likened to perishable flowers.^225 Moreover, Herder specifies that “there is no circumstance [...]
which so decisively shows the character of a man, or a nation, as the treatment of women.”^226
Throughout Haitian poetry of the nineteenth century, the history of the Haitian Revolution, its
warriors, and defeat of slavery are definitely masculine endeavors. This very different, peaceful
expression of a national soul is found in femininity and in nature. The Greenlander or the
Negress, may have different customs, Herder argues, but both incarnate a necessary component
of a complete national development:
How then can these nations be deficient in sentiments of true female humanity,
unless perhaps want and mournful necessity, or a false point of honor and some
barbarous heredity custom, occasionally lead them astray? The germs of every
great and noble feeling not only exist in all places, but are universally unfolded, as
much as the way of life, climate, tradition, or peculiarity of the nation will
permit.^227 [sic]Manoune la noire, Matoute la griffonne, and Anna la mulâtresse, characters whichreappear in Book Two of the collection are also part of the “Sonnet des Femmes. This is the title
of one poem in which the poet mentions fourteen women in the span of its fourteen verses. He
summarizes the lifetime of women loved and includes along with Manoune, Anna, and many
others, white women like Bertita and Rose. In this poem, race and color have no bearing on true
love, and all women are remembered equally by the poet with great fondness. Although the few
poems in the collection which mention Rose, Bertita, or Louise do not include nearly the amount
of physical or other detail found in other poems in Book Two, they nonetheless demonstrate that
the poet’s devotion to black or mulatto women neither implies racial prejudice nor negates the
belief in the spontaneous and universal nature of love.
(^225) Herder 61-62.
(^226) Herder 63.
(^227) Herder 67.