country (a compatriot). It also recalls the word with which it shares its root, “paysanne.”^223 It is
Haitian peasant women, embedded in rustic settings, who are so closely linked to the land in
Durand’s poetry. The primacy given to portraits of black women in rural Haiti is unprecedented
in Haitian letters and works to refute accusations that nineteenth-century Haitian writers
completely ignored the Haitian folk. The “négresses” in these poems stand out among the many
other types of women portrayed and for more than just the sheer frequency of their presence in
Durand’s poetry. Historically a term indissociable from slavery, “négresse” through its
contextual and syntactical associations becomes nearly synonymous with the “maîtresses” of the
poet’s mind and verse. Writing about love as writing about women may represent the most
commonplace of themes, but the specificity and locality of “nos” payses inscribes them into a
national project. Circumventing the need for an elsewhere, a foreign milieu from which to draw
inspiration, the Haitian poet discovers that material for beautiful poetry thrives in his own
homeland. The title of the poem “Vénus-Arrada,” is the name of the woman the poet attempts to
court. This black Haitian woman is likened to Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty, as
well as to Léda, the Spartan queen. Comparing women to ancient divinities and mythological
figures may come to the pen of any writer familiar with such traditions. The Haitian poet,
however, finds her in his homeland and claims her as his own:
C’est dans mon pays, dans l’île charmante/...
C’est dans le pays d’Anacaona
Que je vins un jour...à ma belle maîtresse...
C’était un volcan que ma Vénus noire (1, 6, 7, 39-40),
Ma Vénus de jais, ---Vénus-Arrada!(^223) The feminine form of “pays,” payses” is found in a dictionary entry as a “personne qui est née dans le même
village, dans le même canton ou dans le même contrée״ Grand Larousse de la langue française en six volumes, 1971
ed.