Poetry of Revolution: Romanticism and National Projects

4.0 NATIONAL POETRY AND FATEFUL POLITICS: THE WORK AND LEGACY

OF MASSILLON COICOU

4.1 INTRODUCTION

To begin this chapter I return to the bicentennial publication I referenced in my

introduction, the series of articles on Haitian literature, history, and culture, published in 2006

under the title Reinterpreting the Haitian Revolution and its Cultural Aftershocks and edited by

2004 conference organizers Martin Munro and Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw.^242 These editors

reflect in the study’s introduction on the events in Haiti of 2004 which included not only

bicentennial celebrations but also the political upheavals which ultimately resulted in President

Aristide’s exile. National failing, unending violence, and cyclical instability, they note, once

again seemed to characterize the Haitian plight.^243 Munro and Hackshaw-Walcott rightly

observe in the frenzy of media coverage of 2004 that “Haiti,” as in 1804, was subject to much

interpretation and misinterpretation, especially in the Western imagination.

Where, then, is the truth of Haiti, its history, its intellectual traditions, its culture?

What were, what are the cultural repercussions of Haiti’s revolution, in Haiti and

elsewhere? What role has culture played in shaping Haiti’s history, and

conversely, how has Haiti’s history determined, inspired, liberated and restricted

(^242) Munro and Walcott-Hackshaw.
(^243) Munro and Walcott-Hackshaw ix.