Emile Nelligan

Nelligan was born in Montreal to an Irish father and a French-Canadian mother. A follower of Symbolism, his poetry is deeply 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 1904, 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 will become the object of a myth. 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.

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!

Translation: The Ship of Gold

It was a great Ship sheared in solid gold:
Its masts touched to the skies on uncharted seas;
The Venus of Love, her hair streaming, her flesh bare,
Flaunted herself on the prow beneath a blazing sun.

But one night it struck the great reef
In that treacherous ocean where the Siren sang,
And the horrible shipwreck tilted its keel
Into the depths of the abyss, this immovable coffin.

It was a Ship of Gold whose diaphanous sides
Revealed treasures which profane mariners,
Loathing, Hate and Neurosis, have disputed among themselves.

What remains of it in the brief tempest?
What has become of my heart, deserted ship?
Alas! It has foundered in the depths of the Dream!

External link

• Emile-Nelligan.com (in French)
• Emile Nelligan by a fan (in French)
• Fondation Émile Nelligan (in French)
• Collection of Nelligan's poetry (in French)