Stella
America and the Long 19th Century
General Editors: David Kazanjian, Elizabeth McHenry, and Priscilla Wald
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Stella
meric Bergeaud
Translated and Edited by Lesley S. Curtis and Christen Mucher
Stella
meric Bergeaud
Translated and Edited by Lesley S. Curtis and Christen Mucher
A Novel of the Haitian Revolution
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London
www.nyupress.org
2015 by New York University
All rights reserved
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Neither the author nor New York University Press is responsible for URLs that
may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bergeaud, Emeric, 18181857, author. [Stella. English]
Stella / meric Bergeaud ; translated and edited by Lesley S. Curtis and Christen Mucher.
pages cm. (America and the long 19th century)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4798-6684-7 (cl : acid-free paper)
ISBN 978-1-4798-9240-2 (pb : acid-free paper)
I. Curtis, Lesley S., editor, translator. II. Mucher, Christen, editor, translator. III. Title.
PQ3949.B43S7413 2015
843.8dc23 2015009275
New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper,
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Editors Acknowledgments
Editors Introduction
Lesley S. Curtis and Christen Mucher
Authors Note
To the Reader
B. Ardouin
Stella
Glossary of Foreign Words and Expressions
Original Explanatory Notes
Editors Notes
About the Editors
We wish to thank the many people who helped make this project possible, especially our series editors David Kazanjian, Elizabeth McHenry, and Priscilla Wald, as well as Eric Zinner, Ciara McLaughlin, Alicia Nadkarni, and the editorial team at NYU Press. We would also like to extend our thanks to Deborah Jenson and the members of Duke Universitys Haiti Lab, who gave us the opportunity to discuss early Haitian literature with an incredible group of scholars. Thanks go, too, to Laurent Dubois, Jacques Pierre, Floyd Cheung, Larry Rosenwald, and Sean Moore. The publication of this book would not have been possible without the subvention support generously provided by Smith College. For this, we are very grateful. We must also thank Cybelle McFadden, who orchestrated the serendipitous meeting at the Atlantic World Research Network in Greensboro, North Carolina, that gave life to this project. Finally, this work would certainly not exist without the faithful and loving support of our friends and family, including Colleen Woods and the extended Mucher and Struewing families, Nancy Wilson, Elizabeth Wilson, Brian McDonald, Cord Whitaker, and our brand new stella maris, London Olivia Grace.
meric Bergeaud (18181858), Haitian politician and man of letters, explained in the prefatory note to Stella that he had taken pains not to disfigure history in the writing of his only novel. Although Stellas main charactersRomulus, Remus, the Colonist, Marie the African, and Stellaare fictional, Bergeaud assured his readers that there was truth in the book he wrote to honor his country. He wanted the attraction of the novel to capture readers who do not subject themselves to in-depth study of our annals. Like other Haitian writers of the nineteenth century, Bergeaud believed it was crucial to retell the Haitian Revolution from a positive perspective so as to counter the hostile representations of his country that were so common at the time. For this reason, the novelist wanted his story of Haitis transformation from French colony to independent nation to alter the perception of his native country both at home and afar.
Stella, the nations first novel, seeks to enshrine the Haitian Revolution and the Haitian people as the true inheritors of liberty, and Haiti as the realization of the French Revolutions republican ideals of freedom, equality, and brotherhood. Stella tells of the devastation of colonialism and slavery in the colony of Saint-Domingue, as Haiti was known before independence, and it chronicles the events of the Haitian Revolution, which is portrayed as a bloody yet just fight for emancipation and a period of sacrifice that all future Haitians are charged to honor and remember. While Stella provides a captivating and admirable origin story for Haiti and Haitians, the fact that it was out of print for more than one hundred years means that the novel has struggled to fulfill its authors wish of attracting a wider readership to his nations history.
Bergeaud had given the manuscript to his friend and relative, the historian and politician Beaubrun Ardouin (17961865), also in exile, when the two were together in Paris in 1857. After Bergeauds death the next year, Ardouin had his friends novel published in the City of Lights. It was never printed in Haiti. That Stella appeared in Haitis former colonial capital was due as much to Bergeauds personal circumstances and Haitian politics as it was to the cachet of the nineteenth-century Parisian literary scene.
The legacy of the novels publication history, Bergeauds particular blending of history and fiction, as well as an unfortunate general hostility toward early Haitian literature continue to influence how