Anne Hebert; French Canadian Novelist, Poet and Playwright

Anne Hebert, a key French Canadian novelist, poet and playwright best known for her 1970 novel “Kamouraska,” has died at the age of 83.

Hebert died of cancer Saturday in a hospital in Quebec City.

“Kamouraska,” described as a stream-of-consciousness re-creation of an 1840 murder, was made into a film by director Claude Jutra, and, like much of Hebert’s work, was translated into English.

Hebert was often praised for her vivid imagination and literary artistry. Her writing also reflected extreme violence and rebellion against conformism. Her work demonstrated the French Canadian theme of a character’s past inhibiting any freedom for future action. Hebert often described writing as “playing with fire.”

In 1982, she won France’s Femina Prize for “Les Fous de Bassan,” translated as “In the Shadow of the Wind.”

Her “Am I Disturbing You” was a finalist for the 1999 Giller Prize for Canadian fiction. But despite her many accolades, Hebert was not universally praised. The Montreal Gazette, in reviewing “Am I Disturbing You” last year, said the book “is slender to the point of anorexia and riddled with phrasal scraps instead of sentences. . . . This latest book is so meager in terms of plot, character development and even independent clauses that it’s a feat to have drawn it out to 92 pages.”

Hebert’s last book, “Un Habit d’Lumiere,” was published in French six months ago.

Her other books translated into English over the years included: “Day Has No Equal but the Night,” “Anne Hebert: Selected Poems,” “The Torrent,” “The Silent Rooms” and “The First Garden.”

Born Aug. 1, 1916, near Quebec City, Hebert spent much of her adolescence isolated in sickrooms, coping with scarlet fever, pleurisy and appendicitis. She lived much of her adult life in Paris.

Hebert made her professional mark as a poet, publishing her first book in 1942, “Dreams in Equilibrium.”

But it wasn’t until 1954 that she took Paris by surprise with her book of poetry, “Le Tombeau des Rois” (“The Tomb of the Kings”), a coldblooded dissection of the human psyche.

“The fact that I write is a sign that I am alive, because if one is truly desperate, one does not do anything at all,” Hebert once said. “There have been moments when I have been discouraged, but I never stopped writing.”

Jacques Folch-Ribas, a Quebec author and critic, said the Quebec Writers Academy has suggested that Hebert be considered for the Nobel Prize in literature.

“Her poetry is a poetry of hope,” he said. “It is not abstract.”