existed. Is the decision to be French or Haitian up to the writer? Is national belonging
determined by language, family history, or theme? Did Haitian intellectuals claim Dumas and
Durand because of race or because of literary success? At least for Durand, it seems that being a
Haitian poet implies that the notions and structure of poetry per se work in combination with
nature, social relationships, and history specific to the Haitian experience.
Beyond “La Jalousie,” Durand expands the theme of love to include personalexperiences. Durand’s own love life included many romantic relationships and two marriages,
the first of which, to Virginie Sampeur, ended in divorce. Virginie Sampeur, named Haiti’s first
poetess in several anthologies, was compared to Marceline Desbordes-Valmore and the Greek
poet Sappho in the Haitian press of the late nineteenth century.^220 The only Haitian woman
known to write poetry in the first 130 years of Haiti’s independence, she never published a
collection of her works. Between the few poems cited in anthologies and ones she wrote for the
turn-of-the century Haitian journal La Ronde, less than a dozen of her works remain accessible
today.^221 It is therefore difficult to devote a study to her poetry alone. As several poems in
Rires et Pleurs, illustrate, Durand’s marriage to Sampeur carries more significance than a
cursory review of Durand’s poetry would indicate. It cannot be ignored, for example, that the
years in which the couple was married, from 1862 to 1871, coincide with the period in which
Durand wrote his earliest poems and before he was known as a national poet. Many poems in
both books of Rires et Pleurs elaborate on the strong connection between love and poetry, and
the abundance of poetry is often tied to former moments when the poet was captured by
(^220) Christophe Charles and Virginie Sampeur, La Poésie Féminine haïtienne: histoire et anthologie de Virginie
Sampeur à nos jours (Port-au-Prince: Editions Choucoune, 1980).
(^221) Louis Morpeau believes an album of Sampeur’s poetry was lost prior to attempted publication. Sampeur
reportedly wrote an autobiographical novel, Angèle Dufour, which was also never published. Anthologie d’un
siècle de poésie haïtienne, 1817-1925, avec une étude sur la muse haïtienne d’expression française et une étude sur
la muse haïtienne d’expression créole (Paris: Bossard, 1925).