Antonin Mylett, a Canadian writer who shaped a new literary language for isolated French-speaking minorities, became the first non-European to win France's most prestigious literary awards, and died on February 17th at her home in Montreal, on the street named after her. She was 95 years old.
Her death was confirmed by her publisher, Lemeak.
In novels, short stories and theater, Maylett spoke to a French-speaking population that is often overlooked in the historic region of Acadia.
Their ancestors were expelled by the English overlord in 1755, and the Acadians called “Le Grand Derangement,” or a great evacuation. Maylett decided to bring attention to its historical injustice and establish the independence and vitality of the current Acadia culture.
“Our Acadians, we were considered inferior,” she bent by Pelaggie, an 18th-century Acadian woman, returning her home after she won the Prix Goncourt in the French newspaper Le Monde in 1979 for her novel “Pélagie-la-Charrette,” and returning her home to American origin on the East Coast. In 1982, the English translation was published as “Pelaggie.” (The literal translation of the title is “Pélagie The OX Cart.”)
“I fully knew that if I wanted to succeed in life, I had to speak English.
Instead, she celebrated her grown language. She refused to write school papers in English as early as 12, as the teacher argued.
Ms. Maylett didn't just speak up for the Acadians. She created a new language from the old-fashioned French that survived through oral traditions almost exclusively in her hometown of Acadia. “I'll talk for those who couldn't because I didn't know how to write,” she once told an interviewer at Radio Canada.
In doing so, she begged a French literary arbitrator. French literary arbitrators faced a language that was not spoken in their country within 300 years.
“She invented the acadia, glorified those who had been forgotten, and its survival was due to incredible stubbornness,” critic Gerald Moudal wrote in 1997 in Le Monde. “She let them hear their voices.”
Her career was celebrated on both sides of the Atlantic. Animated by major characters in her work, including Pelaggie and Lasag Wing, the tough, talked about acadian washman who was the title character for the hit 1971 theatrical monologue by Maylett, was built in 1992 in New Brunswick, Mylett's hometown of Bookchuche. A Canadian Post Stamp with her image was published in 2021. French President Emmanuel Macron also presented the country's highest civilian honor, Legion Denneur, in the same year, and visited her at her home in Montreal last year.
“She returned notes that were not heard in French, French, French, and French in Labelais,” she was a 16th-century writer who wrote her PhD and a longtime editor of Pierre Fillion's Lemeaque, said in an interview. “And the cultivated Frenchmen appreciated it.”
“Pélagie-la-Charrette” is one of the few works that have been translated into English. Idioms are intentionally unslearned, but do not come across as eloquent.
She “de facto created a new literary language to convey the glory and flow of modern Acadia,” Canadian writer Mark Abbey wrote in the 1982 Times Literary Supplement.
Mylett added, “It can be as fresh as ice and tough.”
But “Pelaggy” is more than an interesting experiment in language. It is a homage to Mylett's imaginary superhuman grit and resolve ancestors.
Early in the novel, she plantes the flag of her hero: “'Not me!” Pelaghi screamed, seeing a man who had been dropped all the way up and down the coast of Georgia like a fly. “I am not going to leave myself behind in the land of strangers.”''
She then gets mad at the Straggler who wants to return to Acadia with her, and she explodes. She says. “Let's go back to the country!”
Carriage said, “It was her territory and she had the right to get anyone who she wanted.”
This is a character who will not be defeated.
“She was chosen to express the history of living, beaten, broken, but constantly reborn people through women,” wrote critic Jacques Cerrado after its publication in France in 1979.
Pelaghee's personality took on her own independent existence, as New York Times correspondent Henry Guiniger wrote after a visit to Ms. Maylet in 1979.
With a quick laugh, the petite figure, Maylet appeared in her interviewer, just like her hero did.
Her success was often resented at the Cultural Centre in Francophone, Quebec, Canada, as the glove and mail recently recalled. A clear reference to Mylett's Literary Award. ”
Another woman, created by Maylet of La Sagoyin, was an even bigger hit. The show of one woman of the same name has been performed more than two,000 times over 50 years, primarily by Canadian actress Viola Leger. Last week, Le Devoir wrote that the character's “vibrant and clear words” are “not only full of humor, but also full of candid rage facing countless injustice,” reflecting “the language of a poetic country where old-fashioned words and sonorities clash with each other.”
Marie Antonin Mylett was born on May 10, 1929 in Bukututu, one of the ten children of Leonid Maiett and Burgie (Cormier) Mylett. Her parents were both school teachers.
She attended College Notre Dame Acadier, a Catholic boarding school, and received her bacalaurate (equivalent to her high school diploma). She attended Moncton University.
Mylett published her first novel, “Pointe-aux-coques” in 1958 and her second, “Mangé La Dune” in 1962. He taught literature at Moncton University, Laval and Montreal universities in the 1960s and early 70s, earning his PhD. At Laval in 1971.
By the mid-1970s, her literary success, particularly in “Lasagwin” and “Mariagelas,” was a 1973 novel, telling stories of pirate-like women at the time of the ban, but she was primarily able to stop teaching.
For many years she lived with theatrical director Mercedes Palomino. Mercedes Palomino passed away in 2006.
“We didn't have any kids, but we had a lot of kids at the same time,” she told Le Devoir two years ago. “Acadia everything.”
As she told Le Monde in 1979, “We are in the minority, even on the lawns of our homes. This is even more difficult than being in the minority overseas. And this is what I want to say. In this world, all those who are a bit abused, looking down, and minority, we understand them.”
