together the similarities between these two pre-national histories. Separated by time and space,
the two stories have in common the fact that they resurrect episodes fundamental to
understanding each nation’s past. The relationship between these two stories also becomes clear
upon reading verse from the first scene, the poet’s initial section, “La Danse”:
Comme une fille demi nue
Laisse les ondes d’un bassin.
La lune que voile une nue
Laisse l’océan indien.Joyeuse la mer sur la grève
Vient soupirer avec amour;
Le pêcheur en sa barque rêve
A ses gains ou pertes du jour.Au loin les brunes Amirantes
Avec leur sandales, leurs dattiers,
Brillent sur les eaux murmurantes
Ainsi que l’île des palmiers [...]Spectacle ravissant! Nombreuses
Comme les étoiles des cieux,
Les Betjouannes gracieuses
Dansent à fasciner les yeux! (I, 1-12, 17-20)Here it becomes clear that Ardouin will counter the silence and darkness of the sailingslave ship in Nau’s quote by retelling the story of the girls in Shiloh in the context of modern
slavery. In both the history of Israel and the history of Haiti, the perspectives of these victims of
capture and slavery are rarely divulged. Ardouin’s poem imagines an untold part of the story,
giving voice to those whose tragedy is not typically recounted. In this first part, subtitled “La
Danse,” the Betjouannes gracefully dance in the moonlight. As in the following sections, the
nearly baroque descriptions of this luminously nocturnal scene place the events in the realm of
dream, reminiscent in many ways of the delicate, sensorial, and idyllic rendering in “Floranna, la
fiancée.” As in that poem, women are associated with a pre-modern innocence and untainted