Hubert Aquin

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Hubert Aquin (born October 24, 1929 in Montreal ; † March 15, 1977 ibid) was a French-Canadian writer who was best known for his four complex modernist novels and who also influenced contemporary Québec culture as a political activist, essayist , filmmaker and editor .

Life

Studies, professional activity and commitment to the sovereignty of Québec

After attending school, Aquin completed a degree in philosophy at the University of Montreal , from which he graduated in 1951 with a licentiate . After studying at the Institut d'études politiques de Paris ( Sciences Po Paris ) from 1951 to 1954 , he worked for Radio Canada between 1955 and 1959 on his return to Montreal . He then worked for the ONF ( Office national du film du Canada ) between 1959 and 1963 and, at the same time, for the Montreal Stock Exchange from 1960 to 1964 .

Between 1960 and 1968 Aquin was a well-known and influential figure in the growing movement to achieve the sovereignty of Québec, and between 1960 and 1969 was an executive member of the Rassemblement pour l'Independence National (RIN), the first political party to seek independence in Québec. At the same time he was the editor of the magazine Liberté in debates with Pierre Trudeau on the question of the sovereignty of Québec. In a 1964 press release , he stated that he would go underground to work for independence by terrorist means.

The novels published in the 1960s

Shortly afterwards he was arrested and admitted to a psychiatric clinic for four months , where he wrote his first novel Prochain Épisode (1965), the story of a locked up revolutionary. In December 1964 he was acquitted of charges of "illicit gun possession". The release of Prochain Épisode established Aquin as an important cultural figure in Québec of his generation. He went on to claim that he was incapable of compromising with any established order.

In 1966, he was from Switzerland reported . Aquin wrote that this was due to the action of the Gendarmerie Royale du Canada (GRC). He received his first recognition when he was the first writer from Québec to be awarded a Governor General's Prize, Prix ​​du Gouverneur général , for Trou de mémoire (1968) in 1969. Also in 1969 he denounced Pierre Bourgault's decision to unite the RIN with René Lévesque's Mouvement pour la souverainté-association (MSA) to form the Parti Québécois (PQ) and resigned from the party.

The following years seemed to be marked by a growing despair associated with Aquin's sense of separation from the political center of his beloved Québec. In 1969 he published his third novel L'Antiphonaire , which, however, unlike the two previous novels, had no clear political content.

The 1970s: Final Novel, Editor, and Suicide

In 1971 Aquin resigned from the editorial board of Liberté magazine , lamenting that his reliance on the support of the Canadian Art Council ( Conseil des arts du Canada ) would have muted it regarding the October 1970 crisis .

In 1974 Aquin's last novel, Neige noire , appeared, a modern version of Hamlet , in which Aquin combined film, music and painting techniques with a sustained philosophical consideration of time, love, death and the saints.

In March 1975 he took over the role of literary director of Éditions La Presse , the book publications division of the daily La Presse . Given the newspaper's economic ties to the Power Corporation of Canada (PCC) group of companies, its assumption of this role was seen by some as contradicting its earlier "revolutionary" stance. However, he claimed that he had become revolutionary because he was denied the opportunity to become a banker as a Québec resident, and his time at Éditions La Presse was marked by a conflict over funds he could use for unprofitable literary projects wanted to invest in Québec. In August 1976, he resigned as literary director and accused his manager and editor of La Presse , Roger Lemelin , of colonizing Quebec from within.

The last few months of his life were ultimately marked by financial uncertainty and serious depression , which eventually resulted in his suicide .

He was deeply indebted to his home province of Québec, whose contradictions he seemed to embody, and had a flair for dramatic and political gestures. He once declared: “It is my life that will turn out to have been my super-masterpiece”.

Even during his lifetime and after his death, Aquin's life and work were the subject of numerous monographs. His estate was archived in Quebec ( Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec ).

Works

  • Prochain episode , 1965
    • Next episode, in America Spelling Different. Literature from Québec. Ed. Lothar Baier , Pierre Filion. Das Wunderhorn , Heidelberg 2000, pp. 19-27
  • Trou de mémoire , 1968
  • L 'Antiphonaire , 1969
  • Point de fuite , 1971
  • Neige noire , 1974
  • Blocs erratiques , 1977
posthumous appearances and new editions
  • Hamlet's twin , 1979
  • Dossier de presse 1965-1980 , 1981
  • Writing Quebec , 1988
  • L'invention de la mort , 1991
  • Mélanges littéraires , 1995
  • Confession d'un héros; Le choix of the poor; La toile d'araignée , 1997
  • Récits et nouvelles: tout est miroir , 1998
  • Sables mouvants: nouvelle. - Shifting Sands. novella , 2009

literature

  • Christiane Tremblay: Lecture d'Hubert Aquin: Prochain épisode , 1971
  • Françoise Maccabée Iqbal: L'oeuvre romanesque de Hubert Aquin , 1972
  • Patricia Smart: Hubert Aquin, agent double. La dialectique de l'art et du pays dans “Prochain épisode” et “Trou de mémoire” , 1973
  • Françoise Maccabée Iqbal: Hubert Aquin, novelist , 1978
  • René Lapierre: Les masques du récit. Lecture de Prochain episode de Hubert Aquin , 1980
  • René Lapierre: L'imaginaire captif. Hubert Aquin , 1981
  • Pierre-Yves Mocquais: La quete de l'autre par l'ecriture. Une lecture de l'œuvre romanesque de Hubert Aquin , 1983
  • Gordon Sheppard: Signé Hubert Aquin. Enquête sur le suicide d'un écrivain , 1985
  • Pierre-Yves Mocquais: Hubert Aquin, ou, La quête interrompue , 1985
  • Françoise Maccabée-Iqbal: Desainado. Otobiography de Hubert Aquin , 1987
  • Marilyn Randall: Le contexte littéraire. Lecture pragmatique de Hubert Aquin et de Réjean Ducharme . 1990
  • Robert Richard: Le corps logique de la fiction. Le code romanesque chez Hubert Aquin: Essai , 1990
  • Anthony John Wall: Hubert Aquin entre référence et métaphore , 1991
  • Anne Elaine Cliche: Le désir du roman. Hubert Aquin, Réjean Ducharme , 1992
  • André Lamontagne: Les mots des autres. La poétique intertextuelle des œuvres romanesques de Hubert Aquin , 1992
  • Guylaine Massoutre: Itinéraires d'Hubert Aquin. Chronology , 1992
  • Jacques Cardinal: Le roman de l'histoire. Politique et transmission du nom dans Prochain épisode et Trou de mémoire de Hubert Aquin , 1993
  • Winfried Siemerling: Discoveries of the other. Alterity in the work of Leonard Cohen , Hubert Aquin, Michael Ondaatje , and Nicole Brossard . 1994
  • Manon Dumais: Repertoire Hubert Aquin. Bibliographie analytique 1947-1997 , 1998
  • Jean-Christian Pleau: La révolution québécoise. Hubert Aquin et Gaston Miron au tournant des années soixante , 2002
  • Richard Dubois: Hubert Aquin blues: Essai , 2003
  • Renée Legris: Hubert Aquin et la radio. Une quête d'écriture, (1954-1977) , 2004
  • Robert Richard: L'émotion européenne. Dante , Sade , Aquin , 2004
  • Jacques Beaudry: Hubert Aquin. La course contre la vie , 2006
  • Jacques Beaudry: La fatigue d'être. Saint-Denys Garneau , Claude Gauvreau , Hubert Aquin , 2008
  • Martine-Emmanuelle Lapointe: Emblèmes d'une littérature. Le libraire, Prochain épisode et L'avalée des avalés , 2008
  • Janin Taubert: About the novel "Trou de mémoire" by Hubert Aquin. The "écriture éclatée" and the meaning of violence against women in the context of the national search for identity. GRIN Verlag , 2009
  • Filippo Palumbo: Saga Gnostica. Hubert Aquin et le patriote errant. 2012
  • Jean de Dieu Itsieki Putu Basey: De la mémoire de l'Histoire à la refonte des encyclopédies. Hubert Aquin, Henry Bauchau , Rachid Boudjedra , Driss Chraïbi et Ahmadou Kourouma . Peter Lang, Bruxelles 2017

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Description of the "Hubert Aquin Fund" (MSS 145) on the library page, accessed on July 5, 2017.
personal data
SURNAME Aquin, Hubert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French-Canadian writer
DATE OF BIRTH October 24, 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH Montreal
DATE OF DEATH March 15, 1977
Place of death Montreal