There is so much use of metaphor and similies in Notebook of a Return to the Native Land; it is poetry that totally blew me away for its strength, depth of feeling, and the sheer beauty of its style. So much so that it seems an impossible task to comment on the larger aspects of the themes of this novel and the writing style, at least in a blog post. I am therefore going to focus on one angle, minor for sure, but which intrigued me enough from the onset to start marking passages that alluded to… women.
The very first paragraph contains a line which made me laugh: “Calmer than a woman telling lies…” [referring to "paradises lost for him and his kin." So is the female sex better at keeping a straight face when necessity dictates that we embellish the truth? Perhaps we are better actors or have a more innate sense of cunning.]
Describing the throng of the inert town: “This throng which does not know how to throng, this throng, so perfectly alone under the sun, like a woman one thought completely occupied with her lyric cadence, who abruptly challenges a hypothetical rain and enjoins it not to fall…” [Women know the power of thought, bathed in a "lyric cadence." Life is a series of small dances, we must find the right steps to follow, and follow them unrelentlessly. Else... it might pour down with rain?]
A fleeting reference: “Christmas was not like other holidays. It didn’t like to gad about on the streets, to dance in public squares, to mount the carousel horses, to use the crowd to pinch women….” [This made me laugh and feel indignant at the same time, because when I lived in Bahrain, I experienced precisely this technique used by the local males to show 'interest' in foreign women, all of us wanton creatures for not covering ourselves up properly, of course. Césaire is good at capturing tiny behavioral details, and I believe he does this without any real prejudice.]
On Motherhood: “and my mother, whose legs pedal, pedal, night and day, for our tireless hunger, I was even awakened at night by these tireless legs which pedal the night and the bitter bite in the soft flesh of the night of a mother that pedals, pedals for our hunger and day and night.” [Poverty that erases all thought from the soul of a mother except that of how to feed the helpless mouths that must be fed, and she just keeps on and on because... what else can she do?]
Another simile with a sardonic smile: “…but can one kill Remorse, perfect as the stupified face of an English lady discovering a Hottentot skull in her soup tureen.” [not a commentary on the 'weaker sex' in my opinion, more a case of the powerful juxtaposition of 'English lady' and 'Hottentot skull in a soup tureen.' An image that says reams about colonialism, racism, and the 'dignified' culture of the Old Country.]
More imagery: “No women’s loincloths spread out on their shores…/ one still sees madras rags around the loins of women rings in their ears smiles on their lips babies at their nipples…” [women's loins are a re-curring image; a gateway to re-birth?]
I will leave you with this image, which is one of the softest in a novel of images that are often harsh and brutal, one that tiptoes through your mind with a subtle strength, and surely one of the most romantic in this beautiful work (from page 21):
voum rooh oh
that the promised times may return
and the bird who knew my name
and the woman who had a thousand names
names of fountain sun and tears
and her hair of minnows
and her steps my climates
and her eyes my seasons
and the days without injury
and the nights without offense
and the stars my confidence
and the wind my accomplice…
[Mother Earth?]
