Las expectativas eran altas y por desgracia no las ha cumplido.
La ambientación y las descripciones de la naturaleza son muy buenas pero la trama de la historia en sí me ha parecido muy floja. Básicamente trata sobre la elección de marido por parte de la joven Maria. 0266651755 So Beautifully written that it is a pleasure to read. Elegantly evocative of early settlement life in northern Quebec. 0266651755 Maria Chapdelaine is a true Canadian classic. I read it in French in high school and now in English on my ipad. The translation is good but the editing was less than stellar with lots of spelling errors.
Like all great literature, the tale is symbolic of much more than the lot of the book's characters. The choice faced by the heroine is really one faced by everyone at some point in life - between duty and ambition, known and unkown, heritage and progress.
It is also a beautiful description of rural life in Quebec at the turn of the last century. It captures some of the complexity of Quebec's situation. One that drove many French-Canadians to find their fortune elsewhere in Canada and the United States.
The fact that it is so easy to question Maria's decision adds to the book's relevance. Her choice is not self-evident, nor particularly compelling, even on the author's own terms. But life is like that. Maria's mother had a similar choice to make and always harboured some regret. Few people go through life without some thought of the fickleness of fate. This book does not skirt from the difficulty of these choices or console us with a certain outcome.
The book also illustrates the social environment that would In the second half of the 20th century, drive the Quiet Revolution in Quebec, and inspire the Parti Quebecois and divide Canada.
Overall, the writing is beautiful and the characters come to life. It is a very memorable book 0266651755 This story is so removed from the reality of modern life that it is easy to understand why some readers might find it difficult to relate to. It is, however, a true depiction of a particular time and place (e.g.: Early 20th c. in Québec, in a remote area of French Canada.) My own grandparents and those before them lived this kind of reality: Harsh long winters, hard work, sacrifices, isolation and a deeply held religious belief. Dutiful Maria Chapdelaine is at the centre of this moving story. Will she follow her heart or will she choose the life her family wants for her?... I read the original version in French in the 1960's, and then again in English in 1978. Like all good books, it should be read again. 0266651755 The version I read of this was published independently by someone out of the public domain, and they were a poor editor, but that is really here nor there about this short romance of the French Canadian frontier at the turn of the previous century, which turns downright elegiac at the end when the title character makes her choice about whether to stay or head to the US for an entirely new and different life. Apparently considered a classic in its native land, and I guess I can see why. 0266651755
Louis Hémon ë 4 Summary
Excerpt from Maria Chapdelaine: A Romance of French Canada
By his side Egide Simard and others, who like him had come a long journey by sleigh, were fastening their heavy fur coats as they went out of the church, and drew them close at the waist with red scarves. Some young fellows from the village, very handsome in their overcoats with collars of otter skin, were speaking with deference to old Nazaire Larouche, a tall grey man with large bony shoulders, who for the mass had made no change in his everyday garb' a short coat of brown homespun lined with sheepskin, patched breeches, and thick grev woolen socks in moose hide moccasins.
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Moral of the story: you should remain miserable your whole life to honor your equally miserable ancestors. 0266651755 Oh. My. God. Was this book ever boring. Maria Chapdelaine is about a girl whose father spends his entire life slaving away to build farms in the Canadian wilderness. Once his farm is complete, however, he gets bored, moves away, and begins the process again, willfully casting himself into servitude of the savage Canadian landscape. Maria, who has clearly inherited her father's stupidity, falls in love with men after meeting them an entire two times in her isolated life. Given a chance to leave her dreadful life and join civilization, Maria abandons any hope of living happily ever after following her mother's death. Reflecting on her mother's stoic adherence to her father's foolish whims, Maria listens to the wind and gets momentarily sentimental, thus choosing to reside in Northern Quebec - the forest she claims to hate several times throughout the novel. What a bore. Maria Chapdelaine is a boring title for this book, so I've included some of my own interpretations:
We're Always Cold by Louis Hemon
How to Cut Hay by Louis Hemon
We Made Land by Louis Hemon
EDIT: I wanted to come back to this because we discussed the book in class (the one in which I was forced to read Maria Chapdelaine) and a lot of the allegory went over my head. Upon a deeper reading, there really is a beautiful allegory of the Quebecois culture behind the characters. It's just underneath the long and arduous descriptions of how to get tree trunks out of the ground and stuff. 0266651755 دوستانِ گرانقدر، این رمان بنظرم به نوعی عشق و احتیاجات زندگی همچون زمین را مقابل یکدیگر قرار میدهد و البته میتواند اهدافِ دیگری را در دلِ خود داشته باشد
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عزیزانم، داستان مربوط میشود به کوچِ مهاجرانِ فرانسوی به سرزمین کانادا.... خانواده ای به نامِ <شابدولن> که از پدر و مادر و چهار برادر و یک خواهر تشکیل شده است به سویِ زمین هایی که در کانادا قرار گرفته است، مهاجرت میکنند و در این مسیر سه مرد دیگر نیز آنها را همراهی میکنند: <فرانسوا پاراد> مردی که عاشقِ زمینهای جنگلی و زندگی در دلِ طبیعت است - <اوتروپ گانیون> که مردی دهقان و کشاورز است - <لورنزو> که به آمریکا رفته و به خواسته اش نرسیده و نظرش تغییر یافته و حال با شابدولن ها، همسفر شده است تا به کانادا برود
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دخترِ خانوادهٔ شابدولن ها، که شخصیتِ اصلی داستان است، <ماریا> نام دارد.. ماریا و فرانسوا، عاشقِ یکدیگر هستند، ولی فرانسوا از آنها جدا میشود تا به سرزمینهای جنگلیِ کانادا سفر کند و به ماریا قول میدهد که بازگشته و با او ازدواج میکند......... زمانِ بسیار زیادی میگذرد و فرانسوا در سفرش گُم میشود و هیچ کس خبری از او ندارد از سویِ دیگر، ماریا از انتظار برایِ رسیدنِ به فرانسوا دلزده و خسته میشود و عشقِ به فرانسوا را با عشقِ به زمین عوض میکند و برایِ آنکه بتواند به زندگی ادامه دهد، تصمیم میگیرد تا با اوتروپ که دهقانی کارکشته است و حال صاحبِ زمین شده است، ازدواج کند
عزیزانم، بهتر است خودتان این داستان را بخوانید و از آن لذت ببرید
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امیدوارم این ریویو در جهتِ شناختِ این کتاب، مفید بوده باشه
<پیروز باشید و ایرانی> 0266651755 Time stands still, for a moment, in Louis Hémon's Maria Chapdelaine, allowing us a view into a society that faced an internal upheaval, stemming from its very roots. While Hémon was penning his novel, Québec was undergoing a mass migration of its French Canadian citizens into the United States: between 1840 and 1930, just over a million Québécois made the move to industrial towns in the US, seeking jobs. Hémon's novel reflects this heartbreaking quandary in which the citizens found themselves: how does one leave behind one's hearth and the place of ancestors; and conversely, how does one ignore the cry of the future and hungry children to feed?
The story is a simple one, commonplace and (almost) devoid of romance. Maria Chapdelaine is courted from three worthy suitors: Francois Paradis, the very essence of the adventurous coureurs de bois who were the backbone of early Québec society, they being responsible for carving a way into the harsh Canadian landscape; Eutrope Gagnon, the embodiment of the habitants who followed behind and carved the broken trails into concessions and built farms and towns in the heart of the country; and Lorenzo Surprenant, a surprising gift from the south, who represents American temptation and allure for an easier life: one that she will never know if she remains behind in Quebec.
Paradis alone offers Maria a chance at romantic love.
Francois Paradis regarda Maria à la dérobée, puis détourna de nouveau les yeux en serrant très fort ses main l'un contre l'autre. Qu'elle était donc plaisante à contempler! D'être assis auprès d'entrevoir sa poitrine forte, son beau visage honnête et patient, la simplicité franche de ses gestes rares et de ses attitudes, une grande faim d'elle lui venait et en même temps un attendrissement émerveillé, parce qu'il avait vécu presque toute sa vie rien qu'avec d'autres hommes, durement, dans les grand bois sauvages ou les plaines de neige.
Il sentait qu'elle était de ces femmes qui, lorsqu'elle se donnent, donnent tout san compter: l'amour de leur corps et de leur coeur, la force de leurs bras dans las besogne du chaque jour, la dévotion complète d'un esprit sans détours. Et le tout lui parissait si précieux qu'il avait peur de la demander.
The other two offer stability, dependability, and a sedate constancy which, while laudable, just don't pull at her heartstrings. She is head over heels in love with the adventurer, the romantic pioneer, and she would follow him, willingly -- despite her own better judgement.
Il lui semble que quelqu'un lui a chuchoté longtemps que le monde et la vie étaient des choses grises. La routine du travail journalier, coupée de plaisirs incomplets et passagers; les années qui s'écoulent, monotones, la rencontre d'un jeune homme tout pareil aux autres, dont la cour patiente et gaie finit par attendrir; le mariage, et puis une longue suite d'années presque semblables aux précédentes, dans une autre maison. C'est comme cela qu'on vit, a dit la voix. Ce n'est pas bien terrible et en tout cas if faut s'y soumettre; mais c'est uni, terne et froid comme un champ à l'automne.
Ce n'est pas vrai, tout cela. Maria secoue la tête dans l'ombre avec un sourire inconscient d'extase et songe que ce n'était pas vrai. Lorsqu'elle songe à Francois Paradis, à son aspect, à sa présence, à ce qu'ils sont et seront l'un pour l'autre, elle et lui, quelque chose frissonne et brûle tout à la fois en elle. Toute sa forte jeunesse, sa patience et sa simplicité sont venues aboutir à cela: à ce jaillissement d'espoir et de désir, à cette prescience d'un contentement miraculeux qui vient.
By wanting to choose a miraculous life instead of one as cold as a field in autumn, it is almost predestined that Maria will lose her paradise. When the fall finally comes, she barely grieves, subjugating her life and her emotions, with barely a whimper, to those who rule her hearth, if not her heart.
While it is the song of a lonely girl, it is equally the song that Hémon wanted to sing for Québec, his adopted land. He saw the flow of humanity moving south of the border, giving its heart, and its best years, to a foreign beauty; some part of him yearned to want to stanch the flow, and so not lose all the best that there was.
Maria frissonna: l'attendrissement qui était venu baigner son coeur s'évanouit; elle se dit une fois de plus: Tout de même ... c'est un pays dur, icitte. Pourquoi rester?
Alors une troisième voix plus grande que les autre s'éleva dans le silence: la voix du pays de Québec, qui était a moitié un chant de femme et à moitié un sermon de prêtre ...
[Elle disait]
Nous avions apporté d'outre mer nos prières et nos chansons: elles sont toujours les mêmes. Nous avions apporté dans nos poitrines le coeur des hommes de notre pays, vaillant et vif, aussi prompt à la pitié qu'au rire, le coeur plus humain de tous les coeurs humains: il n'a pas changé ... ici toutes les choses que nous avons apportées avec nous, notre culte, notre langue, nos vertus et jusqu'à nos faiblesses deviennent des choses sacrés, intangibles et qui devront demeurer jusqu'à la fin.
C'est pourquoi il faut rester dans la province où nos pères sont restés, et vivre comme ils ont vécus, pour obéir au commandement inexprimé quie s'est formé dans leurs coeurs, qui a passé dans les nôtres et que nous devrons transmettre à notre à de nombreux enfants: Au pays de Québec rien ne doit mourir et rien ne doit changer...
This is a period piece if ever there was one: a slice of early (Québécois) pioneering life, caught in amber. Maria will forever be casting her eyes down, silently mourning for Paradis; she will be caught in that eternal spring, ever-promising to marry Gagnon -- an eternal consummation-postponed.
I view it in the end as a museum piece, and see it with charitable eyes: I recognize that it was poignant, and emotional without being (altogether) persuasive; un cri de coeur from a distant past.
0266651755 Maria Chapdelaine is the story of Maria, a girl living in rural Quebec in the early days of the twentieth century, and the hardships that come with living at this time in this place. It addresses themes prevalent in Canadian Literature; that of climate, isolation and hard work in overcoming both. In true Canadian literary fashion, the story is harrowing but satisfying. It can be boring and tedious - though it is never through the fault of authors; it is simply the fact that those days offered little fun as people were too busy surviving harsh Canadian weather and harvesting food, what else can the authors do? But it is never void of touching moments. I remember a very lovely, innocent, romantic scene with Maria and a love interest out in the woods....
The tragedies that mark Maria's life and the important choices she's given as well as the even more crucial decision she has to make, makes her a sympathetic and wonderful character. Everything you did at the time was meant to ensure the survival of the family, of the community. And Maria's ultimate selflessness is both heartbreaking and admirable.
I think this is a true Canadian classic. 0266651755
