Space, Place, and a Race That Will Not Die - Literature and Painting in Quebec: From Imagery to Identity - page 184

of freedom but as a 'place,' a repository of memory and identity: 'Il re-
vit surtout ses lieux à lui: ses montagnes, ses eaux et, sous la paix in-
nombrable des feuilles silencieuses, sa cabane où l'attendait, comme
une épouse … la liberté … Menaud s'étant rassis, se mit alors à souffrir
dans tous les liens qui le rattachaient à tous les lieux de la montagne,
profonds et sacrés comme le sanctuaire même de son pays.' (113; He
reviewed especially his own places: his mountains, his waters, and un-
der the vast peace of silent leaves, his cabin, where awaiting him like a
spouse … was liberty … Having sat down again, Menaud began to suf-
fer from all the ties that bound him to all the places in the mountains,
profound and sacred like the very sanctuary of his land.) Menaud's
identification with the previously distant mountains is signalled ini-
tially by the possessive adjective ('ses montagnes'); then, set against the
vast space, is a personal place ('sa cabane'), which enables him to see
freedom in intimate not abstract terms ('comme une épouse'). Indeed,
he is now able to view the mountains, less as an amorphous space than
as a series of specific places ('lieux'), which together have a unified mean-
ing captured by an architectural and religious - that is, cultural - meta-
phor ('sanctuaire'). This same sort of architectural form and cultural
significance is attributed to the mountains throughout the final part of
the novel: by the mountain's name, la Basilique (121), as well as by ar-
chitectural metaphors like 'ce cirque' (120), 'le dôme' (137), 'les sanc-
tuaires' (139), and 'colonnades' (143).
In addition to the ongoing sense of freedom engendered by the
mountain, its specific meaning is made clear in a landscape description
early in the novel's final part:
Il contemple la montagne qui est le diadème précieux de l'horizon, entre
la plaine qui mue et le ciel qui roule, l'image de l'éternel, le bleu immobile
qui sépare le double champ de l'éphémère. Ce matin il lui semble que tout
le passé est là, dans ce cirque remué de pourpre et d'or. Le décor a provo-
qué! Un héraut invisible, dans tous les défilés de la montagne, a sonné du
cor. Alors, de tous les points, les preux sont accourus. Ils répètent ce qu'a
dit le livre, un soir du dernier printemps: 'Nous sommes venus, il y a trois
cents ans et nous sommes restés.' [120; He contemplates the mountain, the
precious crown of the horizon, between the changing plain and the rolling
sky, the immobile blue that separates the two ephemeral spheres. This
morning it seems to him that the whole past is there, in this circus of shif-
ting purple and gold. The decor has acted! An invisible herald, in all the
mountain paths, has sounded his horn. Then, from all points, the brave