Poetry of Revolution: Romanticism and National Projects

La nuit dans la campagne où l’on n’entend de bruit

Que l’effort des moulins, que les chants de la danse

Et l’accent du tambour, perdus dans la distance....(13-16)

The poet seems to address foreign readers when he describes the details of a Haitian

night. The speaker goes on to remember not only nature and Marie, but music, the scent of

sugar cane, and the sounds of Creole, all undeniable references to a Haitian setting. In both

poems by Nau, elements from the homeland are remembered and recovered in the text which

time and distance have lost. Even the nostalgia felt toward the homeland, however, comes once

again from the privileged position of exile; poets’ separation from the rest of society could again

be said to imply an elitism in their projects. Returning to this issue of elitism, it is significant

that the opening pages of Le Républicain directly address this problem. Referring to this very

journal as a type of book, one of the editor’s concedes:

Ce livre, selon le plan qu’il se sera tracé, sera circonscrit dans un certain nombre

de lecteurs, ils l’admireront, le sauveront, mais tout le monde ne le lira pas. Il y a

quelque chose dans ce mot livre, un je ne sais quoi de sérieux et d’imposant qui

ne sympathise point avec les masses ... quelle que soit son utilité pour une partie

du peuple [...] s’il n’est au niveau de toutes les intelligences, il a beaucoup fait,

mais il n’a point parfaitement accompli les besoins généraux de la société...^103

In this honest recognition of the limited influence of literary activity, the journal is

posited as a partial accomplishment of more lofty goals. It is important to point out that such a

problem was not unique to Haiti. Anderson specifies that in the early years of print capitalism in

Europe, obviously earlier than in Haiti, that is to say in the 1500s, the literate population was at

the onset quite small.^104 Even by 1840, he notes, almost half the population in France and

Britain remained illiterate.^105 In the Western Hemisphere, between 1776 and 1838, in Spanish

America for example, what Anderson calls “national print languages” were only used by a

(^103) Le Républicain le 15 août 1836.
(^104) Anderson 38.
(^105) Anderson 75.