I reached another marker this week in my posthumous, intriguing, fan-like relationship with Montréal poet Émile Nelligan (1879-1941) when Craig’s partner, Claude, drove me to the site of his burial in Cimetière Notre-Dame-des-Neiges . Even with a map of the cemetery it took us a while to find Marker #588 in Section N. At 350 acres, and with fifty-five kilometres of road, Notre-Dame-des-Neiges is Canada’s largest cemetery, dating back to 1854, and fast closing in on a population of one million people’s remains.
A bust of the young Nelligan, closer to his home at Square Saint-Louis, enjoys a prominent place in that lovely park.
Born at 602, rue de La Gauchetière on Christmas Eve 1879, and baptized at St. Patrick’s on Christmas Day, he was the first son of Irish immigrant David Nelligan and Emilia Amanda Hudon, a francophone from the lower St. Lawrence town of Rimouski. Two younger sisters, Beatrice and Gertrude, followed.
On the outside, his childhood would have appeared to be pretty good, spent between the family home in Montréal and their summer residence in Cacouna, not too far from his mother’s birthplace. Nelligan skipped school increasingly, devoting more and more time to his love of poetry. He left school outright in 1897, over the strong objections of his working-class father.
Childhood, despair, a difficult relationship with his father, and apparently weak boundaries with his mother, social awkwardness, love, music and a morbid fascination with what he viewed as the relief of death dominate his work.
The story is told, in the preface to P.F. Widdows’ bilingual edition of “Émile Nelligan – Selected Poems”, of David Nelligan sending his son off to Liverpool, as something of a would-be merchant mariner. Alas he was back home in two months. His father having given up on him, as Widdows writes, “he never again submitted himself to what the world and his father called work”.
Émile’s work, however, his poetry, continued unstopped.
His first published poem appeared in the journal Le Samedi de Montréal on June 13, 1896, which he submitted under the pen-name Émile Kovar. It was Rêve fantasque, an early indication of his fascination with death, even suicide.
Qu’il est doux de mourir quand notre âme s’afflige,
Quand nous pèse le temps tel un cuisant remords,
-Que le désespoir ou qu’un noir penser l’exige -
Qu’il est doux de mourir alors!
My shaky translation:
How sweet to die when our soul is grieved,
When we weigh the time such a bitter remorse,
-Such black despair of thinking that is required
It is sweet to die then!
Nelligan was just sixteen years old.
Between 1896 and 1897 he met, and was taken under the wing of, Roman Catholic père Eugène Seers, better known in Montréal literary circles as Louis Dantin. An encouraging critic of Nelligan’s work, he published some of his religious-themed poems in the newsletter of his Order and was instrumental in preparing his protegé’s collected poems for publication after Nelligan’s mental breakdown.
Joining, then re-joining, l’École littéraire de Montréal Nelligan’s brief public reading stint came to a dramatic end during the presentation of three of his poems to members, one of them his most well-known La Romance du vin.
That was May 26, 1899. He was diagnosed with irreversible psychoses, before schizophrenia had been named.
At the insistence of his parents, Nelligan was confined to la Retraite Saint-Benoît, a Catholic brothers’ retreat centre at the eastern end of the Island of Montréal. He was moved to the Saint-Jean-de-Dieu asylum in 1925, where he remained until his death on November 18, 1941.
My first introduction to Nelligan was through the music of pianist and composer . On an early album was a tune entitled “Nelligan”. Then, around 1990, Gagnon collaborated with playwright Michel Tremblay and mounted an opera/musical “Nelligan”, whose album cover is pictured above.
Having learned about Nelligan’s promising career, dashed by mental illness that was treated with the crude methods of the day, I felt some identification with him. I almost never fail to walk past Nelligan’s bust in Square St-Louis when I’m in Montréal. I am so pleased to be connecting my love of André Gagnon’s music, the poetry of Émile Nelligan, my fascination with Nelligan landmarks downtown, and now his grave-site on the beautiful slopes of Mont-Royal.
I reached another marker this week in my posthumous, intriguing, fan-like relationship with Montréal poet Émile Nelligan (1879-1941) when Craig’s partner, Claude, drove me to the site of his burial in Cimetière Notre-Dame-des-Neiges . Even with a map of the cemetery it took us a while to find Marker #588 in Section N. At 350 acres, and with fifty-five kilometres of road, Notre-Dame-des-Neiges is Canada’s largest cemetery, dating back to 1854, and fast closing in on a population of one million people’s remains.
A bust of the young Nelligan, closer to his home at Square Saint-Louis, enjoys a prominent place in that lovely park.
Born at 602, rue de La Gauchetière on Christmas Eve 1879, and baptized at St. Patrick’s on Christmas Day, he was the first son of Irish immigrant David Nelligan and Emilia Amanda Hudon, a francophone from the lower St. Lawrence town of Rimouski. Two younger sisters, Beatrice and Gertrude, followed.
On the outside, his childhood would have appeared to be pretty good, spent between the family home in Montréal and their summer residence in Cacouna, not too far from his mother’s birthplace. Nelligan skipped school increasingly, devoting more and more time to his love of poetry. He left school outright in 1897, over the strong objections of his working-class father.
Childhood, despair, a difficult relationship with his father, and apparently weak boundaries with his mother, social awkwardness, love, music and a morbid fascination with what he viewed as the relief of death dominate his work.
The story is told, in the preface to P.F. Widdows’ bilingual edition of “Émile Nelligan – Selected Poems”, of David Nelligan sending his son off to Liverpool, as something of a would-be merchant mariner. Alas he was back home in two months. His father having given up on him, as Widdows writes, “he never again submitted himself to what the world and his father called work”.
Émile’s work, however, his poetry, continued unstopped.
His first published poem appeared in the journal Le Samedi de Montréal on June 13, 1896, which he submitted under the pen-name Émile Kovar. It was Rêve fantasque, an early indication of his fascination with death, even suicide.
My shaky translation:
Nelligan was just sixteen years old.
Between 1896 and 1897 he met, and was taken under the wing of, Roman Catholic père Eugène Seers, better known in Montréal literary circles as Louis Dantin. An encouraging critic of Nelligan’s work, he published some of his religious-themed poems in the newsletter of his Order and was instrumental in preparing his protegé’s collected poems for publication after Nelligan’s mental breakdown.
Joining, then re-joining, l’École littéraire de Montréal Nelligan’s brief public reading stint came to a dramatic end during the presentation of three of his poems to members, one of them his most well-known La Romance du vin.
That was May 26, 1899. He was diagnosed with irreversible psychoses, before schizophrenia had been named.
At the insistence of his parents, Nelligan was confined to la Retraite Saint-Benoît, a Catholic brothers’ retreat centre at the eastern end of the Island of Montréal. He was moved to the Saint-Jean-de-Dieu asylum in 1925, where he remained until his death on November 18, 1941.
My first introduction to Nelligan was through the music of pianist and composer . On an early album was a tune entitled “Nelligan”. Then, around 1990, Gagnon collaborated with playwright Michel Tremblay and mounted an opera/musical “Nelligan”, whose album cover is pictured above.
Having learned about Nelligan’s promising career, dashed by mental illness that was treated with the crude methods of the day, I felt some identification with him. I almost never fail to walk past Nelligan’s bust in Square St-Louis when I’m in Montréal. I am so pleased to be connecting my love of André Gagnon’s music, the poetry of Émile Nelligan, my fascination with Nelligan landmarks downtown, and now his grave-site on the beautiful slopes of Mont-Royal.