Poetry of Revolution: Romanticism and National Projects

Solitude of the palm tree is hence better understood against the backdrop of Haiti’s

monumental past. This poem then does not so much portray Haiti’s isolation from the modern

world but rather Haiti’s distance from its own heroic history. Memories of a past subjectivity are

resurrected to attempt to fill what is lacking in this present space. Haiti’s glory, rooted in the

past, becomes the very source of its present “ennui.”

3.5 LOVE

3.5.1 Love made him a poet

Other poems with various themes also convey the inevitable complexities in writing

Haitian poetry in the late nineteenth-century. Love may in fact seem the least “national” of all

themes, but it nonetheless accounts for more poems than any other topic in the Rires et Pleurs. It

also intersects frequently with the topic of nature. In “A la ville de Saint Marc,” love is the first

memory with which the poet associates his past poetry and happiness. Most of the poems that

concern love, located in the second part of the collection, are indeed cheerful descriptions of

romance and exaltations to Haitian women. Others, more somber in sentiment, reflect personal

disappointments or the social conditions which prevent love from freely flourishing.

I will begin by mentioning Durand’s poem, “La Jalousie” the first poem in Book One of

Rires et Pleurs, coming immediately after “Sonnet-Préface.” “La Jalousie” serves as an

additional but nonetheless important example of the many commonplace themes which comprise

the collection. It also carries anecdotal significance. This poem relates the myth of how jealousy