I was unable to find a clear referent for “Vénus-Arrada.” Since I have only seen it inDurand’s poetry, it is either a local name or a term used by Durand specifically. The poet
equates her to Baudelaire’s beloved, often referred to as his “Vénus noire.”^224 Durand’s love
poetry is not limited to black women of the rural provinces but celebrates women of other colors,
many of whom also reside in the Haitian countryside. The poem “Nos payses” while
emphasizing the “négresses,” concludes by praising all Haitian women:
Pour vous, mes maîtresses,
Griffonnes et négresses,
Et jaunes mulâtresses,
Vers au doux sons,
Chansons!
Payses, je vous donne
Les fleurs de ma couronne...(45-51)By singing to all of Haiti’s beauty, the poet is not participating in the color divisions thatplague his country. Rather, he unifies these variations into a national chorus. The poet who is a
lover of Haitian women of all colors is thereby a lover of his country. In Durand’s poems,
women, like nature, are a fragile but fertile ground on which to write national poetry. This
allegorizing of women and nature is an expansion of the phenomenon observed in Ardouin’s
poem about Anacaona’s maidens in the previous chapter. Durand makes the link between
women, history, poetry and landscape of the Taino Indians to the women and nature of his time
and in his poetic expression.
The primacy of nature can be traced to Romantic notions of nationalism. Nature, inHerder’s text, is consistently described and personified as a feminine presence, and women are
(^224) Baudelaire uses this phrase in Les Fleurs du mal when referring to the woman who inspired much of his poetry,
Jeanne Duval, a mulatto whom he met in France after his return from the Indian Ocean. Peter France, ed., The New
Oxford Companion to Literature in French (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995) 70. There is some speculation that
Duval was from Haiti. The italics in verse 39 suggest Durand intentionally makes this reference to Baudelaire.