countryside.^198 He offered to be the tourist’s guide but also found the experience in the southern
and eastern parts of Haiti to be a time of legitimate discovery for himself. As a native of Cap
Haitian, Haiti’s second largest city located in the northwestern part of the country, Durand
explains that he was not previously familiar with these more rural and distant parts of Haiti.
These months appear to have immersed him in a rural environment. As a thematic study will
indicate, Durand was equally impacted by the traditions of the Haitian peasantry. In these
articles he explains how he came to consider the trip a “Tournée littéraire” because of the
numerous poems it inspired. Several poems are titled after places he visited on this journey.
These poems also coincide with the 1870s date for an initial version of “La voix de la patrie.”
The poems in Book Two therefore represent at least a temporary shift from the poems which
seem to dominate the 1860s. Moving away from the messianic visions of the poet or
metaphysical concerns, Durand expands his project to include depictions of the simpler, physical
elements of Haitian landscape and culture. Contemplating features of the local landscape was
part of Romanticism’s discovery of the nation, and the connection between Romantic notions of
nationhood and the importance of a region’s nature will elucidate Durand’s interest in Haitian
flora and fauna.
Those short verses calling to nature in “La voix de la patrie,” like other verses in thissecond part of the collection, also indicate an expansion of the broader trends which influenced
Durand’s poetry. Specifically, his affiliation with Parnassian poetry also carries importance.
Théodore de Banville’s “La Terre,” published in the 1878 edition of Le Parnasse contemporain
serves as an example of similarities in content and versification between Durand’s poetry and
that of French Parnassian poets. Banville’s poem begins:
(^198) Haïti littéraire et sociale le 20 novembre 1905: 404-406.