L’hydre qui renaissait sur sa base d’airain;
Il fallait étouffer dans l’œuf Dix-huit cent quatre,
Que couvait ardemment le génie africain!« A la verge, à la flamme, aux fers, aux fusillades, »
« Aux limiers de Cuba, -s’écrient les colons »
« Joignons les pendaisons, ajoutons les noyades: »
« Et nous les vaincrons tous, jusqu’au dernier! Allons! »Et de nombreux gibets se dressaient sur les places!
Et puis on les pendait, ces nègres obstinés!
Et puis, pour extirper tous les germes vivaces,
Sans raison, sans prétexte, ils étaient condamnés! (21-32)Birth metaphors are common in Haitian literature, as the events of 1804 are oftendescribed as aborted attempts at freedom and national prosperity. This “génie africain” not only
personifies a spirit of freedom, sought to be snuffed out, but it also posits the historical,
geographical, and ideological origins of the Haitian Revolution as essentially African in nature.
Approximately two-thirds of the slaves in Saint Domingue were African-born, and as Laurent
Dubois in his recent historical study The Avengers of America states, “we are increasingly
coming to understand that it [the Haitian Revolution] was itself in many ways an African
revolution.”^294 In these stanzas, this is a rebirth of an African spirit which existed in a distant
past and will exist again, with 1804 being one powerful instance of its manifestation. In
Coicou’s imagining, even the colonists at the time recognized this potential power, for better or
worse. Moreover, the violence depicted in this poem was enacted by the white colonists,
indiscriminately, against the slaves. This represents a dramatic reversal from Western
representations in the nineteenth century in which the Haitian Revolution is equated with the
inherent savagery of Africans.
(^294) Dubois 5.