Octave Crémazie

Alfred de Musset, Alphonse de Lamartine, and Victor Hugo, in particular, had a profound influence on the future poet. After finishing his studies at the Seminary of Quebec, Crémazie went into business with his brother Joseph, a bookseller. Their shop in Quebec City, the J. et O. Crémazie bookstore, established in 1833, was instrumental in the North American dissemination of works by many Romantic writers. It was also a meeting place for the members of what would become known as Quebec's literary movement of 1860. While still in his early twenties, Crémazie helped found the Institut canadien, an organization devoted to the promotion of French Canadian culture. He would later serve as the organization's president (from 1857 to 1858). Crémazie's first published poems appeared in L'Ami de la religion et de la patrie (edited by his brother Jacques) and other Quebec City newspapers. Recognition for his poetry grew throughout the 1850s. "Le vieux soldat canadien" (1855) and "Le Drapeau de Carillon" (1858) were enthusiastically received and won Crémazie his title as "national bard." The longing for a glorious, vanished past and the sense of estrangement from France in Crémazie's work has prompted the critic Gilles Marcotte to describe it as a poetry of exile. Despite the popularity of his bookstore, Octave Crémazie's extravagant taste for foreign commodities led to large debts and trouble with creditors. He lived at different times in Paris, Bordeaux, and Le Havre under the name of Jules Fontaine, poor and isolated despite having secured a modest job and the support of a few French friends. Crémazie's poetic production stopped when he left Quebec. The documents that survive from his later years include his Journal du siège de Paris, a diary detailing the hardship that Parisians and Crémazie himself endured during the siege of the capital in 1870 and 1871. Many of his letters to close friends and family members also survive, including his correspondence with the priest Raymond Casgrain, to whom Crémazie often expressed his ideas about literature. The book included the following remarks: "In a word, the publishers wanted this book to stand as the most enduring monument that could be raised to the memory of the most patriotic, and indeed the most hapless, of our poets." A statue depicting a French Canadian soldier stands in Montreal's Saint-Louis Square (Rue de Malines and Saint-Denis) with Crémazie's name across the top and the years 1827–1879 (his years of birth and death). Underneath the soldier are the words: Pour mon drapeau je viens ici mourir (literally: "For my flag I come here to die"). There is also a Montreal metro station named for him on the orange line, located on the boulevard likewise named in his honour.

• Name — Octave Crémazie • Born — 16 April 1827 • Birthplace — Quebec City, Lower Canada • Died — 16 January 1879 • Place of death — Le Havre, France • Occupation — Poet, bookseller • Language — French • Genre — Poetry

Octave Crémazie is recorded with the occupation bookseller. Recorded as poet, writer and bookseller.