and Nau, however, identified with and as poètes’ is nonetheless a vision of suffering and silence:
“Attendons qu’il nous luisse un rayon d’espérance/Et poètes, souffrons dans l’ombre et le
silence!” closes the text.
Overall, Ardouin’s simply constructed seven-line poem called “A un ami” is similarenough in the image it conveys of the poet’s suffering as not to merit a separate analysis. It
reinforces the idea of poets as connected to the world of nature and as set apart from the rest of
society:
La foule est insensible au vieux toit qui s’écroule
A l’oiseau qui s’envole, au murmure de l’eau
Pour elle le monde est toujours assez beau;
Mais nous qui ne brûlons que de la pure flamme,
Mon ami, notre monde est le monde de l’âme;
Tout n’est que vanités, que misères et douleurs;
Le cœur de l’homme juste est un vase de pleurs. (1-7)^93The presence of poems such as these demonstrates that the idea of the poet not only asdivine emissary but also that as a marginalized figure had taken hold with these two Haitian
writers. If poets operated under the principle that “quand la vérité vous apparaît ... que votre
nationalité lui donne l’asile...” then the fact that this vision of the poet is similar to one we
might see in French Romantic poets of the same period is a positive sign of Haitian poets’
similarities with poets abroad and literary interconnectedness. On one level, unique personal
factors of suffering and pessimism lent themselves to Romantic expression of solitude and
melancholy. On yet another level, the poets’ sense of isolation can also be traced to
marginalization that Haitian poets must have experienced: separated from Haiti’s largely
illiterate society, differentiated from the neoclassical poetry from earlier decades, and
(^93) Ignace Nau’s poetry is found in a variety of sparse sources. I have compiled the poems and included them in the
appendix of this dissertation. Any subsequent footnote references by “Nau” refer to Ignace’s brother Emile and the
texts he authored.