Marie l’Africaine, Mother Africa. The other characters in the novel—Stella, Marie the African, and the Spirit of the Nation—are allegorical representations that portray archetypes rather than specific people from Haiti’s past. Stella is structured by its dedication to history, and its allegorical elements emphasize that Haiti’s transformation is significant not just to Haitians but to all humanity.
This Translation
Stella appeared in print over 150 years ago, but until recently it has not been available to English-speaking audiences. It appeared twice in the nineteenth century, originally in 1859, and a second time in 1887, apparently at the request of Bergeaud’s widow. Physical copies of either edition, which were printed in the small decimo-octavo (18mo) and duodecimo (12mo) formats, are exceedingly rare. Our edition is based on a microfilmed copy of the 1859 version held by the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris that belongs to Duke University. The University of Florida has digitized its copy of the 1887 edition, and made it available at the Digital Library of the Caribbean, http://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00089373/00001. A modern French version was published in 2009 by Éditions Zoé in Geneva, Switzerland.
We have taken every effort to preserve the feeling of the 1859 text, including retaining much of the text’s italicization and punctuation—especially when used for emphasis—as well as the two original sets of notes with which the book was published. Bergeaud, for example, uses italicized print to emphasize the word “property” in the first chapter: the people described are the property of another person, just like the fruit tree outside their abode is the property of the Colonist. Our translation keeps these kinds of words italicized for emphasis whenever possible, and we have also provided a glossary for certain terms, such as ajoupa, boucan, and indigènes. When we did make changes from the original, these usually involved the separation of longer sentences or the combination of shorter paragraphs. Only rarely did we reorder sentences or paragraphs in order to make the meaning clearer. A few times, we corrected minor errors or inconsistencies in the original; these we have documented in our notes. So as to retain the original format of the authorial and editorial annotations, we have located our notes after the original endnotes. In practice, this means that there are three sets of notes running through the text: footnotes by Bergeaud (lowercase Roman numerals), endnotes by Ardouin (uppercase Roman numerals), and our own endnotes (Arabic numerals). Although potentially confusing, we believe that this arrangement is the best way to balance our desire to respect the integrity of the original while providing modern readers with necessary, and ideally unobtrusive, guidance.
In his own prefatory note, Bergeaud reports that Stella was a long time in completion, and that the work had been often interrupted through the years. While meant as a conventional apology, his words also give clues to the condition of Stella’s composition and hint that it was—at least preliminarily—finished when he handed it to Ardouin in Paris. While it has been suggested that Ardouin’s editorial efforts were confined to the preface and editorial notes, our translation and collation work reveal the mark of Ardouin’s editorial hand elsewhere as well. This is particularly apparent in Stella’s citation of previously published historical material. In the original version of the novel, italicized print, in addition to being used for emphasis, also often indicates direct quotations from other sources; closer attention to these italicized passages reveals that Stella contains numerous quotations from Ardouin’s eleven-volume Études sur l’histoire d’Haïti. For example, in the thirty-third chapter, entitled “Rochambeau,” the words “the leader needed in Saint-Domingue and required for the public good” are italicized in the original. This is an actual quotation from the colonists who were recommending Rochambeau to Napoleon in 1802. It is cited in volume five of Ardouin’s work, on page 343. These insertions suggest that Ardouin altered the text—perhaps significantly—after Bergeaud’s return to Saint Thomas and before its publication. Ardouin’s influence certainly heightens the novel’s unusual dedication to history. For each of these quotations, we have removed the italics and footnoted the original source.
In our translation, we sought to retain a vocabulary, language, and style that was as authentic as possible to the period of the novel’s first publication. We used, for example, the word “colonist” to translate the French term “colon.” Although the word “colonizer,” which is more closely related to the verb “to colonize,” might have emphasized the political nature of Bergeaud’s message, “colonizer” was less common in English at the time. Based on a nineteenth-century translation of Vastey’s work that used “colonist” over “colonizer,” we decided to use this word as well.59
We translated this text with the historical, political, and literary conditions of its production in mind, and hope that this edition will contribute to a newfound appreciation for Bergeaud’s novel and a renewal of interest in early Haitian literature in general. Stella’s challenge to generic expectations, Bergeaud’s alleged “francophilia,” the novel’s place of publication, and a general tendency to undervalue Haitian literature—especially early texts written in French by members of a certain class—have all contributed to the text’s relative obscurity. In the nineteenth century, regrettably, the literary merit of Haitian authors such as Bergeaud—or earlier writers like Juste Chanlatte, Jules Solime Milscent, and Antoine Dupré—was often judged according to French literary standards and based on their works’ similarity to those of French authors. Frustratingly, any signs of resemblance were also identified as evidence of a lack of innovation.60 This accusation of mimicry was repeated by later generations of Haitian writers who sought a return to and appreciation for Haitians’ African heritage.61 Unfortunately, this attitude perpetuated powerful nineteenth-century dismissals of the first nation formed from a successful slave revolt, and it continues to influence studies of Haitian literature today. The goal of this edition is to offer a new population of readers the opportunity to fully engage with this unique text, its historical context, and its political aims—which are, perhaps, still in the process of realization.
LSC and CM
Notes
1 An announcement for Stella first appeared in the September 10, 1859, edition of the weekly Bibliographie de la France: Journal général de l’imprimerie et de la librairie. Dentu was known for publishing travel writing and histories, such as those by Jules Michelet and Beaubrun Ardouin, as well as the works of socialist politicians and intellectuals including Louis Blanc and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.
2 Léon-François Hoffmann, “En marge du premier roman haïtien: Stella, d’Emeric Bergeaud,” in Haïti: Lettres et l’être (Toronto: GREF, 1992): 147–165.
3 While the main events of the novel center on the years 1802–1803, its timeline covers the period from 1788 to 1804; the final chapter provides an even deeper history for the nation, one that begins before 1492.
4 The term “mulatto” does not accurately describe this diverse population, but rather reinforces a racialized system of categorization carried over from the French colonial era. We have chosen instead to use the term gens de couleur, “free people of color,” or people of Euro-African ancestry.
5 The first five volumes of Beaubrun Ardouin’s Études sur l’histoire d’Haïti, 11 vols. (Paris: Dézobry et E. Magdeleine, 1853–1865), are subtitled “Followed by the Life of General J.-M. Borgella,” and include
