Alejo Carpentier

Alejo Carpentier y Valmont (December 26, 1904 – April 24, 1980) was a Cuban novelist, essay writer, and musicologist who greatly influenced Latin American literature during its famous "boom" period.

Life

Early life and education

Carpentier was born in Lausanne, Switzerland. For a long time it was believed that he was born in Havana where his family moved immediately before his birth, but following his death a birth certificate was found in Switzerland. His mother was a Russian professor of languages and his father was a French architect. At 12, his family moved to Paris, where he began to study music theory at the lycee Jeanson de Sailly. When they returned to Cuba in the 1920s, he began a study of architecture which he never completed. He also studied music.^[1]

Cuba and exile in France

Carpentier became a cultural journalist, writing mostly about avant-garde developments in the arts, particularly music. Together with the composer Amadeo Roldán, he helped organize the Cuban premieres of works by Stravinsky and Poulenc. 1927, Carpentier was arrested for opposing the Gerardo Machado y Morales dictatorship and spent forty days in jail. It is during this brief period in jail when he started working on his first novel, Ecué-Yamba-O (1933), an exploration of Afro-Cuban traditions among the poor of the island, which he later disavowed for being superficial. He was released in early 1928. After his release, he escaped Cuba with the help of poet journalist Robert Desnos who had lent him his passport and papers.^[1]

While exiled in France, Carpentier was introduced to the surrealists by Desnos, including André Breton, Paul Eluard, Louis Aragon, Jacques Prévert, and Antonin Artaud. He also met Guatemalan author Miguel Angel Asturias, whose work on pre-Columbian mythology influenced his writing.^[1] He continued to earn his living writing, both in French and Spanish, on contemporary culture, as well as contributing to the Communist Party journal. While in France, he made several visits to Spain, during which he developed a fascination for the Baroque. In 1937 (during the Spanish Civil War) he attended an international conference in Madrid of writers against fascism.

Return to Cuba and years in Venezuela

Carpentier returned to Cuba and continued to work as a journalist at the outbreak of World War II. He also began research on a book published in 1946 as La musica in Cuba. He also wrote stories which were later collected in The War of Time (1958).^[1] While in Cuba, Carpentier also attended a voodoo ceremony that was to develop his interest in Afro-Cubanism.

In 1943, Carpentier, accompanied by French theatrical director Louis Jouvet, made a crucial trip to Haiti, during which he visited the fortress of the Citadelle La Ferriere and the Palace of Sans-Souci, both built by the black king Henri Christophe. This trip, along with readings from Oswald Spengler's cyclical interpretation of history, provided the inspiration for his second novel, The Kingdom of this World (1949).

In 1945, Carpentier moved to Caracas. From 1945 to 1959 he lived in Venezuela, which is the obvious inspiration for the unnamed South American country in which much of The Lost Steps is set. In 1949, he finishes his novel The Kingdom of this World. This novel has a prologue that "outlines Carpentier's faith in the destiny of Latin America and the aesthetic implications of its peculiar cultural heritage."^[1]

Later life

He returned to Cuba after the Fidel Castro's Communist revolution in 1959. He worked for the State Publishing House while he completed the baroque-style book, Explosion in a Cathedral (1962)."^[1] This novel discusses the advent of the Enlightenment and the ideas of the French Revolution in the New World. It has twin leitmotifs of the printing press and the guillotine and can be read as a "meditation on the dangers inherent in all revolutions as they begin to confront the temptations of dictatorship.".^[1] After reading the book Gabriel García Márquez is said to have discarded the first draft of One Hundred Years of Solitude and begun again from scratch.^[2]

In 1966, he settled in Paris as he served as Cuban ambassador to France. In 1975 he was the recipient of the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca. He received the Cervantes Prize in 1977 and the French Prix Médicis^{[citation needed]} in 1979.

Carpentier was struggling with cancer as he completed his final novel and he died in Paris on April 24, 1980. His remains were returned to Cuba for interment in the Colon Cemetery, Havana.

Themes and famous works

Widely known for his baroque style of writing and his theory of "lo real maravilloso," his most famous works include:

• Ecue-yamba-o! (Praised Be the Lord!, 1933)
• The Kingdom of this World (1949)
• The Lost Steps (1953)
• El acoso (1956) (Manhunt)
• War of Time (1958)
• El siglo de las luces (1962) (Explosion in a Cathedral)
• El recurso del método (1974) (Reasons of State)
• Concierto barroco (1974) (Concierto barroco), based on the 1709 meeting of Vivaldi, Handel and Domenico Scarlatti, with cameo appearances by Wagner and Stravinsky, and fictional characters from the new world who inspire the Venetian composer's opera, Motezuma.
• La consagración de la primavera (1978) (The Consecration of Spring)
• El arpa y la sombra (1978) (The Harp and the Shadow) dealing with Columbus.

It was in the prologue to The Kingdom of this World, a novel of the Haitian Revolution, that he described his vision of "lo real maravilloso:" "For what is the history of Latin America but a chronicle of "lo real maravilloso?" Some critics interpret the "real maravilloso" as being synonymous with magical realism.

Quotes

• "For what is the story of [Latin] America if not a chronicle of the marvealous in the real."^[3]

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b c d e f g} Colchie, p. 416–417
2. ^ González Echevarría
3. ^ Colchie, p. 'x'

Further Reading

Books:

• The logic of fetishism : Alejo Carpentier and the Cuban tradition / James J Pancrazio., 2004
• Carpentier's Baroque fiction : returning Medusa's gaze / Steve Wakefield., 2004
• Postmodern tales of slavery in the Americas : from Alejo Carpentier to Charles Johnson / Timothy J Cox., 2001
• Carpentier's Proustian fiction : the influence of Marcel Proust on Alejo Carpentier / Sally Harvey., 1994
• Myth and history in Caribbean fiction : Alejo Carpentier, Wilson Harris, and Edouard Glissant / Barbara Webb., 1992
• Alejo Carpentier, the pilgrim at home / Roberto González Echevarría., 1990
• Alejo Carpentier (Twayne World Author's Series) / Donald Leslie Shaw., 1985
• Alejo Carpentier : bibliographical guide / Roberto González Echevarría., 1983
• Carpentier, El reino de este mundo / Richard A Young., 1983
• Carpentier, Los pasos perdidos / Verity Smith., 1983
• Alchemy of a hero : a comparative study of the works of Alejo Carpentier and Mario Vargas Llosa / Bobs Tusa., 1983
• Alejo Carpentier, a comprehensive study / Bobs Tusa., 1982
• Alejo Carpentier and his early works / Frank Janney., 1981
• Three authors of alienation : Bombal, Onetti, Carpentier / Michael Ian Adams., 1975
• Alejo Carpentier : his Euro-Caribbean vision / Lloyd King., 1972

Articles:

• Kefala E / The dialectics of heresy and authority in Borges and Carpentier (Jorge Borges)

MLN 122 (2): 342-349 MAR 2007

• Warnes C / Magical realism and the legacy of German idealism

MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW 101: 488+ Part 2 APR 2006

• Kaup M / Becoming-baroque - Folding European forms into the new world baroque with Alejo Carpentier

CR-THE NEW CENTENNIAL REVIEW 5 (2): 107-149 FAL 2005

• Paravisini-Gebert L / A re-reading of Alejo Carpentier's The 'Kingdom of This World'

RESEARCH IN AFRICAN LITERATURES 35 (2): 114-127 SUM 2004

• Cohn D / Retracing The 'Lost Steps': The Cuban Revolution, the Cold War, and publishing Alejo Carpentier in the US

CR-THE NEW CENTENNIAL REVIEW 3 (1): 81-108 SPR 2003

• Gingerich S / Culture and anonymity - The other voice of Los 'pasos perdidos' (Reading Alejo Carpentier's novel)

CR-THE NEW CENTENNIAL REVIEW 1 (1): 229-255 SPR 2001

• Hanley S / 'Explosion in a Cathedral': Gnostic archetypes in a Lukacsian historical novel (Alejo Carpentier)

MESTER 29: 29-44 2000

• Handley GB / Oedipal and prodigal returns in Alejo Carpentier and William Faulkner

MISSISSIPPI QUARTERLY 52 (3): 421-458 SUM 1999

• Henighan S / Two paths to the Boom: Carpentier, Asturias, and the performative split

MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW 94: 1009-1024 Part 4 OCT 1999

• Unruh V / The performing spectator in Alejo Carpentier's fictional world

HISPANIC REVIEW 66 (1): 57-77 WIN 1998

• Millington MI / Gender Monologue in Carpentier 'Los Pasos Perdidos'

MLN-MODERN LANGUAGE NOTES 111 (2): 346-367 MAR 1996

• Castells R / The Hidden Intertext in Carpentier, Alejo 'Los Pasos Perdidos'

CONFLUENCIA-REVISTA HISPANICA DE CULTURA Y LITERATURA 10 (1): 81-88 FAL 1994

• Vassar A / The Function of Greek Myth in Carpentier, Alejo 'Los Pasos Perdidos'

NEOPHILOLOGUS 76 (2): 212-223 APR 1992

• Boldy S / Making Sense in Carpentier 'El Acoso'

MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW 85: 612-622 Part 3 JUL 1990lij:Alejo Carpentier

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