Poetry of Revolution: Romanticism and National Projects

Among the other details consistent in most accounts is that Massillon Coicou was taken

with his brothers to the recently erected statue of Dessalines and beaten before being shot in a

Port-au Prince cemetery. Jolibois does not speculate on the meaning of the place of the beating,

but the significance may possibly have to do with Coicou’s play L’Empereur Dessalines whose

productions had been forbidden by the government in November, 1907. In Coicou’s play, the

despotic actions of Dessalines against competing leaders are justified given the compromised

interests and treachery of other leaders, notably Christophe and Pétion. Not coincidentally, Nord

Alexis was the maternal grandson of Henri Christophe. In Coicou’s play, two elites are thus

targeted, black and mulatto respectively, and blamed for the assassination of Haiti’s father of

national independence. Coicou’s play may not only have ignited old prejudices, but since Nord

Alexis counted on the unity of various groups under his iron rule, no suggestion of impending

rebellion or changed leadership could be tolerated.^308 According to details in Joilbois’ account,

Massillon had been condemned to execution due to his theater as also to past speculations about

conspiring with Firmin.^309

This leads us to the question of whether or not any of Coicou’s poems announced his

political intent, if there are any hints of conspiracy in his work in the 1890s. While the poems in

Poésies Nationales were written years before Coicou’s affiliation with Firmin, there is no doubt

that part of the transformative power of poetry cited previously included facilitating the

connection between the present poet with otherwise distant, irretrievable past revolution. I return

once again to “Exultation,” notable not only for its multiple themes but also for its transitional

tone as it moves from epic poetry to personal politics. Although early in the poem the poet

readily admits to an obsession with the nation and its history, the most powerful and unexpected

(^308) Roger Gaillard, Le Grand Fauve: 1902-1908 (Port-au-Prince: R. Gaillard, 1995) 186.
(^309) Jolibois 102.