to maroon leaders like Mackandal, for example) but less cosmopolitan than Toussaint
Louverture, the use of this national figure is the compromise between legitimacy and
subalternity. To summarize, Dessalines as a figure represents an urgent call for authentic
national identity which can only be complete when resurrecting this forgotten African element.
I have already alluded to how the connection between national present and national pastis accomplished in this poem partly through the link between peuple and esclave. The word
“peuple” which appears several times over the course of Nau’s poem is gradually identified with
the slaves of the revolutionary era. In the first stanza, this “peuple,” refers to those who will
welcome the upcoming celebration, a present national community which is nonetheless
indissociable from the memory of “Dessalines.” In the second stanza, the arrival of the
Dessalines, referred to as the “aigle africain” is accompanied by the rising up of the “esclave.”
It is in the third stanza that the link between “peuple” and “esclave” then is directly made, as it is
from slaves that this people is born: Et ce peuple nouveau qui d’esclaves naquit, /Fier des
libertés que sa force conquit.” Beyond positing the locus of Haitian identity as definitively slave,
the valiant character of a people and potential for national renewal and future accomplishments
are all emphasized. “Ce peuple nouveau” underscores the youth of the Haitian nation as well as
the novelty of a phenomenon in which slaves create nations. The choice and place of verbs like
rompre denote the utter break with past notions of nation and reinforce the exceptional nature of
the Haitian Revolution.
These poems represent in turn a break in literature which is not only one betweengenerations of poets, but even among contemporary ones. Some poets continued to write
celebratory poems for official government occasions, or wrote commissioned poetry for funerals
already been in the making for decades, “...these two parties battled for supremacy in the electoral, military and
intellectual fields.” 108.