Émile Nelligan

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Émile Nelligan as a young man
Émile Nelligan as a young man

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

Contents

[edit] 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.

[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: Christ en Croix

By Konrad Bongard

The gypsum Jesus always stalled me in my steps
Like a curse at the old convent door;
Crouching meekly, I bend to exalt an idol
Whose forgiveness I do not implore.

Not long ago, at the crickets' hour, I roamed dim
Meadows in a restful reverie
Reciting 'Eloa', with my hair worn by the wind
And no audience save for the trees.

But now, as I lie with knees bent beneath Christ's scaffold,
I see his crumbling mortar cross
With its plaster buried in the roses, and am saddened -

For if I listen close enough, I can almost hear
The sound of coal-black nails being wrung in
To his wrists, the savage piercing of Longinus' spear.

[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

Wikisource
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