supplice du noir,” the future, beyond the Haitian Revolution, also belongs to the “nègre” with no
mulatto/black distinctions. In the final part of this very long stanza, their suffering and ultimate
victory takes on a present significance and future warning,
Or, demain, qu’appliquant la loi du talion
Le nègre soit debout, se fasse aussi lion,
N’osez point le maudire et comprenez sa haine
L’ignorance est le lot qu’on lui jette en sa chaîne ;
Le mépris insolent, le sarcasme moqueur,
Sont les germes féconds répandus en son cœur
En bien, il gardera la multiple semence
Et, de tant d’éléments, combinant sa démence,
A vos soins généreux donnant leur juste prix,
Ils auront la vengeance, ils auront le mépris. (87-96)
The verses cited previously which invoke 1804 were addressed to Rochambeau in the
futur antérieur, showing a past perspective on an event which would occur despite
Rochambeau’s iron rule. This part of the poem, however, signals a vague “tomorrow,” with no
clear recipient, and written in the simple future and present tenses, both of which are indicative
modes, used to state facts and not subjective desires. This warning of future vengeance, if
addressed to whites as well as to corrupt Haitian leaders complicit in similar goals, suggests that
historical parallels may surface at the end of the nineteenth century: revolutionary violence and
victory may again be on the horizon for the black people. Earlier in the poem, the poet, in
recounting the Ogé and Chavannes execution did recognize that some whites were the exception
to the rule, perhaps French intellectuals, when he says : “Il y avait pourtant ces homes
austères/Pour qui les noirs courbés n’étaient pas moins des frères:[...]ces cœurs français au juste
épanouis.” (9-12) Save these sympathizers, however, the invective admonition stands and comes
decades before similar ones issued Aimé Césaire’s Discours sur le colonialisme (1950) in Jean-
Paul Sartre’s preface to Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth (1963). Recourse to racial solidarity,
real, historic, imagined, or prescribed, constituted an attempt to overcome the seeds of dissention