Antoine Innocent's innovative novel, Mimola, offers a sympathetic portrait of Haitian Vodou and popular religion in a Haiti that appears to take place during the second half of the 19th century. Julie Georges, daughter of Rosalie, an African woman from Dahomey or the Gold Coast, loses her husband and six of her seven children. Her last child, Mimola, nicknamed Lala, also becomes sick and nearly dies, but speaking with another old African woman cognizant of things Creoles (those born in Saint-Domingue or Haiti, not Africa) do not know, tells her that she and Mimola must pay their respects to the ancestral spirits of Rosalie in order to cure Mimola.
Assigned several tasks that require her and her daughter to embrace Vodou rituals and services, Madame Georges and Mimola eventually make the pilgrimage to Saut d'Eau, near Mirebalais, and while doing so, meet the "mulatto" cousin of Madame Georges, Francine Dajobert. Dajobert's mother, the enslaved African-born twin sister of Rosalie, was raped by a French colon. Her daughter's son, Leon, was the product of Francine and a wealthy man, which made it possible for him to be educated in France. Most of the novel is an overview of the promesse made by Madame Georges to appease the ancestral spirits in order to save the life of her daughter, who eventually becomes a manbo, or Vodou priestess herself.
However, as a realist novel that foreshadows Haitian indigénisme through its intimately detailed Vodou ceremonies, customs in the countryside, and social world of its characters, it, like the work of Lhérisson, creatively uses Haitian Creole and playful names, puns, as well as Port-au-Prince and the rural landscape to bring to life a not so distant past. As someone who has also made the trek to Saut d'Eau, (in an automobile, of course), one cannot help but be moved by Innocent's prose and the calm beauty of the waterfalls at the holy site. Innocent goes to great length to describe the trek to Saut d'Eau, the candles, vigils, prayers, music, dancing, and other customs of pilgrims seeking the miraculous from the Virgin Mary and/or the spirits.
What's fascinating here is how Innocent manages to find the beauty and respectful elements of Vodou while using it as a metaphor for a united Haiti. Wealthy "mulattoes" and their "pure" black relations find each other through this religion, and through it a respect for their African forebears and its social value for the lower classes. Thus, through Vodou ceremonies, a respect for charity and others is maintained, as well as veneration of filial ties, which cost Madame Georges and Madame Dajobert their social standing among the elite who look down on Vodou or anything reminding them of Africa. Unfortunately, Leon, the son of Madame Dajobert, continues to reject Vodou and suffers the consequences, all the while dreaming of his cherished France.
Meanwhile, his friend Albert, who was also educated in France and a firm believer in progress, saw the value of Vodou and related its origins to the lares of the Roman world and classical antiquity, to the religions of "primitive races" and ancestral cults. While Albert is almost certainly wrong about the influence of ancient Mediterranean religions on Vodou, it brings to mind a point raised by an academic who told me that many Haitian authors who broached the subject of Vodou were influenced by Fustel de Coulanges's study of classical antiquity, perhaps explaining in part why Innocent falsely presents the origin of the word lwa (or, loua) as lares. Perhaps positivism's three stages and Firmin's legacy also influenced Innocent, who refers to Vodou as a religious stage found all over the world, from the Celts, the ancient East, Africa, and beyond.
Nonetheless, despite his defense of the religion from the extreme disdain of Leon, he also hopes that education, schools, theaters, and gradual change will lead to the religion's decline, although such a development will take a very long time. Moreover, as Albert wisely tells Leon, attempting by force to eradicate Vodou will cause the masses to cling to it more tightly. This brings to mind Roumain's critique of the anti-superstition campaign of the 1940s, which cruelly attempted to uproot the faith while ignoring the conditions in which it is cultivated. And despite his Marxism, Roumain, like Innocent, urged respect and honor for Vodou, even as the latter designates it as primitive and from a previous stage of religious thought.
Thus, Innocent, like the successive generation of indigénistes, saw the value of Vodou in terms of its link to the African past, respect for the origins of Haiti, and as a social glue, even if they personally disagreed with its tenets from a theological point of view. In consideration of the unstable conditions of Haiti at the time of its original publication, and the context of the Generation de la Ronde's nationalism, Mimola offers the reader a penetrating literary exercise in the importance of the religion of the masses for rehabilitating the nation's identity. If the argument of Fustel de Coulanges is relevant at all here, this disdain and rejection of the popular class's religion constitutes a key factor in the implacable social divide and lack of solidarity plaguing the country during the later half of the 19th century.
