Haiti, to Haitian nature, and to national history while using universal poetic topos is unparalleled
in ambition among his Haitian contemporaries. Compared to his predecessors, a more
pronounced subjectivity of this self-declared “barde national” is found in the vast themes of love,
land, slavery, and revolution. Most importantly, Durand’s poetry deserves attention for the
questions it evokes: If Haitian poets like Durand are writing in French and with the same literary
conventions one would find in the French tradition, how does one claim the specificity of the
Haitian poet? How does a Haitian poet achieve legitimacy without watering down indigenous
values, especially when national identity in Haiti becomes increasingly predicated on race?
Various Haitian and French texts, on aesthetics and poetry as well as on theories of racial
equality, will further elucidate the complexities of these questions. I intend to explore key texts
in Durand’s collection in order to illustrate how the effort to inscribe a national and racial
specificity within the aesthetic norms of French Romantic (and to a lesser extent, French
Parnassian) poetry enriches as much as it complicates his poetic project.
Understanding the political changes in Haiti since the 1830s and the general internationaland national climate of the second half of the nineteenth century is indispensable to a reading of
Durand’s texts.^171 The revolution which overthrew Jean-Pierre Boyer in 1843 was followed by
decades of instability. Historians point out that Haiti had twenty-two heads of state between
1843 and 1915 and that only one of these remained until the end of his elected term. Haiti lost
land and prestige in the ensuing chaos, as the eastern part of Hispaniola, united with the western
part of the island from the beginning of Boyer’s rule in 1822, broke away to declare its
independence. It officially became the Dominican Republic one year after Boyer’s downfall in
- The subsequent Haitian governments of Philippe Guerrier (1844-1845) and Faustin-Elie
(^171) As in the previous chapter, the historical information for this period in Haitian history is taken from David
Nicholls’ From Dessalines to Duvalier: Race, Colour, and National Independence in Haiti 108-122.