Mathé Allain
The works of André Paiement reflect a cultural schizophrenia so deep that it becomes ambivalence towards the very heritage he laboured to preserve. His protagonists are caught in dead-end streets because of their collective past and because of their own shortcomings. Only in his last play Lavalléville does he suggest that tradition can be turned to the fulfillment of the individual.
L'oeuvre d'André Paiement reflète une schizophrénie culturelle si profonde qu'elle devient ambivalence envers l'héritage qu'il passa sa courte existence à défendre. Ses protagonistes sont piégés en partie par leur faiblesse, mais aussi en partie par leur passé collectif. Seule sa dernière pièce Lavalléville suggère que la tradition pourrait aider l'être humain à s'épanouir.
When André Paiement died in 1978, the young Franco-Ontarian playwright had produced a number of stage adaptations and five original plays, a small but significant and rernarkably coherent body of work. His friend and collaborator Gaston Tremblay points out in the postface to La Vie et les temps de Médéric Boileau that Paiement's plays reflect the double identity of the Franco-Ontarians, the 'inner division of men caught between two languages, two cultures, two periods.' 1 'Schizophrénie! is what we be,' chant the actors in the final ballet of Paiement's version of Le Malade imaginaire. 2 This schizophrenia characterizes minorities who are forced to utilize simultaneously two sets of linguistic and social values, usually conforming to majority norms in their professional and public lives while retreating to their traditional mores in the private sphere.
Difficult to bear at best, the split can become totally unendurable for some, and critics have argued quite cogently that Paiement's suicide is directly traceable to that schizophrenia. Paul Gay analyses Paiement's plays and finds in them the expression, all the more bitter that it is comical, of the hopelessly colonized status of the Franco-Ontarians.3 Gay quotes an article written by Fernand Dorais shortly after the playwright's suicide, an article in which the critic maintains that Franco-Ontarians must choose between either forsaking their language and mores to become acculturated or holding fast to their subculture and becoming trapped in repressed anger at their exclusion from the larger, dominant group. Thus, concludes Dorais, André took his life; but who really killed André? To him the answer is obvious: 'L'acculturation des Franco-Ontariens, hélas!' 4
Cultural schizophrenia is hardly a new or unusual theme for minority literature. What singularizes Paiement's work, however, is how deep the schizophrenia runs, so deep that it produces a fascinating ambivalence toward the heritage itself. For in his plays, his Franco-Ontarian characters proclaim the importance he attaches to cultural preservation. His last play, Lavalléville, does suggest a possible resolution for this dichotomy, but this resolution is denied by the playwright's death.
Going through Paiement's collected plays, even a casual reader is left with a sense of entrapment. All the protagonists are caught in hopeless snares, sometimes of their own making, sometimes contrived by others, but always at least partly created by the collective past, familial and social. In his earliest play, largely the result of a collective creation by the Troupe Universitaire de l'Université Laurentienne, Moé j'viens du Nord,stie,' the protagonist is a pitiable, shiftless, spineless teenager, Roger, who at eighteen repeats his last year of high school without doing even the minimal work needed for graduation. He dreams of the university where he will be free from dress codes and parental control. 'Mais maudit que c'est plate au High School,' says he, 'on se fait traiter en bébé.' 5 A true loser, a 'déchet franco-ontarien' as Gay terms him,6 he hangs around with his chums, drinking beer and smoking whenever they have a few cents, and dates Nicole, a waitress at the local cafe. He fantasizes escapes from the dreary mining town and his monotonous existence and bridles fiercely when his father warns him: 'Quand tu seras obligé de te fendre en quatre pour faire vivre ta famille, tu penseras à ce que j't'ai dit . . . T'iras travailler à la mine' (p 20). The mine, the town's sole industry, symbolizes a future Roger rejects passionately. Never will he descend 'dans c'te maudit trou' (p 20) where he affirms, 'c'est juste une bande de baveux . . . ou ben des gars comme mon père qui sont là depuis 25 ans, pis qui ont jamais avancé à rien' (p 14). Then Nicole announces she is pregnant. Any solution such as abortion, adoption, or simply running away, entails money and some gumption, and as the curtain falls, Roger dully accepts the inevitable as the trap closes in on him.
Et le septième jour, Paiement's second play, presents a drug addict appropriately nicknamed Speed who is dying in the hospital. His sad little attempt at escape from his drab existence into a bright world of 'trips' and rock music is ending in disaster, and his friends, losers like him, gather around his bed to perform music, acknowledging that in their inarticulate universe 'Y'a pas grand chose à dire.' 7
A mes fils bien-aimés stars three brothers whose father, just before dying, converted his entire estate into cash to purchase an old, run-down theater. The three inherit equally, but Joffre, the scapegrace younger son who has run off to Europe to bum around and avoid work, is named as principal heir with veto power over any decision. Fernand, a carpenter, would like to turn part of the theater into a karate school; Tom, also a laborer, would like to set up a studio for art photography and underground movies. Both see the theater, despite its ramshackle condition, as the way out and a chance to realize their secret ambitions. Joffre, however, flaunts the veto power the will gives him and refuses to agree to any use of the theater unless his brothers guarantee him a monthly remittance in Europe. They clash violently, reliving childhood quarrels and childhood rivalries, until in a fit of rage Tom kills Joffre, thus trapping himself for ever in the consequences of his crime.8
La Vie et les temps de Médéric Boileau relates poetically the life of a lumberman born at the turn of the century in an isolated woodcutters' camp in Northern Ontario. Naturally, he follows in his father's footsteps, entering the employ of the American Lumber and Export Company of Canada, at fifteen helping in the kitchen until, deemed too old for that job, he is moved to log running; which he does till, too old for that task, he is sent into the woods to cut trees sixteen hours a day; until, too old for lumbering, he returns to the kitchen; till, too old for anything, he is retired with a fine farewell speech and a fifty-four dollar bonus, one dollar for each year of faithful service.
All Paiement's protagonists are thus caught in lives without issues. For most of them, it is because they belong to a culture of poverty, semi-illiteracy, and powerlessness. Roger is self-indulgent and lazy, his family has no educational tradition and he views school as a kind of prison. The speed freak is trapped in his habit, but his inarticulateness excludes other ways of expressing himself and his vague dreams. Médéric Boileau's life was preordained the moment he was born to a certain couple in a certain place. What weighs the characters down is the collective past. In A mes fils bien-aimés the father's transmission of control to the imaginative but perverse younger son stands as a metaphor for the past. The feuding siblings, viciously tearing each other apart, are a true reflection of the acculturated group, 'devouring' each other as do rats trapped in a burning cage, to borrow Fernand Dorais's apt and terrifying image.9 Here the playwright's intent is quite explicit: the heritage which should have liberated the creativity of the brothers becomes instead an instrument of oppression and an obstacle in the search for freedom and joy.
Paiement's last play, a curious musical comedy entitled Lavalléville, treats also an oppressive cultural heritage, but in a truculent, Ubuesque mode. Lavalléville is a community founded by the 'great' (he is never referred to in any other terms) Napoléon Lavallé, a banking clerk who fled to this remote corner of Ontario when, a great injustice having been committed against him, he had embezzled $700,004.13 from the Banque Canadienne. As the play opens, the great Napoléon has long been dead, but his son Adolphe perpetuates the noble tradition, running Lavalléville as a dictatorship where all the inhabitants - foundry workers, truck drivers and especially family members - owe him absolute fealty, blind obedience, and total submission. The slightest faltering earns the culprit a swift and stinging rebuke administered with the fearsome rod Adolphe never lays aside, a baguette which evokes both the magic wand of the fairy and Père Ubu's grotesque scepter. The little kingdom has no contact with the outside world: no books, no news, no visitors allowed. The last outsider to have entered the precinct was the embalmer who prepared the great Napoléon for burial. The truckers who bring supplies and cart away the products of the foundry may introduce no outside information. One brought a newspaper from Toronto once, but, gloats Adolphe, 'je l'ai battu pour avoir apporté de l'information étrangère. J'ai même battu sa femme!' 10
Adolphe rules with an iron hand, bullying his son Ambroise, his blacksmith Albert, his niece Diane and, as much as he can, his sister-in-law Adèle. As Ambroise sings while hammering spare pieces to repair the plant's machinery: 'Je suis Ambroise Lavallé / Fils d'un monde, fils d'un temps.' He knows well that he lives 'dans cet enfer d'un père amer,' but accepts his fate as inevitable (p 13). Diane, the niece, more spirited than the men, is determined to flee Lavalléville. She has concocted a plan to escape by hiding in an empty barrel being hauled back to Toronto. Amazed and frightened at her daring, Ambroise and Albert try to convince her to change her mind. The big outside world is threatening, unfriendly, dangerous: better stay where the problems are at least familiar. Albert recounts a dream he once had of being out there 'chez l'étranger' where conditions, he found, were no better than in Lavalléville.
On est tous des prisonniers
On s'ra toujours ce qu'on est
Même si on va chez l'étranger.
In the strange new world of his dream
he discovered:
J'avais plus un sou sur moé
Pour un travail j'ai cherché
J'ai demandé chez l'étranger
En ma langue j'y ai parlé
Même pas l'chance de lui prouver
Que j'étais bon pour travailler
Qu'y m'a envoyé promener
......
Ya pas compris et il m'a dit
'Why is it you speak funny?
You're not good enough for me.
You should go back to Italie.' (p 23)
From that nightmare Albert concluded
that:
On est tous des prisonniers, et
On est obligés de rester
On est obligés de rester. (p 24)
Better the safe if comfortless womb
of Lavalléville: 'J'aime dix fois mieux être un heureux boiteux
qu'être en santé chez l'étranger,' admits Albert who
concludes, 'j'ai rêvé que le grand Napoléon avait raison
de nous emprisonner' (p 22).
The parable of Lavalléville and its self-imposed isolation gains a new dimension when one realizes that there actually existed at the turn of the century a small Ontario community named Dubreuilville for its founder Napoléon Dubreuil, a community determined to preserve its French identity at any cost. Armed guards turned away English speakers at the 'border' and, at the cost of trade, growth, progress, the tiny hamlet maintained its existence and preserved its heritage. The parallel is not coincidental, for Paiement knew the story and his meaning is clear: any heritage preserved at the cost of intellectual growth, creative development, and individual fulfilment is a burden, a trap, and often a lie because the past must be transformed into a mythical Golden Age to justify its enshrinement. Thus Médéric Boileau's mother reminisces about l'ancien temps in the lonely woods:
J'me souviens des grands pins
Les pins rouges
Les pins blancs
Pis les pains chauds
Qui cuisaient dans mon fourneau
Qu'on était ben
Quand on était loin!
More of a realist, Médéric
replies: 'Moé j'me rappelle du temps qu'on vivait là, dans
le camp de bûcherons. Tout le monde travaillait comme des esclaves
pour venir à bout de se faire vivre' (p 10).
In his mother's memories, the past casts a rosy glow, the men sang happily in the woods as they chopped and then
Y arrivaient à la maison
Tous contents de leur journée
Y étaient affamés,
Pis moé,
J'leur donnais à manger.
To which Médéric retorts,
'à force de bûcher on se coupait le dedans des mains juste
à tenir nos haches. J'arrivais pour souper des fois pis ça
me faisait mal de tenir ma fourchette!' (p 12).
Never mind reality, the mother continues her nostalgic litany:
On vivait!
Crédondaine qu'on vivait!
On vivait, on travaillait
Pis on aimait ça
Vivre dans les bois. (p 13)
Médéric, and through
him Paiement, gives short shrift to the myth of the past. Yet this playwright
who rejects nostalgia and portrays the heritage as a burden which stifles
growth and creativity was a man profoundly engaged in cultural preservation.
His short life was spent mostly acting, producing, and writing plays which
he proudly labels 'd'expression franco-ontarienne' and which he carried,
with his collaborators, into the remotest corners of the province. But,
as the revolution in Lavalléville suggests, he did not advocate
preserving a falsified or folksy past endowing harsh realities with a golden
aura. Nor did he preach using one's heritage as a refuge from contemporary
needs and immediate responsibilities.
At the end of the play, Adolphe, plagued by frequent headaches, sends for an outside doctor who turns out to be a quack, but whose arrival catalyzes the inchoate revolt of the youth. Albert and Ambroise throw off Adolphe's yoke and instead of cranking out pieces to keep old machines going in the foundry, use the forge to create a great sculpture, a statue of the Sun, symbol of life, warmth, goodness, enlightenment. These Franco-Ontarian descendants of Plato's sages do not need to seek enlightenment and wisdom outside the cave, here the forge. They hammer their own, out of the tradition which becomes a source of strength and knowledge when it is no longer a constraint. Diane then decides to remain in Lavalléville and work with them for the triumph of love, joy and creativity over oppression, obscurantism and immobilism.
The lesson of Lavalléville seems to be that the Franco-Ontarians should '[se replier] sur eux-mêmes, sans aucune ouverture aux étrangers. Autrement, c'est l'assimilation, l'acculturation.' 11 This solution, Paiement knew as well as anyone to be impossible. This may be why the 'happy ending' of Lavalléville does not convince: the conclusion seems too pat. On the other hand, Paiement was first and foremost a man of the theater, and his texts were less intended to be read than to be watched. With the full support of a good production, the conclusion which does not read well may play quite well, and it may be that in performance Paiement's last play articulates effectively the statement his entire work point to: even for a minority, a cultural heritage makes for schizophrenia if folklorized and fossilized. Cultural preservation should not mean exclusion of others and rejection of change, but opening to the outside while holding fast to traditional values. Diane's decision to stay behind seems to contradict that message so that to the very end Paiement's theater remained informed by a dichotomy he could resolve only in death.
Notes
Forum - "SCHIZOPHRÉNIE! IS WHAT WE BE" - OR IS IT? THE FRANCO-ONTARIAN HERITAGE IN THE PLAYS OF ANDRÉ PAIEMENT
Mathé Allain
a An earlier version of
this paper was presented at the meeting of the Association for Canadian
Studies in the United States, Montreal, October 1987
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1 GASTON TREMBLAY, 'Postface,'
La Vie et les temps de Médéric Boileau Sudbury: Prise
de Parole 1978 p 67
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2 Le Malade imaginaire
adapt. by ANDRÉ PAIMENT in La Vie et les temps de Médéric
Boileau
p 56
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3 PAUL GAY, 'Paul-André
Paiment (1950-1978), ou le désespoir du colonisé,' Theatre
History in Canada/Histoire du théâtre au Canada vol 7
no 2 (Fall 1986) p 176-85
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4 Ibid, p 177
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5 Moé j'viens
du nord, 'stie
Sudbury: Prise de Parole 1975 p 13
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6 GAY, p 178
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7 Et le septième
jour in
Moé j'viens du nord p 62
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8 A mes fils bien-aimés
in
Moé j'viens du nord p 67-122
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9 Quoted in GAY, p 177
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10 Lavalléville
Sudbury: Prise de Parole 1975 p 33
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11 GAY, p 182
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