Poetry of Revolution: Romanticism and National Projects

outbreak of a disease that affected coconut trees near Cap Haitian in the 1880s. The poet begins

with describing this “mal inconnu.”

Dîtes-nous, phalange fidèle

Pourquoi tombez-vous le premier?

Votre mort annoncerait-elle

La fin de nos autres palmiers?

Et si nul de vous ne résiste,

Mourra-t-il aussi le palmiste,

L’emblème de la liberté,

--Cet arbre dont le temps et l’âge

Embellissent le vert feuillage

Et qu’ils couronnent de fierté? (17-26)

The symbolism, of course, is quite clear, as one only has to recall the importance of

nature to national identity in the Caribbean to understand how erosion of natural beauty would

reveal a nation in peril. In Durand’s time, Haiti’s legacy of freedom and independence is gravely

endangered. “La mort de nos cocotiers” and “Les forts,” along with others similar in inspiration,

are heralded as Durand’s most “national” poems and are consistently featured in anthologies or

surveys of Haitian literature. An observation by Dash serves to explain how Durand’s poems of

the 1880s embody national concerns:

The period between the 1880s and the landing of the U.S. marines in 1915

witnessed in Haiti the collapse of the dream of the progressive modern state of the

early post independence years [...] In both a literal and figurative way, Haitian

space had become devalued. Nationalist discourse in Haitian reality were now

seriously contested.^213

This poem in particular demonstrates the acute awareness Haitians had that the heroism

of the nation’s past is no longer sufficient to sustain Haiti’s present and future viability. Haitians

who contemplate the Haitian Revolution know it can no longer be a purely celebratory moment,

and they already understand it as history. The address the poet makes to the trees momentarily

(^213) Dash, The Other America 53-54.