GIVING VOICE TO EVIL. ARTHUR BUIES, REJECTED "ECRIVAIN MAUDIT"

There is now greater recognition of Arthur Buies's undeniable contribution to Quebecois literature-he is even said to be "the best writer of the 19th century". However, this has not always been the case, with a wide range of negative reactions to his work persisting into the 1960s. Concealed behind his anticlericalism and pamphleteering, he offers-especially in Lettres sur le Canada and La Lanteme- a way of thinking about human nature and the human condition that deserves to be studied precisely from the perspective that made Buies into a rejected "ecrivain maudit". Working tirelessly to define a collective symptom, Buies asks the reader to recognize the effects of an "evil" that goes beyond the framework of his time, and, like other thinkers and writers with whom he is in dialogue, to view literature as the place where a certain kind of knowledge, both disturbing and essential, can be transmitted.