Napoleonic forces by including Toussaint’s legendary quote: “in uprooting me you have cut off
the trunk of the tree of liberty for the roots are long and deep.” Coicou, however, alters the last
part of this quote in the poem “Toussaint-Messie” so that it is not the tree of liberty which is cut
but “l’arbre des noirs” which will grow again. In this particular poem, Toussaint’s genius lies
precisely in the fact that future freedom for an entire race was his primary goal, even in his final
moments imprisoned in the Fort du Joux in France. As this poem presents him, he is both a
national leader and a messianic figure for this larger community:
Alors, voyant le Joux, --comme Christ le calvaire, --
A cette soldatesque effrénée et sévère [...]
S’il soupire parfois, lui, le héros si ferme
C’est qu’en sa tête un monde, une race regerme:
Et si dans ses deux mains il laisse aller son front,
Oh! ce qu’il l’y contraint, non, ce n’est pas l’affront,
Ce n’est pas l’agonie à peine commencée,
Mais l’immense avenir qui tourne en sa pensée! (36-37, 44-49)This expansion of community across time and space is not only symbolized by leaderslike Louverture but also in anonymous figures whose names rarely if ever made it into historical
accounts. The poem “Martyre” is one of the longest in Coicou’s collection, composed of thirty
quatrains. The text begins, as do other poems in the collection, with the Haitian Revolution. It
then details, however, the initial repercussions of 1804, many of which had disastrous
consequences for slaves in other colonies. This poem suggests that slave owners throughout the
Americas feared similar revolutions and therefore sought to stamp out what the poet deems the
“génie africain.” The abundance of detail once again supports declarations like those by Fanon
that the encounter between colonized and colonizer began and was perpetuated by violence, and
violence that was real and not symbolic.^293
Or, à coups de massue, il importait d’abattre(^293) Fanon 36.