Nelligan has always moved me deeply. Since my first encounter with him as a teenager, I have devoted him a constant cult. His immense sadness frightens me, but also attracts me. My optimistic nature takes me away from it, but my penchant for nostalgia brings me closer to it. Crying with him, sometimes, comforts me.
Some said his poetry did not live up to his legend. In 1962, in A literature that do, the great critic Gilles Marcotte, while hailing the “disturbing intensity” of the poet, speaks of his “left and heavy verses” and insists on the “borrowed” character of his work. Nelligan, he roughly says, would be a brilliant imitator.
To this reading, I prefer, by far, that of the historian Guy Frégault. In his history of literature french canadian (Guérin, 1996), a large work stemming from a course given at the University of Montreal in the 1940s, Frégault describes Nelligan as “the greatest creator of rhythms, images, sounds and poetic expressions who ever lived in Canada”.
The historian also recognizes the strong influences of the Parnassians and the Symbolists – Baudelaire and Verlaine, above all – on the poet, but he specifies that if “they gave him the impetus, it was he who sounded his own sound”. .
All of these analyzes fascinate me and I am delighted to note that, in the main History of the quebec literature (Boréal, 2007) by Biron, Dumont and Nardout-Lafarge, Nelligan, with ten full pages, receives the honorary treatment he deserves. Had he not had it, however, it would have made no difference to me; whatever one thinks of it, indeed, I love it.
It must be said that I discovered the poet by listening Monique Leyrac sings Nelligan (Analekta, 2000), the recording of the show presented at the Outremont cinema on November 22, 1975. This disc is a pure masterpiece.
Like Nelligan in his poetry, Leyrac combines rigor and exaltation in his interpretation. She recites and sings with fiery intensity the most beautiful poems by Nelligan to bewitching music by André Gagnon, mainly, Claude Léveillée, Chopin, Mozart and a few others. At the piano, Gilles Hainault and Denis Larochelle shine as much in meditation as in outbursts. This marriage of the genius of the poet with that of the singer, two artists who perfectly embody high-class Quebec romanticism, is unsurpassable.
In 1990, almost 50 years after the poet’s death, André Gagnon created, with Michel Tremblay and André Brassard, Nelligan, a romantic opera. This work, conceived by a dream team, was a little served, at the time, by arrangements for synthesizers. It is however a jewel that we can finally rediscover thanks to the chamber version arranged by Anthony Rozankovic for two pianos and cello, which was recorded at Atma Classique this season.
Throughout his life, pianist and composer André Gagnon also worshiped the poet, to the point of buying the Nelligan family home in Saint-Louis Square. There is nothing surprising there. Deeply melancholy, Gagnon’s music is Nelliganian. She too explores the painful beauty of sadness, even tragedy. In Nelligan, the poignant melodies follow one another without downtime and plunge us seriously into the drama of the poet. The organic sobriety of the new arrangements suits Nelligan’s intimacy better than the bombast of the synthesizers. Baritone Dominique Côté, as a young Nelligan, tenor Marc Hervieux, as an old Nelligan capable of nuance, and actress Kathleen Fortin, as the poet’s mother, are up to the task.
In his libretto, Michel Tremblay shows that the romantic vein is no stranger to him. The playwright does not reinvent history, but knows how to insist on the essential moments of the Nelligan drift. We see with emotion the poet choosing the French-Canadian artistic path against his father’s will to impose Anglo-Saxon utilitarianism on him; we follow Nelligan in his dream of living the French bohemian style and in his non-negotiable desire to devote his life to a raised culture which engages existence and which has nothing to do with entertainment.
If all that – the music, the text – rings so true, it’s because Gagnon and Tremblay, absolute artists like Nelligan, know very well that Quebec, which they love despite everything, reserves too often, today as yesterday, contempt and indifference to those of his own who make such choices. The great culture in French, here, the one that gives meaning to life instead of distracting from it, unfortunately does not have tons of friends.
“Émile Nelligan is dead,” wrote Louis Dantin gravely in 1904, mourning his friend’s wandering into madness. He was wrong: Nelligan is still alive, but who knows?