Cahier d’un retour au pays natal or Return to my native land

Aimé Césaire

Background

This poem was originally written in French, so reading the translated version would not be the same; it wouldn’t capture the depth of the text and the soul of the author with the authentic message he wanted to communicate. Even if you know just a little bit of French, it would be worth to try reading the original version. It is an engaged poem with a strong political message denouncing colonisation, slavery, racism, highlighting the social injustices against the black populations, especially in the now French overseas territories (Martinique, Réunion, Guadeloupe…). The very first version was written in 1939 in Paris; Aimé Césaire had just finished his formation and was getting ready to leave the city in order to settle back in Martinique, his native land.

Summary and criticism

The recurring expression throughout the first part of the poem is “Au bout du petit matin” which can loosely be translated as “at the end of the early morning/ at daybreak/ at dawn/at the end of the little sunrise”; this sun rising is a metaphor translating the hope for a better day, it is also a metaphor that brings back the author, and by extension his community, to their actual reality; enduring injustices and oppression, not having a voice that would have the weight to alleviate their condition. In the poem, the author is constantly asking this little sunrise to go away, while calling it back. Confusion, pain, fatality and denial can be perceived, but at the same time, determination and hope; hope to start shaking things and cause a real change: Aimé Césaire says that his voice will be the voice of the misfortunes that are prevented to make any sound, that his voice will build and feed on the strength and freedom of the other voices that lost volume in the hole of desperation. He points out slavery and colonisation as the causes of his fight, his revolt; he wrote: What is directing my voice? Scratching my voice […] It is you, filthy hatred. You, the weight of the abuse and a hundred years of whiplash. You, a hundred years of my patience. His words carry a deep accusation towards slavery and colonial oppression; he is appealing a trial, a trial for recognition and compensation, he is exposing his story and the story of his people. Many other communities, especially the African ones, can find themselves and relate to his story. There is so much intensity, power and intent in his words when he says: only blood in my memory! There are lagoons in my memory. They are covered by skeleton heads. They are not covered by water lilies. […] On their borders are not women’s pagnes (loincloth, printed fabric very popular among African communities). My memory is covered by blood. My memory has his belt of dead bodies. Aimé Césaire is recounting the human loss from slavery, it is also a way of remembering and honouring those people who died, leaving behind their families, without causing any uproar nor revolts because their lives didn’t count that much. These people who died while being denied their human dignity by a community of people who claimed to be humanists following God’s will; he wrote: this country was calm, serene, saying that God’s Spirit could be found in his deeds.

The author also had a huge respect and admiration for his family, and especially for his mother; he wrote: and my mother whose legs pedal tirelessly because we are hungry, pedalling during the day, pedalling during the night, I am woken up in the middle of the night by her legs, never tired, pedalling at night, and the sound of a Singer (sewing machine) that my mother pedals, pedals because we are hungry, day and night. Respect for the parents and the family, and the value accorded to hard work is very much instilled and ingrained in most African societies. There is a lot of pride and dignity for parents to feed their family through their own hard work; begging does not belong to the fundamental African traditional values, and it may certainly be the same for the populations living in Martinique and the West Indies in general, since they originally emigrated from Africa. These values and conceptions are at the core of his poem; he is claiming back his identity, his humanity, his dignity, his pride, his roots, his values, the values of his community. He declares: I accept… I accept… entirely, without reservation, my race, that no ablution of hyssop and lily could purify. This statement embodies pride and confrontation, it can be understood as an answer to those who were claiming that the black people where a dirty race while the white people belonged to the pure and clean race, creating and deepening this inferiority complex which is the root of many problems in our current society.

There are also many metaphors and hyperboles that account for this negated identity and dignity that nurtured this inferiority complex:

p. 52 My race, ripe grape for drunken legs.

p.55-56 My unusual geography; the world map made for my use only, not painted with the scholars’ arbitrary colours, but with the geometry of my scattered blood, I accept.

p.56 And the negro, more marginalised day after day, more coward, more barren, less deep, more scattered, further away from his identity, his values, more deceptive towards his own self, less in touch with his own self.

p.58-59 Those who will never have any consolation because they were not made in the image of God, but in the likeness of the devil, those who consider themselves as second class citizen […] those who live in their own dark hole […] those who say to Europe: “look, I know, like you, how to bow down, like you, how to pay homage, thus, I am no different than you; don’t pay attention to my dark skin: it is the sun that burnt me”.

p.59-60 And they put in his head that only fatality was awaiting him […] that he didn’t have power over his own future, that a mad god had written for eternity a series of limitations for him […] he honestly believed that he was a disgrace, without the perverse curiosity to ever look at the fatal hieroglyphs.

p.60 And it never came to his mind that he could hoe, dig, cut something, something else than the insipid sugar cane.

We perceive through these words and images a lot of pain, and this desire found in many people within the black community then to deny themselves, their culture, values and traditions, recklessly trying to adopt and clone those of the Europeans, clearly begging to be accepted and welcomed in their circle; begging to belong, to be acknowledged, to be considered. Also, when referencing the hieroglyphs, Césaire alludes to the fact that black ancient Egypt is at the origin of the world civilisations; a truth that had long been hidden and distorted by the colonisers in order to reinforce their ideological, cultural and intellectual domination on the colonised populations.

The end of the poem has bittersweet tones; Aimé Césaire mentions the death of his grandfather and through this, the death of this generation of slaves that he describes as very submissive and willing. There is obviously sadness in losing a loved one, but there is also hope for the rise of a new generation with a more open mind and free spirit; accepting of her biologic and phenotypic characteristics, accepting of her culture and traditional legacy, accepting of her black identity. In the same dynamic, the author affirmed: I say hurray! The old negritude, progressively, becomes cadaveric, the horizon becomes undone, takes some steps back and widens, and here it is, among the shredding of the clouds, a dazzling sign, the slave ship is falling apart, on every side… Its stomach is convulsing and echoing… And the “negraille” is standing (“negraille” is a neologism to design the negroes as they were pejoratively called by the slave masters), standing and free. But no, the inequal sun is not enough for me anymore. This last verse particularly summarises the whole poem, a cry for freedom, a call for independence, calling a whole generation to rise and stand together, to fight for a real share, a better share, a fair share.

Keeping in mind that the poem was written in Paris, not many eves away from a permanent departure, leaving behind a life, friends, habits, we feel even more privileged to be taken on a journey with the author; a journey through his souvenirs, his fears, doubts and apprehensions. We navigate through so many mixed feelings; a longing for home, a fear to be disappointed, a sadness to face and rediscover the poverty his people lived in, anger against the people that denied and were still denying the rights and human dignity of his people. Also hope and drive, a pressing desire to raise his voice, a pressing desire to speak for them, a pressing desire to fight and make things better.

This poem is very deep and reflects the state of mind of the author, shaped by his experiences and this desire to build a better world with better opportunities for the future generations of his community. Hence, the title of the poem can be understood not only as a return to his native land, but also as a return to his cultural foundations, his cultural identity, his real values and beliefs, a return to a reality that had been too far, maybe for too long, a return to take on the fight he should have started long ago…

Note: I only read the French version of the poem and I myself translated the verses without reference to the English version. Hence, if you have the English version, the page numbers as well as the expressions may differ.