Novel · A way to begin
Maria Chapdelaine
Louis Hémon · 1914
Opening lines
«Ite missa est.»
La porte de l'église de Péribonka s'ouvrit et les hommes commencèrent à sortir.
“Ite missa est.”
The door of the church at Péribonka opened and the men began to come out.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
At the inhabited edges of Lac Saint-Jean, up the Péribonka river, the Chapdelaine family clears a farm at the edge of the forest. Maria, the eldest, is of an age to marry. Three men want her: François Paradis, a coureur de bois who lives off the wild country; Lorenzo Surprenant, gone to earn his living in the factories of the United States; Eutrope Gagnon, their only neighbour, settled two miles away. Between them pass winter, mass, chores, evening gatherings and silence.
Context
The manuscript, typed in Montreal in 1913, was sent to Paris, where Le Temps serialised it from 27 January to 19 February 1914: its author had died before any of it appeared. The volume was published in Montreal in 1916, illustrated by Suzor-Coté, then by Grasset in 1921, as the first title in Daniel Halévy's Cahiers verts. The Catholic clergy and people on the right appropriated the novel. The text of the manuscript was not published until 1980.
Who it is for
A short novel in simple language; the slowness of the seasons is the subject as much as the setting.
Prizes and reception
Sold in more than ten million copies according to the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, and brought to the screen four times, from Julien Duvivier in 1934 to Sébastien Pilote in 2021.
Sources for this page 10
The pages consulted to check this page.