The young poet from Martinique, Aimé Césaire, wrote "Cahier d'un retour au pays natal" from 1935, while he was a student at the École normale supérieure in rue d'Ulm (in Paris). His inaugural poem appeared in August 1939, on the eve of the war in the review Volontés. The typescript of the poem sent by Césaire to his publisher is kept by the archives of the National Assembly. You can consult it in this edition, with a linearized transcription. A simplified transcription of the Notebook is also available, as well as its translation into English.
