Ardouin’s death. The precise dates of composition for many of their poems, however, remain
unknown, and it is therefore not possible to ascertain if the idea of writing specifically for
national concerns evolved for these poets at a certain time, or if their personal and more
politically oriented poems coexisted throughout their brief writing careers. Their poems about
the Haitian Revolution do appear to be, in any case, the first literary texts in Haiti to go beyond
the mere celebration of Haitian independence to be found in other Haitian poems both prior to
and during this time. In general, critics have accorded little attention to this significant
departure, and Ardouin’s “Le Pont Rouge” and Nau’s “Dessalines,” boasting a token presence in
Haitian anthologies, typically receive only cursory comments in overviews of poetry of the
period. Léon-François Hoffmann’s Littérature d’Haïti, compresses poems with such “patriotic”
themes under general headings like “culte des ancêtres” which runs throughout the nineteenth
century.^141 Such a reduction tends to exaggerate a purported obsession with leaders of the
Haitian Revolution and thereby underestimates the dual significance such revolutionary poems
carried in Haiti of the 1830s. These poems, especially with an emphasis on the role of black
slaves in establishing a Haitian national history, were both politically significant during a period
of mulatto hegemony under Jean-Pierre Boyer’s rule and set the course for Haitian poetry in the
direction of national commitment.
Ardouin’s poem “Le Pont Rouge,” as previously mentioned, was likely written in the1830s and was first published as part of a brochure by Emile Nau in Port-au-Prince in 1837 and
subsequently compiled by his brother Beaubrun in an 1881 edition. Ardouin’s death in 1836,
however, places its composition clearly before the recognition of Haitian independence by
France in 1838 and squarely in the midst of Boyer’s twenty-year rule. The story the poem tells
(^141) Hoffmann 115.