Poetry of Revolution: Romanticism and National Projects

Môle seemed to be less of a factor when the United States secured a naval base in Guantanamo

Bay Cuba in 1903; however, in Coicou’s poems these island territories lead to the rightful

anticipation of other unending reasons for further encroachment. Understanding these events is

essential for situating these poems and for contextualizing Coicou’s constant warnings. In light

of the circumstances, the threats are not overstated and the warnings cannot be excessive:

Pourquoi?? C’est que, devant une inique furie,

On ne peut de ses droits se montrer trop jaloux ;

On ne peut trop crier quand dans la bergerie

De timides pasteurs laissent glisser les loups! (21-24)

The constant presence and continual placement of poems with similar themes throughout

the collection mirrors the unchanging nature of Haiti’s vulnerability and instability in this period

as before and as beyond. Although an answer to the question of how to overcome the corruption

in Haitian governments is not made definitive, Coicou’s poetry at least demonstrates that there

were indeed Haitians who protested, ideologically and otherwise, the constant intervention of

foreign governments in Haitian affairs. Equally important, Coicou’s work elucidates the fact that

Haitian literature is not constantly celebratory of its revolution, nor is it blindly and obsessively

patriotic.^276 This common criticism of Haitian literature has been addressed previously, but it is

important to point out once again that even celebratory poetry about national heroes was not

unique to Haiti. Returning again to Latin poetry, one can observe that Batstone makes this

important observation:

If we go back to the third century, when Roman poetry had its start adapting

Greek techniques and genres, we realize that poetry arose as part of a general

public movement to celebrate the steady expansion of Roman power [...] But that

unanimity of patriotic optimism did not survive the second century [...] Some

historians, indeed, like to describe the next century, from the death of Tiberius

Gracchus in 129 to the battle between Antony and Octavian at Actium in 31

(^276) Munro 26-27.