Émile Nelligan

Son of an Irish father and French-Canadian mother, Nelligan was drawn to the French symbolist poetry of Baudelaire, Verlaine, and Rimbaud. Joining the École littéraire de Montréal, he dazzled audiences at the Château de Ramezay in 1899 with his passionate recital of 'La Romance du vin'.

Later that same year, at just nineteen, Nelligan suffered a severe psychotic breakdown and was institutionalized for the remaining forty-two years of his life, never writing again. His collected poems, published in 1904, established him as the romantic archetype of poetic genius in Quebec culture.