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HAITI'S TRAGIC OVERTURE: STATECRAFT AND STAGECRAFT IN PLAYS BY GLISSANT, TROUILLOT AND CiSAIRE VeVe A. Clark

Haiti's Tragic Overture: Statecraft and Stagecraft in Plays by Glissant, Trouillot and Cesaire by VeVe A. Clark Romance Languages 316 East Hall Tufts University Medford, MA 02155

Caribbean Studies Association Conference St. Kitts May 30--June 2, 1984

[This summary is drawn from a longer paper in which discourse and staging are discussed in depth. Quotations from the texts of the plays have also been omitted in order to present the broader outlines of the argument.]

Haiti's Tragic Overture: Statecraft and Stagecraft in Plays by Glissant, Trouillot and Cesaire

SUMMARY

In the 1960's, La Tragedie du roi Christophe and Une Saison au Congo were hailed as heroic models for decolonization. Since that time, literary critics and Marxist historians have questioned with equal intensity the appropriateness of Cesaire's depiction of Haitian independence and the validity of idealizing revolution (Decock, 1967; Fuyet and Levilain, 1973/1976; Cohen, 1973; Cohen, 1974). Nearly twenty years after the Tragillie's premiere in Salzburg, St. Kitts, France's first settlement in the Caribbean, celebrates its own independence. The occasion seems fitting for a reassessment of historical dramas that focus on Caribbean liberation movements. Three plays, two by Martinican poets Aime Cesaire and Edouard Glissant, La Trage'die du roi Christophe

(1963/1970) and Monsieur Toussaint (1961) along with .

Dessalines ou le mpg 431 pont-rouge (1967) by the Haitian historian Henock Trouillot, recall in detail issues pertinent to decolonization in the modern world. 1 By focusing attention on three principal protagonists in the Haitian Revolution--namely, Toussaint Louverture, Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Henri Christophe--the playwrights investigate universal themes identified with armed resistance and post-independence strategies. Questions related to genre, structure and discourse suggest that there is a type of historical drama of independence that is

uniquely Caribbean. 2 Heroic characterization demonstrates a range of leadership qualities common to all three of the Haitian generals. Viewed in the continuum from Toussaint to Christophe, these qualities, both laudable and reprehensible, provide a code of behaviour to be adapted or avoided by any decolonized leader. In particular, the three plays and the historical moment they reproduce demand that the cultural, economic and political structures created during this transitional period from 1791-1820 be carefully distinguished-. Recent findings in Bali by anthropologist Clifford Geertz may be useful for a political and cultural definition of the new state Haiti erected over old St. DomingUe. The portrait of a decolonized leader sketched in the three plays depends in part upon the historical record and to a large E:>tent on twentieth century meditations on the subject of Haitian independence. 3 The leader must demonstrate a lack of psychological dependence on metropolitan powers as he creates autonomy by preserving traditions native to his country. These will be adapted with caution to modern demands of industrialized agriculture. The position requires diplomacy, bravery, military acumen and a respect for the army and common people alike. The leader must control political factionalism and maintain a rapport with the masses of agrarian workers upon whom economic stability rests. In short, the person must be - capable of embracing an impossible situation. Working often in isolation, this restorer of order must be part visionary and prophet willing to project new structures where there are none and able to develop an ixpedient government despite the constrictions of the present situation (Hall, 1972:46-7; Hurley, 1973:15; Ngal, 1975:221, 224,

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227; Cohen, 1979:256, 263; Warner, 1983:319). In the portrait, one recognizes foremost the vita of Toussaint Louverture. Most historians would agree that Toussaint's style of governing pervaded the early years of the Haitian state until the fall of Henri Christophe. Jean-Jacques Dessalines has previously been eliminated from literary criticism of Haitian Independence by writers who have concentrated purely on Toussaint and Christophe. The advantage of including him is threefold. He is the real arbiter of Haitian Independence which was declared during his office in 1804. Though he diverged from Toussaint's commonwealth stance by returning to maroon practices of destruction, overall, his reforms recalled Toussaint's ideology. Finally, his place in emancipation is considered primary by modern-day Haitian intellectuals who feel he has been overshadowed by Toussaint and Christophe in histories written by foreign nationals. Dramatists who retell the story of Haiti's tragic overture have admittedly sought out an heroic tradition. Their primary concern has been the depiction of a new era characterized by new 'appellations that would replace colonial systems of identification. In that regard, each of the three plays illustratds a radical alteration of rank--a major phase in the decolonization process. Toussaint becomes Mister, a distinction formerly reserved for colonials, while Dessalines and Christophe respectively have themselves crowned Emperor and King. The dramas refer minimally to the slaves most affected by emancipation, however the plays are really not about them, nor do they pretend to define the economic and political environment that allowed

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these men and their allies to rule. At first glance, these dramatizations seem to be romantic approaches to the theme of decolonization no matter the degree of modernism we detect in narrative structure and dramatic style. What kind of government did Toussaint, Dessalines and Christophe actually establish? From modern-day literary critics and historians we hear terms like feudal society, monarchy, totalitarianism and fascist state (Fuyet and Levilain, 1976:361;

Korngold, 1944:151; Cole, 1967:191-278; Christophe, 1978:34; Gregor in Wolitz, 1969:20Q). Most critics of Haitian history and of the plays have refrained from an informed, political definition of statehood in the country, preferring to discuss the failure of its leaders by labeling them tyrants, despots, dictators or authoritarian rulers (Mbom, 1979:52; Heinl and Heinl, 1978:97, 130; Christophe, 1978:31, 34). The latter form of discourse is preserved to this day in North American characterizations of statehood in the other Americas. 4 What political options were available to these three leaders at the end of the eighteenth century beginning of the nineteenth? From a world history perspective, Haiti could have modeled its government on solutions rangings from Confucianism through pre-industrial democracy and military totalitarianism. The evidence from both the historical record and from the plays under discussion is that Haiti did not follow any of the pre-established paradigms known then to the western world. It was a hybrid (Mbom, 1979:52, 63), and well it should have been; it stood as the first successful revolution by

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slaves in any historical period. Could it be that Haiti created a unique form of government unknown at the time in the West? If

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one studies carefully the facts of Haiti's history and culture between the Makandal rebellion of 1758 and Christophe's fall from power in 1820, it seems that, indeed, between 1791 and 1820, Haiti created an unusual state of its own. Though it manifested aspects of the feudal domain, mercantile monarchy, industrial democracies with their Constitutions and parliaments and military empires a la Napoleon, these signs tell only part of a very peculiar story. In each of the attempts at naming the period of decolonization in Haiti, there is one consistent message. Slaves and disenfranchized freedmen liberated themselves, but never succeeded in emulating any of the models of statehood currently in practice. I believe that the three dramatists--and Aime Cesaire more than the other two--have provided a prototype for defining statehood in decolonized Haiti. Rather than existing as separate entities, culture and politics are aligned in the plays as they were during the historical moment they ressurect. Moreover, culture--and drama especially--can assist in understanding statecraft on the ar.

island. In the 1930s, Cesaire called the awareness arising from racial consciousness negritude. Viewed as an holistic but transitional period in Black societies, the movement has 'had cultural, economic and political import. For most, however, it is strictly a literary movement that ended in 1966 with the successive independence movements in Africa and the Caribbean. 0 Negritude has no creditable status in discussions of politics and economics, although its initiators have associated it with African socialism. Primarily because it was an invented term that permitted no comparison with other solutions to radical

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social change, negritude remained a cultural and not a political definition for decolonization. To apply the term to the Haitian situation in the 19th century, as Cesaire did in the Cahier, is an anachronism at best. World history may have recently provided the nomenclature for a political definition of Cesaire's visionary reading of Haitian history. 5 Nineteenth century political events in another island culture, Bali, furnish an alternative model for evaluating what occured in Haiti from Toussaint to Christophe. The mechanisms of the theatre state (Geertz, 1980) provide a far more convincing description of Haiti's peculiar statehood than any of the epithets applied to it at the time or since. Statecraft is stagecraft in this system; culture was politics and politics culture in classical Bali. Therefore, it is quite understandable that dramatic productions based on historical events that resemble the theatre state would represent rather than simply illustrate political theory. Such is the case with the three plays in question. At the risk of oversimplifying Clifford Geertz's complex analysis, I shall attempt to summarize the principal traits of the theatre state as he has rendered it. Negara, or what Ceertz has termed the theatre state, is a Sanskrit loanword meaning "palace, capital, state, realm and town" (Geertz:4). In precolonial Indonesia, negara represented high culture and classical civilization. Its opposite was the 1g-ga or countryside, the governed area or masses (Geertz:4). Before negara, chaos existed; after negara perfection became the doctrine of an

exemplary government that embodied the faultless, civilized world

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(Geertz:13, 97, 109). The theatre state implies the borrowing of an exemplary model from another culture and its subsequent imposi tion over an established, agrarian network. As was true in early nineteenth-century Haiti, the theatre state was an amalgamation of several political ideologies that may resemble comparable forms in the western world, but do not correspond entirely to them. This is another response to governing. Negara may, for example, appear feudal because of the "sinking status relationship from lord to lord" (Geertz:32), although it is not a feudal society. Rather, political power was an accumulation of prestige including authority, virility, charisma, violence, service and worship guided by hereditary leadership. Priests shared state power by providing the leader with aesthetic guidelines to shape the court. The court was located in the city; its most sacred areas faced mountainward away from the tumult of the sea. It was opposed to the countryside of the masses which derived its own control from trades routes leading seaward. Commercial alliance networks among the masses supported the center and were responsi- , ble for the state of the economy. Directed by collective organizations, the hamlet controlled social and economic activity through irrigation control. Villages were characterized by incipient rivalries within the alliances. Established networks in the agrarian areas insulated the center against the disruptive world of commerce that supported it (Geertz:32, 34, 36-39, 50, 97, 113, 116). "Statecraft in pre-colonial Bali was a thespian art," in Geertz's words (Geertz:120): The driving force of public life was status ceremonial. The assiduous ritualism of court culture was not merely the drapery of political order but its substance (32).

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Geertz cites particular ceremonials to elucidate his point. The processions accompanying cremation ceremonies for a deceased leader figure tumultuous activity among the crowds at the peripheral base while a calm, unruffled demeanor exists at the apex and center where the body is being carried (Geertz:118). Geertz refers to the ceremonials as "a playful riot" (118) in which the masses are "stagehands in an endless political opera (65)." The people were not serfs, servants or slaves as they would have been in comparable feudal hierarchies, for classical Bali's approach to politics was unique to its culture and time. Geertz writes: The state ceremonials of classical Bali were metaphysical theatre: theatre designed to express a view of the ultimate nature of reality and shape the existing conditions of life to be consonant with reality...(104) All the enormous gorgeousness was an attempt to set up in terms of drama and decoration an authoritative pattern of political analogy. As Siva was to the gods, the gods were to the kings...All were versions of the same reality. (108) The whole (cremation) ceremony was a giant demonstration, repeated in a thousand ways with a thousand images, of the indestructibility of hierachy in the face of the most powerful leveling forces the world can muster--death, anarchy, passion and fire. "The king is annihilated! Long live his rank!" (120) The notion of the exemplary center and the theatrical qualities of leadership in nineteenth century Haiti have dominated commentary in the literature. Less is said about social and economic interactions on the plantations save in Debien's notable study of seventeenth and eighteenth century slavery (Debien, 1974). The similarities between the theAtre state in nineteenth century Bali and the political environment in nineteenth century

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Haiti are apparent. Nonetheless, an analysis of their differences is essential for a proper definition of Haiti's decolonization process. Four areas come to mind and deserve further study, namely: 1) Haiti was post-colonial and not pre-colonial; 2) emancipation was the overriding issue of the age, but was not pertinent to the Balinese theatre state; 3) alliance networks among the peasantry, if they existed at all in Haiti did not administer the country as was true in Bali and finally, 4) church and state were constantly at odds in Haiti because of the dual tradition of Catholicism and Vodoun on the island. Rather than dismiss the theory of Haiti as a theatre state, these disclaimers point more concretely to Haiti's tragic overture. The theatre state was a transitional period even in Balinese history. The rivalries at the periphery in both Bali and Haiti were a constant menace to hegemony at the center. When Dutch traders arrived in Indonesia later in the century, their presence eroded the alliance networks that had previously held.the theatre state together. Haiti's problems were similar but more intense. There were external threats of re-enslavment, isolation from other nations compounded by the internal erosion of the plantation system in favor of loosely coordinated serfdoms, and finally, civil war. The advantages of considering Haiti a theatre state turns the critic's thinking away from the heroes and class stratification toward the entire system they represented. The three dramas display the ideologies of state in what could be called status ceremonials. They describe in a more controlled atmosphere what is less apparent in historical narratives or Marxist studies of Haitian Independence.

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Theatre wa S very much a part of political action in decolon.

ized Haiti. As Trouillot writes in the preface to Dessalipes: Antoine Dupre and Juste Chanlatte were among the first playwrights to rely on blocks of our history (for material). At the time, the type of history that attracted attention was alive and very close to them. General Lamarre, who after 1807 waged war against Christophe in the North, had scarcely died before Dupre celebrated him in drama as a national hero. In other words, the data of this very fresh history had a polemic character, a quality of political propaganda to it. For the benefit of Port-au-Prince society and those living in other cities, one glorified Petion's army, for instance, in order to disparage Henri Christophe's northern forces (Trouillot, 1967:4) (Translation by the present author] Emulation and opposition, two principal yet polar elements in the theatre state pervade the structure and discourse of the plays by Glissant, Trouillot and Cesaire. Emulation or the reflection of the leader's ideology in the people is the single

unifying principle in the play by Glissant. Using Vodoun cosmology as a base, Monsieur Toussaint is divided into four acts (the gods, the dead, the people, the heroes) each of which is a mirror image of the other: the gods are to the heroes as the dead are to the people. Glissant has presented Toussaint's rule in a cosmic mirror, comparable to Vodoun, where the loas possess the servitors from the other side of the waters. The play is reflexive in much the same way that the Balinese theatre state was. Cesaire's architecture of Haitian history is even closer to the theatre state primarily because Christophe's reign approached the ideal more than any other. The play builds in stages from the rivalry of the cockfight in the opening scenes to the end of Act I when Christophe at his apogee discusses with Besse his concept for the Citadel. From there, the play descends into disorder.

There is at the apex a reasoned intention (always in danger of falling away from the ideal) and at the base the confusion and rivalry characteristic of the theatre state. Trouillot's play, like the others is a drama of oxymoron. Unlike the Tragedie which focused on rivalry in the opening scenes, Dessalines begins in an uncontrolled state of disorder: funds have been embezzeled, luxury courts misery, pirates inhibit the lawful in an unstable situation when Haiti was part colonial, part independent and foreign nationals still resided in the country. The disorder in the society slowly reaches the person of Dessalines when conspirators plot to overthrow the "tyrannical Emperor" (II, V), one of the most contrastive designations in the play. In Act IV, scene 8, Dessalines is assassinated at Pont Rouge by soldiers faithful to the mulatto, Petion. Toussaint's dream of the decolonized leader is thereafter transferred to members of Dessalines' entourage and to certain citizens. Trouillot suggests that the exemplary center was preserved in the minds of the masses. In the final dialogue between Dauphin and the madwoman Defilee, a verified participant at the assassination scene (Heinl, 1978:139), Defilee states that the country will remain bathed in blood until another hero "is born and finds men, women and children who understand him" (V, 12). Rising like a phoenix from the dust, Christophe rekindles the ideal of the theatre state previously acted out by Toussaint and Dessalines. This meditation on Haiti's tragic overture suggests primarily that decolonization is tragic when the ideology that supports it is of an imported variety--whether borrowed from foreign colonial or native elite sources. The lesson from Bali

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confirms that the theatre state, whether or not it existed as well in Haiti, is a transitional period that, by virtue of its stable instability will pass. Some would see the Haitian example

as class struggle (James, 1963; Cesaire, 1960), however the Marxist dialectic or even the totalitarian model do not account for so much of Haiti's dilemma from 1791-1820--its theatricality, its endurance over a twenty-nine year period, its singular position in world history and the fact that the political form created in Haiti has gone unnamed for one hundred and ninety-three years! If, indeed, Haiti was a theatre state between 1791 and 1820, are we witnessing unrelated but simultaneous development in two remote island regions of the world or, as some would have it, were the Haitian leaders simply imitating, and badly, Napoleon's pre-totalitarian regime? Was the theatre state unknown in the west as most historians would presume? Generally, one forgets that Toussaint, the undisputed standard for decolonized leadership, read the Abbe de Raynal's Histoire des Indes before he entered the political arena. To what extent was the Buddhist philosophy of excellence, measure and hierarchy communicated through Raynal to Toussaint and by his example from Dessalines to Christophe? The response seems significant but negligible when compared with the overwhelming example that the theatre state, provides for a rereading of Haitian history in an economic, political and cultural environment more akin to its unfolding. VeVe A. Clark Tufts University 0 Copyright 1984 by VeVe A. Clark

NOTES 1.

Aimg C‘saire, La Tragedie du roi Christophe. (Paris: Presence Africaine, 1963), Edouard Glissant, Monsieur Toussaint. (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1961), Henock Trouillot, Dessalines ou le sang du pont-rouge (Port-au-Prince, Imprimerie des Antilles, 1967). The plays by Cesaire and Glissant have been translated into English by Ralph Manheim and Juris Silenieks respectively and are available from Grove Press, 1969 and Three Continents Press, 1981.

2.

Cesaire attempted in La Tragedie and Une Saison au Congo to demonstrate the similarities between decolonization in the Caribbean and in Africa. In a penetrating article, Jean Decock studied how different were the two independence movements in reality and in the dramas. Historical dramas of independence in the Caribbean are unique in that these societies have undergone an intense period of slavery and are distanced physically from an African past. In addition, culture is multifarious in the Caribbean where indigenous, colonial, creole and African survivals remain in spirit or in fact. These layers are also reflected in language, a circumstance that must be confronted by the playwright who often solves the problem by writing in a colonial language. See Jean Decock, "Faut-il jouer Cesaire?" African Arts, 1:1 (Autumn 1967), 36-39, 72-73, 75 for a discussion of language and audience in Cesaire's work.

3.

Henry Cohen in two articles from 1973 and 1974 has shown how Cesaire distorted the historical record in La Tragedie. See the references for citations. Glissant and Trouillot both point out in prefaces to their works the degree of historicity or lack of it in the plays.

4.

See for example Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick's Dictatorships and Double Standards. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982).

5.

One literary critic has emphasized Cesaire's Marxist reading of the Christophe rule (Wolitz, 1969). I do not agree with this assessment. Cesaire's analysis in Toussaint Louverture. La Revolution francaise et le probleme colonial, (Paris: Le club fransais du llvre, 1960) observes Toussaint in the context of class stratification in colonial Haiti and is, undoubtedly influenced by Marxist thinking and by Cesaire's own experiences in Martinique. I call his rendering in La Tragedie visionary because he departs from a strict historical reading as Cohen has pointed out. If this approach can be termed Marxist, then.I agree with Wolitz. It seems to me that Cesaire has constructed through discourse a form of theatre state ceremonial in La Tragedie rather than a tragedy in the classic sense:

REFERENCES Cesaire, Aime. 1960. Toussaint Louverture. Paris: Club francais du livre. . 1963. La Tragedie du roi Christopbe. Paris: Presence Africaine. Cohen, Henry. 1973. "History, Invention and Cesaire's Roi Christophe." Black Images. 2:3, 4/33-36. . 1974. "The Petrified Builder: Cesaire's Roi Christopne." Studies in Black Literatule. 5:3, 21-24. . 1979. "Lamartine's Toussaint Louverture (1948) and Glissant's Monsieur Toussaint (1961): A Comparison." Studia Africans. 1:3, 255-269. Cole, Hubert. 1970. Christophe. King of Haiti. New York: Viking Press. Debien, Gabriel. 1974. Les esclayes aux Antilles Francaises, 4 XVIIe-XVIIIe siecles. Basse Terre. Decock, Jean. 1967. "Faut-il jouer Cesaire?" African Arts. 1:1, 36-39, 72-73, 75. Fuyet, Herve and Nicole, Guy and Mary Levilain. 1976. "Decolonization and Social Classes in The Tragedy of King Christophe by Aime Cesaire." In Weapons of Criticism. Marxism in America and the Literary Tradition, edited by Norman Rudich. Palo Alto: Ramparts Press. Geertz, Clifford. 1980. Negara. The Theatre State in nineteenth-Century Bali. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Glissant, Edouard. 1961. Monsieur Toussaint. Paris: Editions du Seuil. Hall, Gwendolyn. 1972. "What Toussaint Louverture Can Teach Us." Black World. 21:4, 46-48. Heinl, Robert and Nancy Heinl. 1978. Written in Blood. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. Hurley, E.A., 1973. "A Theatre of Frustration: The Theatre of Aime Cesaire." Black Images. 2:1, 13-15, 43. Irele, Abiola. 196,8., "Post Colonial Negritude: The Political Plays of Aime Cesaire." West Africa (January 27), 100-101. James, C.L.R. 1963. The Black Jacobins. New York: Random House.

Korngold, Ralph. 1945. Citizen Toussaint. Boston: Little, Brown and Co. Laville, Pierre. 1970. "Aime Cesaire et Jean-Marie Serreau, Un acte politique et poetique: La Tragedie du roi Christophe et prig saison au Congo." In Les Voies de la creation thegtrale, II, edited by Denis Bablet. Paris: Centre national de la recherche scientifique. Mbom, Clement. 1979. Le Theatre d i Aime Cesaire. Paris: Fernand Nathan. Mouralis, Bernard. 1974. "L'image de l'independance haitienne dans la litterature,negro-africaine." Revue de litterature compare (juillet-decembre), 504-535. Ngal, M. 1975. patrie. Dakar: Nouvelles Editions Africaines. Silenieks, Juris, 1968. "Deux pieces antillaises: du temoignage local vers une tragedie moderne." Kentucky Romance Ouarterly. 15:3, 245-254. Trouillot, Henock. 1967. Dessalines ou le sang du pont-rouge. Port-au-Prince: Imprimerie des Antilles. Warner, Keith Q. 1983. "Culture and Politics: The Tragedy of Cesaire's Christophe and ',Mr. West Indian Politician.'" Journal of Caribbean Studies. 3:3, 314-322. Wolitz, Seth. 1969. "The Hero of Negritude in the Theater of Aims C‘saire." Kentucky Romance Ouarterly. 16:3, 195-208.