3.3 THE MAKINGS OF A NATIONAL POET AND THE VICISSITUDES OF A
COLLECTION
Durand’s collection as a whole remains difficult to classify. The words “rires” and“pleurs,” in the last verse of “Sonnet-Préface” are frequently repeated in different contexts in
several poems. This antithesis will play out in the alternating tones of celebration and despair,
again related to the collection’s main themes of love, nature, history, and nation. The two
opposing sentiments, juxtaposed into a title, also constitute a topos and succinctly tied together
the diversity of three decades of poetry. The subtitles of the two books further indicate the
variety of style and theme: Book One includes Poèmes, élégies, satires, odelettes, and Book
Two, containing the more playful descriptions of love and nature, has as its subtitle, Fleurs des
mornes, Refrains, Nos payses, Contes créoles. I will begin my analysis with two of Oswald
Durand’s longest poems, both located in the first book. They stand out among the rest in a
variety of ways. These two poems illustrate the thematic and stylistic diversity of the collection
in terms of alternating versification and differing content even within the space of a single poem.
The shifting poetic voices also contemplate what should constitute national poetry in Haiti at this
time. The questions these poems raise, like the ones posed at the end of the introduction to this
chapter, relate to understanding Oswald Durand’s mission as a poet and the challenges of
defining a Haitian poetic project.
The first of these two poems, “La voix de la patrie,” is dedicated to Massillon Coicou, apoet whose political activism resulted in his assassination in 1908 and whose poetry is the
subject of this study’s final chapter. Coicou, twenty-seven years younger than Durand, began to
write in the 1880s. Coicou’s poems affirmed unwavering commitment to patriotic themes. It is
no surprise that of all poets, Durand would associate Coicou with a poem bearing this title.