The prodigious insights of Hubert Reeves
"The history of the cosmos is the history of matter awakening. The universe is born in the greatest destitution. At first, there is only a collection of simple, structureless particles. Like balls on a green billiard table, they simply wander and collide. Then, in successive stages, these particles combine and associate. Architectures develop."
Hubert Reeves, Patience dans l'azur.
I served mass, wished to become a priest. I was nervous at my first communion and my baptism was confirmed. I endured the sisters, was lined up by the Jesuits, and suspended my presence at the Sunday eucharistic celebration once I expressed my agnosticism to the parish priest—a requirement of my parents.
It was during an oriental philosophy course that I could finally put words to this ineffable energy I perceived in all matter, this universal essence in which all things seemed to bathe. Robert Linssen wrote in Bouddhisme, Taoïsme et zen: "To see everything, when we look at the universe, is to see far beyond its mere surface appearances. It is to penetrate its profound essence through what is most intimate and most inexpressible."
A few years later, I discovered and delved into Hubert Reeves's works, the content of which confirmed the absence of an independent God, external to us, and revealed this energy present in all things.
With clear writing and impeccable scientific rigor, the Quebec-born astrophysicist describes the origin of the world in light of current scientific knowledge. The story takes us back to the Big Bang, a dazzling explosion that occurred fifteen billion years ago, giving birth to our perceptible universe. Since then, it has continued to expand and cool. "We were engendered in the initial explosion, in the heart of the stars and in the immensity of interstellar space."
When I re-read Malicorne — Réflexions d'un observateur de la nature, I was captivated by the author's playful and delightful pen, which evokes in this work his love of Life in its simplest and most humble offerings. "A grand ballet of pollens takes place in the bluish air when, with my hand, I cover the morning sun. Tiny white tufts emerge from the shadow, glide slowly on the layers of air, illuminate for an instant before returning to the undergrowth where they redraw themselves in shadow." Here, the scientific mind, often perceived as cold, cerebral, and Cartesian, engenders vibrant and shimmering prose, an engaged and contagious lyricism.
Each time I reread Hubert Reeves's works, I inevitably wondered what path this man had taken to achieve such accomplishments on human, scientific, and literary levels. I found the answer in Je n'aurai pas le temps — Mémoires published by Éditions du Seuil in 2008.
I was delighted to discover the author's journey, charmed by his early passion for science and arts. But above all, I felt a close connection with the narrative, part of which takes place during the same period as my parents' youth. Their youth on the shore of a lake, Lake Saint-Louis for young Hubert and Lake of Two Mountains for young Wilfrid, who would become my father. Both followed their classical studies with the Jesuits at Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf, in the same class to boot. But that's where the similarity ends. At college, Hubert Reeves already showed a keen interest in nature, fervently striving to understand its phenomena, a quest of no interest to my future father.
Opposite the Reeves family home in Bellevue was a marshy area from which an archipelago of tiny islets emerged. Young Hubert would reach them by canoe via the Cardinal channel. "The impression this place made on me was so intense that I forgot to paddle. Without a sound, without any gesture, I remained attentive to the world around me for a long time. Nature then forgave my intrusion and found its rhythm again. Yellow butterflies and steel-blue dragonflies fluttered above the grasses, while in long strides, water striders glided over the liquid surface where yellow irises mirrored themselves." Thus, he recounts his childhood years spent in the west of Montreal Island, where every opportunity was good for acquiring new knowledge. It was there, with his family, that he discovered the infinitude of the celestial vault. The night captivated him. He became insatiable: "My appetite was boundless. I urgently needed to learn everything that had been discovered in the Universe." His wishes would soon come true.
Hubert Reeves's memoirs allow the reader to follow the astrophysicist on his journey. Endowed with endless curiosity, the man seizes every opportunity to expand his fields of knowledge, whether terrestrial or cosmic, musical or literary. The narrative leads the reader from Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf to the universities of Montreal, McGill, and then Cornell, where the student, writing a doctorate in physics, meets the most eminent scientists on the planet. The book recounts his years of teaching physics at the University of Montreal, his move to Europe, his countless scientific travels and collaborations, then his career as an author and popularizer, and, finally, his definitive settling with Camille, his second wife, in Malicorne in northern Burgundy, where he gardens, plants trees, and observes this nature which remains for him an inexhaustible source of wonder and inspiration.
Today, as he realizes he will run out of time to accomplish all that he still dreams of achieving, armed with his phenomenal understanding of the Universe, he humbly shares, at the conclusion of his memoirs, his personal perception of divine essence: "I am increasingly inclined to think that the nature of what might be called, in the vaguest sense, divinity (if it exists...) is well beyond the reach of our human faculties. That it escapes us as much as Einstein's theory of relativity escapes the intelligence of a mouse. That at best we arrive at vague and peripheral perceptions, still far from its essence."
This text is taken from the book Les mots de la terre by Yves Gagnon. Colloïdales, 2021.
Je n'aurai pas le temps — Mémoires. Hubert Reeves. Seuil, 2008
By Yves Gagnon
