Poetry of Revolution: Romanticism and National Projects

and through violence that the colonized man finds his freedom.^278 Additionally, and in

anticipation of Coicou’s focus on race which will be discussed in a later section, Fanon also

conveys that in response to the violence through which white supremacy is affirmed,

decolonization unifies a heterogeneous people along national or racial lines.^279 Many of

Coicou’s poems contest the racist rhetoric and images of Haitian barbarity which Western texts

had exploited since the Haitian Revolution, though he nonetheless urges unity based on race. In

“Cauchemar,” the poet catalogues some of the violent events in European colonialism and then

turns his attention to Haitians and their forefathers, specifying:

C’est pourtant sans forfaits, c’est sans être jaloux,

Sans haïr les petits, que nous grandissons, nous.

Car nous ne sommes pas descendants de vandales ;

Nos pères n’avaient point de ces fureurs brutales

Que Dieu vengeur du Droit, ne sanctionne pas. (33-37)

A few verses later, he continues to refer to the events precipitating the Haitian

Revolution, writing:

Sans crainte, sans remords, sans honte, sans bassesse,

Mais le front haut, avec un titre de noblesse,

Nos fiers aïeux n’avaient quelque fois massacré,

Incendié, détruit, qu’au nom du Droit sacré;

Et leur pitié, d’ailleurs, répondait à des crimes: (47-51)

The contradiction, however, between the content of these verses and the qualifying

“ne....que...” is readily apparent. This allows the poet to assert a certain pride in the

revolutionnaires’ actions, a pride in their unexpected power and destructiveness, while still

placing that violence well behind in degree to that of colonial slavery. This violence is

contextualized, justified, and even within sacred rights of a higher order.

(^278) Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington (New York: Grove Press, 1963) 35, 86.
(^279) Fanon 43-44.