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. He was among the first practitioners of magical realism and exerted a decisive influence on the works of younger Latin American writers.

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 after his birth. Following Carpentier's death, his birth certificate was found in Switzerland.^[1] Carpentier was the son of Jorge Julián Carpentier, a French architect, and Lina Valmont, a Russian language teacher.

When Alejo was 12, his family moved from Cuba to Paris. He began to study music theory at the Lycée Jeanson de Sailly. As an adolescent, he read Balzac, Flaubert, and Zola. In 1921, Carpentier attended the School of Architecture of the University of Havana. His parents broke up and his father abandoned the family. Carpentier left his studies and tried to find work. He turned to journalism, working for the Cuban newspapers Carteles and Social. He also studied music.^[2]

Cuba and exile in France

Carpentier became a cultural journalist, writing mostly about avant-garde developments in the arts, particularly music. His journalistic work was considered leftist and helped found the Cuban Communist Party.^[2] Together with the composer Amadeo Roldán, Carpentier helped organize the Cuban premieres of works by Stravinsky and Poulenc. Participating in the Grupo minorista and other avant-garde cultural groups, he became deeply involved in political protest. In 1926, Carpentier went to Mexico where he met the revolutionary painter Diego Rivera.

The following year, he founded the Revista de Avance, a magazine devoted to nationalism, radicalism and new ideas in the arts. Carpentier was often suspected of having subversive and ultramodern cultural ideas. Carpentier was arrested for opposing the Gerardo Machado y Morales dictatorship. He had signed a democratic and anti-imperialist manifesto against Machado's regime and as a result, spent forty days in jail. It was during this brief period in jail that he started working on his first novel, Ecué-Yamba-O (1933), an exploration of Afro-Cuban traditions among the poor of the island.^[2] After his release, he escaped Cuba with the help of journalist Robert Desnos who had lent him his passport and papers.^[2]

While exiled in France, Carpentier founded a literary magazine called Imán. He was introduced to the surrealists by Desnos, including André Breton, Paul Éluard, Louis Aragon, Jacques Prévert, and Antonin Artaud. He also met Guatemalan author Miguel Ángel Asturias, whose work on pre-Columbian mythology influenced his writing.^[2] He continued to earn his living by writing on contemporary culture, both in French and Spanish, as well as contributing to the Communist Party journal. He also began working for a French radio station as a sound-technician and producer. Carpentier made several visits to Spain, during which he developed a fascination for the Baroque. He completed the final version of Ecue-Yamba-O in 1933 and published it in Madrid. 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 worked on an important history of Cuban music, eventually published in 1946 as La música en Cuba.^[3] He also wrote short stories which were later collected in The War of Time (1958).^[2] While in Cuba, Carpentier attended a santería ceremony that was to further deepen his interest in Afro-Cubanism.

In 1943, accompanied by French theatrical director Louis Jouvet, 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).

In 1945, Carpentier moved to Caracas. From 1945 to 1959 he lived in Venezuela, which is the inspiration for the unnamed South American country in which much of The Lost Steps takes place.^[4] 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."^[2]

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, El Siglo de las Luces (Explosion in a Cathedral) (1962)."^[2] 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.".^[2] 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.^[5]

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^[6] in 1977 and was recipient of the French Laureates Prix Médicis étranger in 1979 for La harpe et l'ombre.^[7]^[6]^[8]

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

Themes

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, 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 Revolution, that he described his vision of "lo real maravilloso" ("But what is the history of Latin America but a chronicle of magical realism?").^[9] 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.

Music

As a young child Carpentier was exposed to a great deal of music. Carpentier himself played the piano, while Carpentier's father played cello and studied under Pau Casals, his grandmother played the organ and his mother the piano.^[10] Carpentier went on to formally study music theory at the Lycée Jeanson de Sailly.^[11] With this intrinsic appreciation of music and a fascination with Cuban identity Carpentier began investigating the origins of Cuban music.^[12] In 1946, Carpentier published the ethnomusicological study La Música en Cuba that 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.^[13] 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.^[14] 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.^[15] In an interview the author himself was quoted as saying, "Music is present in all of my work."^[16] 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 writing he eagerly integrated music into his writing.^[17]

Afro-Cubanism and Music

Particularly fascinated with the overwhelming influence of African culture in Cuban culture, in particular African music, Carpentier devoted a 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. Thus a hybrid musical form unique to Cuba was created.^[18] Carpentier theorizes that the improvisation inherent in African influenced music allows for varied interpretations that catalyze regional differences and therefore regional identity. Idiosyncrasies are able to develop much more readily from unscripted free form music and thus, reasons Carpentier, Cuba has such a varied musical identity.^[19]

Famous Works

Carpentier's most famous 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 World)
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 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 Rite of Spring; Le Sacre du Printemps: Igor Stravinsky)
El arpa y la sombra (1978) (The Harp and the Shadow) dealing with Columbus.

El reino de este mundo (The Kingdom of this World)

Carpentier's El reino de este mundo (1949) highlights the Haitian Revolution of the 18th century when the African slaves fought the French colonists for their freedom and basic human rights.^[20] 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 corporal and spiritual self.^[21] The story is seen through the eyes of the protagonist Ti Noël, a black slave. It has been implied that Carpentier used such a character's point of view in order to avoid the racial stereotyping that may pursue him as a white, European/Cuban writer who publishes on the subject of the Haitian Revolution.^[22] 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.^[23]

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 Cuba starting from the sixteenth century, the arrival of European explorers, till 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.^[24]. The book includes 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")^[25] 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 purposely hidden 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.^[26]. 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.^[27].

Style

Baroque

The Baroque style dates back to the cultural period of the 17th and early 18th centuries.^[28] 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".^[29] 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").^[30] 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.^[31] Carpentier enriched his vision of the baroque in his early crónicas before he equated himself as a writer of that fashion. He experimented with the baroque 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".^[32] 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 distinguished 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.^[33] Kaup claims that Carpentier utilizes what is known as the "New World Baroque", seeing as Latin America didn't come into contact with the Enlightenment or "European modernity".^[34] This contraconquista (counter conquest) allows the New World authors to experiment with new identities and manners of expressing them.^[35] 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."^[36] This criollo of the New World Baroque is sometimes seen as the dominant style of European literature emerging as a subordinate literary construction in Latin America.^[37]

Influence of Travel

Wakefield notes that Carpentier motivated his diverse travels with his need to incoporate the sights he experienced into familiar descriptions within his novels. Carpentier stimulated El reino de este mundo from his 1943 trip to Haiti, and Los pasos perdidos from visiting Venezuela in 1949. Similarily, he travelled to Guadelupe and Gulf of Sante Fe to inspire El siglo de las luces, and Baku and Mexico for Vera and Enrique's firsthand descriptions in La consegración de la primavera.^[38]

Surrealism

During his visit to France early in his life, Carpentier was fortunate enough to meet and collaborate with many figures of the French Surrealism movement. Taken with Surrealist theory Carpentier absorbed all he could from his contemporaries mainly his friend and colleague, the Parisian poet Robert Desnos. Striving to portray unlikely beauty, termed, "the third beauty", Surrealist theory embraced unique perspectives of the world.^[39] Within the Surrealist theory was the concept of Primitivism or a reverence for presiding folkloric tradition, Nativism.^[40] 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.^[41]

Quotes

"For what is the story of [Latin] America if not a chronicle of the marvelous in the real."^[2]
"[A] fuerza de querer suscitar lo maravilloso a todo trance, los taumaturgos se hacen burócratas." ([B]y creating the marvellous at all cost, the thaumaturgists become bureaucrats).^[9]
"Al llegar a París(...) conducido por Robert Desnos, que era una de las figuras capitales del surrealismo, me vi de lleno, a las 48 horas, en pleno movimiento surrealista." (Arriving in Paris, I met Robert Desnos, who was one of the capital figures of Surrealism, and within 48 hours I was fully immersed in the Surrealist movement.)^[42]
"(Carpentier tiene)...un perpetuo trasiego, para una preocupacion perpetua: cual es mi identidad como cubano? Cual es mi papel como hombre?" ("Carpentier has... a perpetual issue, for a perpetual preoccupation: What is my identity as a Cuban? What is my roll as a man?") ^[43].

Notes

^ Belnap 1993, p. 263-264, cited in Wakefield(2004) p.6
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j Colchie, Thomas (editor), A Hammock Beneath the Mangoes: stories from Latin America; Penguin Group, 416–417(1991).
^ Carpentier, Alejo 1972. La Musica en Cuba. Mexico.
^ Shaw, Donald 1985. Alejo Carpentier. Boston.
^ González Echevarría
^ ^a ^b Template:Fr icon Une autre vision de Cuba
^ Prix Médicis
^ Template:Fr icon Lettres de Cuba, Alejo Carpentier
^ ^a ^b Gosser Esquilín, Mary Ann. Caribbean Identities Reconstructed and Redefined in Women's Narrative Texts: Marie Chauvet, Myriam Warner-Vieyra, and Ana Lydia Vega. Latin American Issues, 13(2) (1997).[1]
^ Navarro 1999, p. 25
^ {{Harvnb|Colchie|1991|
^ Navarro 1999
^ Carpentier 1972, p. 55-56
^ Navarro 1999, p. 105
^ Navarro 1999, p. 25
^ Carpentier, 1983 & , cited in Navarro(1999) p.156
^ Navarro 1999, p. 217
^ Carpentier 1972, p. 126
^ Carpentier 1972, p. 249
^ Paravisini-Gebert 2004, p. 114
^ Paravisini-Gebert 2004, p. 115-116
^ Wakefield 2004, p. 58
^ Wakefield 2004, p. 56
^ Carpentier 1972, p. 50
^ Carpentier 1972, p. 136
^ Carpentier 1972, p. 302-303
^ Carpentier 1972, p. 304
^ Wakefield 2004, p. 1
^ Piper 1984, p. 44-45, cited in Wakefield(2004) p.3-4
^ Carpentier 1990, p. 175, cited in Wakefield(2004) p.5
^ Wakefield 2004, p. 3
^ Wakefield 2004, p. 10
^ Wakefield 2004, p. 49
^ Kaup 2005, p. 109
^ Kaup 2005, p. 110-111
^ Carpentier 1975, p. 100, cited in Kaup(2005) p.110
^ Kaup 2005, p. 116
^ Wakefield 2004, p. 9
^ Navarro 1999, p. 62
^ Leante 1970, p. 21-22, cited in Navarro(1999) p.67
^ Navarro 1999, p. 62
^ Carpentier, Alejo 1976. Rázon de ser. Caracas.
^ Navarro 1999, p. 13

References

Primary

Carpentier, Alejo (1975), The Baroque and the Marvelous Real
Carpentier, Alejo (1990), Obras completas: Ensayos, Vol. 13, Mexico: Siglo XII
Carpentier, Alejo (1972), La música en Cuba, Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Economica
Carpentier, Alejo (1976), Razón de ser, Caracas: Universidad Central de Venezuela

Secondary

Belnap, Jeffrey Grant (1993), The Post-Colonial State and the 'Hybrid' Intellect: Carpentier, Ngugi, and Spivak, Irvine, CA: U of California P
Kaup, Monika, "Becoming-Baroque: Folding European forms into the New World baroque with Alejo Carpentier", CR: The New Centennial Review, 5 (2), Michigan State University Press: 107–149, retrieved 03/12/10 {{citation}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |month= (help)
Navarro, Gabriel (1999), Musica y escrita en Alejo Carpentier, Alicante: Universidad de Alicante
Paravisini-Gebert, Lizabeth (summer 2004), "The Haitian Revolution in Interstices and Shadows: A re-reading of Alejo Carpentier's "The Kingdom of This World"", Research in African Literatures, 35 (2), Indiana University Press: 114–127, retrieved 03/29/10 {{citation}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |month= (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link)
Piper, David (1984), A-Z of Art & Artists, London: Michell Beazeley, ISBN 0949819492
Wakefield, Steve (2004), Capentier's Baroque Fiction: Returning Medusa's gaze, Great Britain: The Cromwell Press, ISBN 1855661071