colonialism, and with movements like négritude and Haiti’s own indiginisme on the horizon.
Less than ten years away would be the first Pan-African conference, and only thirty years after
Coicou’s death C.L.R James wrote his account of the Haitian Revolution in anticipation of
African revolutionary movements. Although rarely considered, Coicou’s work certainly
“identified and defined a transcontinental resistant political identity predicated upon
blackness.”^297
Perhaps what understandably overshadows this emerging penchant in Coicou’s work ishis constant devotion to the dream of the Haitian nation, in which blackness is a continual source
of both grief and pride. Haiti’s struggle to realize this unfulfilled dream of national prosperity is
a principal reason for the continuing of Romanticism in the last decades of the nineteenth-
century. Another poem begins:
Orgueil sacre! –doux rêve!—ineffable hantise!
Flamme vivante au cœur que le malheur attise!
--Culte mystérieux! – divine obsession !...Fonder un peuple noir ; faire une nation ;
Entre les races sœurs établir l’harmonie!
Sauver la noire, enfin, de sa lente agonie!Oh! n’est-il pas bien vrai que ce rêve était beau? (“Exultation,” 1-7)In the beginning of this poem, we have the summary of what constituted much of Haiti’snational ambition after the Revolution—to be recognized as a nation, to legitimize its own
existence, to halt African suffering, and to counter racism through its example. The break in
stanzas before the question “wasn’t this a beautiful dream?” again means mourning this failure.
The fact that this poem’s title is “Exultation,” however, connotes exhilaration for such
aspirations. “Exultation” is an example of how Coicou’s poetry is neither purely celebratory and
(^297) Gulick 813.