In the middle of his poem, “Notebook of a Return to the Native Land”, which details the experiences of a man during his to his homeland, author Aimé Césaire describes the narrator’s hypocrisy when he writes:
“You must know the extent of my cowardice
One evening on the streetcar facing me, a ni**er…
He was COMICAL AND UGLY,
COMICAL AND UGLY for sure.
I displayed a big complicitous smile…
My cowardice rediscovered!” (Césaire 29-30).
The narrator, while on a streetcar, describes a black man in extremely ugly and unflattering terms, painting a stereotypical and offensive picture of the black man that the white man would have seen in colonial – and unfortunately sometimes present – times. The narrator then goes on, in a melancholic and depressed tone, to point out his own hypocrisy: he believes that he truly can make a difference in the social constructs surrounding his race and situation in life, but he then proceeds to fall prey to the very thing he is trying to eradicate. This is a very accurate depiction of the mindset of the colonized man that is present and depicted in various other works of colonial discourse, including The Colonizer and the Colonized by Albert Memmi. This mindset is particularly prevalent when considering the disparity between the opportunities the colonized and colonizers are afforded in life. It is a pattern that recurs throughout the entire poem, and is intentional by Césaire in that it demonstrates the cyclic manner of thinking that the colonized go through as a result of their oppressed situation, a manner of thinking that persists even centuries after the atrocities that occurred. This cyclic pattern is present in the structure of the poem, as well, as the narrator is detailing his journey home from Europe, ending a complete circle in Martinique. What do these cyclic patterns represent for the colonized and how their history affects their future?
The central event in this poem is the narrator’s reactions to what he sees in his home town, and he uses a variety of metaphors – such as a slave on a slave ship (Césaire 47-48) – as he tries to understand why there is this sense of complacency and acceptance in his people. The narrator calls himself out for falling into this same pattern and mindset, showing that it is unfortunately deeply ingrained within the people, when he says “Hail to the three centuries which uphold my civil rights and my minimized blood. / My heroism, what a farce! / This town fits me to a t” (Césaire 30). As a result, the narrator struggles with his identify throughout the entire poem, and is unsure how to fit his history into his present day identity; in this respect, there is the recurring idea of Negritude, one meaning of which is the reclaiming of African history, legacy, and consciousness. There is a cyclic nature where there is a rejection of history, but also an acceptance of what happened. The narrator is trying to spark a change in his people, which is seen near the end of the poem “And the ni**er scum is on its feet… / standing and free” Césaire 47-48). This revolution is paralleled in Memmi’s work, where he describes one of the only two solutions for the colonized as revolt. However, he describes a self-loathing, following by a self-acceptance, and finally ending with a tension where the colonized is unable to “correspond with himself” (Memmi 140). This is another cyclic pattern that results in revolt, and ends in discord in the identity of the self. This cyclic pattern has great effects on the colonized person, as Memmi writes “the right balance being found, the self-accusation continues… his alienation must completely cease. We must await the complete disappearance of colonization – including the period of revolt” (140-141). But, as can be seen in Césaire’s poem, the disappearance of colonization does not equate a sense of identity. This is a problem that can, and does, persist for centuries.
This cyclical pattern is also present in the rest of Césaire’s poem, where he presents
contrasting points of view that show the narrator’s acceptance of the difficulties in establishing Negritude. He utilizes multiple references to the history and legacy of the black man, describing his memory as “encircled in blood. / My memory has a belt of corpses! / and machine gun fire or rum barrels…” (Césaire 25), and then circles back to present day as a way to connect the two, pointing out that they are both extremely relevant and cannot exist without the other. As he does this, he incorporates a heavy dose of surrealism throughout the entire poem, where his metaphors do not seem to mesh well, but create a whole out of the chaos. In this respect, there is another cyclic pattern – he switches from a revolutionary and optimistic voice, to one accepting of his fate; a voice that ignores its history, to one that embraces it. Memmi wrote “Assimilation being abandoned, the colonized’s liberation must be carried out through a recovery of self and of autonomous dignity” (Memmi 128) and this can be seen in Césaire’s poem where he ultimately embraces the idea that the process of Negritude, especially his own, is a long and arduous process; he circles around this manner of thinking throughout the poem, hinting at his conclusion.
Césaire’s poem is one that pushes against the boundaries of colonialism and its effects, but, as it says in the poem, it takes a lot to eradicate and correct the mistakes of the colonizers. “Notebook of a Return to the Native Land” was originally written in 1947, and is still relevant when read in conjunction with other pieces of colonial discourse, a testament to the fact that colonialism is still felt in the world today. Césaire discusses his attempts at fixing the problem, within himself first, and hopes that it will bleed out into his people. He does this through his development of Negritude, and the idea of reclaiming African consciousness. He was the first to use the term, and will not be the last.