Poetry of Revolution: Romanticism and National Projects

(Sean Pound) #1

Durand’s career, do suggest he was initially a poet who wrote extensively about love and nature,


mostly during the 1870s. Only later did Durand devote many more poems to national themes.


Other dates reveal, however, that these broader trends are not absolute and reflect not an


evolution in Durand’s poetry over a thirty year period but rather an expansion of style, content,


and thoughts about poetry. Attempting to date “La voix de la patrie” shows how difficult it is to


establish with certainty a chronology of Durand’s poems. Since this poem is dedicated to


Massillon Coicou, one might conclude that it was written at the earliest in the 1880s when


Coicou began writing poetry. However, two editors of Haitian anthologies specify that this


poem had already made Durand famous during the mid 1870s, but Coicou himself would not


have been more than twelve or thirteen years old at the time of composition.^196 I have not


located any manuscripts of Durand’s texts, but given this information, he likely wrote this poem


early in his career and that later, in a revised form, dedicated the verses to Coicou. If, “La voix


de la patrie” was written in the 1870s, it certainly did not, as its ending might suggest, signal an


abandonment of political poetry. Several of Durand’s most strikingly political poems, such as


“La mort de nos cocotiers” and “Chant national” indisputably date from the 1880s. During this


decade, Durand’s poetry most resembles Coicou’s in terms of style and theme. Rather than a


steady progression, whether in terms of subject matter, tone, or versification, Durand’s work can


best be chronicled as a series of fluctuations at different political, personal, or artistic moments.


Durand’s early period can be considered to include the Romantic poems he wrote in the

mid to late 1860s. Two poems in particular which do bear specific dates demonstrate that


Durand rather early in his career had a conception of the poet’s role which is consistent with that


of the French Romantic tradition. The first of these is “Ducas Hippolyte.” Durand composed


(^196) Berrou and Pompilus 424-425.

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