Poetry of Revolution: Romanticism and National Projects

Images of island landscape and discussions about Parnassian poetry also evoke visions of

the palm tree. More than just tropical décor, this recurrent presence is also an important national

symbol in Durand’s poetry as it is in the Haitian imaginary. The center of the Haitian flag has

born a coat of arms with a palm tree in the center since Pétion’s new design of the flag in 1806.

Durand’s poem “Les forts” compares the unwavering palm tree to the stoicism of revolutionary

leader Toussaint Louverture whose serene memory has outlasted the temporary adversity he met

in deportation, imprisonment, and death:

Comme ce haut palmier qui devint le symbole

De notre liberté; -- fier quoique foudroyé, -- ...( 35-36)

Toussaint qui semblait né d’une femme de Sparte...^211

Resta toujours debout dans sa sérénité (39- 40)^212

In some of these poems about Haiti’s Revolution, the tree is described with a type of

Parnassian permanence despite the death of other vegetation or the fading significance of

national memories. The gradual degradation of landscape, linked to the disappearance of national

heroes, suggests the end of these themes on which to center national poetry. Many of these

explicitly national poems are more Romantic in sensibility because they no longer portray what

nature still remains. Rather, the poet ponders the degradation and disappearance of nature and its

meaning for national independence as for national poetry. Durand’s well-known “La mort de

nos cocotiers” connects a present state of affairs to an eventual end of the nation, an end

conveyed by the death of one of Haiti’s national symbols. The occasion for this poem was the

(^211) Toussaint has been referred to as the black Spartacus. C.LR. James mentions this when he imagines Toussaint
reading Raynal. “...he came in the end to believe in himself as the black Spartacus, foretold by Raynal as
predestined to achieve the emancipation of the blacks. The labourers in their turn worshiped him as a direct servant
of God.” 250.
(^212) In Toussaint’s legendary quote, it was upon deportation that he compared himself to a tree, stating that although
the tree has been cut down, it will grow again because the roots were well planted. One of many sources to cite this
is in Laurent Dubois’s work, 278.