Albert Laberge

Background

Albert Laberge was born on February 18, 1871, in Beauharnois, Quebec, Canada. His parents, Pierre and Josephine (Boursier) Laberge were farmers, but they had hopes for young Albert that a good education would lead him to a life beyond the farm.

Education

When he was seventeen, Albert was enrolled at the College Sainte-Marie in Montreal - a highly respected, Jesuit-run school. Unfortunately for young Laberge’s degree aspirations, he had been introduced to literature that the good Jesuit fathers deemed "dangerous." For this purported lapse in judgment, he was expelled from the college before completing his final year.

Career

Laberge’s short stories began to see print in Montreal- based periodicals. In 1895, he commenced work on the novel La scouine which would be received as his most important fictional effort.

Laberge supported his literary efforts through his work as a journalist, writing art criticism for Montreal’s La Presse (he also served as sports editor for that daily). His experiences and the acquaintances he made during his thirty-six-year association with La Presse would provide him with more than a steady paycheck. He drew upon them for the biographies and sketches that would comprise five of the fourteen volumes of collected writings that he produced during the course of his lifetime.

Laberge was not only an essayist. From the beginning of his career, he became involved in fiction writing, and he began experimenting with the short story form. Prior to his expulsion from college, he had already become interested in the poetry of the French Romantic and Symbolist schools. Soon he would discover the writings of Balzac, Zola and, most profoundly, Guy de Maupassant. In addition. Laberge had begun an association with the Ecole de Montreal, a circle of contemporary literary figures in the city. At the time of his first association with them, the Ecole’s interests ran toward the modernist style in fiction, which ill-suited Laberge’s own development, and he soon left the group. Later, however, he would return to the Ecole, as his work on La scouine progressed.

Because of his refusal to cater to conventional literary tastes, Laberge found it difficult to publish his fictional work. Indeed, during his lifetime none of his work was commercially printed. Rather, Laberge was forced to bring out his volumes privately and at his own expense. Even La Scouine, which was completed in 1918 after twenty-two years of work, only achieved commercial publication, in translation, in 1977. During his lifetime, Laberge found his blunt portrayal of rural life condemned by the Archbishop of Montreal, and this did little to help him find willing publishers. It would not be until after his death, in the 1960s, when the French literary establishment began seriously to question the received ideological wisdom of the Catholic Church, that Laberge’s writings would receive respect.

Achievements

• Although his writing was less than polished, Laberge’s work has an undisputed place in the French-Canadian literary canon. His willingness to break from tradition provided the impetus for the much later development of a naturalist literature, as represented in the works of such writers as Gerard Bessette, Marie-Claire Blais, and Roch Carrier. La Scouine has also been performed as a ballet, created by Les Grands Ballets Canadiens.

Works

More photos

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  • Bitter Bread 1918
  • Quand chantait la cigale 1936
  • Visages de la vie et de la mort 1936
  • Le Destin des Hommes
  • Scènes de chaque jour 1942

Religion

Laberge was a Сatholic.

Connections

Father:

Pierre Laberge

Mother:

Josephine (Boursier) Laberge

References

• Contemporary Authors, Vol. 189
  2001