Poetry of Revolution: Romanticism and National Projects

(Sean Pound) #1

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 similar

enough 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)^93

The presence of poems such as these demonstrates that the idea of the poet not only as

divine 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.

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