Guy Delahaye, born Francoise-Guillaume Lahaise, was a poet, psychiatrist, and social satirist who allowed himself to squelch his creative potential and exchange it for a professional life that encountered far less resistance and required far less energy to pursue.
Background
Guy Delahaye was born Francoise-Guillaume Lahaise on March 18, 1888 in Mont-saint-hilaire, Quebec, Canada to Pierre-Adelard and Evangeline (Cheval) Lahaise. He was the son of the owners of his home town's general store. Hence, he was afforded financial comforts and educational opportunities not readily available to the average francophone child.
Education
As a youth, Guy was inquisitive and inclined toward intellectual endeavors, and he indulged these tendencies by choosing to study philosophy when it was time to go to college. However, the following year he reconsidered his future and redirected his course to the study to medicine at the Universite de Montreal. He graduated in 1910 with his B.A. in medicine.
In 1910 Gay published his first of three literary efforts, Les Phases: Tryptiques.
Les Phases is a poetic effort inspired by the passion and fearlessness of youthful thought and ideals. Delahaye ignored the extant restrictions of the time, pushing the limits of what was socially acceptable. According to Alexandre L. Amprimoz in the Dictionary of Literary Biography; Delahaye's first book of poetry is "a difficult but rewarding book that embodies the conflict between permanence and sudden change." It summons forth the controversy that penetrated the developing region, exposing the limitations inherent in a society culturally imprisoned by a controlling government, while presenting the virtues of embracing change and social evolution.
Delahaye was raised as a Catholic, and one of the primary notions in Catholicism is the concept and existence of the Holy Trinity. Delahaye expanded this concept and applied it to a much broader vision of life. Les Phases is separated into two parts, but each part purposefully utilizes divisions and permutations of three. For example, the first part is made up of thirty poems, and these poems are presented in individual groups of three. Then, each poem consists of nine lines, and these lines are separated into three equal stanzas. Even the rhyming pattern follows a ternary rhythm.
The second part of the book, dedicated to Delahaye's longtime friend and contemporary painter, Ozias Leduc, consists of fifteen sonnets. Not surprisingly, these sonnets are divided into three triptychs.
Delahaye published another book of "verbal acrobatics" in 1912 titled Mignonne, allons voir si la rose... Portrait ("Lovely One, Let's Go See If the Rose... Portrait"). This was a collection of puns, jokes, and word games that cynically mocked the close-mindedness of his less enlightened contemporaries.
He assumed the role of the higher intellect, essentially treating his critics as less-seasoned, less-developed and less-gifted children who needed to be treated with gentleness and simplicity. This clever condescension did not help to win him any favor. His attempt to expand his critics' boundaries, challenge their comfortable assumptions and doctrine, and ultimately dispel the automatic rejection of unexplored literary undertakings was admirable. Unfortunately, he apparently tired of the burden and decided to leave Quebec and pursue other interests and surround himself with a less repressed and repressive environment.
On November 17, 1912, a short time after Mignonne was published. Delahaye traveled to Paris and concentrated on his career as a psychiatrist, virtually abandoning his gift for philosophy, poetry, and prose. Then he traveled all over the United States and to Cuba, working and studying throughout them both. He eventually returned to Montreal after his twelve-year professional sabbatical to practice medicine and psychiatry at a local hospital, until his retirement in 1959.
As a Catholic Gay conceived of unity as an implicit form of trinity: he believed in truth, beauty, and goodness; in the present, the past, and the future, and dawn, sun, and sunset.
Personality
Delahaye was not simply trying to be clever or obsessive, but was trying to remain consistent with his perception of life.