Hébert, Anne 1916-2000

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HÉBERT, Anne 1916-2000

PERSONAL: Born August 1, 1916, in Sainte-Catherine-de-Fossambault, Quebec, Canada; died of cancer, January 22, 2000, in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada; daughter of Maurice-Lang (a literary critic) and Marguerite Marie (Tache) Hébert. Education: Attended College Saint-Coeur de Marie and College Notre Dame.

CAREER: Poet and novelist. Worked for Radio Canada, 1950-53, and for National Film Board, 1953-54, 1959-60.

MEMBER: Royal Society of Canada.

AWARDS, HONORS: Grants from Canadian government, 1954, Canadian Council of Arts, 1960 and 1961, Guggenheim Foundation, 1963, and Province of Quebec, 1965; Prix de la Province de Quebec, France Canada prize, and Duvernay prize, all 1958, all for Les Chambres de bois; Molson Prize, 1967; French booksellers prize, 1971; Governor General award, 1975, for Les Enfants du sabbat, and 1992, for L'Enfant charge de songes; Grand Prix de Monaco, 1975; French Academy award, 1975; Prix David (Quebec), 1978; Prix Femina, 1982, for Les Fous de bassan; D.Litt., University of Toronto, 1967, University of Quebec, 1979, McGill University, 1980, University of Laval, and University of Laurentienne; Giller Prize finalist, 1999, for Am I Disturbing You?

WRITINGS:

POETRY

Les Songes en equilibre (title means "Dreams in Equilibrium"), Éditions de l'Arbre (Montreal, Quebec, Canada), 1942.

Le Tombeau des rois (also see below), Institut Litteraire du Quebec, 1953, translation by Peter Miller published as The Tomb of the Kings, Contact Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1967.

Poemes (includes Le Tombeau des rois), Éditions du Seuil (Montreal, Quebec, Canada), 1960, translation by Alan Brown published as Poems, Musson (Don Mills, Ontario, Canada), 1975.

Saint-Denys Garneau and Anne Hébert (selected poetry), translation by F. R. Scott, Klanak Press (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), 1962, revised edition, 1978.

Eve: Poems, translation by A. Poulin, Jr., Quarterly Review of Literature, 1980.

Selected Poems, translation by A. Poulin, BOA Editions (Brockport, NY), 1987.

Oeuvres poetiques: 1950-1990, Boreál (Montreal, Quebec, Canada), 1992.

Le Jour n'a d'egal que la nuit, Boreál (Montreal, Quebec, Canada), 1992, published as Day Has No Equal but Night, translation by A. Poulin, BOA Editions (Brockport, NY), 1994.

Poemes pour la main gauche, Boreál (Montreal, Quebec, Canada), 1997.

NOVELS

Les Chambres de bois, Éditions du Seuil (Montreal, Quebec, Canada), 1958, translation by Kathy Mezei published as The Silent Rooms, Musson (Don Mills, Ontario, Canada), 1974.

Kamouraska, Éditions du Seuil (Montreal, Quebec, Canada), 1970, translation by Norman Shapiro, Crown (New York, NY), 1973.

Les Enfants du sabbat, Éditions du Seuil (Montreal, Quebec, Canada), 1975, translation by Carol Dunlop-Hébert published as Children of the Black Sabbath, Crown (New York, NY), 1977.

Heloise, Éditions du Seuil (Montreal, Quebec, Canada), 1980, translation by Sheila Fischman, Stoddart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1982.

Les Fous de bassan, Éditions du Seuil (Montreal, Quebec, Canada), 1982, translation by Sheila Fischman published as In the Shadow of the Wind, Stoddart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1983.

Le Premier jardin, Éditions du Seuil (Montreal, Quebec, Canada), 1988, translation published as The First Garden, Anansi (Concord, Ontario, Canada), 1990.

L'Enfant charge de songes (title means "The Child Filled with Dreams"), Éditions du Seuil (Montreal, Quebec, Canada), 1992, translation published as Burden of Dreams, Anansi (Concord, Ontario, Canada), 1994.

Aurelien, Clara, Mademoiselle et le Lieutenant Anglais, translation by Sheila Fischman published as Aurelien, Clara, Mademoiselle, and the English Lieutenant, General Distribution Services, 1996.

Un Habit de lumiere, Éditions du Seuil (Montreal, Quebec, Canada), 1999, translation by Sheila Fischman published as A Suit of Light, Anansi (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2000.

OTHER

Le Torrent (short stories), Beauchemin, 1950, new edition published as Le Torrent, suivi de deux nouvelles inedites, Éditions HMH (Montreal, Quebec, Canada), 1963, translation by Gwendolyn Moore published as The Torrent: Novellas and Short Stories, Harvest House (Montreal, Quebec, Canada), 1973.

Les Invites au proces, le theatre du grand prix (radio play; produced by Radio-Canada, 1952), published in Le Temps sauvage, La Merciere assassinee, Les Invites au proces: Theatre, 1967.

(With others) Trois de Quebec (radio play), Radio-Canada, 1953.

Les Indes parmi nous (screenplay), National Film Board of Canada, 1954.

La Canne a peche (screenplay), National Film Board of Canada, 1959.

Saint-Denys Garneau (screenplay), National Film Board of Canada, 1960.

Le Temps sauvage (play; produced in Quebec, 1966), published in Le Temps sauvage, La Merciere assassinee, Les Invites au proces: Theatre, 1967.

Le Temps sauvage, La Merciere assassinee, Les Invites au proces: Theatre (plays), Éditions HMH, 1967.

(With F. R. Scott) Dialogue sur la traduction, edited by Jeanne Lapointe, Éditions HMH, 1970.

La Cage: L'Ile de la demoiselle (play), Boreál (Montreal, Quebec, Canada), 1990.

Est-ce que je te derange?, Éditions du Seuil (Montreal, Quebec, Canada), 1998, translation by Sheila Fischman published as Am I Disturbing You?, Anansi (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1998.

Also author of Drole de mic-mac and Le Medecin du nord, both 1954, and Le Deficient mental, 1960. Contributor of poems to literary journals.

SIDELIGHTS: French-Canadian poet and novelist Anne Hébert was acclaimed as one of her country's most distinguished literary stylists. Continuing from her first book of verse, 1942's Les Songes en equilibre, Hébert contributed novels, poems, and plays to the growing body of modern Canadian letters, winning the poet numerous awards for her work. Praised by critics for her originality, Hébert was particularly known for the novel Kamouraska, published in 1970, and the poetry cycle Le Tombeau des rois, translated as The Tomb of the Kings and first published in 1953.

Hébert was born in 1916 and raised in an intellectually stimulating environment. Her father, Maurice-Lang Hébert, was a distinguished literary critic; among his friends were some of the finest minds in Quebec. Due to a childhood illness Hébert was educated privately and spent most of her time at the family's country home in Sainte-Catherine-de-Fossambault. She began writing poetry in her adolescence with the advice and guidance of both her father and her cousin, poet Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau.

Unlike Saint-Denys Garneau, who remained in self-isolation until his death, Hébert emerged from the spiritual struggle described in her first two books of poetry. Les Songes en equilibre, her poetic debut, chronicles the experiences of a young woman who travels from carefree childhood to the renunciation of pleasure and the acceptance of a lonely life of spiritual and poetic duty. Hébert received strict Roman Catholic training as a child, and believed the obligation of a poet is to be a spiritual force in man's salvation.

In her second book of poetry, The Tomb of the Kings, Hébert reveals that the austere life she chose for herself had stifled her work. It is in this volume of her poetry that she emerges from a dark and deep spiritual struggle. Samuel Moon characterized The Tomb of the Kings as a work "closely unified by its constant introspection, by its atmosphere of profound melancholy, by its recurrent themes of a dead childhood, a living death cut off from love and beauty, suicide, the theme of introspection itself. Such a book would seem to be of more interest clinically than poetically, but the miracle occurs and these materials are transmuted by the remarkable force of Mlle. Hébert's imagery, the simplicity and directness of her diction, and the restrained lyric sound of her vers libre."

Although known primarily as a poet, Hébert also wrote for the stage and television, and was the author of several published novels. Characteristic of her prose work is the theme of the inhibiting burden of the past, which binds any freedom for future actions. Many critics have noted that this theme is a French-Canadian phenomenon.

Hébert's first novel, Les Chambres de bois, appeared in 1958. Catherine, the novel's chief protagonist, is married to an artist who is repulsed by sex. She eventually abandons her husband for another man, and discovers happiness in this new relationship. According to an article in Contemporary Literary Criticism, Les Chambres de bois "was well received by critics who applauded Hébert's use of symbolist imagery." A contributor to Books and Writers commented that the "fantastic elements" found in Les Chambres de bois can also be found in Hébert's subsequent works.

Kamouraska, Hébert's second novel, was published seventeen years after Les Chambres de bois, and drew praise from both Canadian and U.S. critics. A Choice reviewer noted that the novel "conveys the same sense of mounting and almost unendurable excitement that one felt on first reading a Brontë novel—except that Kamouraska is modern in style and explicitness. The events are a stream-of-consciousness re-creation of a murder of passion that actually occurred in 1840. Hébert's poetic vision draws the thoughtful reader to be one with each of the frenzied characters." Kamouraska tells the story of Elisabeth d'Aulnieres, who conspires to slay her abusive spouse with the aid of her lover, Doctor George Nelson. Following the murder of Antoine Tassy, Nelson escapes to the United States, but Elisabeth is imprisoned for the crime. A Canadian Forum critic compared Hébert's "highly complex style and imagery" with that of writers Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka, and James Joyce, and stated that "the greatness of this work resides in the happy mixture of particularity and universality, unity and complexity, vitality and artistic originality, and, above all, in the way the author makes simplistic moral judgment of the characters impossible."

Mel Watkins in the New York Times called Hébert a "stylist of the first rank" in his review of Children of the Black Sabbath, a novel that deals with a young novice possessed by the devil. Watkins observed that Hébert "both complements and heightens this eerie, aphotic atmosphere with the verity and density of her minor characters and with the restrained elegance of her prose. The result is an impressionistic tale that moves smoothly. . . . The vitality of the prose, of itself, makes it one of the best of its kind." Suspense and atmosphere are keys to Hébert's later works, as well. Heloise recounts the tale of a Paris vampire, and Les Fous de bassan concerns the reactions of several people to a savage crime. For the latter work, Hébert received the Prix Femina, an award honoring novels penned by women.

Hébert's treatment of her characters in Les Fous de bassan—translated in 1984 as In the Shadow of the Wind—drastically departs from her previous books. While Hébert's other novels portray strong women who break down societal conventions, the cousins Nora and Olivia of In the Shadow of the Wind are at the mercy of their cruel cousin Stevens, and one is sexually abused by their uncle Reverend Jones. The story of the girls' murders is narrated at different times by Stevens, Reverend Jones, and Nora prior to her death as well as by Olivia thereafter. In the work, the cousins are depicted as "the source of temptation." As Lori Saint-Martin commented in Women's Review of Books, "Such a purely misogynistic vision is relatively rare today—especially among women writers. Coming from Anne Hébert, the turnaround is even more disturbing."

While such misogyny may have been a departure for Hébert, critics nonetheless praised Les Fous de bassan. A Publishers Weekly critic found the dark tale reminiscent of Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome, while C. D. B. Bryan in the New York Times Book Review termed it "haunting" and remarked that "The winds Anne Hébert stirs up in her readers' minds do not die down until long after the book has been closed." Despite such praise and receipt of the Prix Femina, the book was deemed flawed by Matthew Clark in Quill and Quire: "I find the language precious, the characterization thin, the situation conventionally Gothic, and the actions unmotivated."

Hébert's 1992 novel L'Enfant charge de songes received the Canadian Governor General Award for French fiction. Its English title, Burden of Dreams, aptly describes the protagonists of the novel who, according to Bettina L. Knapp in World Literature Today, are never "described as flesh-and-blood beings." Anne Denoon in Books in Canada noted that from the novel's "very first page the reader is acutely conscious of entering a strange, unruly and disquieting world." Knapp praised the novelist's imaginative plot, exclaiming: "More than a first-class storyteller, Hébert fuses supernatural and natural domains, the collective with the individual." Stephen Smith in Quill and Quire found that "the overwhelming impression that Anne Hébert's plangent novel leaves is of blurred edges: it's an impressionistic landscape, a story filtered through fevered sleep."

After an absence of nearly twenty years, Hébert returned to poetry with the 1994 publication Day Has No Equal but Night. The volume includes both previously published work and unpublished work, "adding," according to contributor J. Warwick in Choice, "a new political dimension . . . but not eclipsing her intensely personal themes." Translator A. Poulin, Jr. chose to include the poet's original French, with its English translation on the facing page. While Poulin had served as translator for Hébert's Selected Poems, published in 1988, reviewers were mixed in their opinion of the translator's literal treatment of Hébert's words in this work, Judy Clarence in Library Journal calling Poulin's effort "clunky and cumbersome." Acknowledging the difficulty in translating Hébert's imaginative writing, Sarah Lawall in World Literature Today maintained that Poulin "offers fluent, readable, and usually literal translations that also emulate the form of the original vers libre. Still there are some instances where the word choice seems either mistaken or else inattentive to indications in the text." Despite the translation, reviewers continued to be fascinated by Hébert's work. Pat Monaghan, reviewing Day Has No Equal but Night in Booklist, lauded Hébert as "a visionary descendant" of French poet Arthur Rimbaud.

In 1999 Hébert's final novel, Un Habit de lumiere, was published. Bettina L. Knapp noted in a World Literature Today article that this work is "reminiscent of some of [Hébert's] . . . previous writing," such as L'Enfant charge de songes and Les Fous de Bassan, which are also filled with "deeply troubled and troubling beings." The story in Un Habit de lumiere revolves around the strong fantasy lives of three members of a Spanish family residing in Paris. Hébert examines the inner lives of Rose-Alba, Rose's husband, and their son, Miguel, contrasting each person's dream worlds with the stifling reality of their everyday lives. Knapp concluded by saying that Un Habit de lumiere presents "a pitiful world of. . . . pitifully predictable solutions."

Three years prior to her death from cancer in 2000, Hébert returned from Paris to spend her final years in her native Quebec. In a Maclean's article, Sheila Fischman, who translated seven of Hébert's novels, stated that the late writer "used the French language like something fine and rare; her style is . . . luminous and pure. Every word she used was necessary and right. . . . Hébert's great achievement will be part of our human experience as long as fine writing is admired and read."

After Hébert's death, Marie-Claire Blais wrote appreciatively of Hébert in Time International: Hébert "was a poet for whom the beauty of the world was a vast source of inspiration and delight. . . . For future generations of writers and poets who will come after her, this great artist will continue to be an exemplary model of courage and perseverance in the way that she approached the act of writing."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 4, 1975, Volume 13, 1980, Volume 29, 1984.

Contemporary Women Poets, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1997.

Contemporary World Writers, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1993.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 68: Canadian Writers, 1920-1959, First Series, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1988.

Knight, Kelton, Anne Hébert: In Search of the First Garden, P. Lang (New York, NY), 1995.

Lewis, Paula Gilbert, editor, Traditionalism, Nationalism, and Feminism: Women Writers of Quebec, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1985.

Mitchell, Constantina, Shaping the Novel: Textual Interplay in the Fiction of Malraux, Hébert, Modiano, Berghahn Books (Providence, RI), 1995.

Russell, Delbert W., Anne Hébert, Twayne (New York, NY), 1983.

PERIODICALS

American Review of Canadian Studies, fall, 1987.

Booklist, January 15, 1991, p. 1045; September 1, 1993, p. 43; March 15, 1994, p. 1323.

Books in Canada, April, 1990, p. 47; February, 1995, p. 35.

Canadian Forum, November-December, 1973; December, 1999, Suzette Mayr, review of Am I Disturbing You?, pp. 42-44.

Canadian Literature, Volume 58, 1973; spring, 1981; summer, 1985; autumn, 1991, p. 175; summer, 1992, p. 187; spring, 1994, p. 110; summer, 2000, Eva-Marie Kroller, pp. 5-9.

Choice, September, 1973; September, 1994, p. 117.

Essays on Canadian Writing, Volume 12, 1978; summer, 1983.

French Review, May, 1986; December, 1988, p. 363; February, 1991, p. 451; December, 1999, Patrice J. Proulx, review of Est-ce que je te derange?, pp. 380-381; December, 2000, Douglas L. Boudreau, "Anglophone Presence in the Early Novels of Anne Hébert," pp. 308-319; December, 2000, Karin Egloff, review of Un Habit de lumiere, pp. 398-399.

Journal of Canadian Fiction, Volume 2, number 1, 1972.

Library Journal, March 15, 1994, p. 74.

Los Angeles Times, January 26, 2000.

Modern Fiction Studies, summer, 1981.

New York Times, September 7, 1977.

New York Times Book Review, July 22, 1984, p. 7.

Poetry, June, 1968.

Publishers Weekly, May 18, 1984, p. 142; March 28, 1994, p. 91.

Quebec Studies, Volume 3, 1985; Volume 4, 1986; Volume 5, 1987; Volume 6, 1988; Volume 8, 1989.

Quill and Quire, November, 1983, p. 20; January, 1995, p. 35.

Studies in Canadian Literature, Volume 14, number 1, 1989.

Waves, spring, 1982.