Joseph-David MERMET (1775-1820)

Lieutenant and Poet

Born in Lyon, circa 1775, he spent three years in Canada (1813-1816).

A lieutenant in the famous Watteville regiment, he was sent to Kingston (Canada ) with his regiment in 1813, to help Canadians fight the American armies.

Joseph Mermet published numerous poems in the Spectateur Canadien.

His poem on the Victoire de Châteauguay, published in the first months of his stay in Canada, was enough to establish his success in a country where men of letters were rare and critics undemanding.

Unpublished verses by the Kingston poet were hotly contested in Montreal salons. It's undeniable that he exerted a considerable literary influence on a society still deprived of a better literature, through his easy, light poems of a rather mediocre lyricism.

On the subject of this influence, we could read some of the literary discussions in which Joseph Mermet took part in the Spectateur Canadien

An ardent legitimist, Lieutenant Mermet hurried back to France at the Restoration, where he expected to see his attachment to the Bourbons rewarded at last.

But, completely disregarded by the new regime, he soon bitterly regretted having left Canada.

The last time he was heard from in 1820, he was in Marseille, disappointed, poor and unhappy.

some of his poems:

  • England triumphant and France happy
  • Epitaph of Bonaparte (Distique)
  • Execration of Bonaparte
  • Excerpt from the fire during the siege of Lyon
  • A Parisian in Siberia to his mother
  • Le Régime du Bourguignon (1815)
  • Picture of the Niagara cataract (1815)
  • A veteran's reply to Louis XVIII
  • Wishes for France in 1801
  • The Sicilian in Canada
  • La victoire de Châteauguay (1813)

found in Jules Fournier's Anthology of Canadian Poets. Montreal 1920

The Châteaugay Victory (1813)

 

 
  • Lettres sur la musique moderne in 1797
  • Leçons de belles lettres in 1803/1804
  • L'art du raisonnement presented in a new light in 1805
  • L'histoire de l'Art à St-Claude published in lannuaire du Jura in 1842
  • Numerous eulogies on eminent figures such as King Louis XVI.



 

The Bourguignon regime

My doctor is nature
My pharmacy is my garden
And the purest herbal tea
Is, in my opinion, the best wine.

In this rustic hut
I have no access to ailments
I like everything, nothing tires me;
If I enjoy anything, it's without excess.

I am rich in my countryside;
Its ears are ears of gold;
Kind children, good companion
Help me gather this treasure.

Everywhere I find tenderness;
Everywhere I see, I adore God;
And I am, thanks to his wisdom,
Content at all times, in all places.

It is to him that I sacrifice
And my existence, and my fate:
When I spend my life in this way,
Should I dread death?

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