The Tale of a Narrative: 's Don I' Orignal

by Barbara Thompson Godard

"Le monologue est la forme la plus eighteenth-century and contemporary ancienne et la plus nouvelle du thea• works that question the origins and tre quebecois. . . . II se situe a la function of narrative. Don 1'Orignal fois en marge (au cabaret, dans les celebrates unbookishness: its self- boites) et au coeur de notre thea• conscious analysis of narrative focus- tre, " (1) writes Laurent Mailhot. This ses on the question of an "Acadian mode of representation has its roots literature" where moribund conventions in an especially rich oral narrative of the European literary tradition tradition that is also the source of would be regenerated by the living tales by Ferron, Theriault, Carrier and, vitality of a native folk tradition now we may add, by Maillet. Paraphras• based on oral narrative. This folk ing Mailhot, the tale is the most tradition provides a rhetoric and venerable and the newest form of fiction vocabulary of comedy, a cast of char• in French-speaking Canada, a paradox I acters and the element of the marvel• should like to explore in Antonine lous that engenders romance. In jux• Maillet's Don 1'Orignal. taposing classical form and vital language, Maillet insists that dis• covering an ancestral community should This novel shares its sophisticated liberate rather than enslave a present reflexive form with prominent generation. In 1971, Maillet published a thesis on tive plot reveal the modernist ethos, Rabelais et les traditions populaires though their origins lie in the oral en Acadie(2)wherein she showed how the tale. Modernism, whether of the mediaeval traditions on which Rabelais "early symbolist variety" or a more drew for his celebrated works were recent, historically based "post• alive and flourishing in the folklore modernism," attacks mimesis. Para• of . As if to demonstrate the doxical though it may seem, one of the reality of the Phoenix, Maillet pub• characteristics of the modernist move• lished in the same year La SagouineQ) ment in Canada, whether in Laurence's (a monologue or a recit? asks The Diviners, Aquin's Prochain episode Mailhot)(4)and a year later Don or Don 1'Orignal is the search for new 1'Orignal, narratives heavily dependent narrative forms in an ancient oral on her folklore research. Maillet's tradition. These works juxtapose the attempts to develop an artistic lan• artifice of verisimilitude to the guage out of the real landscape in chaotic vitality of history, thus which she lives lead her to the folk• questioning the ability of literature tale, whose very art is "the art of to give form to reality. Its arti• playing with the masks of words."(5) fices are accentuated through the In company with her contemporaries, presence of a highly visible and un• Maillet's major task becomes the ex• reliable narrator and the abandonment ploration of language for the purpose of realism's linear plot. In Don of freeing the imagination from repre• 1'Orignal folk traditions have the sentational strictures and affirming appearance of history and history gains the compatibility of spiritual and the heightened grandeur of legend. The political goals. The continual ex• fact that both history and folk tra• ploration of the French language in dition are possible explanations of all its vital aspects and Acadian facts deters us from dismissing either specificity is a constant of Maillet's one. Maillet's characteristic struc• style. Her linguistic sense seeks out tural device of multiple choices leads the most vital form of language. Her us to a wider world of multivalent words, expressions, inflexions are de• narrative larger than the partial rived from speech, not books. Yet truths of either the marvellous or the paradoxically, her writing is an at• world of fact offered therein. tempt to give them form. Like Jacques Ferron, Maillet says: "I am the last Fundamental to the modernist movement of an oral tradition and the first of are its linguistic preoccupations. its written transposition."(6) Disjuncted from feeling, language in Modernism took over its own space, In Maillet's novel the multivalent formed an opaque substance dwelling narrative perspective and accumula• outside the characters who ostensibly mouth it to become itself the subject tensive use of pastiche and puns would in a plot. With its emphasis on indicate an attempt at "de-composition." transmission, the tale does not create Readers are invited to reflect more heroes but limits itself to propagating deeply on the conventions of literary the art of speaking and telling.(7) language. Most common here is a style of "writ• ten speech" which, according to Roland This dual movement has particular Barthes,(8)is one of the more extreme relevance in Canada where both English examples of modernist "zero degree and French writers have been aware of writing," writing which is the nega• "translated" language—standard British tion of itself, silence, absence. or American, international French- dominating literature. Dennis Lee has Classical language reflected a stable described the problem of language for world; however, beginning with Flau• a minority whose public space is bert, language became narcissistic, threatened. self-reflexive. Mallarme with his But if we live in space which is phrase "to speak has no connection radically in question for us, that with the reality of things," "murdered" makes our barest speaking a problem language. Later Wittgenstein des• to itself. For voice does issue in cribed the nature of linguistic truth part from civil space. And alien• as tautological ("that which mirrors ation in that space will enter and itself in language, language cannot undercut our writing, make it re• represent"), and the only subject left coil upon itself, become a problem for writers was that of their diffi• to itself. cult relationship with their medium, language. One facet of this crisis The act of writing "becomes a prob• of language has been a turning to lem to itself" when it raises a symbolism, music or foreign languages vicious circle, when to write to carry the burden of meaning when necessarily involves something that English or French is no longer suf• seems to make writing impossible. ficient. Maillet's use of Acadian Contradictions in our civil space dialect in Don 1'Orignal is evidence are one thing that makes this hap• of her dissatisfaction with literary pen, and I am struck by the subtle language. Through her use of the cur• connections people here have drawn rent coin of language, the commonplaces between words and their own prob• of speech and popular art forms, she lematic public space.(9) has injected new material into litera• Significantly Lee first made this state• ture. There are some indications that ment to a group of Quebec writers only Maillet has experienced the crisis of too acutely aware of the linguistic language in yet another way. Her ex• alienation of a doubly colonized people. From the early sixties, a debate on Maillet has learned from Carrier's language has animated the Quebec example: she uses swearing as a means literary world. Its focus has been on of individualizing the characters and "joual," speech that signals linguistic showing their inventive powers. These alienation. Those who use it in fic• are also revealed in their creative tion make thus an implicit comment on malapropisms and unwitting puns on literary conventions and show one way literary classics. Writing from to renew them—"Parole" versus "langue." Acadia as a spokesman for its national aspirations,(11)Maillet is Roch Carrier, who has chosen to seek even more aware of the colonizing im• out the vital speech of the past to plications of conventional language. form a new literary language, describes Like Carrier she is embarked on the the process in a comment on the origins perilous enterprise of creating a of La guerre, yes sir. vital imaginary country in order for En ecrivant ce livre, je me suis that country to come into existence. apercu que notre litterature demeurait generalement superficielle Her Acadian nationality is the first dans ses themes et son ton, comme element in Maillet's mistrust of la litterature d'une communaute language, but there is a second ele• tenue a l'ecart, alors meme que des ment nourishing it, namely her sex. recits comme ceux de Cartier, de Though she has made no feminist pro• Champlain, du P. Biard, de Marie nouncement, in all her fiction—Don de 1'Incarnation regorgent d'une l'Orignal, , Mariaagelas richesse spontanee qui n'a pratique- and Cordes-de-Bois—Maillet has ment jamais ete exploitee. Pour developed strong female characters who ecrire mon roman, j'ai du me are the effective heads of their so• depouiller de tout ce qu'on m'avait cieties. Don l'Orignal may be the appris pour revenir a la source de titular head of Flea Island, but it is personnages d'instinct, de coleres, La Sagouine who fulfills all the of• de sentiments profonds. Le sacre, fices she is entitled to in a battle par exemple, dont personnellement which sets her against the redoubtable je 'use pas, que je n'ai jamais en- Mayoress from the mainland. Epic tendu dans ma famille, j'en fais battles in this fiction, as in grand usage dans le livre, parce Cordes-de-bois, pit women against each qu'il m'apparait comme la premiere other in an inversion of the tra• affirmation d'une conscience in- ditional epic, an implied destruction dividuelle. La structure syntaxi- of masculine conventions. que du blaspheme raconte bien notre histoire, le flou de notre Contemporary Quebec women's writing expression, le pietinement de la also centres the revolt against conven• pensee et de la vie. . . .(10) tions in language. Following the lead of French feminists Monique Wittig and pun and paratax, would suggest she Helene Cixous, Nicole Brossard and gives implicit assent to the goals of Madeleine Gagnon express their existen• these feminist writers.(13) tial experience in a subjective manner, attempting to invent their own language, The burning question for Maillet is the a language of and for women. This nature of narrative truth for she would enterprise is prompted by their aware• claim her linguistic experiments are ness that official languages are the elements of the tradition of folk nar• languages of the holders of power in rative she has inherited, a debt which our society, men. Women have not is largely unconscious.In her thesis written history and their experience only one brief chapter is devoted to has solidified in the silence of their the literary technique of tales, a bodies. The genders of French language mere two pages being reserved for make one more acutely aware of its "l'art du conteur." However, her fic• phallocentric nature. For these women, tion provides an extended gloss to language does not mirror any political, this section of her thesis. social or psychological reality. There is no continuity between their percep• Emphasis is not on description but on tions and the language used to embody plot in Don 1'Orignal, which dissolves them. Language must be invented anew into the act of telling, for each in a revolutionary act that will over• character as he is introduced brings turn all known literary conventions his story with him. Don 1'Orignal is and grammatical laws. Mair Verthuy(12) a collection of sequences. It is sums up the means currently employed about the telling of these stories: its in this protest against the existing characters (ironically, for they are power structure. It "may take the form named after real people in Bouctouche, of asserting the right to speak an al• , as Maillet lists them in ready existent language whose use had her thesis)(14)are word beings who par• been forbidden or restricted: ... it ticipate in fiction as grammatical be• may take the form of linguistic sub• ings. "Hommes recits," Todorov has version (the extensive use of puns, called such figures in The Arabian paratax, etc.), of a repossession of Nights.(15) Like that earlier collec• the Word (a woman's body and bodily tion of tales, Don 1'Orignal is circu• functions expressed by women), of the lar in form. At its conclusion we re• desire to create a parallel opposing read the phrases of the opening pages language (experiments in the invention about the Fleas setting up their shacks of new words)." Maillet's extensive and digging their wells as they begin use of Acadian dialect, a "restricted their society again. Though they have language" and the characteristic now changed geographical locations with stylistic features of her prose, the the mainlanders and traded social classes, these two groups remain op• "was the daughter-in-law of a third posed to each other. One imagines the cousin of the god-father of a lateral struggle between them continuing ad descendent of the great-grandson of a infinitum. Within this circle, the Flea." Such an oblique relationship plot develops by the accumulation of with the actors of the story points to stories. Don l'Orignal is a series of the indirectness of the narrative. So intricate Chinese boxes. To speak is many opportunities for creative rein- to live, we realize, when the narra• terpretation of the original story tor's discourse blithely fills in the have occurred that the truth will gaps left in the chronicles and his• never be known. tories (Ch. 31) creating the events ex nihilo, as it were, through his History is equally fallible. Maillet's words. Such is the power of the nar• openly manipulative narrator alerts our rative act. suspicion to the reliability of scien• tific, objective methods when, in the Maillet believes in the power of same chapter, he tells of his use of literature, a fantastic but life- the auxiliary sciences in seeking to improving literature, yet this makes establish the origins of a five-holed her all the more aware of the lie that button. All along he has known that is narrative.(16) Her analysis and only the barber wore such buttons! His judgement of truth and lies, gossip, display of objectivity is self-defeat• rumour, memory, private and public ing. We remember then all the other story-telling is implicit in her form cases where rumour has been studied, and themes but occasionally surfaces cases where there are several contra• as in Chapter 31. Here the clash of dictory opinions offered by witnesses folk memory and history, of life and of an action, as in the narrative of literature, favours the former, for Sam Amateur. (Chs. 8 and 9) Maillet the entire narrative is presented to invariably qualifies the testimony of us as a gloss on history that has her "highly respectable witnesses" so failed to record the epic events in a that we are shown the subtle and im• nation's development. Instead these portant gap between happening and in• have been kept alive in the speech of terpretation. The fact that all ex• those descended from the key actors in planations are possible deters us from the events. The narrator assures us dismissing any of them. Where there in the opening line that he has for• is a viewer, there is a story; where gotten how to spell the name of his there is a character, there is a story. village and thus has no aptitude for They live through narration that brings written narrative. His story, he re• them into existence. Nevertheless, lates in Chapter 31, (17)he has learned Maillet gives the final word to the from his "paternal grandmother" who oral narrators. The Epilogue is re- ported to us purportedly in the very from another oral mode where the words of the narrator's ancestor who raconteur must always be aware of the has visited the Fleas. The author in• impact of his narrative on his audience. sists thus on the collective nature of This latter he defines in his first narrative and on the importance of in• sentence: "along the shores of the formal or amateur narratives. country next yours." An opposition is set up between the audience of foreign• Maillet's method is to place personal ers and the people of the story. For acts of narrative imagination within us, he provides explanations of the the public chronicle. People tell nature of life in language we under• themselves and each other the truths, stand. Maillet says that her charac• half-truths, lies and fantasies by ters speak their own words in dialect, which we all live, while Maillet con• while she, as narrator, speaks her stantly reminds us of the context of language which is close to that of the such individual narratives. Story• characters but bears the marks of telling is valued as an activity of education.(18) This duality of dis• the mind and heart. It is freely course reveals other tensions, that be• anecdotal, accumulating local history. tween verisimilitude and the marvel• Individual biographers stand out with• lous, for example, which the narrator in the group but their stories also attempts to blur. As we have noticed, create a sense of community, for they he discusses in detail at strategic arise from the flow of conversation points in the narrative (such as the picking up naturally (Ch. 6) from other opening and closing of the book and the people's remarks and immediate events. beginning of chapters) the "real" One tale thus breeds another, showing sources for his story but passes rapid• that the community recognizes narration ly over the more numerous marvellous as a ritual necessity. So it pours adventures. Another fundamental ten• forth its autobiography and the narra• sion is that between the people of the tor transposes these oral tales into mainland "en haut" and the islanders written narrative. "en bas," between the rich and the poor. This contrast provokes the In this role, the narrator is himself drama of the story and reveals the an important descendant from the oral simple and constant opposition funda• tale. Not only does his obvious lying mental to any popular tale. Certainly set up the hyperbolic comedy of the this principal operates on many struc• transformation of the lilliputian fleas tural levels in Don 1'Orignal, in the into giants. His omnipresence (defin• drama, the mode of representation, the ing his role, ordering the complex al• language and the narrator with his ternating narratives, imposing the audience. image of a collective narrator) derives Don l'Orignal is an anatomy of forms of ultimate decision to undertake such oral narrative. Consequently, the action is based on the prophetic dream opening chapters of the novel seem of the Mayor related in Chapter 3. confusing to the reader because of the This dream lends imagination to the number and variety of narratives. otherwise limited notion of rational First we have the marvellous tall-tale planning. The presence of a fly on the of the rapid growth of Flea Island Mayor's forehead has been perceived as risen up from the sea,(19)followed in a blow from the sling shot of a Flea Chapter 2 by the mainlanders' interpre• soldier. On the basis of such an tations of this event as revealed in erroneous interpretation of this dream the conversations of the milliner and rests her decision to attack the Fleas. the barber who debate the question of The Mayor's deluded fantasies of the Boer War which they have read about grandeur (in which she sees herself in a library book. They can come to kindred to Joseph and Joan of Arc in little agreement about the elements of the domain of interpretive skill) and the book, its thesis, language, style her boasting further undermine the or ideas. Here Maillet jokingly ex• veracity of her viewpoint. Neverthe• plores the imaginative element in the less, Maillet's narrative is based on reading of any text and its limitations the consequences of these mispercep- as a form of truth. Moreover the war tions, dreams and fantasies. The in question here is a colonialist one townsfolk are enjoined to share these wherein a native population is suppres• plans by the terrible presage, the sed by immigrants. At this point in ghost ship, which appears to them in her fiction Maillet is attempting to Chapter 7, fulfilling the ritual ap• undermine the position of the cultured parition before great storms. Thus mainlanders who oppose the natural the die is cast. Flea Island will be "Fleas." Their culture, as we see, attacked. leads them to certain erroneous fan• tasies about Flea Island which are to In Chapter 4 we shift to the Flea camp determine the outcome of the story. and the domain of the tall-tale. La The Fleas are first observed through a Sagouine's genealogy is revealed: a spyglass ("lorgnette") and a common fine piece of biography is the narra• French expression refers to looking at tive of the exploits of Jos a Pit a things through the small end of the Boy who shut his stepmother up in a "lorgnette," as exaggerating the im• cellar. Moving still in the realm of portance of minor details, indicating giants, the narrator refers to the a tendency to hyperbole.(20) These, celebrated story of Michel-Archange then, are basic attitudes of the main• 'with Sam Amateur (a story, based on landers, attitudes which are going to local legends and folk tales)—a nar• lead them to attack the Fleas. The rative delayed until Chapters 8 and 9 when it is related by the bard touchstones in the theme of narrative, Pamphile. The stories people tell so important in Don 1'Orignal, and il• within the novel tend to be signifi• lustrate the hopes Maillet has for cant in form, feeling and content; in narrative in a nationalist perspective. Pamphile's tale of the supernatural we find a model for good story telling Chapter 5 plunges us into the action and good listening where the teller of of the battle between the mainlanders this tall-tale finds a proper time and and the poor from Flea Island but, use for lying. In this community, rather than letting us see what is entertainment is essentially narrative. happening, it is related second-hand Pamphile's tale, as well as amusing in the report of Michel-Archange. This his audience, makes human connections, technique of substituting narrative for he relies on an existing community for drama is manifestly modelled on of interest. The ritual and repetitive the example of the French classical nature of his telling is emphasized: theatre and the classical epic, for that this is the epic tale of battle Michel-Archange's story is framed by of a hero from Flea Island (Pumpkin an epic simile. Here the contrasting though he may be) underlines the elevated European literary tradition national interest of the telling. and the low oral folk tradition are Pamphile, through his narrative, works brought into comic tension. No sooner to weld neighbourliness and friendship is the story concluded, than the ele• within the community. These beneficial vated mode of the epic gives way to a effects of narrative stand in sharp conversational battle where the char• contrast to the war-like dreams and acters hurl blasphemies, proverbs and fantasies of the Mayor and the equally nursery rhymes at each other. The divisive effects of her game of secrets greater part of talk in this novel is and disclosures (played first with the narrative because it cannot be dramatic. lighthouse keeper, then with the mer• Characters are often too simple to re• chant to keep them in subordinate flect or analyse. Feelings and be• positions in the battle) which are haviour have to be explained in stor• examples of bad narratives. The Puciade (Fleeiade) is a microcosm of ies but because they are created for their tellers by a master of language Don 1'Orignal, relating one battle, and psychology, they are powerfully whereas Maillet recounts the entire compressed, implying passions and mo• history of this people so similar to tives. In this passage the compression the .(21) As well, Pamphile's is extreme, the characters being tale of the exploits of Sam Amateur developed through their imaginative relies heavily on supernatural lore. swearing or the type of proverb they The fabulous is his (and Maillet's) speak. milieu.(22) These two chapters are Chapter 6 furnishes us with a longer fictional world, a reassurance essen• example of characterization through tial for comedy. Like Leacock in Sun• narrative in Noume's traveller's tale, shine Sketches or Swift in Gulliver's which relates his fishing expedition Travels, she provides us not only with to foreign shores and his adventures the relative clauses that reveal the (mostly with prostitutes). The story logic of interruptions but she also thus functions on two levels, as indicates to us the limited views of salacious anecdote and as travel nar• her narrator and characters in the rative. But within Noume's tale is unreliability of the narrator's embedded another narrative, the mar• memory and the deforming view of the vellous folktale of the little grey mainlanders who look at the Fleas man ("petit bonhomme gris"), the through the "lorgnette."(25) The ghost of a headless pirate who guards fleas have been magnified into giants buried treasure.(23) La Sainte in• in the tall-tale tradition of Rabelais terrupts Noume's narration to suggest rather than the heroic one of Le Cid. that this ghost would have been a In an analysis of the characters in help in fighting the other ghost, Sam the Rabelasian tradition and the Amateur, whose story, to be told two giants' tale (type 650 which includes chapters later, is thus prepared for. the popular Ti-Jean tales of Acadia In this way, the spiralling effect of and the Anglo-American Paul Bunyan), narrative within narrative is com• Maillet(26)comments that they are more pounded. We see how a story is called openly magnified than literary heroes forth from the conversation of the like Hamlet or Don Quixote who are al• characters while the community of so fighting for the re-establishment sympathy between teller and listeners, of law and peace. who both accept the supernatural as factual, is established.(24) This in• Maillet has used the Acadian folk tra• terruption of the preceding story to dition in the interpolated stories and unfold a second story is similar to characterizations, as well as in the the operation of the sentences in Don language, technique and structure of l'Orignal: complex sentences with num• narration. Acadian superstitions such erous subordinate clauses are embedded as that of the ghost ship, traditional within each other parallelling the apparition to forecast stormy weather, structure of the narrative, a primor• are included.(27) Several different dial characteristic of folktales. versions of this story are presented as the mainlanders debate about its Maillet controls the series of expand• significance. Whether one accepts the ing and conflicting protagonist/narra• version of piracy or kidnapping, both tor viewpoints, giving us the reassur• involve the witchcraft of a vengeful ing recognition of the limits of the Indian mother. By offering these dif- ferent versions for our consideration, Acadian ceremonies.(28) A proverb Maillet raises doubts in our minds, she has collected in Cape Breton, "il doubts which are confirmed in the de• n'y a qu'un poil entre un savant et un bate about a phantom, "ordinarily a fou,"(29)seems to have served as the man," according to definition, but genesis of the teacher whose saving of never "ordinary," points out the mer• Citrouille illustrates the fine line chant. These plays on words are a between wisdom and folly. Here we de• salient feature of Maillet's style. tect Maillet's attempt to revitalize Here we have the characteristic a proverbial language, for the final skeptical offering of multiple mean• dramatized creation of the teacher is ings . Each character in Don 1'Orignal far more lively than the saying. is a potential story that is the story Citrouille himself, so miraculously of his life: every character signifies resurrected from drowning, so marvel• a new plot. The story serves not only lously married by the hermit on the to reiterate an adventure but also to high seas, would seem to owe much to introduce the narrative which a char• the significant Acadian folk-hero Jean acter makes of it. This we see most de Calais. This figure illustrates the clearly in the fabulous adventures of importance of the sea in Acadian folk• Michel-Archange and Sam Amateur, sub• lore, for Jean in his sea voyage is ject to the numerous interpretations drowned,then miraculously saved by of rumour and gossip. The narrator grateful death. The elements of this assures us that no factual evidence tale—the sea, a good deed rewarded, a exists for any of the hypotheses ad• villain, a beautiful princess, a happy vanced about their supernatural actions. ending—seemed, according to Acadian But characters are identified by their folklorists, to have especially cap• varying explanations. La Sainte tivated the imagination of Acadian demonstrates her "saintliness" by ac• raconteurs, for they are continually cusing Sam of diabolic adventures repeated.(30) while Don 1'Orignal reveals his preoc• cupations with leadership in inter• In developing her major narrative theme preting the actions as "military tac• of the contrasts between oral and tics." literary narratives, Maillet has quoted at length in Don 1'Orignal without al• All Maillet's characters are based on ways identifying her sources. When we folk tradition through their actions admit her dependence upon books, we or sayings. La Sainte, for instance must look at the kinds of authors on promises God, in return for the safety whom she depends. Foremost among these of her son, to make a pilgrimage of is Rabelais, whose model paradoxically the stations of the cross, a ritual affirms the importance of both oral Maillet says is an important part of and written narrative. When the Mayor prophetically dreams of the forthcoming ment of extensive plays on proverbs battle, she compares one general to and wise-saws and has fed her penchant Panurge, the army to his sheep. This for fantastic etymology. It is also explicit reference to Rabelais intro• significant that Maillet compares her duces a number of stylistic parallels hero Noume to Don Quixote, and so, as with his works, for Maillet has found author, points out the magnification in this master, a model for the trans• process indulged in by the protagonist formation of folklore into literature, narrator. Cervantes' interest in the and also a model in the art of quoting. alienating effects of literature, in Like him, she realizes the comic spirit the discrepancy between literature and latent in parodies of the abuse of life, has influenced her. From Cervan• pedantically quoting. What both are tes too, Maillet has learned how to attracted to is words in sacrosanct draw quotations from books and from texts: their humour is catalyzed by proverbs or nursery rhymes, fitting the firmly moulded formulas and they them into a balanced harmony of con• are drawn into a game of parodistic in• trasts. The narrator's literary al• version. (31) Echoes of Rabelais are lusions find their antithetical cor• all pervasive in Don l'Orignal prin• respondence in the Fleas' popular ex• cipally because the French writer pro• pressions and proverbs, for both quo• vides a model for elevating the oral tation and proverb are preformed tradition to great literature. Indeed, linguistic material. In Don l'Orignal Maillet would claim that Rabelais is the extensive allusions to books work her immediate ancestor in an Acadian both to create a universal language literary tradition, the material he of reference, a mythic background for used having remained in embryo for an Acadian literature and, through some three centuries in Acadia. Maillet's parodying of them, to decom• pose this discourse in favour of the vitality of the living literature of Allusions to other literary works, in Acadia. Don l'Orignal, are generally tongue-in- cheek and form part of the "battle of the books" in the novel. Maillet's Throughout Don l'Orignal, too, there is search for a vital language through a paradoxical relationship of flesh and the paradoxical relationship of word, of "parole" and "langue." The literary text and life owes much to the lively images and hyperbole of. the Renaissance humanist tradition with Fleas' speech contrasts with the its mocking of scholastic texts and formalized language of the narrator's delight in the freshness of the vulgate. prose as he seeks through balanced Rabelais' model here is instructive, sentences, epithets and catalogues to for he has taught her much about the fit their action into the epic mould. art of misquoting, about the develops Juxtaposition of different levels of language is one of the chief comic forms in the modern world. Maillet features of the novel. Literature and seeks to ignite some of the fossilized life are brought into most eloquent energy found in these cliches, energy conflict in the debate in Chapter 5 located especially in the Acadians' where the narrator introduces and speech. While far from being the ex• frames the dialogue with a series of haustive analysis of Flaubert's balanced phrases: Bouvard et Pecuchet or his Diction- So they threw themselves body and naire des idees recues, Don 1'Orignal soul into an illuminating debate is an inventory of ritual ways of ex• worthy of the most august House of pression partially detached from their Commons. Hair stood on end, feet original emotional and spiritual mean• beat the ground and fists drew ing. Burdened by the wastes of time, fantastic arabesques in the these cultural shards and rubbish of sky. (32) the past create a discordant variety Rapidly the succeeding dialogue dis• of styles to produce sounds not pre• solves into a series of misquoted viously heard in high French Canadian proverbs and swearing, brought to a literature. Sensitive to the thin• conclusion by Don 1'Orignal's re• ness , inarticulateness and alienation sounding "godeche de hellI" signifying of language, Maillet seeks to disturb the Acadian's originality of speech the reader's conventional consciousness and demonic vitality. Earlier in the in other ways and to enter a new realm same chapter an extended epic simile(33) of aesthetic possibilities. This frames and contrasts Michel-Archange's second development begins with the dis• description of the attempted capture location of this conventional language of a keg of molasses. In keeping with and moves to creation with the intro• the classical tradition, the action is duction of Acadianisms into the related not dramatized, for it is less literary language. That the tale is important than Michel's way of telling the literary genre most appropriate it which creates the comedy of con• for such exploration has been suggested trasting language so fundamental to by Jean Marcel.(34) Maillet proposes Don 1'Orignal and its hyperbolic mode a mythology as much in the vocabulary, of narrative. syntax and rhetoric of her work as in the figuration. Maillet's second aim is to find a viable, vital language for an Acadian It is in Chapter 23 that the problem literature and her exploration assumes of language is most clearly addressed, two forms. First, there is the at• as the cultural insensibility of the tempt, already briefly described, to community is demonstrated through its adumbrate a universal language from a reliance on foreign tongues, mindlessly number of literary models from differ• repeated: ent ages which have become clicheed The funeral procession landed on language, is dramatized in the Biblical the island reciting and chanting pageant of the Fleas presented at the the prayers for the repose of the celebration of Citrouille's resurrec• dead. Since the Flea nation was tion. Here too we observe the manner entirely non-Latin in origin, it in which Maillet's native folk heroes was apt to confound ablatives, are drawn against contrasting heroic genitives and accusatives in a way values of the old world. In her thesis, to render the meaning of the re• Maillet(36)states that one lively as• quests it addressed to the heavens pect of Acadian folklore has been the completely unintelligible to it• presentation of Biblical plays in self and Citrouille. They were church basements. The Fleas treat vaguely aware of crying something episodes from Genesis very freely, or other from the depths of the thus crystallizing the recreative pro• abyss: that a watcher somewhere cess at work in their parodying of was hoping for Aurora: that some• sacred texts. La Cruche, as prosti• one held his sins before him while tute, plays the role of Eve, giving another trailed his works after: thus a worldly interpretation to the and that a sacrifice would be made fall of man. No spiritual sins of from a holocaust or a helicopter, pride for these people! Similarly, the it wasn't quite clear which one. parallels between crafty, braggart Dies ilia, dies irae, quescat Noume, retiring Citrouille and the aeternam Domine, R.I.P.(35) brothers Cain and Abel are reinforced, The absurdity of the puns unintention• though Abel is brought to life to com• ally made by the characters who replace memorate Citrouille's revival, thus dawn by the figure of a woman, Aurora, encapsulating the victory of life over and confound helicopter with holo• form that this dramatic production sig• caust—though the words are far from nificantly represents. Puns and word being homonyms—points to the fact playsC37)such as malapropisms reveal that for the characters "to speak has the gap between ritual language and no connection with the reality of emotional reality, destructuring the things," though it does for Maillet at text in preparation for the next step this point. Through her puns she de- which is the translation of texts into structures this ritual language for us. Acadian speech. She also points to a means of refresh• ing the language through the replace• Proverbs are another form of ritual, ment of outworn formulas with new tautological speech into which Maillet words drawn from the immediate experi• injects new life through her juxta• ence of the characters. position, misquotation and misapplica• tion of them. The author-narrator of This attempt to revitalize the corpse, Don l'Orignal reveals to us the limi- tations of the characters, whose ac• lem. (39) In conclusion, La Sagouine tion is determined by proverbs, through threatens the mainlanders with the the absurd conclusions that result "bomination of desolation," a mala- from their being too-literally applied. propism based on two of the most fre• For instance, the Flea invasion of the quently used words in Jeremiah.(40) mainland to capture the keg of molas• But the prophet was berating his own ses is effected "in the west, in order people of Israel, predicting this des• to outwit the enemy whose soundest truction for them should they not mend military theory was that the devil al• their ways, while La Sagouine vituper• ways came from the east."(38) Such ates against the mainlanders. Other preparation seems exaggerated when the misquotations, such as Jeremiah 10:19 mere sight of the Fleas sends all the "Woe is me for my hurt', my wound is mainlanders into their houses! The grievous" which becomes "For your succeeding manoeuvres of dividing the wound is as big as the sea,"(41)demon• army into three whose wandering paths strate how the sense of the prophecy will converge on the keg, confirms the has been translated into new terms absurdity of the initial insistence on predicting not the downfall, but the direction, when the armies criss-cross final victory of the Fleas, as related and then mill about anywhere. in the Epilogue.

Also significant in terms of renewing Similarly, Citrouille's appropriation the language are Maillet's Rabelaisian of Hamlet's famous monologue, "To be or parodies of sacred texts which link not to be," is translated into new the themes of the narrative and the terms in this context. Hamlet reflects story of language, for the parodies on the existential dilemma and dies, turn on the translation of literary Citrouille debates on the question of texts into Acadian dialect. La death and lives.(42) Sagouine's Jeremiade in Chapter 33 T'kick off, t' be finished with which echoes the language and struc• every-thin', once 'n fer all. ture of the prophet's lamentations Is't better fer a guy from th' while transforming their sense is an island t1 excellent example of this restructuring drag out his bitch uva life goin' process. Her lament places the conflict between between mainlanders and islanders in the his shack 'n his punt, or t' finish context of the struggle between Babylon it and Jerusalem and hereby inverses the all off by sinkin' 'tween them? denotative values of their names. For, One Citrouille less in th' world. though the Fleas have been associated T' kick off, t' sink, t' sleep 'n with the devil, their homes are now perhaps lamented as Jeremiah mourned Jerusa• t' dream.(43) Shakespeare's elevated language is "jongler" for "reflechir, songer" subverted here in Citrouille's low (dream), and the printed page is sig• level speech, revealing thus the nificantly transformed in its aspect thrust of Maillet's story of language to change the reader's perceptions of which, like the Fleas, is struggling language. Stopping to ponder over the towards life. They overturn or walk lexical references of these unfamiliar around ritual forms of speech and words, the reader slows his pace. cliches breathing new life into old Words come more rapidly than sense and formulae. the reader is thus obliged to involve himself actively in the creative pro• In this introduction of Acadian langu• cess. age, hitherto spoken, into the ele• vated structure of literary discourse These archaisms give Don l'Orignal its we discover the ultimate importance of characteristic note, popular and learned Don l'Orignal. Maillet becomes the at the same time, and are thus an ele• last of an oral tradition and the first gant means of recalling the dual ori• of a written one, bridging the gap with gins of tales. Moreover they aid the the literary ancestors of Acadia in dislocation from time and space neces- sixteenth and seventeenth-century sary for the genre. For Maillet, France. A more detailed examination though, they are evidence of the con• of her use of dialect would lead us to tinuity of the human imagination and various Acadian glossaries. There one provide that essential link in the learns about the alternate verb forms literary tradition she is establishing— employed in Acadian syntax of which a tradition whose predecessors are in Maillet has made only sparing use, re• the Renaissance but whose ancestors are taining the unusual plural form—the in the even more ancient and more royal we as in "j'avions"(44)or modern oral tradition. Such a feeling "j'enterrons"—to emphasize the collec• of continuity is essential in the ex• tive spirit of the Fleas (and Acadians). ploration of the vital aspects of lan• We could enumerate the archaisms in the guage that is Maillet's constant con• Flea islanders'speech that have a rich• cern. A country invents itself in its ness of imagery not found in modern, words and its spelling, Maillet is thinner, less articulate speech. Just both lexicographer and toponymist. listen to La Sagouine thunder at her Despite the frequency of quotation in hypocritical neighbours: "rats d'eglise, Don l'Orignal, Maillet's words, expres• mangeux de balustre, saintes nitouches, sions and inflexions come not from books fripeux de benitier." Add to these but from life. What dictionary could words like "hucher" for "crier" (shout), contain these expressions when she is or "forbir" for "frotter" (clean up), the first in a literary tradition? "l'echine" instead of "dos" (back), Maillet has listened to the old people telling their tales and taken note. speech or cliches and replace them with the vitality of Acadian speech. Language is renewed also through neo• Likewise her style, with its densely logisms unique to the geographical lo• embedded clauses, resembles the para• cation. Terms such as "poire-acre" tax. Jean Marcel states,(49)that this (choke-cherry) and "dore" (dory)(45) rhetorical device of linking state• describe vegetation and boats of ments without conjunction, without Acadia. In other cases, the language syntactical bonds, is the dominant a— has bent under the influence of Indian syntactical trait in the primitive or English words. "Mashkoui"(46)is a construction of sentences and is Micmac word for soft birch bark: characteristic of languages in the "frolic" is borrowed from English but process of formation or, in literature, its meaning is transformed to "bee."(47) of the epic and the tale, strongly This would suggest that Acadians, like marked by the traits of oral style. the Fleas, associate these events less Maillet rarely omits the conjunctions, with the work undertaken than with the but the length of her sentences, the amusement that follows. Another in• number of actions contained in each, stance where the connotative value of is frequently confusing to the reader the word has been transformed is "saw- in the way of the paratax. Examples esse," a corruption of the English abound, but one might examine the "souwester." For the Acadian, this first sentence where one is plunged word refers to any hat with a peaked into the middle of an action (in media brim worn backwards with the brim over res is the epic formula) through the the neck. Hats are worn this way by complexity of the period. farmers on rainy days or by lumberjacks On the shores of the country right in the winter woods to keep the moisture next to yours where I still live, off their necks.(48) Each word thus has in front of a village whose name its story too within the longer narra• I've forgotten how to spell, there tive which attempts to monumentalize arose one fine morning a sort of this language that has kept its natal yellow blob that looked just like freshness but is in the process of being a whale.(50) structured. Here syntactic play has replaced the ritual entry of the oral tale. In Since Maillet is involved in the other cases, wasting no time with genesis of a literary world, she has qualifications and reservations the only a limited interest in destructur- oral style piles action upon action. ing language. The techniques she uses However, oceans that give birth to of disturbing our perception of langu• islands don't take them back until age help to renew it. Her puns, as we they've done their time and ful• have seen, subvert ritual forms of filled their destiny, gambolling and splashing about and spattering text carefully. These changes in tempo nearby shores too if they don't contribute to our sense of disorienta• watch out. This is what the island tion and the renewal of our perception of hay did. Its neighbours had of language. underestimated how deep and solid it was.(51)Thus the people of the Maillet's sensitivity to language is mainland turned their eyes and at• derived from her triple alienation as tention way from the island, too woman, Acadian and French Canadian. eager to plant, hoe, pick, gather, While she has made us aware of the produce and market to concern them• linguistic uniqueness of the alienated, selves with a tiny little island of above all she has striven to communi• hay. And so it was able to shoot up cate. Her ideal of the good narrator and flower in peace, ignored and is Pamphile, the bard whose stories forsaken by all continents.(52) forge communal and national bonds be• Such complexity and condensation forces tween people. Don l'Orignal is the the reader to slow down and examine the "Puciade" of the Acadians.

NOTES one considers this sensitivity to language and desire to renew it as con• stituting a fundamental characteristic of minority literatures and accept Elaine Showalter's contention [in A Literature of Their Own, (Princeton, 1. Laurent Hailhot, "Le monologue quefce'cois," , 58 1977), p. 10] that women's writing follows the pattern of evolution of (Autumn, 1973) , p. 26. other minority literatures, then it would seem likely that women who were doubly a minority, as is Maillet, and thus doubly sensitive should be in 2. Antonine Maillet, Rabelais et les traditions populaires en Acadie the forefront of the linguistic renewal of their national literatures. (Montreal, 1971), hereafter referred to as Rabelais.

3. Antonine Maillet, La Sagouine (Montreal, 1971). 14. Maillet, Rabelais, p. 125. 4. Mailhot, p. 27. 15. Tvestan Todorov, "Hommes recits," Poetique de la prose (Paris, 1971) , 5. Jean Marcel, Jacques Perron, malgre lui (Montreal, 1970), p. 101. "L'art p. 7B. "Narrative men" is the English translation. du conte c'est l'art de jouer du masque avec les mots, art tr$s ancien et qui tient son prestige de ce qu'il a ete essentiellenent popularei." 16. Maillet calls artistic creation "a lie" in "Interview" with Andre Major, Ecrits du Canada Francais, no. 36 (1973), p. 11. 6. Jacques Ferron, La barre du jour, 2, no. 4 (1967), p. 26. "Je suis le dernier d'une tradition orale et le premier d'une transposition tcrite." 17. The title of this chapter is: WHEREIN THE AUTHOR OF THIS SO TRUE, SO See note 24 for Maillet's wording. VERITABLE, SO VERACIOUS TALE REVEALS HIS SOURCES AND EXPOSES HIS METHODS IN ORDER TO PROVE HIS COMPLETE OBJECTIVITY. This echoes a formula from Rabelais designed to draw attention to the tell-tale exaggeration of an 7. Marcel, p. 59. anecdote. The phrase in question is "ce tant vrai, tant veritable et tant vcridique recit." Maillet, Rabelais, p. 183. 6. Roland Barthes, Le degre zero de 1'ecriture (Paris, 1964), p. 12.

9. Dennis Lee, "Country Cadence Silence," Open Letter, Ser. II, No. 6 (Fall, 18. Maillet Interview, p. 20. 1973), p. 37. 19. We have already briefly mentioned ghost-tales and local legends as types 10. Roch Carrier, La Presse, 2 mars, 1966, p. 25, quoted in Renald Berube, included in this anatomy of narrative, but the oral tradition has played an even more significant role in the composition of Don l'Orignal. The "La guerre, yes sirj de Roch Carrier: humour noir et langage vert," Voix liar's tale or tall tale has been an important feature of North-American et images du pays III (1970), p. 146. folklore and Maillet has identified its importance in Acadia, (Rabelais, p. 36). The extremely rapid growth of Flea Island belongs in this tra• 11. In an interview with Andre Major, Maillet at first rejects Major's asser• dition. Daniel Hoffman (Form and Fable in American Fiction, New York, then she tion that she is a "porte-parole" of Acadia, admits that is an 1973, p. 18-19) has suggested that such recurrent fables cf a land alive "auteur engage" in that the image she gives of Acadia involves her per• with marvels and gigantic in fertility which at first glance seem like sonally, pp. 17:16. local "boosterisms" reflect cultural attitudes to nature. "The myth which these preposterous deadpan exaggerations project is that of the 12. Mair Verthuy and Jeanne Maranda: "Quebec Feminist Writing," Emergency Earthly Paradise, the Land of Cockaigne, the prelapsarian Eden in the New Librarian, Vol. 5, no. 1 (September/October, 1977), p. 3. World." Maillet tells us that Cocaigne is the name of a New Brunswick village neat her native Bouctouche, setting of Don l'Orignal. Moreover, 13. One may question the exclusiveness of these techniques to women's writing. she suggests that the characteristics of Rabelais' giants—the story• Ferron, for instance, makes extensive use of the peratax and the pun while telling Grandgousier, the gigantically strong Gargantua, the strength ele• Kroetsch in The Studhorse Man develops much of his argument for a western vated to art of Pantagruel and the craft of Panurge—are the same as those literature on the pun "Poseidon, posse, pussy, poesie." Nevertheless, if of our "Boy a Polyte, Moume, Michel-Archange," all real people ot 36. Maillet, Rabelais, pp. 113-4. Bouctouche. Through the magnifying lens of the spyglass, real people are developed into literary heroes on the folk model. 37. Maillet, Don 1'Orignal, p. 96, Ch. 23 for example. 20. Le Petit Robert, p. 1008. "Lorgnette." "Citrouille's returned!" "Resurrected the revenant!" 21. The story of the poor young man (Citrouille) and the rich girl (Adeline) "The ghost's resuscitated I" served as the basis for an earlier realistic tale by Kaillet in the play "Returned, re-entered, revived, recaptured!" Les Crasseux (1968). These two works together, Maillet replies to Major's "RrrrrrJ rrrrrl" question, relate the Dispersion of the Acadians in a social form in the "Purrrrr. . .rrrrr. . .rrrr, Citrouille!" conflict of rich and poor, a form that dramatizes also the situation in "Res us ci tated, re ci troui1led!" Acadia today. (Interview, Major, p. 21). 38. Ibid., p. 52, Ch. 12. 22. In an analysis of Acadian folklore, Charlotte Cormier and Nancy Schmitz comment on the surprising richness of marvellous tales in the present 39. Jeremiah 4:19 - 31. day repertory of Acadian raconteurs. As well humorous anecdotes consti• tute a large part of the folklore corpus. "Contes acadiens," Revue de I'Universite' de , 8 (1975) , pp. 6-7. 40. Jeremiah 8:12.

23. Maillet, Rabelais, p. 46. 41. Jeremiah 6:10. "To whom shall I speak and give warning that they may hear you" is echoed in p. 136, Ch. 33. "To whom shall I compare you 24. These interrelated narratives resemble the "compiled stories" or mosaics or little island." or "collages" of other contemporary writers less obviously indebted to the oral tradition such as Ray Smith and Clark Blaise. 42. Maillet, Don l'Orignal, Ch. 18.

25. If this distortion were not clear in the beginning, it is by the end 43. "Crever ou pas crever, c'est la la grosse affaire. Un gars de l'lle (p. 140 - Ch. 34). "The poor keeper was making too much of it. Ke didn't est-y mieux de trainer sa salope de vie entre sa cabane et son chaland need all his artillery to discover the new vision offered to his eyes and ou d'en finir en se laissant couler entre les deux?" confused mind. For the scene that suddenly caught at his throat was taking place right at his feet, at the base of the lighthouse, at a dis• 44. Ibid., pp. 23 (Ch. 5) and 76. tance attainable with the naked eye." 45. See Pascal Poirier, Le Parler Frar.co-acadien et ses origines (Quebec, 26. Maillet, Rabelais, p. 116 and 120. 1928) and Genevieve Massignon, Les parlers frangais d'Acadie, 2 vols. (Paris: 1962). 27. Maillet, Don 1'Orignal (Montreal, 1972). The Tale of Don 1'Orignal (Toronto: Clarke Irwin: 1978). trans. B. Godard, Chapter 7. 46- Ibid., p. 67, Ch. 16.

.28. Maillet, Rabelais, pp. 78-9. 47. Maillet, Rabelais, p. 71.

29. Ibid., p. 81. 48. Ibid., p. 76, Ch. 18. Thanks to Anna Arsenault for this explanation.

30.. Charlotte Cormier and Nancy Schmitz, "Contes acadiens," pp. 6-7. 49. Marcel, p. 116.

31. Herman Meyer, The poetics of quotation in the European novel 50. Maillet, Don l'Orignal, Ch. 1. "Le long des cotes du pays que jhabite (Princeton, 1968), pp. 35, 40. encore et qui se situe juste a cote du votre, avait surgi un bon matin, en pleine mer, en face d'un village dont 1'orthographe ne m'est plus 32. Maillet, Don 1'Orignal, p. 25, Ch. 5. "Alors on se jeta corps perdu en memoire, une espece de tache jaune et qui avait toute l'apparence et le cerveau echauffe* dans un lumineux debat, digne de la plus auguste d'une baleine d'or. chatnbre de communes. Les cheveux se herissaient, les pieds frappaient le sol, et les poigns dessinaient dans le ciel des fantastiques 51. Ibid., p. 10, Ch. 1. "Cependant les oceans qui accouchent d'lles ne les arabesques." reprennent pas que celles-ci n'aient fait leur temps, accompli leur destinee, s'ebattant et s'ebrouant jusqu'a eclabousser les rives par 33. ibid., p. 27. Ch. 5. "On this day it (the sky) was all pocked with tiny trop proches et qui ne prennent assez tot leurs precautions. II en fut clouds which looked like many ancient gods come there to applaud the ainsi de l'lle de foin dont les voisins avaient mal estime la pro- entertaining spectacle about to unfold below. (. . .) "That's how she fondeur et la solidite." be then. . . '." 52. "Les gens de la terre feme done avaient detourne leurs yeux et leur 34. Marcel, p. 101. attention de l'lle, trop empresses a planter, sarcler, cueillir, vendanger, produire et marchander, pour s'occuper en plus d'une mince 35. Ibid., p. 95, Ch. 23. petite lie de foin. C'est ainsi que l'lle put germer et fleurir en paix, ignoree et abandonee de tous les continents."