Louis Hémon: Maria Chapdelaine

Maria Chapdelaine's novel depicts the harsh life of French homesteaders in the Canadian wilderness. It tells the story of the harsh livelihood of rural loggers who have to defy the forces of nature and conquer the land of the wild forest - they proudly call it "making land" - day in and day out. The story of the heroine Maria is simple: it is a story of love in the difficult conditions of rural Canada, a story from a time when universally accepted values were still in place and when people, although they struggled with nature to acquire farmland, lived in harmony with it. Louis Hémon wrote realistic, poetic prose from a time we now see as idyllic. A Canadian lake was named after the prematurely deceased writer in 1919. The second lake was named Marie Chapdelaine in honour of the heroine of the story. .. Read by Ladislav Mrkvička, directed by Hana Kofrankova