Arthur de Bussières

Arthur de Bussières (January 20, 1877 – May 7, 1913) was a Canadian poet from Montreal, Quebec.^[1]

He was born in Montreal in 1877 to a poor family. There is evidence that his birth name was Arthur Bussières, and that the nobiliary particle "de" was later added as a pen name.^[2] He joined the École littéraire de Montréal in 1896 and became a close friend of Émile Nelligan, Charles Gill, Henry Desjardins, Albert Lozeau and Joseph Melançon.

Several of his early poems were published in anthologies edited by Louis Dantin,^[1] and later in journals including Le Monde illustré, Le Passe-Temps, L'Avenir, L'Étudiant, La Revue populaire, Les Débats, L'Alliance nationale and Anthologie des poètes canadiens.^[3] His writing style was generally labelled as Parnassian, and as most strongly influenced by José-Maria de Heredia.^[4] He supported himself primarily as a house painter, according to official sources; after Nelligan was committed to an insane asylum in 1899, Bussières virtually disappeared from the École littéraire, and published only a very small amount of work in the next decade until reemerging in 1910.^[5]

He had not published a standalone poetry collection as of 1913, when he died of appendicitis at age 36; the collection Les Bengalis, comprising all of his surviving poetry, was posthumously published in 1931.^[1]

Bussières is now best known for his role in historical investigation into the question of Nelligan's sexual orientation; there is circumstantial evidence but no definitive proof that the two men may have had a romantic or sexual relationship.^[6] Within the École littéraire de Montréal circle, it was widely believed that Nelligan was institutionalized because his mother discovered him and Bussières in flagrante delicto , but that rumor was not widely publicized until the late 20th-century and remains unsubstantiated.^[5] Bussières was also alleged by a contemporary, Jean-Aubert Loranger, to have supplemented his income as a house painter by also working as a male prostitute.^[6]

A biography of Bussières, Arthur de Bussières, poète, et l'École littéraire de Montréal, was published by Wilfrid Paquin in 1986.^[2]

Bussières was portrayed by David La Haye in the 1991 biopic Nelligan .

• 1877 births
• 1913 deaths
• 19th-century Canadian poets
• 19th-century Canadian male writers
• 20th-century Canadian poets
• 20th-century Canadian male writers
• Canadian male poets
• Canadian poets in French

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