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Date of birth: Place of birth:
Calling:
Winter evening Oh, how the snow has snowed! Émile Nelligan |
Photo : Émile Nelligan © 1980, LIDEC inc.
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Émile Nelligan's life
was one long tragedy. He was the son of David
Nelligan, born in Dublin, Ireland, and
Émilie-Amanda Hudon, from Rimouski. Apart
from a few holidays in Cacouana, he spent his
entire life in Montreal where he attended the
École Olier, the Petit Séminaire de
Montréal, Mont Saint-Louis and the
Collège Sainte-Marie. At a very young age,
he was influenced by the symbolist poets, including
Verlaine, Beaudelaire and Edgar Allan Poe, and by
the romanticism of Chopin. He joined Montreal's
literary life as a member of the École
littéraire de Montréal in 1897. His
first poem, Rêve fantastique, was published
in Le Samedi on June 13, 1896, under the pseudonym
of Émile Kovar. In 1898, he hired on as a
sailer on a ship leaving for Liverpool. On his
return, he gave up the seafaring life and forced
himself to work for some time as a finance clerk.
On December 28, at the first public meeting of the
École littéraire at the Château
de Ramezay, he recited three poems: Un rêve
de Watteau, Le Récital des anges and
L'idiote aux cloches. The following year, he worked
on preparing a collection of his poetry that he
planned to entitle Le récital des anges.
Other poems appeared in Le Monde illustré,
L'Alliance nationale and Le petit Messager du
Très Saint-Sacrement He had a triomph in
1899 with the reading of Romance de vin which,
together with Le Vaisseau d'or, contributed to his
legendary fame in Quebec literature.
His work includes some 170
poems, sonnets, rondels and songs that he wrote
between the ages of 16 and 19. His work is
characterized by a lyricism overflowing with
sadness, nostalgia, extreme sensitivity, inner
sorrow and symbols. Unlike the poets who preceded
him, Nelligan did not draw his inspiration from his
native soil, but from his "inner self". On August
9, 1899, overworked, ill and facing dementia,
Nelligan was interned at the Saint-Benoît
retreat and later, in 1925, at the Hôpital
Saint-Jean-de-Dieu, where he remained until his
death on November 18, 1941. The work of this gifted
and hyper-sensitive adolescent marks an important
stage in the history of French-Canadian poetry and
continues to feed our imagination. Émile
Nelligan was a prodigiously gifted poet who lacked
only time to become a great poet. In three short
years, he made an invaluable contribution to our
poetic heritage, not just for Canadian poetry, but
for the poetry of the whole world. This adolescent
poet at 19 made his mark on the literary history of
French-speaking countries.
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