Alejo Carpentier
Encyclopedia
Alejo Carpentier y Valmont (December 26, 1904 – April 24, 1980) was a Cuba
n novelist, essayist, and musicologist who greatly influenced Latin American literature
during its famous "boom" period
. Born in Lausanne
, Switzerland
, Carpentier grew up in Havana
, Cuba
; and despite his European birthplace, Carpentier strongly self-identified as Cuban throughout his life. He traveled extensively, particularly in France, and to South America and Mexico, where he met prominent members of the Latin American cultural and artistic community. Carpentier took a keen interest in Latin American politics and often aligned himself with revolutionary movements, such as Fidel Castro
's Communist Revolution in Cuba in the mid-century. Carpentier was jailed and exiled for his leftist political philosophies.
With a developed knowledge of music, Carpentier explored musicology, publishing an in-depth study of the music of Cuba
, La música en Cuba and integrated musical themes and literary techniques throughout his works. He explored elements of Afro-Cuban
ism and incorporated the cultural aspects into the majority of his writings. Although Carpentier wrote in a myriad of genres, such as journalism, radio drama, playwrighting, academic essays, opera and libretto, he is best known for his novels. He was among the first practitioners of magical realism using the technique, lo real maravilloso to explore the fantastic quality of Latin American history and culture. The most famous example of Afro-Cuban influence and use of lo real maravilloso is Carpentier's 1949 novel El reino de este mundo (The Kingdom of this World
) about the Haitian revolution of the late 18th century.
Carpentier's writing style integrated the resurgent Baroque
style, or New World Baroque style that Latin American artists adopted from the European model and assimilated to the Latin American artistic vision. With a first-hand experience of the French Surrealist movement, Carpentier also adapted the Surrealist theory to Latin American literature. Always eager to explore more than Cuban identity, Carpentier used his traveling experiences throughout Europe and Latin American to expand his understanding of Latin American identity. Carpentier wove elements of Latin American political history, music, social injustice and art into the tapestries of his writings, all of which exerted a decisive influence on the works of younger Latin American and Cuban writers like Lisandro Otero
, Leonardo Padura and Fernando Velázquez Medina. Carpentier died in Paris in 1980 and was buried in Havana's Colon Cemetery with other Cuban political and artistic luminaries.
, Switzerland
, to Jorge Julián Carpentier, a French architect, and Lina Valmont, a Russian language teacher. For a long time it was believed that he was born in Havana
, where his family moved immediately after his birth; however, following Carpentier's death, his birth certificate was found in Switzerland.
In 1912, Alejo and his family moved from Cuba
to Paris. He also spoke French and as an adolescent, he read Balzac, Flaubert, and Zola. In 1921, Carpentier attended the School of Architecture of the University of Havana. When he was 18, his parents' marriage broke up and his father abandoned the family. The following year, Carpentier left his studies and tried to find work to support his mother. He turned to journalism, working for the Cuban newspapers Carteles and Social. He also studied music.
During 1923 and 1924 he continued to work as a columnist and also edited musical and theatre reviews for La Discusión and El Heraldo de Cuba. In 1927, with the help of Jorge Mañach, Juan Marinello, Francisco Ichaso, and Martí Casanovas, he became a founding member of Revista de Avance, a magazine devoted to nationalism, radicalism and new ideas in the arts. The first issue appeared on March 15, 1927; it lasted until September 15, 1930, and became the "voice of the vanguard" and the primary voice of expression of the Cuban movement. Because of his involvement in such projects, Carpentier was often suspected of having subversive and ultramodern cultural ideas. Carpentier was arrested in 1927 for opposing Gerardo Machado y Morales dictatorship and had signed a democratic and anti-imperialist manifesto against Machado's regime and, as a result, spent forty days in jail. During this brief period in jail he started working on his first novel, Ecué-Yamba-O, an exploration of Afro-Cuban traditions among the poor of the island. (The book was eventually completed in 1933.) After his release, he escaped Cuba with the help of journalist Robert Desnos
who lent him his passport and papers. Carpentier decided on a voluntary exile to France and arrived in Paris in 1928; he remained there until 1939, when he returned to Havana. When he left Cuba, he was fortunate enough to avoid the political conflicts which had occurred during the 1930s. During this time certain positions were unacceptable to the authorities and Cuban intellectuals were forced to define their political position and for these and other political reasons he decided to leave.
During this time abroad, his disconnection from Cuba and the interaction with different groups of intellectuals and artists in Paris helped with his ‘critical vision’. Carpentier felt that it was important for him to remain outside of the influences of movements because he believed in maintaining a “balance against the insularity of his homeland”. Upon arriving in Paris he immediately began working on poems and editorials in Parisian and Cuban magazines. Contributions to the Parisian Journal such as the short story "Cahiers du Sud" (1933), in French, were an effort to acquire European readers as a way to improve his recognition. He also contributed to the magazines Documents and L’Intransigeant. Carpentier was familiar with the activities of the Comité de Jeunes Revolutionnaires Cubains, a group of exiled Cuban leftists who had published La Terreur á Cuba, a brochure against the Machado government. He documented the latest news about this group and their activities in his book Homenaje a nuestros amigos de Paris. It was also during this time that, with the help of Robert Desnos, Carpentier became part of the surrealist movement which became a positive influence in his work. While in France, Carpentier also founded a literary magazine called Imán in 1931, for which he became editor-in-chief. Most of the authors who worked with him in La Revolution Surrealiste also contributed works in Imán under the title “Conocimiento de America”. Carpentier contributed the short story Histoire de Lunes (1933); it was experimental for its time as it contained elements of fantasy and folklore characterized as magical reality.
Surrealism helped Carpentier to see contexts and aspects, especially those of American life, which he did not see before and after working among the leading artistic figures for some time, Carpentier did not feel overly enthusiastic about his work within surrealism and had felt that his “surrealist attempts ha[d] been in vain” describing his frustration, as he felt he had “nothing to add to this movement in France".
As Carpentier became acquainted with those among the arts community he had several encounters to meet other famous authors such as Pablo Neruda
, who had sent him a draft of his book “Residencia el la Tierra” to review; Guatemalan author Miguel Ángel Asturias
, whose work on pre-Columbian mythology influenced his writing; and Pablo Picasso
, an introduction made possible through Carpentier's connection with friends in the arts.
Throughout his time in France Carpentier was occupied with not only literary works, but also other projects that kept him engaged within the arts. He collaborated with French composer Marins François Gaillard on the musical Yamba-O, “a burlesque tragedy”, that was presented in the Théâtre Beriza in Paris (1928); and with composer Amadeo Roldán
helped organize the Cuban premieres of works by Stravinsky and Poulenc
. In film, Carpentier wrote text and edited music for the French documentary Le Vaudou. He continued to earn his living by writing on contemporary culture, both in French and Spanish. He also began working for a French radio station as a sound-technician and producer. From 1932 until 1939 Carpentier worked on several projects produced by Foniric Studios. He directed the production of Le Livre de Christophe Colomb and collaborated with Desnos on arranging readings of Edgar Allan Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue, and Walt Whitman’s Salute to the World. Although abroad, Carpentier still maintained contact with Cuba by sending articles and poems to contribute to Havana publications such as Ensayos Convergentes.
When the Machado regime came to an end in 1933, Carpentier decided to make plans to return to his native land to visit, and in 1936 he made the trip back to Cuba. The time he had spent in Paris for over eleven years had enriched and "oriented his expressive abilities". Carpentier himself inidicated that he was tiring of Paris, and "...in 1939 without any other reason than the nostalgia of Cuba, I vacated my apartment and started the return to La Havana".
, Carpentier made a crucial trip to Haiti
, during which he visited the fortress of the Citadelle Laferrière
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, El Reino de Este Mundo (The Kingdom of this World
) (1949).
Carpentier returned to Cuba and continued to work as a journalist
at the outbreak of World War II. He worked on a history of Cuban music
, eventually published in 1946 as La música en Cuba.
, which is the inspiration for the unnamed South American country in which much of his novel The Lost Steps takes place.
He wrote short stories which were later collected in The War of Time (1958). While in Cuba, Carpentier attended a santería
ceremony that was to further deepen his interest in Afro-Cubanism.> In 1949, he finished 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."
's Communist revolution in 1959. He worked for the State Publishing House while he completed the baroque-style book, El Siglo de las Luces (Explosion in a Cathedral
) (1962). 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." 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.
In 1966, Carpentier settled in Paris where 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 was recipient of the French Laureates Prix Médicis
étranger in 1979 for La harpe et l'ombre.
Carpentier was struggling with cancer as he completed his final novel, El arpa y la sombra, and finally died in Paris on April 24, 1980. His remains were returned to Cuba for interment in the Colon Cemetery, Havana
.
, that he described his vision of lo real maravilloso: "But what is the history of Latin America but a chronicle of magical realism?". The novel itself develops the outlandish (but true) history of Henri Christophe
, first king of Haiti, as an example of how the real history of Latin America is so strange as to appear fictional. Some critics interpret the real maravilloso as being synonymous with magical realism. However, Carpentier's theory and its development in his work are more limited in their scope than is the magical realism of, for example, Gabriel García Márquez. Whereas García Márquez's works include events that the reader never mistakes for reality (rainfall of flowers, old men with wings, etc.), Carpentier, for the most part, simply writes about extreme aspects of the history and geography of Latin America, aspects that are almost unbelievable, but that are in fact true.
Early in his career Carpentier collaborated with other young musicians eager to explore Cuban musical roots. One such collaborator was Amadeo Roldán
a French musician of Cuban background. They helped to organize the Cuban premiere of popular orchestral music of the era Conciertos de música nueva (Concerts of New Music), featuring composers such as Stravinsky, Milhaud
, Ravel, Malipiero
, Poulenc and Eric Satie. In regards to their own music, Carpentier and Roldán were far more interested in integrating African rhythms and melodies into their works and abandoned imitation of European musical styles. "¡Abajo la lira, arriba el bongó!" (Down with the lyre, up with the bongo!) was the popular slogan for their style of music. Carpentier and Roldán collaborated on numerous works; including the 1925 orchestral piece Obertura sobre temas cubanos (Overture on Cuban Themes) which was regarded as scandalous for its betrayal of what was seen as the proper European-style symphony in favor of Afro-Cuban inspired music. Other well-known collaborations between the two included Tres pequeñas poemas: Oriente, Pregón, Fiesta negra (Three little poems) produced in 1926, and two Afro-Cuban ballets: La Rebambaramba, a colonial ballet in two parts (1928) and El milagro de Anaquille (1929).
Carpentier's interest in music had great influence on his prose writing. Navarro suggests that readers of Carpentier's works are more listeners than they are readers. Lyrical use of colloquial dialects, literary rhythms such as alliteration and assonance and the theme of music within the world of the narrative (drums, footsteps, etc.) are a few examples of music's influence over Carpentier's work. In an interview the author himself was quoted as saying, "Music is present in all of my work." For Carpentier, analysis of Cuban identity was grounded in the analysis of Cuban music. As such, for Carpentier to better understand Cuban identity through his work, he eagerly integrated music into his writing.
Particularly fascinated with the overwhelming influence of African music in Cuban music, Carpentier introduced Afro-Cuban influenced music called lo afrocubano, (i.e. heavily improvised and rhythm based music) into what was deemed more formal music venues dependent on European styles, called lo guajiro. Carpentier once wrote that lo guajiro was, "very poetic, but lo guajiro is not music...On the other hand, in mestizo and black music...the rich material has an incredible wealth to it...to make it the work of national expression." Because of racial tensions between white Cubans and black and criollo
Cubans, such preferences were not well received by the Cuban elite of the mid century. Carpentier devoted the majority of his musicology research to the Afro-Cuban
influences present in Cuba. For example, Carpentier paid particular attention to Contradanza
, a wildly popular Cuban dance derived from the European style of music and dance, Contredanse. The ample room left for musical improvisation and the element of group dance were easily adapted into African musical tradition where improvisation and dance play integral roles. Hence, a hybrid musical form unique to Cuba was created. Carpentier argued that the improvisation inherent in African influenced music allowed for varied interpretations that catalyzed regional differences and therefore regional identity, and concluded that this was why Cuba had such a varied musical identity.
of the 18th century when the African slaves fought the French colonists for their freedom and basic human rights. The novel combines not only historical references of the event with aspects of African faith and rituals, most notably voodoo; but also the connections between corporeal and spiritual self. The story is seen through the eyes of the protagonist Ti Noël, a black slave. Being a white, European/Cuban writer who published on the subject of the Haitian Revolution, it has been implied that Carpentier chose to write from Ti Noël's point of view so that he would avoid being criticized for any racial stereotyping. Carpentier incorporates symbolic architecture throughout the novel; representing the dictatorship of colonial rule with structures such as the Sans-Souci Palace
and the fortress of La Ferrière.
starting from the sixteenth century with the arrival of European explorers, until the present day of publication, the mid-twentieth century. The blending of different cultures—black, white, mulattos, criollos
and natives—mirrors the blending of Cuba’s two main musical styles, the Christian European music and the elemental percussion and rhythm based music of the transported Africans and aboriginal peoples of the island. The book includes a general history of music in colonized Latin America, but mainly focuses on Cuban styles of music and dance, influential Cuban musicians and Cuban musical identity. Carpentier devotes a great deal of his study to exploring the influence African descendants had on Cuban music. He has an entire chapter titled, “Los Negros” ("The Blacks") that explores the many substantial ways African music influenced all of Latin American music. According to Carpentier, the African influence on Cuban music in particular was deliberately concealed by the colonist prejudice of 18th and 19th century Cuba. At the time of the book's publication many white Cubans were reluctant to even acknowledge the blending of the cultures much less investigate it. Carpentier, though, was eager to do so, and by making bold statements about Cuba’s past and integral relationships with a wide range of cultures he succeeded in giving back to Cuba an in-depth academic perspective of its own cultural identity through its music.
style dates back to the cultural period of the 17th and early 18th centuries. It is most often defined as "the dominant style of art in Europe between the Mannerist and Rococo
eras, a style characterized by dynamic movement, overt emotion and self-confident rhetoric". Carpentier first became fascinated with this style in architecture and sculpture; however, he later describes el barroco as un espíritu, and not un estilo histórico ("a spirit, not an historical style"). Wakefield insists that this attitude towards the Baroque stemmed from Carpentier's background in both Europe and Latin America which allowed him to take on a superior front in the face of post-colonialism and ultimately have the literary upper-hand where he could use European style to tell the Latin American story. Carpentier developed his vision of the baroque in his early works before he described himself as a baroque writer. He experimented with the technique in several developmental stages: "first as a cultural style of aesthetic fascination, later as a literary device to create period ambience, and finally as a weapon of postcolonial pride, defiance and one-upmanship".
This style strongly presents itself when comparing works such as the early Ecue-Yamba-O to the celebrated El reino de este mundo, regarding Carpentier's use of more historically eloquent vocabulary in the latter, instead of the authentic language of the ethnically-inspired characters. Here he escapes the stereotype of "nativism" by incorporating European standards, but continues to achieve a sense of normalcy without the expected use of the colloquialisms which the protagonist Ti Noel would undoubtedly use.
Kaup claims that Carpentier utilizes what is known as the "New World Baroque", since Latin America didn't come into contact with the Enlightenment or "European modernity". This contraconquista (counter conquest) allows the New World authors to experiment with new identities and the manners of expressing them. As such, Carpentier observed in his 1975 essay that "American Baroque develop[ed] along with criollo culture ...: the awareness of being Other, of being new, of being symbiotic, of being a criollo; and the criollo spirit is itself a Baroque spirit." This criollo of the New World Baroque is often seen as the dominant style of European literature emerging as a subordinate literary construction in Latin America.
movement. Taken with Surrealist theory, Carpentier absorbed much of it from his contemporaries, mainly his friend and colleague, the Parisian journalist Robert Desnos
. Striving to portray unlikely beauty, termed, "the third beauty", Surrealist theory embraced unique perspectives of the world. Within the Surrealist theory was the concept of Primitivism
or a reverence for presiding folkloric tradition. Carpentier, inspired by French Surrealists, learned to view his Cuban home in this new light. He left France with a bursting sense of Cuban and Latin American pride and the artistic goal to capture what it meant to be both.
Spanish
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
n novelist, essayist, and musicologist who greatly influenced Latin American literature
Latin American literature
Latin American literature consists of the oral and written literature of Latin America in several languages, particularly in Spanish, Portuguese, and indigenous languages of the Americas. It rose to particular prominence globally during the second half of the 20th century, largely due to the...
during its famous "boom" period
Latin American Boom
The Latin American Boom was a literary movement of the 1960s and 1970s when the work of a group of relatively young Latin American novelists became widely circulated in Europe and throughout the world...
. Born in Lausanne
Lausanne
Lausanne is a city in Romandy, the French-speaking part of Switzerland, and is the capital of the canton of Vaud. The seat of the district of Lausanne, the city is situated on the shores of Lake Geneva . It faces the French town of Évian-les-Bains, with the Jura mountains to its north-west...
, Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
, Carpentier grew up in Havana
Havana
Havana is the capital city, province, major port, and leading commercial centre of Cuba. The city proper has a population of 2.1 million inhabitants, and it spans a total of — making it the largest city in the Caribbean region, and the most populous...
, Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
; and despite his European birthplace, Carpentier strongly self-identified as Cuban throughout his life. He traveled extensively, particularly in France, and to South America and Mexico, where he met prominent members of the Latin American cultural and artistic community. Carpentier took a keen interest in Latin American politics and often aligned himself with revolutionary movements, such as Fidel Castro
Fidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011...
's Communist Revolution in Cuba in the mid-century. Carpentier was jailed and exiled for his leftist political philosophies.
With a developed knowledge of music, Carpentier explored musicology, publishing an in-depth study of the music of Cuba
Music of Cuba
The Caribbean island of Cuba has developed a wide range of creolized musical styles, based on its cultural origins in Europe and Africa. Since the 19th century its music has been hugely popular and influential throughout the world...
, La música en Cuba and integrated musical themes and literary techniques throughout his works. He explored elements of Afro-Cuban
Afro-Cuban
The term Afro-Cuban refers to Cubans of Sub Saharan African ancestry, and to historical or cultural elements in Cuba thought to emanate from this community...
ism and incorporated the cultural aspects into the majority of his writings. Although Carpentier wrote in a myriad of genres, such as journalism, radio drama, playwrighting, academic essays, opera and libretto, he is best known for his novels. He was among the first practitioners of magical realism using the technique, lo real maravilloso to explore the fantastic quality of Latin American history and culture. The most famous example of Afro-Cuban influence and use of lo real maravilloso is Carpentier's 1949 novel El reino de este mundo (The Kingdom of this World
The Kingdom of this World
The Kingdom of This World is a novella by Cuban author Alejo Carpentier, published in 1949 in his native Spanish and first translated into English in 1957. A work of historical fiction, it tells the story of Haiti before, during, and after the Haitian Revolution as seen by its central character,...
) about the Haitian revolution of the late 18th century.
Carpentier's writing style integrated the resurgent Baroque
Baroque
The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...
style, or New World Baroque style that Latin American artists adopted from the European model and assimilated to the Latin American artistic vision. With a first-hand experience of the French Surrealist movement, Carpentier also adapted the Surrealist theory to Latin American literature. Always eager to explore more than Cuban identity, Carpentier used his traveling experiences throughout Europe and Latin American to expand his understanding of Latin American identity. Carpentier wove elements of Latin American political history, music, social injustice and art into the tapestries of his writings, all of which exerted a decisive influence on the works of younger Latin American and Cuban writers like Lisandro Otero
Lisandro Otero
Lisandro Otero González was a Cuban novelist and journalist.Born in Havana, Cuba, Otero won the National Prize of Literature in 2002, and was the director of Cuban Academy of Language since October 2004 to his death. He also was a member of The Royal Academy of Spanish Language and Member of the...
, Leonardo Padura and Fernando Velázquez Medina. Carpentier died in Paris in 1980 and was buried in Havana's Colon Cemetery with other Cuban political and artistic luminaries.
Early life and education
Carpentier was born on December 26, 1904 in LausanneLausanne
Lausanne is a city in Romandy, the French-speaking part of Switzerland, and is the capital of the canton of Vaud. The seat of the district of Lausanne, the city is situated on the shores of Lake Geneva . It faces the French town of Évian-les-Bains, with the Jura mountains to its north-west...
, Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
, to Jorge Julián Carpentier, a French architect, and Lina Valmont, a Russian language teacher. For a long time it was believed that he was born in Havana
Havana
Havana is the capital city, province, major port, and leading commercial centre of Cuba. The city proper has a population of 2.1 million inhabitants, and it spans a total of — making it the largest city in the Caribbean region, and the most populous...
, where his family moved immediately after his birth; however, following Carpentier's death, his birth certificate was found in Switzerland.
In 1912, Alejo and his family moved from Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
to Paris. He also spoke French and as an adolescent, he read Balzac, Flaubert, and Zola. In 1921, Carpentier attended the School of Architecture of the University of Havana. When he was 18, his parents' marriage broke up and his father abandoned the family. The following year, Carpentier left his studies and tried to find work to support his mother. He turned to journalism, working for the Cuban newspapers Carteles and Social. He also studied music.
Cuba and exile in France
In 1921, while studying in Havana, Carpentier became a cultural journalist, writing mostly about avant-garde developments in the arts, particularly music." He contributed columns to La Discusión, a daily journal from Havana. His journalistic work, which was considered leftist, helped establish the Cuban Communist Party.During 1923 and 1924 he continued to work as a columnist and also edited musical and theatre reviews for La Discusión and El Heraldo de Cuba. In 1927, with the help of Jorge Mañach, Juan Marinello, Francisco Ichaso, and Martí Casanovas, he became a founding member of Revista de Avance, a magazine devoted to nationalism, radicalism and new ideas in the arts. The first issue appeared on March 15, 1927; it lasted until September 15, 1930, and became the "voice of the vanguard" and the primary voice of expression of the Cuban movement. Because of his involvement in such projects, Carpentier was often suspected of having subversive and ultramodern cultural ideas. Carpentier was arrested in 1927 for opposing Gerardo Machado y Morales dictatorship and had signed a democratic and anti-imperialist manifesto against Machado's regime and, as a result, spent forty days in jail. During this brief period in jail he started working on his first novel, Ecué-Yamba-O, an exploration of Afro-Cuban traditions among the poor of the island. (The book was eventually completed in 1933.) After his release, he escaped Cuba with the help of journalist Robert Desnos
Robert Desnos
Robert Desnos , was a French surrealist poet who played a key role in the Surrealist movement of his day.- Biography :...
who lent him his passport and papers. Carpentier decided on a voluntary exile to France and arrived in Paris in 1928; he remained there until 1939, when he returned to Havana. When he left Cuba, he was fortunate enough to avoid the political conflicts which had occurred during the 1930s. During this time certain positions were unacceptable to the authorities and Cuban intellectuals were forced to define their political position and for these and other political reasons he decided to leave.
During this time abroad, his disconnection from Cuba and the interaction with different groups of intellectuals and artists in Paris helped with his ‘critical vision’. Carpentier felt that it was important for him to remain outside of the influences of movements because he believed in maintaining a “balance against the insularity of his homeland”. Upon arriving in Paris he immediately began working on poems and editorials in Parisian and Cuban magazines. Contributions to the Parisian Journal such as the short story "Cahiers du Sud" (1933), in French, were an effort to acquire European readers as a way to improve his recognition. He also contributed to the magazines Documents and L’Intransigeant. Carpentier was familiar with the activities of the Comité de Jeunes Revolutionnaires Cubains, a group of exiled Cuban leftists who had published La Terreur á Cuba, a brochure against the Machado government. He documented the latest news about this group and their activities in his book Homenaje a nuestros amigos de Paris. It was also during this time that, with the help of Robert Desnos, Carpentier became part of the surrealist movement which became a positive influence in his work. While in France, Carpentier also founded a literary magazine called Imán in 1931, for which he became editor-in-chief. Most of the authors who worked with him in La Revolution Surrealiste also contributed works in Imán under the title “Conocimiento de America”. Carpentier contributed the short story Histoire de Lunes (1933); it was experimental for its time as it contained elements of fantasy and folklore characterized as magical reality.
Surrealism helped Carpentier to see contexts and aspects, especially those of American life, which he did not see before and after working among the leading artistic figures for some time, Carpentier did not feel overly enthusiastic about his work within surrealism and had felt that his “surrealist attempts ha[d] been in vain” describing his frustration, as he felt he had “nothing to add to this movement in France".
As Carpentier became acquainted with those among the arts community he had several encounters to meet other famous authors such as Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean poet, diplomat and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. He chose his pen name after Czech poet Jan Neruda....
, who had sent him a draft of his book “Residencia el la Tierra” to review; Guatemalan author Miguel Ángel Asturias
Miguel Ángel Asturias
Miguel Ángel Asturias Rosales was a Nobel Prize–winning Guatemalan poet, novelist, playwright, journalist and diplomat...
, whose work on pre-Columbian mythology influenced his writing; and Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
, an introduction made possible through Carpentier's connection with friends in the arts.
Throughout his time in France Carpentier was occupied with not only literary works, but also other projects that kept him engaged within the arts. He collaborated with French composer Marins François Gaillard on the musical Yamba-O, “a burlesque tragedy”, that was presented in the Théâtre Beriza in Paris (1928); and with composer Amadeo Roldán
Amadeo Roldán
Amadeo Roldán y Gardes was a Cuban composer and violinist. Roldán was born in Paris to a Cuban mulatta and a Spanish father...
helped organize the Cuban premieres of works by Stravinsky and Poulenc
Francis Poulenc
Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc was a French composer and a member of the French group Les six. He composed solo piano music, chamber music, oratorio, choral music, opera, ballet music, and orchestral music...
. In film, Carpentier wrote text and edited music for the French documentary Le Vaudou. He continued to earn his living by writing on contemporary culture, both in French and Spanish. He also began working for a French radio station as a sound-technician and producer. From 1932 until 1939 Carpentier worked on several projects produced by Foniric Studios. He directed the production of Le Livre de Christophe Colomb and collaborated with Desnos on arranging readings of Edgar Allan Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue, and Walt Whitman’s Salute to the World. Although abroad, Carpentier still maintained contact with Cuba by sending articles and poems to contribute to Havana publications such as Ensayos Convergentes.
When the Machado regime came to an end in 1933, Carpentier decided to make plans to return to his native land to visit, and in 1936 he made the trip back to Cuba. The time he had spent in Paris for over eleven years had enriched and "oriented his expressive abilities". Carpentier himself inidicated that he was tiring of Paris, and "...in 1939 without any other reason than the nostalgia of Cuba, I vacated my apartment and started the return to La Havana".
Years in Haiti and Return to Cuba
In 1943, accompanied by French theatrical director Louis JouvetLouis Jouvet
Louis Jouvet was a renowned French actor, director, and theatre director.- Life :Overcoming speech impediments and sometimes paralyzing stage fright as a young man, Jouvet's first important association was with Jacques Copeau's Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier, beginning in 1913...
, Carpentier made a crucial trip to Haiti
Haiti
Haiti , officially the Republic of Haiti , is a Caribbean country. It occupies the western, smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Ayiti was the indigenous Taíno or Amerindian name for the island...
, during which he visited the fortress of the Citadelle Laferrière
Citadelle Laferrière
The Citadelle Laferrière or, Citadelle Henry Christophe, or simply the Citadelle , is a large mountaintop fortress in northern Haiti, approximately south of the city of Cap-Haïtien and five miles uphill from the town of Milot...
and the Palace of Sans-Souci, both built by the black king Henri Christophe
Henri Christophe
Henri Christophe was a key leader in the Haitian Revolution, winning independence from France in 1804. On 17 February 1807, after the creation of a separate nation in the north, Christophe was elected President of the State of Haiti...
. This trip, along with readings from Oswald Spengler
Oswald Spengler
Oswald Manuel Arnold Gottfried Spengler was a German historian and philosopher whose interests also included mathematics, science, and art. He is best known for his book The Decline of the West , published in 1918, which puts forth a cyclical theory of the rise and decline of civilizations...
's cyclical interpretation of history, provided the inspiration for his second novel, El Reino de Este Mundo (The Kingdom of this World
The Kingdom of this World
The Kingdom of This World is a novella by Cuban author Alejo Carpentier, published in 1949 in his native Spanish and first translated into English in 1957. A work of historical fiction, it tells the story of Haiti before, during, and after the Haitian Revolution as seen by its central character,...
) (1949).
Carpentier returned to Cuba and continued to work as a journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
at the outbreak of World War II. He worked on a history of Cuban music
Music of Cuba
The Caribbean island of Cuba has developed a wide range of creolized musical styles, based on its cultural origins in Europe and Africa. Since the 19th century its music has been hugely popular and influential throughout the world...
, eventually published in 1946 as La música en Cuba.
Lives in Venezuela
In 1945, Carpentier moved to Caracas as autoexilate. From 1945 to 1959 he lived in VenezuelaVenezuela
Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...
, which is the inspiration for the unnamed South American country in which much of his novel The Lost Steps takes place.
He wrote short stories which were later collected in The War of Time (1958). While in Cuba, Carpentier attended a santería
Santería
Santería is a syncretic religion of West African and Caribbean origin influenced by Roman Catholic Christianity, also known as Regla de Ocha, La Regla Lucumi, or Lukumi. Its liturgical language, a dialect of Yoruba, is also known as Lucumi....
ceremony that was to further deepen his interest in Afro-Cubanism.> In 1949, he finished his novel The Kingdom of this World. This novel has a prologue that "outlines Carpentier's faith in the destiny of Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
and the aesthetic implications of its peculiar cultural heritage."
Later life
Carpentier returned to Cuba after Fidel CastroFidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011...
's Communist revolution in 1959. He worked for the State Publishing House while he completed the baroque-style book, El Siglo de las Luces (Explosion in a Cathedral
Explosion in a Cathedral
Explosion in a Cathedral is a historical novel by Cuban writer and musicologist Alejo Carpentier...
) (1962). This novel discusses the advent of the Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
and the ideas of the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
in the New World. It has twin leitmotifs of the printing press and the guillotine
Guillotine
The guillotine is a device used for carrying out :executions by decapitation. It consists of a tall upright frame from which an angled blade is suspended. This blade is raised with a rope and then allowed to drop, severing the head from the body...
and can be read as a "meditation on the dangers inherent in all revolutions as they begin to confront the temptations of dictatorship." After reading the book, Gabriel García Márquez
Gabriel García Márquez
Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez is a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist, known affectionately as Gabo throughout Latin America. He is considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in...
is said to have discarded the first draft of One Hundred Years of Solitude
One Hundred Years of Solitude
One Hundred Years of Solitude , by Gabriel García Márquez, is a novel which tells the multi-generational story of the Buendía family, whose patriarch, José Arcadio Buendía, founds the town of Macondo, the metaphoric Colombia...
and begun again from scratch.
In 1966, Carpentier settled in Paris where he served as Cuban ambassador to France. In 1975 he was the recipient of the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca
Prix mondial Cino Del Duca
The Prix mondial Cino Del Duca is an international literary award.-Origins and operations:It was established in 1969 in France by Simone Del Duca to continue the work of her husband, publishing magnate Cino Del Duca .Designed to recognize and reward an author whose work constitutes, in a...
. He received the Cervantes Prize in 1977 and was recipient of the French Laureates Prix Médicis
Prix Médicis
The Prix Médicis is a French literary award given each year in November. It was founded in 1958 by Gala Barbisan and Jean-Pierre Giraudoux. It is awarded to an author whose "fame does not yet match his talent."...
étranger in 1979 for La harpe et l'ombre.
Carpentier was struggling with cancer as he completed his final novel, El arpa y la sombra, and finally died in Paris on April 24, 1980. His remains were returned to Cuba for interment in the Colon Cemetery, Havana
Colon Cemetery, Havana
The Colon Cemetery or more fully in the Spanish language Cementerio de Cristóbal Colón was founded in 1876 in the Vedado neighbourhood of Havana, Cuba on top of Espada Cemetery. Named for Christopher Columbus, the 140 acre cemetery is noted for its many elaborately sculpted memorials...
.
Lo real maravilloso
Carpentier is widely known for his theory of lo real maravilloso. This is the notion that the history and the geography of Latin America are both so extreme as to appear fictional or even magical to outsiders. Thus, Latin America is a region where the line between magic and reality is blurred. It was in the prologue to The Kingdom of this World, a novel of the Haitian RevolutionHaitian Revolution
The Haitian Revolution was a period of conflict in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, which culminated in the elimination of slavery there and the founding of the Haitian republic...
, that he described his vision of lo real maravilloso: "But what is the history of Latin America but a chronicle of magical realism?". The novel itself develops the outlandish (but true) history of Henri Christophe
Henri Christophe
Henri Christophe was a key leader in the Haitian Revolution, winning independence from France in 1804. On 17 February 1807, after the creation of a separate nation in the north, Christophe was elected President of the State of Haiti...
, first king of Haiti, as an example of how the real history of Latin America is so strange as to appear fictional. Some critics interpret the real maravilloso as being synonymous with magical realism. However, Carpentier's theory and its development in his work are more limited in their scope than is the magical realism of, for example, Gabriel García Márquez. Whereas García Márquez's works include events that the reader never mistakes for reality (rainfall of flowers, old men with wings, etc.), Carpentier, for the most part, simply writes about extreme aspects of the history and geography of Latin America, aspects that are almost unbelievable, but that are in fact true.
Music
As a young child Carpentier was exposed to a great deal of music. Carpentier himself played the piano, as did his mother; his father played cello, studying under Pau Casals, and his grandmother played the organ. Carpentier studied music theory at the Lycée Jeanson de Sailly when he lived in Paris for the first time. Carpentier's own compositions made him an important part of the contemporary Cuban musical landscape, but he also studied the origins and political nuances of Cuban music. His devotion to the adaptations of European artistic styles into Latin American music styles can also be seen in his admiration for Afro-Cuban musical themes.Early in his career Carpentier collaborated with other young musicians eager to explore Cuban musical roots. One such collaborator was Amadeo Roldán
Amadeo Roldán
Amadeo Roldán y Gardes was a Cuban composer and violinist. Roldán was born in Paris to a Cuban mulatta and a Spanish father...
a French musician of Cuban background. They helped to organize the Cuban premiere of popular orchestral music of the era Conciertos de música nueva (Concerts of New Music), featuring composers such as Stravinsky, Milhaud
Milhaud
Milhaud is a commune in the Gard department in southern France.-Population:-References:*...
, Ravel, Malipiero
Malipiero
Malipiero is a Venetian surname of Bohemian origin, also documented as Mastropiero or Maripiero.Malipiero can refer to:-People:* Gian Francesco Malipiero Italian composer* Domenico Malipiero Venetian naval captain...
, Poulenc and Eric Satie. In regards to their own music, Carpentier and Roldán were far more interested in integrating African rhythms and melodies into their works and abandoned imitation of European musical styles. "¡Abajo la lira, arriba el bongó!" (Down with the lyre, up with the bongo!) was the popular slogan for their style of music. Carpentier and Roldán collaborated on numerous works; including the 1925 orchestral piece Obertura sobre temas cubanos (Overture on Cuban Themes) which was regarded as scandalous for its betrayal of what was seen as the proper European-style symphony in favor of Afro-Cuban inspired music. Other well-known collaborations between the two included Tres pequeñas poemas: Oriente, Pregón, Fiesta negra (Three little poems) produced in 1926, and two Afro-Cuban ballets: La Rebambaramba, a colonial ballet in two parts (1928) and El milagro de Anaquille (1929).
Carpentier's interest in music had great influence on his prose writing. Navarro suggests that readers of Carpentier's works are more listeners than they are readers. Lyrical use of colloquial dialects, literary rhythms such as alliteration and assonance and the theme of music within the world of the narrative (drums, footsteps, etc.) are a few examples of music's influence over Carpentier's work. In an interview the author himself was quoted as saying, "Music is present in all of my work." For Carpentier, analysis of Cuban identity was grounded in the analysis of Cuban music. As such, for Carpentier to better understand Cuban identity through his work, he eagerly integrated music into his writing.
Ethnomusicology and Afro-Cubanism
With this intrinsic appreciation of music and a fascination with Cuban identity, Carpentier began investigating the origins of Cuban music in a more academic sense. In 1946, Carpentier published the ethnomusicological study La Música en Cuba which explores how European music, transplanted African music and the indigenous music of the island all blended together to create Cuban music. Carpentier took particular interest in Afro-Cuban themes.Particularly fascinated with the overwhelming influence of African music in Cuban music, Carpentier introduced Afro-Cuban influenced music called lo afrocubano, (i.e. heavily improvised and rhythm based music) into what was deemed more formal music venues dependent on European styles, called lo guajiro. Carpentier once wrote that lo guajiro was, "very poetic, but lo guajiro is not music...On the other hand, in mestizo and black music...the rich material has an incredible wealth to it...to make it the work of national expression." Because of racial tensions between white Cubans and black and criollo
Criollo people
The Criollo class ranked below that of the Iberian Peninsulares, the high-born permanent residence colonists born in Spain. But Criollos were higher status/rank than all other castes—people of mixed descent, Amerindians, and enslaved Africans...
Cubans, such preferences were not well received by the Cuban elite of the mid century. Carpentier devoted the majority of his musicology research to the Afro-Cuban
Afro-Cuban
The term Afro-Cuban refers to Cubans of Sub Saharan African ancestry, and to historical or cultural elements in Cuba thought to emanate from this community...
influences present in Cuba. For example, Carpentier paid particular attention to Contradanza
Contradanza
The Cuban contradanza was a popular dance music genre of the 19th century.- Origins and Early Development:...
, a wildly popular Cuban dance derived from the European style of music and dance, Contredanse. The ample room left for musical improvisation and the element of group dance were easily adapted into African musical tradition where improvisation and dance play integral roles. Hence, a hybrid musical form unique to Cuba was created. Carpentier argued that the improvisation inherent in African influenced music allowed for varied interpretations that catalyzed regional differences and therefore regional identity, and concluded that this was why Cuba had such a varied musical identity.
Major works
Carpentier's major works include:- Ecue-yamba-o! (1933) (Praised Be the Lord!)
- La música en Cuba (1946) (The Music of Cuba), an ethno-musicological study of Cuba starting from the sixteenth century, the arrival of European explorers, till the present day of publication, the mid twentieth century.
- El reino de este mundo (1949) (The Kingdom of this WorldThe Kingdom of this WorldThe Kingdom of This World is a novella by Cuban author Alejo Carpentier, published in 1949 in his native Spanish and first translated into English in 1957. A work of historical fiction, it tells the story of Haiti before, during, and after the Haitian Revolution as seen by its central character,...
) - Los pasos perdidos (1953) (The Lost Steps)
- El acoso (1956) (Manhunt)
- Guerra del tiempo (1958) (War of Time)
- El siglo de las luces (1962) (Explosion in a CathedralExplosion in a CathedralExplosion in a Cathedral is a historical novel by Cuban writer and musicologist Alejo Carpentier...
) - El Recurso del método (1974) (Reasons of State)
- Concierto barroco (1974) (Concierto barroco; English: Baroque Concert), based on the 1709 meeting of Vivaldi, HandelHANDELHANDEL was the code-name for the UK's National Attack Warning System in the Cold War. It consisted of a small console consisting of two microphones, lights and gauges. The reason behind this was to provide a back-up if anything failed....
and Domenico ScarlattiDomenico ScarlattiGiuseppe Domenico Scarlatti was an Italian composer who spent much of his life in the service of the Portuguese and Spanish royal families. He is classified as a Baroque composer chronologically, although his music was influential in the development of the Classical style...
, with cameo appearances by WagnerRichard WagnerWilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
and StravinskyIgor StravinskyIgor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
, and fictional characters from the new world who inspire the Venetian composer's opera, MotezumaMotezumaMotezuma is an opera in three acts by Antonio Vivaldi with an Italian libretto by Girolamo Giusti. The first performance was given in the Teatro Sant'Angelo in Venice on 14 November 1733...
. - La consagración de la primavera (1978) (The Rite of SpringThe Rite of SpringThe Rite of Spring, original French title Le sacre du printemps , is a ballet with music by Igor Stravinsky; choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky; and concept, set design and costumes by Nicholas Roerich...
; Le Sacre du Printemps, ballet by Igor StravinskyIgor StravinskyIgor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
) - El arpa y la sombra (1978) (The Harp and the Shadow) dealing with ColumbusChristopher ColumbusChristopher Columbus was an explorer, colonizer, and navigator, born in the Republic of Genoa, in northwestern Italy. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that led to general European awareness of the American continents in the...
.
El reino de este mundo (The Kingdom of this World)
Carpentier's El reino de este mundo (1949) highlights the Haitian RevolutionHaitian Revolution
The Haitian Revolution was a period of conflict in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, which culminated in the elimination of slavery there and the founding of the Haitian republic...
of the 18th century when the African slaves fought the French colonists for their freedom and basic human rights. The novel combines not only historical references of the event with aspects of African faith and rituals, most notably voodoo; but also the connections between corporeal and spiritual self. The story is seen through the eyes of the protagonist Ti Noël, a black slave. Being a white, European/Cuban writer who published on the subject of the Haitian Revolution, it has been implied that Carpentier chose to write from Ti Noël's point of view so that he would avoid being criticized for any racial stereotyping. Carpentier incorporates symbolic architecture throughout the novel; representing the dictatorship of colonial rule with structures such as the Sans-Souci Palace
Sans-Souci Palace
The Sans-Souci Palace was the royal residence of King Henri I of Haiti, Queen Marie-Louise and their two daughters. It was the most important of nine palaces built by the king, as well as fifteen châteaux, numerous forts, and sprawling summer homes on his twenty plantations. Construction of the...
and the fortress of La Ferrière.
La música en Cuba (The Music of Cuba)
La música en Cuba (The Music of Cuba) is an ethno-musicological study of the Music of CubaMusic of Cuba
The Caribbean island of Cuba has developed a wide range of creolized musical styles, based on its cultural origins in Europe and Africa. Since the 19th century its music has been hugely popular and influential throughout the world...
starting from the sixteenth century with the arrival of European explorers, until the present day of publication, the mid-twentieth century. The blending of different cultures—black, white, mulattos, criollos
Criollo people
The Criollo class ranked below that of the Iberian Peninsulares, the high-born permanent residence colonists born in Spain. But Criollos were higher status/rank than all other castes—people of mixed descent, Amerindians, and enslaved Africans...
and natives—mirrors the blending of Cuba’s two main musical styles, the Christian European music and the elemental percussion and rhythm based music of the transported Africans and aboriginal peoples of the island. The book includes a general history of music in colonized Latin America, but mainly focuses on Cuban styles of music and dance, influential Cuban musicians and Cuban musical identity. Carpentier devotes a great deal of his study to exploring the influence African descendants had on Cuban music. He has an entire chapter titled, “Los Negros” ("The Blacks") that explores the many substantial ways African music influenced all of Latin American music. According to Carpentier, the African influence on Cuban music in particular was deliberately concealed by the colonist prejudice of 18th and 19th century Cuba. At the time of the book's publication many white Cubans were reluctant to even acknowledge the blending of the cultures much less investigate it. Carpentier, though, was eager to do so, and by making bold statements about Cuba’s past and integral relationships with a wide range of cultures he succeeded in giving back to Cuba an in-depth academic perspective of its own cultural identity through its music.
Baroque
The BaroqueBaroque
The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...
style dates back to the cultural period of the 17th and early 18th centuries. It is most often defined as "the dominant style of art in Europe between the Mannerist and Rococo
Rococo
Rococo , also referred to as "Late Baroque", is an 18th-century style which developed as Baroque artists gave up their symmetry and became increasingly ornate, florid, and playful...
eras, a style characterized by dynamic movement, overt emotion and self-confident rhetoric". Carpentier first became fascinated with this style in architecture and sculpture; however, he later describes el barroco as un espíritu, and not un estilo histórico ("a spirit, not an historical style"). Wakefield insists that this attitude towards the Baroque stemmed from Carpentier's background in both Europe and Latin America which allowed him to take on a superior front in the face of post-colonialism and ultimately have the literary upper-hand where he could use European style to tell the Latin American story. Carpentier developed his vision of the baroque in his early works before he described himself as a baroque writer. He experimented with the technique in several developmental stages: "first as a cultural style of aesthetic fascination, later as a literary device to create period ambience, and finally as a weapon of postcolonial pride, defiance and one-upmanship".
This style strongly presents itself when comparing works such as the early Ecue-Yamba-O to the celebrated El reino de este mundo, regarding Carpentier's use of more historically eloquent vocabulary in the latter, instead of the authentic language of the ethnically-inspired characters. Here he escapes the stereotype of "nativism" by incorporating European standards, but continues to achieve a sense of normalcy without the expected use of the colloquialisms which the protagonist Ti Noel would undoubtedly use.
Kaup claims that Carpentier utilizes what is known as the "New World Baroque", since Latin America didn't come into contact with the Enlightenment or "European modernity". This contraconquista (counter conquest) allows the New World authors to experiment with new identities and the manners of expressing them. As such, Carpentier observed in his 1975 essay that "American Baroque develop[ed] along with criollo culture ...: the awareness of being Other, of being new, of being symbiotic, of being a criollo; and the criollo spirit is itself a Baroque spirit." This criollo of the New World Baroque is often seen as the dominant style of European literature emerging as a subordinate literary construction in Latin America.
Influence of travel
Wakefield notes that Carpentier's diverse travels were motivated by his need to incorporate the sights he experienced into familiar descriptions within his novels. Carpentier's El reino de este mundo was inspired by his 1943 trip to Haiti, and Los pasos perdidos drew on his visit to Venezuela in 1949. Similarly, his travels to Guadelupe and the Gulf of Sante Fe inspired El siglo de las luces, and Vera and Enrique's firsthand descriptions of Baku and Mexico in La consegración de la primavera were drawn from Carpentier's trips to those places.Surrealism
During his visit to France early in his life, Carpentier met and collaborated with many figures of the French SurrealistSurrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
movement. Taken with Surrealist theory, Carpentier absorbed much of it from his contemporaries, mainly his friend and colleague, the Parisian journalist Robert Desnos
Robert Desnos
Robert Desnos , was a French surrealist poet who played a key role in the Surrealist movement of his day.- Biography :...
. Striving to portray unlikely beauty, termed, "the third beauty", Surrealist theory embraced unique perspectives of the world. Within the Surrealist theory was the concept of Primitivism
Primitivism
Primitivism is a Western art movement that borrows visual forms from non-Western or prehistoric peoples, such as Paul Gauguin's inclusion of Tahitian motifs in paintings and ceramics...
or a reverence for presiding folkloric tradition. Carpentier, inspired by French Surrealists, learned to view his Cuban home in this new light. He left France with a bursting sense of Cuban and Latin American pride and the artistic goal to capture what it meant to be both.
Further reading
English- Adams, Michael Ian (1975) Three authors of Alienation : Bombal, Onetti, Carpentier, Austin: University of Texas Press, ISBN 0292780095
- Echevarría, Roberto González (1983) Alejo Carpentier : Bibliographical guide, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, ISBN 0313239231
- Brennan, Timothy (Ed. 2001) Alejo Carpentier Music in Cuba: Edited and with and Introduction by Timothy Brennan, translated by Alan West-Durán, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, ISBN 9780816632299
- Cox, Timothy J. (2001) Postmodern Tales of Slavery in the Americas : From Alejo Carpentier to Charles Johnson, New York: Garland.
- Harvey, Sally (1994) Carpentier's Proustian Fiction : The Influence of Marcel Proust on Alejo Carpentier, London: Tamesis Books, ISBN 1855660342
- Janney, Frank (1981) Alejo Carpentier and his Early Works, London : Tamesis Books, ISBN 0729300625
- King, Lloyd (1972) Alejo Carpentier : His Euro-Caribbean Vision, St. Augustine, Trinidad: Research & Publications Fund Committee.
- Pancrazio, James J. (2004) The Logic of Fetishism : Alejo Carpentier and the Cuban Tradition, Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press.
- Shaw, Donald, (1985) Alejo Carpentier Twayne World Author's Series, ISBN 0805766065
- Tusa, Bobs (1983) Alchemy of a hero : a Comparative Study of the Works of Alejo Carpentier and Mario Vargas Llosa, Valencia; Chapel Hill : Albatros Hispanofila, ISBN 8472740994
- Tusa, Bobs, (1982) Alejo Carpentier, a Comprehensive Study, Valencia; Chapel Hill : Albatros Hispanofila, ISBN 8472740900
- Wakefield, Steve (2004) Carpentier's Baroque fiction : Returning Medusa's Gaze, Tamesis Books, ISBN 9781855661073
- Webb, Barbara (1992) Myth and History in Caribbean Fiction : Alejo Carpentier, Wilson Harris, and Edouard Glissant, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.
- Young, Richard E. (1983) Carpentier, El reino de este mundo.
Spanish
- Acosta, Leonardo (1981) Música y épica en la novela de Alejo Carpentier.
- Ainsa, Fernando, (2005) Alejo Carpentier ante la crítica.
- Arias, Salvador (1977) Recopilación de textos sobre Alejo Carpentier.
- Barroso, Juan (1977) Realismo mágico y lo real maravilloso en El reino de este mundo y El siglo de las luces.
- Bergh, Klaus Müller (1972) Alejo Carpentier : Estudio biográfico-critico.
- Bergh, Klaus Müller (1972) Asedios a Carpentier.
- Birkenmaier, Anke (2006) Alejo Carpentier y la cultura del surrealismo en América Latina.
- Blanco, Luis (1970) Alejo Carpentier : tientos y differencias.
- Calahorro,Inmaculada López (2006) Alejo Carpentier y el mundo clasico.
- Chaple, Sergio (2004) Estudios carpenterianos.
- Collard, Patrick (1991) Cómo leer a Alejo Carpentier.
- Cvitanovic, Dinko (1997) Carpentier : una revisión lineal.
- Duno-Gottberg, Luis (2003) "Solventando las diferencias: La ideología del mestizaje en Cuba", Iberoamericana – Frankfurt am Main, Vervuert, Madrid.
- Echevarría, Roberto González (1993) Alejo Carpentier, el peregrino en su patria.
- Echevarría, Roberto González (2004) Alejo Carpentier, el peregrino en su patria.
- Fama, Antonio (1995) Las últimas obras de Alejo Carpentier.
- Fowler, Víctor (2004) Diccionario de conceptos de Alejo Carpentier.
- González, Eduardo (1978) Alejo Carpentier : el tiempo del hombre.
- Labastida, Jaime (1974) Casa de las Américas, no.87, "Con Alejo Carpentier".
- Martí, José (1974) Un camino de medio siglo : Homenaje nacional al 70 aniversario de Alejo Carpentier.
- Mayo, Edmundo Gómez, Construcción y lenguaje en Alejo Carpentier.
- Mocega-González, Esther P. (1980) Alejo Carpentier : estudios sobre su narrativa.
- Mocega-González, Esther P. (1975) La narrativa de Alejo Carpentier : el concepto del tiempo como tema fundamental.
- Mujica, Héctor (1975) Conversación con Alejo Carpentier.
- Padura, Leonardo (2002) Un camino de medio siglo : Alejo Carpentier y la narrativa de lo real maravilloso.
- Pickenhayn,Jorge Oscar (1978) Para leer a Alejo Carpentier.
- Plaza, Sixto (1984) El acá y el allá en la narrativa de Alejo Carpentier.
- Sáinz, Enrigue (1980) Conversación con Alejo Carpentier.
- Santander, Carlos (1971) Alejo Carpentier: Viaje a la Semilla y otros relatos.
- Selma, José Vila (1978) El "último" Carpentier.
- Rodríguez, Alexis Márquez (1982) Lo barroco y lo real-maravilloso en la obra de Alejo Carpentier.
- Rodríguez, Alexis Márquez (2004) Nuevas lecturas de alejo Carpentier.
- Zurdo, Oscar Velayos (1985) El diálogo con la historia de Alejo Carpentier.