Poetry of Revolution: Romanticism and National Projects

is not only frequently a source of the poet’s anguish, but it may also very well lead to persecution

and martyrdom, Williams specifies. Ironically, this is exactly how Coicou, the poet for whom

Williams authors this very preface, is most often remembered.

As part of poetry’s patriotic mission, Williams explains that Haitian poetry, and by

analogy Coicou’s poems, will often be inspired by Haitian historical figures. In this way,

Williams seems to argue that poetry will do what so far, politics has not:

C’est vous, Toussaint Louverture...c’est vous, Dessalines, le Spartacus de la race

noire...Si la patrie n’a pas encore traduit sa reconnaissance envers vous en des

statues qui immortalisent vos traits et vos exploits, et vous offrent ainsi pour

modèles à la postérité, que du moins un des vôtres fasse vivre, pour longtemps

encore, votre impérissable souvenir!^259

The genius of the poet, Williams claims, lies in his ability to create and sustain sublime

figures of Haiti’s national history. The black race, like the Haitian nation, will be

commemorated most in poetry, recognized in literary masterpieces if unrecognized in political

practice or in historical account. Coicou’s poems, specifically about Haitian revolutionary

leaders or this “cult of the hero” as it is often called, will be discussed later in this chapter.^260 In

this preface, Williams alludes to the place they will occupy in Coicou’s work while emphasizing

that the relationship between the poet and these heroes is, however, reciprocal:

Souvent le marin italien grave le nom du saint qu’il invoque sur l’avant de sa

barque, afin de s’assurer une heureuse navigation; comme lui, puisse l’auteur,

grâce aux immortels héros de notre histoire dont les noms décorent le frontispice

de son œuvre, obtenir un heureux voyage pour son livre, reliquaire de leur

dévouement et de leur gloire!^261

(^259) Williams, Poésies Nationales 24.
(^260) This (often dismissive) descriptor has appeared in numerous sources on Haitian literature. Most recently, Martin
Munro cites it but slightly differently when he states: ‘Given the epic scale of the revolution, and the pressing need
to create a post-1804 historical consciousness, the cult of the hero was an almost inevitable and in some senses
positive phenomenon.’ Martin Munro and Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw, “Petrifying Myths: Lack and Excess in
Caribbean and Haitian History,” Reinterpreting the Haitian Revolution and its Cultural Aftershocks 26.
(^261) Williams 24.