Il s’écria : ton jour, ô liberté, se lève!
Cri de lion qui fit tressaillir les déserts!
Cri sublime! Et soudain les vils troupeaux d’esclaves
Deviennent les guerriers qui brisent leurs entraves
En s’armant de leurs propres fers! (7-12)Dessalines’s greatness lies in defining moments in which his efforts combine with themobilization of slaves to achieve freedom through their own efforts. This is the first time in
Haitian literature, as it was in history, that this intensely dramatic transformation is portrayed,
one which makes warriors out of those whose status had been dehumanized, when a previously
directionless mass achieves political agency, joining, in verse ten, their hero-warrior. As
explained in this chapter’s introduction, Haitian poets from 1804 to 1825 were more interested in
praising their current leaders than in focusing on revolutionary heroes; moreover, Dessalines
would hardly have been acknowledged by writers in Pétion’s mulatto republic. Various word
forms containing the root cri are repeated throughout the text to express the utter rupture
associated with such a vociferous proclamation, the breaking of silence as slaves make history.
The fact that this transformation takes place entirely from self-determination, as already noted by
Hegel, also marks a practice which will later be heralded by Fanon and other Caribbean writers
for whom granted freedoms from colonial powers are less meaningful. Haitian poets in the
1830s not only trace the exceptional nature of this colossal event, but in doing so point out that
liberty as an ideal sees the light of day not in revolutionary France but in the slave society which
will become the Haitian nation.
Nau’s poem continues with yet another temporal shift, going back to the events ofToussaint’s kidnapping and this crucial time when the struggle for freedom from slavery was
almost lost. With Toussaint Louverture no longer leading the revolutionary forces, the
reintroduction of slavery and pre-eminence of French rule seemed likely to follow: