Essays on Haitian Literature

Introduction

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The Republic of Haiti is somewhat smaller than Belgium and somewhat larger than New Hampshire ; three quarters of her territory is steeply mountainous. Practically all of the six million inhabitants live in the lowlands, making these narrow plains among the most densely populated areas of the world.

The all but deserted Western third of Hispaniola was ceded by Spain to France in 1697, and, during the 17th and 18th centuries, a relatively large number of Frenchmen settled in the colony, which they called Saint-Domingue. From about 1740 on, Saint-Domingue's economy boomed, the prosperity of the colony resting on tropical cash crops, coffee, and sugar in particular. By 1789, it accounted for as much as 50% of France's foreign trade.

As did the other New World "sugar colonies," Saint-Domingue drew its work force from Africa. It is difficult to estimate how many millions of slaves were deported to the colony : they were so brutally exploited that, on the average, they survived no more than seven years after reaching the plantations. Probably as many as half of the 400,000 slaves in Saint-Domingue at the eve of the revolution had been born in Africa.

Saint-Domingue was organized on the same model as the other West Indies. The 40,000 Whites (who either came from the métropole or had been born on the island) provided the cadres, the planters, the majority of the skilled workers, merchants, and artisans. The Black slaves provided the work force. Most of the 28,000 Mulattos formed an intermediate class which, theoretically, enjoyed all the rights of free men, but which came to be subjected to all sorts of humiliating discriminatory measures. The original Arawak population had succumbed to mistreatment and disease within one generation after having been "discovered" by the Europeans.

Yet the destiny of Haiti was to be radically different from that of "Anglo-Saxon" or "Iberian" America. Inspired by the French Revolutionary ideal of the "Rights of Man," a general slave uprising broke out in 1791. For the next twelve years, intermittent violence reigned in the colony. Free men were pitted against slaves, Whites against Blacks, partisans of accommodation with France against proponents of Independence, French troops first against local insurgents, later against Spanish, then English invaders, finally against the Haitian army. In 1802, Bonaparte tried to reestablish French rule and the institution of slavery which had officially been abolished by decree on 16 Pluviôse II(February 4th, 1794). The 40,000 man expeditionary corps he sent to Saint-Domingue under the command of his brother-in-law, General Leclerc, was wiped out by the Haitians and their ally, yellow fever. This was the first time a Napoleonic army had ever been defeated, a fact still carefully kept [6] out of French history school books. Jean-Jacques Dessalines proclaimed the Independence of Haiti on January 1, 1804. Haiti was consequently the first New World land-after the United States--to achieve nationhood. It was also the first, and, for a long time, was to remain the only Black republic in the world. [1]

The situation of the new state was far from auspicious. The country had been devastated by twelve years of savage fighting and by the scorched-earth policy of the insurgents. Those Europeans who had not perished or managed to flee were eliminated by Dessalines right after Independence. As a result the country was left practically without trained administrators and technicians. Until its independence was recognized by the French (in 1825), and later by other major powers, the Haitians feared a return of their former masters ; they were forced to earmark for national defense energies and resources badly needed for reconstruction and organization, the Haitian armed forces retaining its privileged position up to present times. Further, the major powers (France, of course, but also England, Spain and the United States) continued to collaborate in isolating Haiti, fearing that she would "export the revolution" and inspire their own slaves to rise.

Haitian history since Independence has been characterized-as has that of most of Latin America-by dependence upon and exploitation by, imperial powers : Germany and England as well as France and the United States-and by periods of political instability and irresponsibility. Government and civil service positions were and remain a means for members of the ruling class to enrich themselves. While repression has in general been relatively mild, it has occasionally been brutal. Haitian governments have done little to better the lives of the masses ; it is calculated that about 80% of the population lives off the land ... a land, however, which can no longer feed the population.

Up until about a generation ago, most Westerners did not even have a clear idea of where Haiti was. In the introduction to his Black Democracy — The Story of Haiti, first published in 1928, the American historian H.P. Davis wrote :

When the average American hears of Haiti, if he does not confuse it with the island of Tahiti — thousands of miles away in the Pacific —he thinks of a small, unimportant West Indian country. (...) Of the Haitians themselves, their background, or present condition, the American people generally have no conception. (2^nd rev. ed., New York, 1967, p. 3.)

In 1939, an English lady-traveler, Mabel Steedman, entitled her book Unknown to the World : Haiti ; and, as late as 1955, Pierre Massoni, a [7] French essayist, also begins a mediocre book, Haiti, reine des Antilles, by reminding his readers that :

Contrary to what many people, who confuse it with Tahiti, think, Haiti is not in Africa and even less in the South Pacific. (p. 11.) [2]

But today, if the word "Haiti" were to be used as a cue in a word association test, most non-Haitians would in all probability be able to respond and, in their response, would mention poverty, political repression or frenzied pagan ritual. The media has dramatized the flight of desperate Haitians who sail flimsy boats to the Bahamas or to Florida. To specialists, this comes as no surprise. Already in 1949, the Report of the United Nations Mission to Haiti stated that :

Haitian agriculture is faced with the grave problem of sustaining an expanding population on shrinking land resources. It is high time to arrest the dissipation of the basic wealth of the country and to reverse the trend. (...) The general standard of living is so low as not to permit of further compression. (pp. 3 & 6.)

A generation later, the trend has not been reversed, and the standard of living has been dramatically "further compressed."

When François Duvalier came to power in 1957, he organized the Milice civile (later to become the Volontaires de la sécurité nationale). With their jaunty hats and dark glasses, these impassive men-immediately baptised tonton makout ("bogeymen") by the population-captured the imagination of the Western public, always fascinated by all forms of ominous exoticism. The media did not fail to cater to this fascination. Graham Greene's novel about Duvalier's Haiti, The Comedians (London, 1966) was an international bestseller, and millions saw some of the most prestigious actors of the time starring in the film version, directed by Peter Glenville. The Créole terms Papa Dok and Tonton Makout became, if not household words, then close to it.

That there was a racialist dimension to this publicity seems to me evident. In no way do I wish to suggest that reprehensible actions of the Third World-and particularly Black-governments should not be exposed and denounced to world public opinion. But I am suggesting that Westerners have an unfortunate tendency to find them picturesque as well as sinister. Just as, when their rulers dilapidate vast sums on gaudy displays of luxury, Westerners are quick to wax indignant, but slow to remember that Western governments-and Eastern Bloc ones also, for that matter-have generally found reasons to supply them with the means to indulge in these displays.

The exotic aspect of Haitian culture which has most enthralled [8] Westerners has been Vodùn, [3] the folk religion of Haiti, traditionally tolerated at best and at worst forcibly suppressed by various Haitian regimes. The ruling Westernized t4ite has, until very recently, generally felt that vodùn contributes towards giving Haiti a pejorative image abroad. They fear that foreigners will advance it as a proof of African savagery, as evidence that Black men left to their own devices cannot reach true civilization. By and large, the Westernized, elite's fears are well justified, for ever since foreigners have chosen to write about Haiti, whether in travel books or in works of fiction, they have associated vodùn with blood (the blood of sacrificed animals and human beings, preferably of children and pretty women), with loss of consciousness during "possession" trances, and-last but certainly not least-with lascivious dancing leading to unbridled sexual excesses. As early as 1793, in his otherwise admirable Description (...) de la partie française de l’île Saint-Domingue, M. Moreau de Saint-Méry describes what purports to be a vodùn ceremony, where some of the adepts

in this Bacchanalia, tear up their clothes and even bite their own flesh ; others who have only fallen unconscious are carried by the dancers into a nearby room, where a disgusting prostitution sometimes holds sway in the dark Finally, exhaustion puts a stop to this spectacle, which is an insult to reason. (New rev. ed., 3 vols., Paris, 1958, Vol. 1, p. 67-68.)

In his 1826 novel Bug Jargal, which takes place in Haiti during the revolution, Victor Hugo drew from such melodramatic nonsense to describe a vodùn dance. And a century and a half later, in Gérard de Villier's Requiem pour tontons macoutes (Paris, 1971), a young girl is raped and hacked to pieces in a Port-au-Prince cemetery, where her killers had gone to unearth bits and pieces of a political opponent's body for use in the preparation of magic charms.

English language authors have done no better. Sir Spencer St. John, erstwhile representative of Her Majesty’s Government in Haiti, published his Hayti or the Black Republic in 1884. The book, which appeared in French translation two years later, did much to spread the myth that human sacrifices, and even cannibalism, were intrinsic elements of vodùn ritual. The titles of several later "eyewitness reports" on Haiti are revealing : William B. Seabrook's Magic Island (New York, 1929), for example, or John Houston Craige's Cannibal Cousins (New York, 1934), or Edna Taff's A Puritan in Voodooland (Philadelphia, 1938). Novelists also took advantage of — and perpetuated — their readers' tendency to identify Haiti [9] with primitive rites : Beale Davis in The Goat Without Horns [4] (New York, 1925), Henry Bedford-Jones in Drums of Dambala [5] (New York, 1932) and Richard Dohrman in The Cross of Baron Samedi [6] (Boston, 1958) explicitly refer to vodùn in their title, but it is safe to say that few English- language novels which take place in Haiti fail to treat their reader to a vodùn ceremony or, at the very least, to the brewing of potions and the sticking of pins in rag dolls. In Don Smith's Haitian Vendetta (New York, 1973), CIA agent Phil Sherman is sent on a mission to Haiti, where he makes frenetic love to Michèle Delorme, a beautiful Mulatto girl who of course turns out to be a mambo, or vodùn priestess.

The association of Haiti with vodùn and of vodùn with erotic frenzy has — needless to say — been amply illustrated by the Hollywood movie industry. One can imagine the discouraged indignation with which Haitians must have watched Baron Samedi's dance, as performed by Geoffrey Holder in Live and Let Die, one of the latest James Bond epics. In one of the first serious books on vodùn, Voodoo in Haiti (Fr. ed., Paris, 1958 ; Engl. trans. by Hugo Charteris, New York 1972), the anthropologist Alfred Métraux has ample reason to begin by reminding us that

certain exotic words are charged with evocative power. Voodoo is one. It usually conjurs up visions of mysterious deaths, secret rites-- or dark saturnalia celebrated by "blood-maddened, sex-maddened, godmaddened" negroes. (p. 15.)

And one can certainly sympathize with the Haitian essayist Louis Elie who laments in his Remarques sur le vaudoux (typescript, n.d. ca. 1945) :

What crimes are the inhabitants of our unfortunate country expiating, to have provoked the disgusting outpourings of these vile scribblers ? It seems as if an evil genie had forced travelers to see Haiti not as she is, but as a nightmare, a "Magic Island" fit only to serve as Satan's stamping grounds. (p. 15.)

Haitians rightly complain that even today-or perhaps one should say today more than ever-only rarely do foreigners mention the gentleness, dignity and courtliness of Haitians, rich and poor ; only rarely do they know or care about the glory of the Haitian Revolution, surely one of the noblest episodes in the history of mankind ; only rarely are they acquainted with the considerable Haitian contribution in the realms of music, of painting, of sculpture and of literature.

This is not the place to show what the pejorative image of Haiti abroad owes to the phantasms that haunt the Western subconscious. My hope is, rather, to contribute to a better knowledge of Haitian literature, [10] which is a venerable and illustrious literature.

The independence that Haitians won by the sword, they exalted and nurtured with the pen. From the very beginning, the written word in Haiti has served to affirm national and racial pride, and to scourge internal deleterious tendencies. Explicitly, of course, but also implicitly, as we shall see : every lyric poem, humorous short story, well-constructed drama or novel was one more proof that Haitians are neither "blood-," nor "sex-," nor "god-maddened," but rational, cultivated people, masters of that most rational creation of civilized humanity, the French language.

No wonder, then, that young Haitians have always received an essentially literary education, and studied the same classical texts chosen for the edification of French youths. The country has formed generations of good hellenists and excellent latinists, who were taught that literature is the noblest product of the human mind, and literature in French the noblest one of all. As much as, and sometimes more than money or power, to have had a poem, an article or a novel published is a source of great prestige-and not only among the intellectuals, as Dantès Bellegarde somewhat acidly remarked in an article for La Ronde on October 5^th, 1898 :

You cannot imagine the prestige enjoyed here by the printed word in the eyes of the crowd. It is enough to have written just about anything for you to appear as a superior being.

Until quite recently, a number of fine literary reviews were published not only in Port-au-Prince but also in several provincial cities and, as Edmund Wilson wrote in Red, Black Blond and Olive (New York, 1956) :

(...) this island, since the revolution of 1804, has produced a greater number of books in proportion to the population than any other American country, with the exception of the United States. (p. 110.)

Haitian literature is remarkable not only for its abundance but also for its quality. Thanks to anthologies and to the re-issue of titles long out of print, it is at last becoming better known abroad. A few Haitian novelists, such as Jacques Roumain, Jacques- Stephen Alexis, and the Marcelin brothers, have been widely translated. Haitian writers have also benefitted from the recent interest in Caribbean and Black literatures.

Perhaps this discovery and appreciation of Haiti's literature will--if not counteract-at least counterbalance somewhat the negative image foreigners have of the country. Just as the starving Haitian child or the humiliated Haitian adult brings shame on all men, much of Haitian literature's dignity and strength is, for all men, a source of elation and pride.