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'Émile Nelligan' (December 24, 1879 - November 18, 1941) was a francophone poet from Quebec, Canada.

Contents

Biography

Quotation: ''Le Vaisseau d'Or''

Selected bibliography

Collections

In translation

External links

Biography

Nelligan was born in Montreal to an Irish father and a French-Canadian mother. A follower of Symbolism, his poetry was profoundly influenced by Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, Georges Rodenbach, Maurice Rollinat and Edgar Allan Poe. A precocious talent like Arthur Rimbaud, his first poems were published in Montreal when he was 16 years old.
In 1899, Nelligan suffered a major psychotic breakdown from which he never recovered. He never had a chance to finish his first poetry work which was to be entitled ''Le Récital des Anges'' according to his last notes.
In 1903, his collected poems were published to great acclaim in Canada, an acclaim he never knew.
On his passing in 1941, Émile Nelligan was interred in the Cimetière Notre-Dame-des-Neiges in Montreal, Quebec. Following his death, the public became increasingly interested in Nelligan. His incomplete work spawned a kind of romantic legend. He was first translated to English in 1960 by P.F. Widdows. In 1983, Fred Cogswell translated all his poems in ''The Complete Poems of Émile Nelligan''.
Émile Nelligan is considered one of the greatest poets of French Canada. Several schools and libraries in Quebec are named after him and Hotel Nelligan is a four-star hotel in Old Montreal at the corner of Rue St. Paul and Rue St. Sulpice.

Quotation: ''Le Vaisseau d'Or''

''C'était un grand Vaisseau taillé dans l'or massif:
Ses mâts touchaient l'azur, sur des mers inconnues;
La Cyprine d'amour, cheveux épars, chairs nues,
S'étalait à sa proue, au soleil excessif.''
''Mais il vint une nuit frapper le grand écueil
Dans l'Océan trompeur où chantait la Sirène,
Et le naufrage horrible inclina sa carène
Aux profondeurs du Gouffre, immuable cercueil.''
''Ce fut un Vaisseau d'Or, dont les flancs diaphanes
Révélaient des trésors que les marins profanes,
Dégoût, Haine et Névrose, entre eux ont disputés.''
''Que reste-t-il de lui dans la tempête brève?
Qu'est devenu mon coeur, navire déserté?
Hélas! Il a sombré dans l'abîme du Rêve!''

Selected bibliography

Collections

★ ''Émile Nelligan et son œuvre'' - 1903

★ ''Poésies complètes, 1896-1899'' - 1952

★ ''Poèmes choisis'' - 1966

★ ''Oeuvres complètes'' (two volumes) - 1991

★ ''Poèmes autographes'' - 1991

In translation

★ ''Selected Poems'' - 1960 (translated by P. F. Widdows)

★ ''The Complete Poems of Emile Nelligan'' - 1982 (translated by Fred Cogswell)

External links

★ Emile-Nelligan.com

★ Fondation Émile Nelligan

★ Collection of Nelligan's poetry

★ English translation of La Romance du Vin