about the author

Although his work is rarely translated or read outside the province, Émile Nelligan (1879–1941) is a major figure in Québécois literature and a representative example of the Symbolist tradition. This late-nineteenth-century art movement, a reaction to the Realist movement’s emphasis on the mundane details of everyday life, privileged imaginative flights of fancy and vivid imagery. Symbolist poets were keenly interested in synaesthetic experiences, exemplified by Nelligan’s conflation of sound and scent in the final lines of “Violon D’Adieu,” and in expressions of extreme emotion (often verging on melodrama), such as Paul Verlaine’s “Il pleure dans mon cœur / Comme il pleut sur la ville” (“It rains in my heart / Like it rains on the city”).

Like the French Symbolist Arthur Rimbaud, Nelligan was a precocious poet whose career both began and ended early. After publishing his first poems at the age of sixteen, he dropped out of school and joined a group of bohemian writers (the École littéraire de Montréal), often giving recitations at their meetings. His poetry was well received during this period, but in 1899 he began to exhibit erratic behaviour, including hallucinations and suicide attempts. His parents — who had never supported his writing pursuits — arranged for him to be institutionalized at the age of nineteen, bringing a halt to his poetic output. This unfortunate turn of events may clarify some of the distinctive features of Nelligan’s poetry, which stands out as particularly gloomy and pessimistic compared to that of other Symbolists. Yet there are moments of transcendence amid the darkness: strains of music, flashes of gold, and — unsurprisingly for a Montréal poet — the peaceful silence of snow.