page_0003

2.

scholars .

But I want to speak to you today especially about your
own tongue. I have long been interested in the language and literature
of French Canada. As spoken, especially in the country parts,
your French speech is a beautiful and vivid thing, full of interesting
historical reminiscences, and full of phrases drawn from the sea voyages
of the first French pioneers. I only wish I understood it better.
French-Canadian literature is in the great classical tradition
of France, One can see the French writers who have influenced it
in different generations. Last century in men like Cremazie and
Nelligan one can detect the influence of the great French romantics.
In the poetry of this century in men like
Paul Morin and Robert Choquette one can trace more recent models .
What interests me especially is that the influence of contemporary
France always seems to take a little time to make itself felt in
Canada. It is never the latest French fashion which affects our
French-Canadian writers. For example, Victor Hugo, who is not very popular
in France today, seems to me still a living force in this country.
I think that time-lag is all to the good, for it prevents our
writers here being slavish copyists, and enables them to give their
work their own special Canadian idiom.

But literature can take care of itself . The wind of inspiration
blows where it listeth, and no man can control it. But we
can do something to preserve the purity of the language. It is its
purity, its precision, its exquisite lucidity, which is the special
glory of the French tongue. As an eighteenth century critic wrote -

"Elle est le toutes les langues la seule qui ait une
probité attachée à son genié."