the nominal independence achieved from the French in 1804. It was in the 1830s, however, and
in a politically united Haiti, that the important beginnings of a new consciousness began to take
shape. Unlike the partisan poets of Haiti’s earliest years, several Haitian poets publishing in the
journals Le Républicain and its successor L’Union between 1836 and 1839, chose to find new
inspiration in personal and national themes more Romantic in sentiment.^50 Coriolan Ardouin and
Ignace Nau are among the writers who emerged with a keener awareness of what it meant to be a
national poet as well as a poet in one’s own right.
This poetry of the 1830s is typically viewed either comparatively or retrospectively, thatis to say either considered in relation to French literature or valued as an early expression of a
twentieth-century Haitian trend. Specifically, critics such as Léon-François Hoffmann consider
Romantic poetry of the 1830s an initial expression of Haitian indigénisme, a movement focused
on celebrating local themes of Haitian indigenous (and essentially African) culture of the 1920s
and 1930s.^51 In one of the most widely recognized studies on twentieth-century Haitian
literature, J. Michael Dash includes a survey of the nineteenth century in which Ardouin and Nau
are once again inheritors of Romanticism and responders to early theories of literary
indigénisme.^52 Although he briefly considers Ardouin and Nau, Dash is admittedly more
interested in Emile Nau’s literary prescriptions of 1836 and 1837, claiming that “the actual
artistic achievement of this movement is less impressive than its literary theories.”^53 It is
precisely because poetic texts of the period have not been studied in depth that they are not given
much consideration in literary studies. Although Romantic and Indigenous each correspond to
(^50) Le Républicain, deemed a “journal littéraire,” includes diverse articles on literature, history, and nationalism in
addition to French and Haitian poems. The name change to L’Union: recueil commercial et littéraire happened April
20, 1837 but was explained by the editors on August 17, 1837. It was meant to broaden the scope of the journal
beyond literature to include politics, scientific and industrial information, agriculture, and especially commerce.
(^51) Léon-François Hoffmann, Littérature d’Haïti (Vanves: Edicef, 1995).
(^52) Dash, Literature and Ideology in Haiti: 1915-1961.
(^53) Dash, Literature and Ideology in Haiti: 1915-1961 10.