Background
He was born on November 8, 1827 in Quebec City.
(Excerpt from Lettres Et Fragments de Lettres de Octave Cr...)
Excerpt from Lettres Et Fragments de Lettres de Octave Crémazie: Publiées Sous le Patronage de l'Institut Canadien de Québec Je marche beaucoup tous les jours. Tantôt je vais faire une longue promenade sur les bords de la rivière, tantôt je vais visiter les villages environnants. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0282964711/?tag=2022091-20
He was born on November 8, 1827 in Quebec City.
From 1836 to 1844, he was a student at the Seminary of Quebec, where the priest John Holmes (American priest) introduced him to the works of the French Romantic writers. Alfred de Musset, Alphonse de Lamartine, and Victor Hugo, in particular, had a profound influence on the future poet.
He became the business associate of his brother Joseph in 1844. Octave used their bookshop as a base for his literary interests; buying, reading, and discussing recent works from France, particularly Victor Hugo's. A group around Crémazie formed what became known as the École Patriotique or the École de Québec. Nationally selfconscious and grandiloquently romantic, it created the first characteristic body of French-Canadian literature about 1860. Meanwhile, Crémazie's own affairs went badly, and in 1862 he fled to France to avoid pursuit for forging guarantors' signatures in order to gain credit for his failing business.
Crémazie's writings include occasional verse, more personal poems, various letters, and a diary. The poems which made his name commemorate events in Canadian history. Thus Le Vieux soldat Canadian celebrated the arrival in Quebec of the first French naval vessel (1855) since the British conquest in 1760, and Le Drapeau de Carillon celebrated the centenary of Montcalm's victory of 1758 at Carillon (now Ticonderoga, N. Y. ). The latter poem also mentions the theme of I'abandon, the feeling that France failed its valiant Canadian colony, in spite of which, in Crémazie's opinion, the cult of France must be maintained.
Prolonged exile in France made Crémazie aware of his own outmoded, rhetorical style, and he expressed a preference for his lyrical poems, especially La Promenade des trois morts, which, however, he was too discouraged to complete.
Although direct contact with French literary circles crushed Crémazie as a poet, it stimulated him to write some valuable critical comments in his letters to Canada. He blamed the low standard of Canadian taste for his former success and felt that this had led him away from developing his finer talents. Canadian literature, he felt, could never excel either as a French or as an American creation.
These contradictions in Crémazie's attitude to his cultural context are indicative of French Canada's grave doubts about its cultural survival.
Crémazie was in Paris during the siege of 1870 and kept a diary containing details on living conditions and expressing anti-Communard sentiments. He died on Jan. 18, 1879, in Le Havre, where he had found modest employment.
(Excerpt from Lettres Et Fragments de Lettres de Octave Cr...)
("Poésies" par Octave Crémazie. Octave Crémazie était un p...)
("Oeuvres" de Octave Crémazie. Ecrivain et poète canadien ...)
In politics Crémazie supported right-wing positions generally and French imperialism in particular, but he was a liberal patriot at home.
Quotes from others about the person
Recognized both during and after his lifetime for his patriotic verse and his significant role in the cultural development of Quebec, Crémazie has been called "the father of French Canadian poetry. "