Poetry of Revolution: Romanticism and National Projects

beginnings and its implications for “la race noire.” Vergil’s poem also maintains a universal

appeal as a text about the destruction of civilizations and their resurrections. As W.R. Johnson

states in his introduction to his English translation of the Aeneid:

What fuels the poem [...] is neither triumphalism nor defeatism but its pervasive

tension between exaltation and lament. This severe dialectic—a counter point of

defeat and triumph, abjection and salvation, death and rebirth—is the Aeneid’s

mainspring. The steady equipoise of this double vision arms the Aeneid with its

unique power to comfort as well as disturb readers even today.^253

These vacillating sentiments and alternating tones also characterize Coicou’s poetry.

Celebration of a glorious revolution and mourning at signs of national failure coexist within the

collection as within various poems.

The commonality which Haitian poetry shares with Roman poetry is most evident in the

crescendo of Williams’ argument when he lauds poets for their ability to recall and revive

through poetry the glory of once prosperous civilizations. The Haitian nation, like other great

civilizations, will be preserved through its national epics and founding myths.

Poetry will endure when cities, statesmen, and statues are no more:

Le magnifique César prodiguait au poète des honneurs en échange de

l’immortalité; en effet, Horace et Virgile ont été les deux plus grandes gloires du

règne d’Auguste. Sa Rome de marbre a disparu avec ses plus beaux monuments;

mais ceux des deux grands poètes vivront autant que le monde.^254

In general, Coicou’s frequent references to Latin literature take on additional significance

if one accepts the viewpoint that Latin literature arose partly in response to two conditions:

wanting to rival other cultures (especially Greece) and needing to create through its literature the

(^253) W.R. Johnson, introduction, Virgil/Aeneid, by Virgil, trans. Stanley Lombardo (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing
Company, Inc., 2005) xv.
(^254) Williams, Poésies Nationales 19.