Poetry of Revolution: Romanticism and National Projects

“criminal” behavior. The poem’s description of whites’ defeat is followed by a final description

of Dessalines’ death which circles back to the beginning of the poem. In the third and final part

of Ardouin’s “Le Pont Rouge” Dessalines is inscribed in a divine order, a sacred vengeance with

a larger purpose which outlasts the tragic moment of his death at the bridge. The last four verses

read:

Et s’il s’ensevelit sous un triste linceul

C’est qu’il faut que d’un ciel la clarté se ternisse.

Que le flot se mêlant au sable se brunisse,

C’est que la pure gloire appartient à Dieu seul. (29-32)

The mention of God in this last verse harkens back to the poem’s epigraph, two verses

from the book of II Kings in the Bible: “Comment les forts sont-ils tombés? Comment la gloire

des armes a-t-elle péri?” Dessalines is romanticized as a national martyr. The Old Testament

book, a history of Israeli kingship, also centers on the relationship between prophecy and the

fulfillment of that prophecy through historical circumstances. While both Ardouin and the Old

Testament writer recount the impact that decisions of leaders had on a national history, a higher

power in both texts works to fulfill national destiny and divine mission. The response to his

tragic death, even thirty years after the event, can be for a call to remember Dessalines’ role

within a larger context. In concluding a discussion of this poem, it bears pointing out, however,

that the fact that Dessalines was ambushed by radical mulattos at the Pont Rouge is completely

omitted from the poetic account. This is perhaps to reinforce the desired unity between blacks

and mulattos with which Dessalines is in many ways associated both during and after the

Revolution. It was under Dessalines’ command that mulatto and black troops joined forces to

complete independence. After independence, he is chiefly known for declaring all Haitians

“black” in Haiti’s constitution, and for planning to redistribute land more equitably between

blacks and mulattos, seeking, as Nicholls explains, to eliminate color prejudice from the