 |
| Eternal flame at Acadian Memorial, St. Martinville, LA |
This winter when
I sojourned in Acadiana for my half-year stay, I engaged in a whirlwind of
lunches, dinners, poetry readings, and visits with old friends. I also
investigated more fully my own roots in Acadiana through research and tours of
places like the Acadian Memorial in St. Martinville, Louisiana where I found my
Vincent ancestor’s name on the Wall of Names. The Vincents were among the first
families to follow Beau Soleil, Joseph Broussard, during the Grand Derangement from
Nova Scotia to Cajun country. Although these exiled people endured many hardships, I
discovered that the colonial population, beginning in 1699 when Iberville and
Bienville explored and formed the colony of Louisiana, had also struggled to
settle the Louisiana colony, enduring fights over land and other resources with
Indians, surviving floods and hurricanes, and striving to establish profitable
agriculture.
Later, under
Spanish rule, the Spanish expanded the Louisiana population with citizens from
Quebec, Switzerland, the Caribbean, Alsace-Lorraine, Normandy, etc. These
people became known as Creoles. In the late 1700’s Acadian refugees were sent
to bayou country and intermingled with Creoles and Native Americans, African
and Caribbean slaves, British, Germans and Italians. Two of my New Iberia friends
are descendants of Lebanese and Syrian families who were members of early
migrations to Louisiana and who added to the wonderful cultural mix of this unique
part of the world.
During one of
those migrations in the late 19th century, my great-grandfather,
Samuel Marquart, who was of German descent, joined the German population in
Lake Arthur, Louisiana, and my grandfather, E. L. Marquart, married an Acadian woman,
Leila Vincent, a descendant of the Vincents who came down from Port Royal, Nova
Scotia.
My father, Harold
Marquart, learned to speak Parisian French, but he wasn’t allowed to speak the
Cajun French my grandmother knew because she had been brought up under the
Louisiana laws that were passed to mandate “English only” public schools – laws
that resulted in a weakening of the culture in south Louisiana. According to
Christophe Landry, author of “Francophone Louisiana, More Than Cajun,” (Louisiana Cultural Vistas, Summer
2010), “between 1920-1960, usage of French or Creole was forbidden in virtually
all aspects of life in south Louisiana…often students violating the language
restriction were required to write ‘I will not speak French on the school
grounds’ one hundred times!” Today, through the efforts of CODOFIl (Council for
the Development of French in Louisiana) and other state organizations launched
to preserve an endangered language, Cajun French is alive and well.
My friend
Darrell Bourque, former Poet Laureate of Louisiana, speaks and writes in Cajun
French, and on several occasions I have read alongside him at poetry readings. On
both occasions, he read verses of poems in which he had used French. Following
one of those occasions I lamented about my French deficiencies in a poem that I
included in my book, Alchemy, which I
include below:
TO DARRELL:
It is good to read poems
with you,
the ultimate poet leading
the ultimate life;
I like that our ancestors
have common roots
that were entwined in
boats
rocking on the wave of
exile,
their coming disturbing a
halcyon world,
wilderness and deliverance
in one place.
By right of poetry
we became friends in a
friendlier world.
I am looking at your face,
one that has known lost
battles
and lately won even more;
it is a face more French
than the French,
the sharp incline of your
nose
framed by gray curls,
reading words that sound
to me
like “pwis and jer, may
jahmay,
der swashay, dit swa, dit
swa.”
Your wife looks up at you
crooning those soft
inflections,
mating with your eyes
again;
knowing she does not have
to remember
the romance of first
years,
every day it is reflected
in your voice and eyes.
I am sorry that part of my
ancestry
cannot match yours,
the speaking of an ancient
language
aroused my Scots mother’s
disdain,
eclipsed my father’s
perorations
in
Parisian French,
in
Cajun French,
doubling the language he
never passed to me,
or I would be able to
parley with you,
tell you in like patois
your poetry is elegant and
delivers us,
immerses me in occasions
of shared ancestry
where we recite anthems,
chants of the Grand
Derangement,
come upon this place
of tangled vines and brown
water, singing
it is good to be a poet
with you,
it is good to be a poet
with you,
it is good to be a poet
in this
new world.
I have tried to redeem my Cajun
background (which my grandmother Vincent actually tried to “disappear”) by
writing middle-grade and young adult novels based in New Iberia and other
communities in south Louisiana: Martin’s Quest, Martin Finds His Totem, Kajun Kween, Flood on the Rio Teche,
and a forthcoming middle-grade/young adult novel, Martin and the Last
Tribe. The last title should be published
by the end of April. Meanwhile, on my next stay in Louisiana, I hope to learn how
to “parlez vous” so the “tatailles” (monster cockroaches) won’t get me because
my Grandmother Vincent denied her roots!
