Audiobook · read by volunteers
Maria Chapdelaine
Louis Hémon (1880–1913)
Read by Kim S, Jc Guan, Luigina, Annise, ernieBob, Lucy Burgoyne (1950-2014), Leni, Sarah Jennings, Varra Unreal · 16 chapters · 5 h 03
About the book
Maria Chapdelaine, a young woman from a farming family in the far north of Quebec, lives among forests, long winters and hard work. Three men come into her life: a trapper who loves the open wilderness, a farmer who offers a safe and settled future, and a man who has gone to the United States and speaks of cities and an easier life. Her choice will say something about her, and perhaps about the people to whom she belongs. Louis Hémon writes with simple, patient beauty about seasons, clearing the land, family customs and the voice of the countryside. This is the English translation by W. H. Blake, read by nine volunteers. It is a quiet and moving novel, and it rewards listeners who like stories rooted in a place. Nature and the seasons play a large part in the story.
Introduction
Louis Hémon was a Frenchman, born in 1880, who travelled to Canada in 1911 and lived for a time among the farmers of the Lac-Saint-Jean region of Quebec. He wrote Maria Chapdelaine there, and he died in 1913, killed in a railway accident, before the book was published as a volume. It first appeared as a serial in a Paris newspaper, and it became one of the best-known novels about French Canada.
The story is often read as an allegory of the French Canadian people, who held on to their language, their faith and their land in a harsh country. The setting is the region around the Peribonka river, in the early 1900s. Hémon describes the daily work of the settlers with respect and precision: clearing trees, planting, the winter that closes the world, the visit of the priest. Yet the novel is also a love story, in which feeling, duty and loyalty to a way of life are weighed against one another.
The English version recorded here is the translation by W. H. Blake, published in 1921, and the recording divides it into 16 chapters, for about five hours in all. Nine LibriVox volunteers share the reading. The work has been filmed and has had a lasting place in Quebec’s sense of itself. Today it can still be heard as a portrait of a way of life and of the unspoken emotions of a young woman who has to decide. The book is short enough to enjoy in a few sittings, and its descriptions of snow, forest and clearing give it a strong sense of place. It has the simplicity of a folk tale, and it leaves the listener with a feeling of respect for the people it portrays.
Public domain
Louis Hémon died in 1913: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text