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Hubert Aquin (; 24 October 1929 – 15 March 1977) was a Quebec writer, filmmaker and intellectual. He is particularly known for his novel Next Episode. He is also an important figure in the history of the Quebec independence movement, to which he contributed both as an activist and as an . Tempted by suicide for a great part of his existence, he ended his life in 1977 in the gardens of Villa Maria College.
Aquin worked at the Montreal Stock Exchange from 1960 to 1964. In 1966, based on an already written script, Aquin wrote the script for the film Faux bond, in which he eventually played the main role, after some hesitation. The images from the film will be used to illustrate several passages of the NFB documentary Deux épisodes dans la vie d'Hubert Aquin by Jacques Godbout. In 1967, he began teaching literature at Collège Sainte-Marie. In 1969, he was hired by the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), but he resigned in 1970, saying he disagreed with the policy of Rector Léo A. Dorais. Carleton University, in Ottawa, hired him in 1974 as a visiting professor, but did not renew his contract.
In 1975, Aquin was appointed literary director of Éditions La Presse. He lost his job in August 1976: he was fired following the publication of an open letter denouncing the cultural policies of Éditions La Presse towards Quebec works. He then accused his superior officer, Roger Lemelin, of "colonizing Quebec from the inside". In 1976, Aquin returned to UQAM for a teaching position, but only taught there for one month due to a strike. After the victory of the Parti Québécois in 1976, Aquin hoped to obtain a position within the government, such as Deputy Minister of Cultural Affairs, which did not come to fruition.
It was at Radio-Canada that he met his future wife, Thérèse Larouche, a script girl for his friend Louis-Georges Carrier. He married her in 1955. In 1963, he met Andrée Yanacopoulo. Born in Tunis to a half-Sicilian, half-Greek father and a French mother, Yanacopoulo graduated in medicine and sociology. She then prepared a thesis on suicide and researched "Depression among French Canadians in Montreal", supervised by Guy Rocher, a sociologist, and Camille Laurin, a Psychiatry and future pro-independence minister under René Lévesque. Yanacopoulo would be Aquin's lover until his death. As for his wife Thérèse Larouche, they began divorce proceedings in 1966. The seizures of Aquin's income that followed contributed to his financial troubles.
On 19 June 1964, he publicly announced in a letter to the newspapers Le Devoir and Montréal-Matin that he was going "undercover" and becoming "commander of the Special Organization" with the aim of joining forces with the Front de libération du Québec. He then took refuge at Louis-Georges Carrier's dwelling, then at Andrée Yanacopoulo's. He meets Dr. Pierre Lefebvre, a psychiatrist and contributor to Parti pris, who, on 26 June, concludes that immediate treatment is necessary due to a "nervous breakdown". On 29 June, a press release announces that the Special Organization will take action on the following 1 July. On 5 July, Aquin is arrested by a plainclothes police officer in a stolen car, in possession of a revolver, in a parking lot behind the Saint Joseph's Oratory.
During his incarceration, he declares that his profession is: "revolutionary". Two charges were brought against him: "theft and possession of stolen goods" and "possession of an offensive weapon for a dangerous purpose". He was then interned for two months in a psychiatric hospital, the Albert-Prévost Institute, in the maximum security wing. It was during this stay that he began writing his novel Next Episode, which tells the story of an imprisoned revolutionary. The verdict of the trial, deferred, only arrived in 1966. Aquin was then acquitted because of contradictory testimonies given about his mental health. His pistol was however confiscated.
Around May 1966, Aquin left Quebec to live in Switzerland. There he became interested in the "Jura separatism", and tried to make contact with autonomists in the Bernese Jura. On 29 August, he was questioned by the police of the canton of Vaud about his membership in the RIN, and his imprisonment. He was then suspected of collusion with the Front de libération jurassien. On 19 November, on behalf of the Federal Foreigners Police, the canton of Vaud refused him a residence permit that he needed to live in Nyon. He was told that he had to leave Switzerland before 15 January 1967, under the pretext of "foreign overpopulation". Aquin then moved to Paris, and remained there until 21 March 1967. He then returned to Montreal. During 1969, he denounced the decision to dissolve the RIN in favor of René Lévesque's Mouvement Souveraineté-Association, and left the party.
In 1969, he was the first Quebec writer to refuse the Governor General's Literary Award which was awarded to him for his novel Trou de mémoire, from 1968. Also in 1969, he published L'Antiphonaire which, like his subsequent novels (and unlike the two preceding ones), does not contain any explicit political reference. In 1971, he published Point de fuite. That year, he resigned from the editorial board of Liberté because, he said, the magazine had ignored the events of the October Crisis in order to avoid losing funding from the Canada Council for the Arts. In 1974, Aquin published Neige noire, a modern version of Hamlet. At the end of his life, he planned to write Obombre, a work that would remain unfinished. His novel L'Invention de la mort, written around 1959 or 1960, was finally published posthumously in 1991.
The Hubert Aquin archives are held at the Montreal archives centre of the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec.
In 1979, the Quebec writer and filmmaker Jacques Godbout made a documentary entitled Two episodes in the life of Hubert Aquin.
Hubert-Aquin Street was named in his honor in 1984 in Quebec City.
A notable work in English about Aquin is HA!: A Self-Murder Mystery (2003), an experiment in biography by Aquin's friend Gordon Sheppard.
Literary production
In 1952, Aquin wrote Les Rédempteurs, a work that remained unpublished until 1959. His texts appeared in various magazines, starting in 1959, including in Parti pris, Le Magazine Maclean, Voix et images du pays, Écrits du Canada français and the literary magazine Liberté, of which he was director from 1961 to 1962. Next Episode, his best-known novel, was published in 1965 in Montreal, then in 1966 in Paris and translated into English in 1967 in Toronto. In Quebec, it was a success in terms of sales and reviews. The first edition sold out in two and a half months, and, in Le Devoir, the literary critic Jean Éthier-Blais ended his article about the book by exclaiming: "We do not have to look any further. We have him, our great writer. My God, thank you. » In Paris, the critical reception was however more mixed.
Suicide
Suicide is an idea that haunts Aquin for many years, and he often evokes it with his friends in the form of jokes. On 29 March 1971, he failed a suicide attempt in a room of the Queen Elizabeth Hotel by swallowing barbiturates. He is hospitalized at the Sacré-Cœur Hospital until 4 April. At the hotel, he had registered under the name of his character from his novel The Antiphonary, J. W. Forrestier. On 15 March 1977, he attempted suicide again, this time with a firearm in the gardens of the Villa Maria College in Montreal, leaving his partner Andrée Yanacopoulo a final note:
Legacy
Tributes
The Hubert-Aquin building at the Université du Québec à Montréal (built from 1975 to 1979) is named in his (posthumous) honour.
Canada Reads
Regarded in English Canada as a classic of Canadian literature, Next Episode was chosen for the 2003 edition of CBC Radio's Canada Reads competition, where it was championed by journalist Denise Bombardier. It was the winning title, because of the deciding vote of future Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau, who was also on the panel and voted against the book he was initially defending, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams by Wayne Johnston. Justin Trudeau is the son of former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who Aquin was responding to with "La fatigue culturelle du Canada français".
Bibliography
Novels
Essays
Filmography
Producer
Director
Writer
Actor
Awards and honours
Notes and references
See also
Further reading
External links
Categories: 1929 Births, 1977 Suicides, Canadian Male Novelists, Writers From Quebec, Suicides By Firearm In Quebec, Université De Montréal Alumni, Sciences Po Alumni, Prix Athanase-david Winners, Quebec Sovereigntists, Postcolonial Theorists, Film Directors From Montreal, 20th-century Canadian Novelists, French-language Canadian Novelists, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation People, National Film Board Of Canada People, 20th-century Canadian Male Writers, Governor General's Award–winning Fiction Writers, 1977 Deaths, Novelists From Montreal
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