Césaire Reimagines a Return to Martinique

In August 1939, the Parisian literary periodical Volontes published the first edition of Cahier d'un retour au pays natal by the Martinican author Aime Cesaire. The publication emerged just as Cesaire was leaving metropolitan France to return to Martinique to begin working as a schoolteacher. Prior to its appearance in Volontes under the direction of Georges Pelorson, the manuscript had encountered initial rejection from the journal Cahiers du sud. Blending poetry and prose into a single book-length structure, the work emerged as an inquiry into the cultural identity of black people in colonial settings.

The poem did not remain in its original 1939 format, instead undergoing significant textual development across several distinct stages of Cesaire's life. In 1947, two expanded editions appeared, incorporating heightened surrealist features. One of these versions was issued in New York by the publisher Brentano's, and another was released in Paris by Editions Bordas. Both editions included a prefatory essay by surrealist leader Andre Breton, who had first published his tribute under the title Un grand poete noir in the New York-based journal Hemispheres in 1943.