Et puis, c’était son tour, à l’altière négresse,
En face du bourreau railleur de ses vertus,
Elle eut comme un délire, un transport d’allégresse,
Car la mort des martyrs ne l’épouvantait plus.Lui-même, le bourreau, ce qu’il avait de haine,
Le calme de la mère, esclave le tarit;
Et comme un damné geint au fond de sa géhenne
Sa conscience en lui semblait pousser un cri...
Car lorsqu’il eut rempli sa mission cruelle,
Il vit la noire encore le bénir; et les flots
Rugirent d’épouvante en s’engouffrant sur elle ;
Et la mer indignée exhala des sanglots... (102-113)The ellipsis at the end suggests the ongoing nature of the struggle, the enduring quality,of this symbolism, and the open-endedness of poetic themes. For Coicou, responding to what he
sees as the inevitable demise of Haitian sovereignty includes recasting the Haitian Revolution in
terms of African survival, providing an alternative paradigm which will work within but also
beyond national borders. Reinventing these identities means widening the range of those who
could constitutes revolutionary heroes, from nameless slaves in “Martyre” to numerous black
legions in “Vertières,” to pre-revolutionary leaders in “Le Supplice du Noir.” Moreover,
Coicou’s poetry merits being read in a global context, which not only struggles for abolition in
Brazil but also the parceling of Africa by European nations. In fact, if we consider the poems
about the ever-increasing encroachment of Haitian space by imperialist powers and the constant
maneuvers to parcel Haiti’s economy and territory, we see how similar Haiti was in many ways
to the African continent at this time. Coicou’s collection was published in 1892, during the
height of the European “scramble for Africa” and the precise year in fact that France invaded
Dahomey. Treated as an African space by world powers, Haitians writers will increasingly see
themselves as African. Coicou was writing at a temporal crossroads so to speak, with a century
of retrospection on its revolution, in the midst of increasing imperialism and global European