Publications in French

306 UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY Dr. Tyrone Guthrie's contribution is an unofficial long view of the Festival. He thinks that, with prudence and luck and perhaps some unqualified aid from the Department of Education, the enterprise may now be regarded as an annual event. For several years yet outside help will be necessary, but essentially the production should be Canadian even to the accent of the actors. He himself fortunately can guide the Festival for another year. Again the volume is brightened by the theatrical portraits by Mr. Grant Macdonald. The third sounding of the trumpets, we hope, will by the same trio be recorded. IV. PUBLICATIONS IN FRENCH W. E. COLLIN This year's books are significant as windows opening on the drama of the French-Canadian conscience. Writers are creating ironic patterns by representing sullied figures who venture into the stream of life or fall hopeless on the shore. There are thousands of fear-ridden clerks, says Gabrielle Roy in her latest novel, Alexandre Chenevert (Montreal, Beauchemin, 373 pp., $3.00), thousands of Cheneverts, embodiments of the silliness, stupidity and insignificance of city life. Thousands of him, at a definite hour of the morning, descend a staircase , all at once, run from every point of the city toward overcrowded streetcars. Thousands of him pile up there.... Quick lunch at the end of a counter. The little man covers the sidewalk with his hurrying multi~ tude, tired Qut, sometimes sulky. He disappears behind counters in stores, in offices crackling with tinkling bells, clicking typewriters, buried under piles of papers, reports, ledgers, registers-far, forever farther and farther away from the care-free life of earlier days. They are a pitiful brood over which Mile Roy spreads her tender wings. Chenevert was a puny fellow with a slightly hooked nose which made him look like a lonely, perhaps unhappy bird of prey. He pitied weak and unfortunate people and detested the strong, ferocious races. He intensely disliked the bank manager, an English Canadian, who represented the hereditary enemy. From behind his wicket he watched a continuous stream of faces and reflected on his life. He came to think of one life for the necessary things, clothes, rent, heat, and electricity, and another life for meditation and, perhaps, travel. To be free to lead this other life he made arrangements with himself and succeeded only in confusing his brain. His most grievous error was to believe in the dollar. If he was ever to feel secure he reckoned he would have to work till he was seventy- "to have enough to die on." His wife fell sick and the thought of having to pay a doctor's bills drove him crazy. "There must be a limit somewhere," exclaimed Chenevert, LEITERS IN CANADA, 1954 307 "raising hls shrivelled little fist." Having tried to escape by way of books he had a great, fantastic dream: a serious illness which would be the last, a spell in the hospital, a real rest. The doctor said: "Go away somewhere.... Throw off everything. For once at least in your life do what you've always wanted to do." At St. Donat, in the Laurentian Mountains, Mile Roy teaches the little city man the lesson of solitude. "Vain was your agitation, useless your anguish, useless your suffering, useless all that, said the silence to this exhausted man." "The trees bowed: they told Alexandre that they lived a whlle, died, and were replaced by others and that was all right." She shows him life in harmony with nature. "He saw the grass waving at hls feet in long paths where the wind passed; birds floating leisurely in the air, clouds sailing in the distance and he identified hlmself with a secret emotional understanding, with the irresponsible and docile elements of creation." She delivers him from men and from God. He is not responsible for original sin. Life is innocent. The disgruntled Alexandre died in him and another, a kind of sympathetic Alexandre, took hls place. Part three of the book is a gentle mockery of civilized life, out of harmony with nature and in harmony with original sin. Chenevert was so happy he felt he must communicate...