SOURCE: Pallister, Janis L. “Return.” In Aimé Césaire, pp. 1-28. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1991.

In the following essay, Pallister analyzes in detail Césaire's Cahier d'un retour au pays natal as a work that traces the poet's long journey from a place of alienation from his culture to an eventual acceptance and pride in his cultural background.

Cahier d'un retour au pays natal—the title alone tells us much. It informs us of the poem's modernity: it says the poem is a “notebook”—certainly not a formal or traditional genre. It speaks of return, after many physical voyages the world over, after many spiritual voyages in which the native land has been spurned as a source of embarrassment. Not only return but a return, and a significant one. An archetypal return or nostos, one not unlike that of the prodigal son. A return to the land of...