The Poem

Return to My Native Land is an extended lyric meditation (1,055 lines in

the original French). Aimé Césaire wrote the first version in the late
1930’s, having completed his studies in France, upon his return to his
native Martinique (revised versions appeared in 1947 and 1956). Although
the general mode of the poem is lyric, it mixes modes frequently. It has
some epic qualities, especially evidenced by the narrator who, as an epic
hero should, is trying to embody in himself the best qualities of his race.
Further, about half the poem is written in prose.

The poem can be generally broken down into three parts. The first part is
an examination of the poet’s native Martinique, and particularly its capital,
Fort-de-France. In the second part, he reacts, often negatively, to the
people and history of this land. In the third, he learns not only to accept
but also to embrace the people and spirit of his native land.

Césaire is often associated with the French Surrealist poets, and even a
brief glance at the poem reveals why. In the first full paragraph, he tells a
cop to “Beat it”; then, in a quick rush of images, he turns toward
paradises that are lost to such people as the cop, nourishes the wind while
rocked by a thought, and unlaces monsters—among other things. Such
images have the impossible, dreamlike quality characteristic of
Surrealism, and this quality keeps up throughout the poem. Overall, the
poem does have a narrative shape, which is not characteristic of
Surrealism, and as these images in the beginning suggest, the overall
thrust of the poem involves the speaker’s attempt to unleash the spirit of
his native land which has been hidden, and imprisoned, and made to look
monstrous by the subjugation of imperialism.

The key phrase in the first section of the poem (most of which is written in
prose) is the phrase that begins many paragraphs, and indeed, the poem
itself: “At the end of the wee hours.” Literally, this phrase refers to the
time immediately before sunrise and suggests someone who has been up
most of the night, throughout the wee hours. Figuratively, the phrase
suggests someone on the edge of an insight that is slowly dawning.
Indeed, what the reader finds in this first section is an exploration of the
city which focuses on observations of how the land’s history of rule by
France has twisted and distorted it.

The reference to “Josephine, Empress of the French, dreaming way up

there above the nigger scum,” is a good example of the type of image to
be found in this section. It refers to a statue of Josephine, robed in the
manner of the Napoleonic empire, which does in fact stand in the center
of the public square of Fort-de-France. The statue seems to pay no
attention to the “desolate throng under the sun,” meaning the people of
African descent who populate Martinique, and the populace feels no
connection to her. She is a symbol of the French empire, and a reminder
to the people that their culture and ethnicity is considered second class in
this city.

Other recurring phrases also provide a clue to what holds the various
images of this section together: “this town sprawled flat,” “this inert
town,” the narrator repeats several times, to emphasize the idea that this
is a town paralyzed in certain ways by colonialism. Other images of the
town crawling, of life lying prostrate, and of dreams aborted also give the
sense of a people struggling against a paralyzing burden.

The second section of the poem begins...

(This entire section contains 1279 words.)

Themes and Meanings

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Although the central thematic concern of the poem is the importance for
the person who lives as the subject of a colonized land to decolonize his or
her own mind and sensibility, one of the central paradoxes of the poem is
that it is written in French, the language of the colonialists, not in the
native Creole of the Martinican population. Indeed, in their brief
introduction to Aimé Césaire: The Collected Poetry (1983), Clayton
Eshleman and Annette Smith point out the paradox that Césaire, the
spokesperson for decolonizing the mind, who was later to become mayor
of Fort-de-France, the city on which he focuses in Return to My Native
Land, apparently never thought of Creole as a suitable language for his
poetry.

Further, the traditions from which the poem seems to borrow are largely
the traditions of French literature. Not only does the poem’s rush of
bizarre and often grotesque images seem to place it in the context of
French Surrealist literature, but, as Eshleman and Smith also note, the
images of hardship and misery seem to owe much to such images in the
works of Victor Hugo, the great French novelist of the nineteenth century,
whose works Césaire read as he was growing up.

A partial resolution of this apparent paradox can be seen through an

analogy to the writers of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920’s, who were
also greatly influential in Césaire’s poetry. The images of people from the
whole history of the black race that the narrator includes and identifies
with, may remind readers of Langston Hughes’s early poem, “The Negro
Speaks of Rivers”; similarly, the ending of the poem, in which he speaks of
transcending the binds and confines that have been placed on his people,
bears a similarity in tone and spirit to another Langston Hughes poem, “I,
Too, Sing America,” which talks of the inevitability of African Americans
being included in the mainstream of American life.
Similarly, the type of revolution that Césaire seems to be advocating in
this poem is not a revolution that results in the violent overthrow of the
past; rather, it is a revolution through inclusion. Toward the end of the
poem, the narrator speaks of rallying dances to his side, including the “ it-
is-beautiful-good-and-legitimate-to-be-a-nigger-dance, ” as if to say that
he wants to celebrate who he and his people are and can be, not dictate
who they cannot be or what they should not do.

Shortly thereafter, he says, “bind me with your vast arms to the luminous
clay/ bind my black vibration to the very navel of the world/ bind, bind me,
bitter brotherhood.” The image of being bound, which earlier implied
slavery, has been transformed here into an image of connection to the
natural world and to other people. He does not want to forget or forsake
his connection to the white-dominated French world. Rather, he wants to
have the chance to accept his connection to this world on his own terms,
and in a life-affirming way, rather than have the terms of this connection
dictated by imposed power structures.

To put this more directly, the task this narrator takes on is the task of
defining for himself a concept of his own negritude, starting from the
realities that have been imposed on the black population of his native
land by white, European colonizers. The fiery optimism of the last section
of the poem, with its unqualified lines of acceptance such as “I acceptI
accepttotally, without reservation,” is the optimism of someone who has
learned he can see beauty and create life even from within the ruins of a
system that has defiled the life and beauty of his land and people.

QUESTION AND ANSWERS

In Return to My Native Land, what places
does Césaire list in lines 300–363 and why?

Quick answer:
In Return to My Native Land, Césaire lists places that are associated with
slavery, from the ports of Bordeaux, Nantes, and Liverpool to the Southern
slave states of the USA and the islands of the Caribbean.

Understanding "Notebook of a
Return to the Native Land" by Aime
Cesaire
 ANAYA M. BAKER
  UPDATED:

NOV 18, 2023 10:14 AM EST

"Notebook of a Return to the Native Land"

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Understanding Cesaire

Aime Cesaire's epic poem "Notebook of a Return to the Native Land" can be difficult
to decipher due to Cesaire's unusual usage of metaphor, language, and poetic
rhythm. Published in 1947, "Notebook" could be considered a blend between Walt
Whitman's "Song of Myself" and W.E.B. DuBois' The Souls of Black Folk.

"Notebook," which explores themes of self and cultural identity, is the first expression
of the concept of negritude. "Negritude" became a central tenet of the civil rights
movement in the United States, as well as the "Black is Beautiful" cultural movement
in both North and South America. Cesaire was not only the creator of the negritude
movement but a prominent politician and public figure, a member of the surrealist
movement, and one of the most revered French-Caribbean writers of all time.

In addition to starting the negritude movement, Cesaire was also involved with
surrealism

Benedict Chukwukadibia Enwonwu's

History

Aime Cesaire grew up in Martinique, one of the French Caribbean islands, before
leaving for Paris to continue his studies. During the time that Cesaire grew up in the
islands, African identity was something largely absent from both literature and the
everyday lexicon. While many of the residents of the Caribbean had dark skin and
were the descendants of slaves, this heritage was generally regarded as a mark of
shame.

The dominant trend in society was a distancing of oneself and family as much as
possible from African origins. This meant speaking the language of the colonizing
country, France, and as in Cesaire's case, reading European literature and attending
schools strictly run in the fashion of the colonial country.

During his studies at the Lycee Louis-le-Grand in Paris, Cesaire began to study
African history and culture, eventually founding a magazine called "The Black
Student" with Senegalese scholar Leopold Sedar Senghor. It was during this
formative period that Cesaire began to realize the need for a redefinition of black
consciousness, one which would include the reclamation of history and a
strengthened sense of identity independent of colonial powers.

It was after Cesaire's graduation from the Lycee, on a holiday to Yugoslavia, that he
first began writing "Notebook." The poem tells the story of one young and idealistic
man's return to his home in Martinique after being away in Europe and addresses all
of the ideas that had been germinating during his stay in Paris. The speaker of the
poem is on a journey to confront history, the negative and the positive, and to find a
way to understand the identity of both himself and his people in light of that history.

Central Metaphor

The central metaphor of "Notebook" is that of trying on masks. As the poem's

narrator returns to his native town, he is struck by the perceived inertia of the
residents. They have become complacent to poverty, colonialism, and self-loathing.
The speaker of the poem wants to do something that will affect change in the black
people of his town. He wants to be the voice that heralds a metamorphosis of belief
and identity, but he is not sure how to begin.

The rest of the poem goes through a series of metaphors pertaining to masks of
identities. The speaker tries on first one mask of identity, then another, in hopes of
finding a means with which to motivate his people and force the reevaluation so
desperately needed. From the grandiose role of liberator, of speaker for all the
oppressed of the world, to the speaker for only the black people of the Caribbean, to
a descendant of a glorious African heritage, all of the masks are inadequate for the
task at hand. The poem alternates between ecstatically hopeful and deep despair as
the speaker is enamored and then disillusioned with his various masks.

Negritude

The epiphany or turn in the poem begins with the introduction of the concept of
negritude. While Cesaire explicitly spells out all of the things that negritude is not, he
never provides an exact definition for what negritude is exactly. Upon closer
analysis, it appears that negritude is more than a simple state, concept, or theory but
an action pertaining to intense self-analysis and redefinition.

The narrator of the poem is unable to create an idea of a people based solely on
African heritage and tradition, for as he states:

"No, we've never been Amazons of the king of Dahomey, nor princes of Ghana with
eight hundred camels, nor wise men in Timbuktu under Askia the Great ... I may as
well confess that we were at all times pretty mediocre dishwashers, shoeblacks
without ambition, at best conscientious sorcerers and the only unquestionable record
that we broke was that of endurance under the chicote [whip]..."

In order to create a new identity that is more than just fantasy or wishful thinking, the
narrator must accept both his African heritage as well as the legacy of slavery,
poverty, and colonialism. He will never be able to be a voice for his people or
represent the idea of an integrated, whole person if he does not face his very real
history. And negritude, more than just a feeling of pride in the color of one's skin or in
one's origins, is to be found within this process of self and cultural discovery.

Rising

At the conclusion of "Notebook," the narrator is humbled and has begun to

understand the process of his own negritude. Only then is he finally able to speak for
(and to) the inhabitants of his "native land."

These people, who he at first found "inert,' "sprawled-flat," a "throng which does not
know how to throng," can now metaphorically rise upwards. It is this confrontation
with his own origins, his own insecurities, his own self-hatred, and his conflicted past
that allows the speaker to be a voice to inspire others to transcend their passive and
horizontal identities. Writes Cesaire in the final pages of the poem:

Recommended

Adam Was Not the First Human, for the Bible Tells
Us So

"Reeking of fried onions the nigger scum rediscovers the bitter

taste of freedom in its spilled blood

And the nigger scum is on its feet

the seated nigger scum

unexpectedly standing
standing in the hold

standing in the cabins

standing on deck

standing in the wind

standing under the sun

standing in the blood

standing

and

free

and the lustral* ship fealessly advances on the crumbling water.

*lustral: Pertaining to a ritual of purification in ancient Roman society.

Comments

Emma Souders on November 02, 2018:

it was actually first published in 1939

Scholastika Paul on January 20, 2016:

Thanks am looking forward for more

Anaya M. Baker (author) from North Carolina on February 13, 2012:

Thanks Ron! I was thinking about it the other day, and the whole consciousness
redefinition issue really applies to so many groups. Maybe not so much any more in
the African-American community in the US, I think its been pretty sucessful, but
plenty of immigrant groups, and more recently LGBT groups are going through some
similar issues....

Ron Eldridge on February 13, 2012:

This is really a great hub thanks for sharing. The redefinition of Black consciousness
is compelling and vital to understanding and growing self-awareness. Great read.

Anaya M. Baker (author) from North Carolina on October 27, 2010:

Thanks:) I just read Christophe, good read! Unfortunately I took Spanish instead of
French in school, so I'm limited to the English-only versions. From what I hear,
Cesaire's writing loses a lot in translation...but even the translated versions I pick up
are pretty powerful!

France Travel Inf on October 27, 2010:

Great -- great hub! We have been reading Cesair (La tragedie de Roi Christophe)
thus this was a very interesting followup, I look forward to more.

http://www.france-travel-info.com

Notebook of a Return to the Native Land (1939)

By Aime Cesaire
Notebook of a Return to the Native Land is a mixture of prose and lyrical
poetry. There isn’t a logical narrative structure to this poem. Instead, the
poem consists of abrupt juxtapositions, shifts within themes and content,
and repetition of certain phrases and words that make this lyrical
narrative frustrating to read at times.

In this poem, Aime Cesaire calls forth for the unification of all black people
in various areas. He expresses the horrors of colonization and how it
positions blacks to be at the bottom of a hierarchal structure. He cites
various incidents of slavery and discrimination to support his points. In the
end, the narrator realizes that it’s his duty is to be a leader in his
community and also discovering and accepting his blackness as
something special and powerful.

There are two movements that contributed to Aime Cesaire’s writing. The
first is the art and literary movement known as “Surrealism.” In
surrealism, artists and writers are blending reality into dream-like settings
and vice versa. Artists and writers would allow the unconscious mind to
express itself in their work, creating illogical scenes where “objects don’t
appear as they are in reality. ” As a result, you can’t tell what is real and
what isn’t. The best example I can think of is the surrealist painter,
Salvador Dali. Now as a reader, you read these surrealistic moments when
Cesaire uses jargon from a specific region, phrases that describe objects
and nature in a manner where you have to guess the subject, and the
shifting juxtapositions embedded throughout the lyrical prose. The
grammar used isn’t illogical but rather, it is experimental and
automatistic, in which Cesaire lets his unconscious mind flow into his
words to the point where it can confuse the reader. There were moments
where I was confused as to what Cesaire was trying to say, but it wasn’t
because I’m an incompetent reader, but rather his way of writing is
unfamiliar. It takes a lot of patience and slow reading to try to fully grasp
what he’s trying to say.

The second movement that this text is associated with is the Negritude
movement during the 1930s. A movement that was founded by
Francophone scholars, writers, and politicians of the African diaspora. The
movement aimed to spread the power of Black consciousness around
Africa and areas where there is a large population of African ancestry. This
movement takes the derogatory term about black people and transforms
the term into something positive. They take ownership of the term and
cultivate an identity that empowers “blackness.” The Negritude
movement was influenced by the surrealist style of writing and have
written about topics such as “black” identity, African culture, and anti-
colonialism.

Notebook of a Return to the Native Land isn’t my type of poetry, but the
themes and issues discussed in this lyrical narrative are relatable for
those who are of African descent and are trying to appreciate their “black”
identity. In my opinion, if the city of Wakanda actually existed, this
book, Notebook of a Return to the Native Land, would be a text integrated
into their culture.

3/5

Haiti where negritude rose to its feet for the first time and said it believed in its own humanity; and
the comic little tail of Florida where they are just finishing strangling a negro; Africa gigantically
caterpillaring as far as the Spanish foot of Europe; the nakedness of Africa where the scythe of
Death swings wide.

Return to my Native Land by Aime Cesaire a single poem by the African activist. Cesaire was born
in the French Caribbean country of Martinique. He earned a scholarship to Lycee Louis-le-Grand,
created the literary review L'Etudiant Noir. Cesaire returned to Martinique in 1939 and taught at
Lycee Schoelcher. One of his students would play an important role in the French colony of Algeria,
Frantz Fanon. Cesaire played a role in his country's politics as a member of the Communist Party
and later forming the Parti Progressiste Martinuqais.

Cesaire started writing Return to my Native Land (Cahier d'un retour au pays natal) in 1936 while
while still in France. As a single poem it is rather long, but as a book it is short. Cesaire captures his
feelings and emotions on returning to his home country after studying in France. Martinique is
small. It covers 436 square miles and supports a population well under half a million people. Its
history is typical of a Caribbean colony. Its native people were beaten down and expelled from the
island. They are replaced with African slaves to work the new sugar plantations. The island changes
hands from Spain in 1493 to the French in 1635, to the British during the Seven Years War and the
Napoleonic Wars, and returned back to the French. The island suffered as a single commodity,
sugar, economy which eventually lead to the freeing of the slaves in 1848. In 1946 Martinique
became an Overseas Department of France and finally simply a department in 1974. It still relies
heavily on French aid.

Cesaire was active in government and a communist for sometime. Some explanation communist is
needed to understand exactly what it meant at the time. Countries like Martinique were under
colonial rule and had little if any autonomy as a nation. There was also the much the same
problems with the inhabitants of African descent after slavery ended, much the same as in the
United States. The enlightened act of freeing the slaves was not followed up with assurances of
liberty, equality, and fraternity. Cesaire makes this clear with the use of the derogatory term for a
black man. Communism, as an ideal, took root in these environments. The promise of removing the
yoke of colonial powers and the equality it promised all men was quite enticing. Here you have
people who are being exploited and controlled by power thousands of miles away under a system
called capitalism. To these people capitalism is not working so that simple leaves the alternative
system. Their concerns are local and not exporting world wide revolution. They simply desired
freedom.

Once you get a feel for the setting, which is very foreign for many, Cesaire's words take on new
meanings and a cause. It is not difficult to see the similarity in Cesaire and Fanon. Their styles
differ the sledgehammer of Fanon and the velvet hammer Cesaire, but both seek to find identity
beyond colonialism. Cesaire write in a mix of prose and poetry all of it lyrical in rhythm and surreal.
At times I felt as if I was on a raft in the ocean rocking on the rhythm and intensities of Cesaire's
voice. The poem has a great feel to it that helps convey the pointed political and cultural
messages. The lyrical feel reminded of reading the leaves of grass. You can lose yourself simply in
the rhythm on the words. Here though, the message is as important as the art. Cesaire is more
than just a voice calling for justice or the voice of protest. He is a French and captures that
particular style that makes French poetry unique.

His literary style is classified as negritude a rejection of colonial racism and a term developed by
Cesaire. He purposely chose to use the root Negre, the French equivalent to the American word
“n*gger.” He took it as a proud title. Sarte said negritude is the Hegelian dialectic to racism. This is
an interesting and unique look into colonial life and racism in a country other than America.
Ceasaire writing is impressive. Berger and Bostock's translation seems to be spot on. Steerforth
Press has done a great service re-releasing this translation. The only thing that would have made it
better would be a more detailed introduction for those without the historical background.
( )
evil_cyclist | Mar 16, 2020 |
An absolutely astounding poem. A must-read for any student or fan of poetry.

(Provided by publisher)( )
tldegray | Sep 21, 2018 |
Aimé Césaire is one of the key figures in postcolonial literature, and his Cahier is one of its seminal
texts, discussed on just about every course on the subject. In fact it's so seminal, and its historical
importance and relevance to later generations of writers are so well explained in the textbooks,
that it's scarcely ever necessary actually to look at it. Which is a shame, because as well as being a
key moment in literary history, it is an interesting and rewarding poem in its own right.

It's a surprisingly modest work in scale: a free-verse poem that takes up about thirty pages in print,
so that it's not at all inconceivable that it would fit into an actual "notebook" in manuscript. To
summarise something that can't and probably shouldn't be summarised, Césaire, who was
studying in Paris at the time, imagines himself revisiting Martinique, watching what's going on at
the break of dawn ("au bout du petit matin") from the point of view of a sparrow-hawk. And what
he sees is not attractive or nostalgic: everything is tainted with dirt and disease and the damage
done by slavery and colonialism. He looks back in time to see slaves being tortured by landowners,
or Toussaint Louverture in his cell in the Jura (surrounded by the "white death" of snow). He thinks
about a black man he has seen on a tram in Paris, apparently crushed by his sense of inferiority,
and he comes to the realisation that blackness - Négritude - is something to celebrate and assert.
The "great black hole" he wanted to drown himself in a little while ago is now the place where he
can fish out and exploit "the night's malevolent tongue".

There is a lot of anger here, but it's expressed in surprisingly beautiful and complex language.
Césaire was a poet first of all, even if he did end up devoting the last sixty years of his life to
politics. You can get a lot of enjoyment out of the sweep and rhythm of his words, and the baffling
variety of registers he uses. Unfortunately for us, he was also trained as a classics teacher, and had
a habit of pillaging the remoter reaches of the Latin and Greek dictionaries for words that ought to
but didn't - as yet - exist in French. When you read Cahier, it is often more difficult to come to
terms with these obscure classical coinages than with the handful of specifically Caribbean terms
he uses. At a few points this leads to real problems: crucially, for example, no-one has ever been
quite sure what Césaire meant by the last word of the text, verrition - it possibly has something to
do with turning or sweeping, but if so, why is it qualified by the adjective immobile?

(Rosello mostly translates these words into equally obscure or made-up English terms, to preserve
the difficulty of the original. Thus verrition becomes "revolvolution". This is probably a trick you can
only get away with in a parallel text: in a standalone translation it would be rather baffling.)

Eighty years on, it's easy enough to see the blind spots that weren't so evident in 1939 when the
first version of the Cahier appeared. There's a lot of declamatory Whitmanesque penis-waving, and
not much role for women in Césaire's view of the world; many people have pointed out how
négritude's simplistic race-based focus forces it to overlook many of the ethnic and social
complexities of the Caribbean, and more recently Patrick Chamoiseau and his co-authors in Éloge
de la Créolité have challenged Césaire's exclusion of Creole language and culture. (Chamoiseau's
novel Texaco is in many ways a direct challenge to the attitudes expressed in the Cahier, but it is
careful to treat Césaire the person and politician with considerable respect and affection.)

The Bloodaxe edition comes with a very comprehensive introductory essay by Professor Rosello,
who also did the parallel text translation. Without taking sides noticeably, she sets out the
background to the poem's composition and discusses its reception and current (1995) views of its
importance, and provides a fairly comprehensive bibliography. One rather striking omission is that
she doesn't get into any detail about the textual history of the poem, beyond remarking that it first
appeared almost unnoticed in a review called Volontés in 1939, and that it only really came to the
attention of the critics in a new edition with a preface by André Bréton in 1947. From what I've read
elsewhere I know that Césaire revised the poem quite heavily on at least three occasions, so it
seems at least odd not to mention which version of the text is being used and why.

If you can live with that, this edition seems to be a very good way to approach the poem if French
isn't your first language. Rosello's translation is fairly literal but by no means plodding, so
depending on how good your French is, you can switch back and forth between the original and the
translation quite comfortably.( )
3 thorold | Jan 24, 2016 |
Groundbreaking for its time but because of my bad French as much as the passing of years it didn't
speak to me.( )
poingu | Jan 23, 2016 |
Aime’ Cesaire’s “Return to My Native Land,” one of the great prose-poetry works of the twentieth
century, was parented by not one but three literary movements: the Negritude Movement, the
Harlem Renaissance, and French Surrealism. The book’s very rich suffusion of cultural and political
nuances may be attributed to the Harlem Renaissance and the Negritude Movement while its
linguistic dexterity and philosophical daring would have to acknowledge some allegiance to French
surrealism. The result is a masterful examination of a soul simultaneously created by and torn
between two cultural sensibilities: the European and the African. Like James Baldwin, Albert Camus,
and Frantz Fanon in their various works, Cesaire in “Return to My Native Land” take racism and
class oppression to task at the same time that he delves most deeply into the greater nature of the
human condition itself.