B.C.E., as a period of intermittent civil war. As political unity degenerated, other
aspects of culture and individualism, both good and bad, came to the fore.^277In Coicou’s poetry, the alarmist rhetoric and imperative messages are thoroughlycontextualized in light of events of Coicou’s time and in light of the lessons of history. Later in
“L’Eveil,” he exclaims:
Crains-les tous tant qu’ils sont, ô Mère encore meurtrie!
Crains-les dans leurs conseils, crains-les dans leurs présents ;
C’est pour les avoir trop écoutés, Patrie,
Que tu n’as point vécu tes quatre-vingt-six ans! (45-48)What this Patrie really refers to is not clearly specified and once again seems to be anabstract identity, a poetic ideal. At the same, time, however, there is a concrete reality, complete
political sovereignty, which also had not yet been achieved. The “eighty-six years” denotes time
between the Haitian Revolution in 1804 and 1890 when Coicou authored the poem. In fact,
Coicou’s collection was published at the height of the Le Môle affair, when both the immediate
and future outcomes seemed uncertain. Additionally, he wrote in the era that precedes what
historians typically call Haiti’s battles with the “Great Powers,” a period from 1902 to 1915. He
is already warning of the escalation of imperialist demands. The poet in “L’Eveil” clearly sensed
that any goals for real independence had gradually been constituted over time, as the site of this
successful slave revolt had become nothing more than the locus of competing imperialist forces
and consequently internal corruption. In spite of the revolution, paralyzing fear made it difficult
to define a Haitian present and therefore forge a Haitian future. Interestingly, it appears that
Coicou anticipated a critique of his texts, an accusation of hatred and bigotry. At the beginning
of part three of this long poem, he writes:
Non, non, je ne suis point l’apôtre de la haine;
Je n’ai point clos mon cœur au cœur de l’étranger ;(^277) Batstone x-xi.