The directory «Plots»

Nelligan Émile
(1879—1941)

Émile Nelligan was a francophone poet from Quebec, Canada. 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.

Canada, 1979, «Le Vaisseau d'Or»