Emile Nelligan

Emile Nelligan (December 24th 1879 with Montreal - 1941) is a Poète Québécois. Disciple of the symbolism, his poetry was deeply influenced by Octave Crémazie, Louis Fréchette, Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, Georges Rodenbach, Maurice Rollinat, and Edgar Allan Poe. Among the recurrent themes of his poems, one notes childhood, the madness, the music, the love and death.

Biography

Nelligan is born in Montreal to the 602, Rue of Gauchetière. It is the first wire of David Nelligan, an Irishman, and of Emilie Amanda Hudon, Québécois French-speaking. It has two young sisters, Béatrice and Gertrude.

Endowed with an early talent like Arthur Rimbaud, its first poetries are published in Montreal whereas it is only 16 years old.

Starting from 1896, after having made the discovery of poetry, it decides to devote the remainder of its life to him.

In 1897, Nelligan becomes member of the literary École of Montreal and gives up its studies definitively.

In 1898, since David Nelligan hardly appreciates the lifestyle of his son, it decides to learn to him from force work by sending it to go on a journey in England. However, the precipitated return of his/her son obliges it to find a local employment to him. Finally, Emile Nelligan will be accountant, but he will forsake this trade later 15 days.

May 26th 1899, during a public meeting of the literary School of Montreal, Nelligan makes the reading of three poems of which its famous the Lovesong of the wine which remains engraved in the collective memory, because it is the last with being marked as a public by the poet who, in the same year, is diagnosed as suffering low registers Psychose S from which it will never go back. It forever have the possibility of completing its first work of Poetry which had, according to its last notes, to be entitled the Recital of the angels .

In 1904, a collection of 107 of its poems, chosen and ordered by Louis Dantin is published at Beauchemin. This publication makes known it in Quebec, in Belgium and France.

After its death in 1941, the public is interested more and more in Nelligan. Its unfinished work becomes the object of a Mythe.

It is initially translated into English in 1960 by P.F. Widdows. Into 1983, Fred Cogswell off translated all his poems in the work The Complete Poems Emile Nelligan .

Today, Emile Nelligan is still regarded as one of the largest poets of French Canada.

Homages

Several schools and libraries bear its name to Quebec. Since 1979, the Price Emile-Nelligan crown a book of poetry in French language of one or a young poet of North America.

This last has a monument in its memory in the town of Quebec.

The June 7th 2005, the Emile-Nelligan Foundation and the Town of Montreal inaugurated a bust in its memory with the Carré Saint-Louis.

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