Poetry of Revolution: Romanticism and National Projects

and sentiment, signals the lasting direction Haitian poetry will take throughout the nineteenth

century.

It was mentioned earlier that the educational situation in Haitian society of the 1830s

meant that the intellectual community involved in the publication of L’Union was indeed a small

one. It is not surprising that members of this cénacle, and poets among them, would seek

commonality and would search for literary connections of sorts, with those who shared their

sensibilities within Haiti. Ardouin’s poem, titled and dedicated “A Ignace Nau,” is an expression

of such a search. This text singles out Ardouin and Nau, even within a circle of poets, as sharing

similar life experiences and literary visions. Nau, whom Ardouin calls friend, is the only poet by

name to appear in any of Ardouin’s poetry:

Mon ami, quand l’orage gronde,

Quand l’éclair éblouit nos yeux

Et qu’une obscurité profonde

Confond la terre avec les cieux,

Sous le nuage qui les voile

Il ne scintille aucune étoile,

Et les oiseaux n’ont point de voix!

La foudre éclate dans les bois! (1-8)

The menacing storm and darkness function here as rather typical symbols of confusion

and turbulence. The separation between earthy and cosmic realms is initially masked, and the

noise of the storm is accompanied by an unnatural silence of the birds. The first seven verses

form one syntactical unit in this description, before the last verse “La foudre éclate dans les

bois!” introduces a break in the scene. An explosion of light, a natural element connecting earth

and sky, can be read as the ability innate to poets to cut through the chaos and the blurred

meaning of events. The second stanza sets up a similar scene, this time using the waves of the

sea. The final stanza of this three part poem restates in more direct emotional terms this same

troubled serenity, before projecting once again the idea of an eventual light. The lot of Ardouin