Poetry of Revolution: Romanticism and National Projects

of these past episodes would serve to forge present unity among the different color, social, and

economic factions in Haitian society of Coicou’s day.

Poetic portrayals of Haiti’s past, without the pre and post-revolutionary antagonism

between mulattos and blacks, are reminiscent of previous political prescriptions and nationalist

discourse in Haiti. Elision of color difference had also been the ambition of Haiti’s first ruler,

Jean-Jacques Dessalines, as he had made explicit in the 1805 Haitian constitution. Problems of

political unity in this former colony were addressed in article 14 where blackness alone becomes

synonymous with “Haitian.” Sybille Fischer explains:

All hierarchies based on people’s skin color are abolished, and all Haitians are to

be referred to by the generic term, “black.” From the taxonomic lunacy that had

more than one hundred different terms to refer to different degrees of racial and

mixture and color, we have moved to a generic denomination: “black.” [...] The

very act of calling all Haitians black, regardless of their phenotype, would be for a

long time recognized as a radical break from the entrenched practice of

distinguishing, at the very least between mulattoes, blacks, and whites.^288

Fischer goes on to explain how the previously subordinate term “black” is now used as

the universal term for all Haitians. Interestingly, even the few French women and Poles who had

fought alongside mulatto and slave leaders during the revolution were also designated as “black”

once they became naturalized Haitian citizens. The attempt to eliminate racial distinctions

obviously coincided with the desire to abolish class hierarchy as well: there was to be no more

slavery, and mulattos could not claim property rights over blacks simply because their French

fathers had been land owners. Ultimately, of course, attempting to rid of Haitian society of racial

distinctions did not become reality.

The powerful difference as noted in much of Coicou’s poetry is that the designation of all

mulatto/black inhabitants of Saint Domingue as black precedes Haitian independence. In “Le

(^288) Fischer 232.