Émile Nelligan
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Émile Nelligan (December 24, 1879 - November 18, 1941) was a francophone poet from Quebec, Canada.
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[edit] Biography
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 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 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. Hotel Nelligan is a four star hotel found in Old Montreal at the corner of Rue St. Paul and Rue St. Sulpice.
[edit] 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!
[edit] Translation: The Ship of Gold
A tremendous schooner hacked out of gold:
On unfathomed seas, her masts tickled clouds;
Aphrodite, hair wild, breasts bare, proud,
Thrust from the prow, bold in the violent sun’s hold.
But one night she struck rocks, tossed and swept
By dissembling rollers; glad sirens sang
As the hideous wreck tipped its pierced crang
Into the grave of the gulf’s greatest depths.
She was a golden craft, whose gossamer planks
Disclosed treasures fought over by those rank
Drowning seamen, Disgust, Hate, Obsession.
What’s left of her after the transient gale?
What’s become of my heart, a ship dispossessed?
It sank out beyond the golden dream’s pale!
[Translation copyright Zachariah Wells]
[edit] Selected bibliography
[edit] Collections
- Émile Nelligan et son œuvre - 1903
- Poésies complètes, 1896-1899 - 1952
- Poèmes choisis - 1966
- Oeuvres complètes (two volumes) - 1991
- Poèmes autographes - 1991
[edit] In translation
- Selected Poems - 1960 (translated by P. F. Widdows)
- The Complete Poems of Emile Nelligan - 1982 (translated by Fred Cogswell)
[edit] External links
- (French) Emile-Nelligan.com
- (French) Fondation Émile Nelligan
- (French) Collection of Nelligan's poetry
- English translation of La Romance du Vin
