Poetry of Revolution: Romanticism and National Projects

Haiti to its independence after Toussaint’s departure. David Nicholls gives an account of this

event for which similar accounts are found in other sources:

The first draft of the declaration of independence had been drawn up by an

educated mulatto, Chareron, who formulated a long and reasoned defense of the

step which was being taken towards independence. After it had been read out,

Boisrond Tonnere, also a mulatto, who had been drinking heavily, stammered,

‘All that which has been formulated is not in accordance with our real feelings; to

draw up the Act of Independence, we need the skin of a white man for parchment,

his skull for a writing desk, his blood for ink, and a bayonet for pen.’ Dessalines

replied in Haitian créole, ‘C’est ca, Mouqué, c‘est ça, même mon vlé! C’est sang

blanc, mon besoin.’ (That is right sir, that is right, that is my wish. I need white

blood.) It was Boisrond Tonnerre who produced the final text of the

declaration.^48

French continued to be the only official language of Haiti until 1961, and aside from a

few experimental texts written in Haitian Creole, French remained the language not only of

Haiti’s Romantic poets but also of all writers throughout the nineteenth and much of the

twentieth century. Returning to the literature of the Romantic era, another study, actually on

Greek Romanticism, offers insights which may further enhance understanding of language issues

in Haiti. In yet another national context, Gregory Jusdanis reinforces the other arguments in the

study Romantic Poetry that nationalism represents people’s attempt to become modern and

“expresses the aspiration of an ethnic group to build a political community in the modern world

of nation-states.”^ In the next paragraph he opens with this statement: “Romanticism emerged in

Europe alongside and of and often danced check to jowl with nationalism.”^49 From this,

Jusdanis goes on to explain the work and contributions of Joseph Texte, the first chair of

comparative literature in France, who in his 1898 L’histoire comparée des literatures promoted

(^48) David Nicholls, From Dessalines to Duvalier: Race, Colour and National Independence in Haiti (New Brunswick,
NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996) 36.
(^49) Gregory Jusdanis, “Greek Romanticism: A Cosmopolitan Discourse,” Romantic Poetry (Philadelphia: John
Benjamins Publishing Company, 2002) 269-270. Jusdanis also references one of his previous works, The Necessary
Nation published in 2001, in which he states that in as disparate locations as Germany, Greece, Brazil, the
Philippines, or India, patriots used the strategies of nationalism against foreign aggressors.