nor purely despairing; there is a racial weight to Haiti’s national project that Coicou nonetheless
posits as indispensable to Haiti’s future. This complexity is inherent to the Haitian condition,
past, present, and future. Referring to Haiti’s heroes, the poet states that they “inspire
l’héroisme....ainsi que la pitié!” In this frequent recourse to history, it is important to note that
Coicou stands out in his inclusion of maroon leaders. He not only does this in parts of “Martyre”
but includes names in a long list of less canonical leaders in “Exultation:”
C’est bien de vous aussi que nous nous réclamons;
C’est vous que nous chantons; c’est vous que nous aimons
C’est pour vous que nos cœurs bondissent d’espérance :
Macaya, Zéphirin, Benech, Lamour-Dérance,
Boukman, Jeannot, Fourmi, Labrunit, Guyambois,
Metellus, Halaou, Lavougou, Catabois,
Lafleur, Tellier, Vancol, Sylla !...groupe farouche
Que Dieu même anima du souffle de sa bouche! (131-138)Boukman is the most famous name in this list, a voodoo priest whose ceremony at Bois-Caiman precipitated the 1791 slave rebellion considered by many to be the official start of the
Haitian Revolution. In this list, Macaya, Zephirin, Benech, and Sylla are identified as maroon
leaders by Carolyn Fick’s The Making of Haiti: the Saint-Domingue Revolution from Below,
only published in 1990. They find their way into her historical account precisely because her
study focuses on marronage and its importance in the Haitian Revolution. Many of these names,
however, appear much less frequently in other books of history and the importance of their
revolutionary role is contested by some prominent histories. Some of the names in this poem in
fact I have not been able to trace at all, which makes the mention Coicou gives them all the more
important at least in the space of his text. After another list of many names he writes:
Tous, nous nous réclamons de ces hommes géants,
Oh! c’est bien de vous-même en qui la vieille Afrique
Fit passer son génie et son âme stoïque; (129-131)