Le Cimetière de Sainte-Marie, Le Havre, Seine-Maritime (76): #1: Octave Crémazie

Octave Crémazie (1827-79) is undoubtedly an important poet from the Canadian province of Québec. The bookshop his brother Joseph founded in 1833 was much enhanced by Octave's literary knowledge, and was for a time very notable in Québec city. On the note by his cenotaph in le cimetière Sainte-Marie we don't exactly get the full story: it says that the bookshop failed, that Crémazie went to France in exile in 1862 under the assumed name Jules Fontaine, but not that the bookshop failed largely due to Crémazie's wild extravangances, nor that he fled from Canada due to his fraudulent activities. In France he lived in poverty and died in Le Havre but was buried in obscure Ingouville with just a wooden cross as a grave. This cenotaph is the real tribute to his work.

Octave Crémazie in Québec city

'LA SOCIÉTÉ DES POÈTES A FAIT

POSER CETTE PLAQUETTE EN 1932

SUR LA MAISON JADIS OCCUPÉE

PAR LA LIBRAIRIE CRÉMAZIE'

A likeness of the head, along with dates of the poet Octave Cremazie (1827–79), are on this plaque erected in 1932 to indicate that Crémazie's bookshop was here on rue de la Fabrique.

And on La Fresque des Québécois, a huge mural in Vieux-Québec, is a representation of Crémazie's bookshop, which among other things, is selling François Ricard's biography Gabrielle Roy: une vie (1972):

Octave Crémazie, Plateau-Mont-Royal, Montréal, Québec

The statue of the poet Octave Crémazie (1826–79) impressively stands at the entrance to the square Saint-Louis, where it was originally unveiled in 1906 at the instigation of Louis Fréchette.

Octave Crémazie, Émile Nelligan and Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau, Montréal, Québec

The métro station Crémazie is named after the poet Octave Crémazie (1827–1879), who was born in Québec. A mural on the station wall by Georges Lauda and Paul Pannier and titled Le poète dans l'univers is dedicated to Crémazie and two other poets from Québec: Émile Nelligan (1879–1941) and Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau (1912–43).

A plaque explains the mural. The principal colors here are blue, black and white, evocative of the night sky, and the curves are representative of the trajectories of the heavenly bodies.

Planet and zodiac signs are evocative, by their unusual presence, of the liberty of poetic inspiration and lyricism.

Anti-clockwise, representations of the heads of Garneau, Nelligan and Crémazie.

'TOUS CEUX DONT LE COEUR PUR N'ÉCOUTE SUR LA TERRE
QUE LES ÉCHOS DU CIEL, QUI RENDENT MOINS AMÈRE
LA DOULOUREUSE VOIE OÙ L'HOMME DOIT MARCHER'

Octave Crémazie

'A-T-ON LE DROIT DE FAIRE LA NUIT

NUIT, SUR UN MONDE ET SUR NOTRE COEUR

POUR UNE ÉTINCELLE'

Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau

'MA PENSÉE EST COULEUR DE LUMIÈRES LOINTAINES,

DU FOND DE QUELQUE CRYPTE

                AUX VAGUES PROFONDEURS'

Émile Nelligan