A joy to read: Lionel Groulx

Unofficial translation of Andrée Ferretti, « Un bonheur de lecture: Lionel Groulx », in L'Action nationale, vol. 84, no 6, juin 1994, pp. 840-850.

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Lecturer invited to the third lunch-talk of the L'Action indépendantiste du Québec, which, on November 22, 1993, gathered more than 130 people including Mrs. Louise Harel, Andrée Ferretti paid this vibrating homage to the work of our national historian.

Introduction

I read or read again, in a few days, more than one thousand pages of the work of our famous historian. I then rediscovered with pleasure an intellectual of an immense scope, as much for the extent of his erudition as for the innovation of his conception of history and his methods of rebuilding of the past, comparable with that of the best social science thinkers and researchers of the first half of the XXe century. I moreover enjoyed the beauty of a language and a style which make the erudite work of Lionel Groulx a true literary work.

However, this joy of reading could only, for someone like me who loves to share my enthusiasms, be accompanied by the desire to see other people read this considerable author, particularly today where as much his epigones as his detractors serve him, either by in magnifying him in glorifying and obsolete presentations and analysis, or by reducing him to the defamatory formulae of their vision as ignorant and malevolent essay writers.

It is important indeed, to read him today with intelligence, not to regard Lionel Groulx as a contemporary, however current his work may remain under several aspects, but as a historical figure marked by his time. His vision of the world and ours were nourished at too different sources not to be shaped by often divergent values.

We should never lose sight of the fact that Lionel Groulx was born in 1878, that at the end of the Great War (First World War), he was 36 years old, that he was thus an already accomplished man, more especially as he had been remarkably precocious. However, if it is true, as the majority of the historians supports it, that the XXe century really begins only at the end of this war, one must admit that Lionel Groulx, until approximately 1920, was a man of the 19th century, entirely impregnated by the ultramontane ideology.

It is well-known that in French Canada the ultramontane Church imposes then, and since a long time already, its faith, its dogmas and its ideas. Received almost universally by the French-Canadian population of all social backgrounds, its lesson and its values are indissociably tied to all the intellectual activity, an activity which is not restricted to compose with this given, but which conforms to it. The bonds of thought and this Catholicism are not, indeed, only those of belief, but those of culture and institution, with all that this comprises of monolithism in the fields of education and knowledge. Now, is it necessary to point it out, Lionel Groulx was, since 1891, pupil, then student in a seminar, trained for priesthood.

How, consequently, not to be astonished that the young abbot succeeded rather quickly, as soon as the advent of the new era, to release himself from the influence of a formation so rigorously dominant, to substantially free himself from it, without disavowing it. On the contrary, throughout his life, this man found in fidelity to the fundamental principles of his family, social and religious education, the point of support which enabled him to work out a renewed interpretation of our history. This attitude is another mark of his intelligence, since as well, there is no creative exercise of thought which is not nourished by specific cultural assets, sufficiently recognized to be exceeded without being unobtrusive. There is, for example, no nodal logic but as tributary to Aristotelian logic.

Nevertheless, not everyone becomes the hero of a distinguished intellectual adventure. How did Lionel Groulx arrive there? For my part, I am convinced that it is the love that he felt for his people which is the true framework of it. It appears obvious to me that his creative work of explanations, debates and not yet exhausted engagements, where an intelligence sensitive to our history is constantly present, is but another face of his luminous love for his "small people". I admire that during the 70 years of his active life, he pursued no another goal, through his multiple research, writings, course, conferences and all other actions, than that of developing among French Canadians a national conscience sufficiently oriented to work out coherent projects, likely to serve their blooming. And, today, in front of the positive representation that the Quebec people have of themselves, I am filled with wonder at the powerful success at this work, by recalling to myself that it was accomplished within a people which was then more deeply alienated than ever, after having undergone, since 1840, not only without revolt, but in the most debilitating resignation, the political and economic domination of English Canada, with its corrosive effects on all the aspects of its development, particularly on the assertion of its national identity.

Also, even if I cannot see the Groulx' work, from some point of view where I place myself, committed on the way of the independence of Quebec, I no less see it as the material of origin of the contemporary independence movement, as the intellectual frame for the reflexion which gave birth to it. And it is finally as an independentist militant that it touched me.