tutorial, study guide, critical commentary, further reading

The Kingdom of this World (1949) is Alejo Carpentier’s historical novel documenting the first successful slave revolution in the Americas. It took place on the island of Hispanola in what is now Haiti between 1791 and 1804. The story is told largely from the point of view of a poor slave, and it unfolds in a series of amazingly vivid tableaux that capture both the confusion of political upheavals and the complexities of European colonialism in the New World. It is generally considered Carpentier’s first great novel.

The Kingdom of This World – commentary

Historical background

The islands that make up the Antilles were first visited (‘discovered’) by Christopher Columbus in 1492. He was making his journey westward in search of spices and gold, and he thought he had landed in China or India. That’s why the area is known as the West Indies.

His journey was quickly replicated by the British and the French. All of these European nations claimed ownership wherever they landed. And they were meanwhile at war with each other. At this time even America was a colony ‘belonging’ to England.

Having established political and military control over the islands, the next phase of European colonial expansion was to import slaves from Africa to do the work of exploiting the natural resources of the islands – the sugar cane, tobacco, and minerals. Much to the chagrin of Columbus, there was no gold. Carpentier gives a vivid account of this episode in his other novel The Harp and the Shadow (1979).

The events of The Kingdom of This World take place on Hispanola in the Caribbean, an island which is split into two separate countries – Haiti and San Domingo. The political history of the region is quite complex. Haiti was then a French colony, whilst San Domingo was under Spanish domination.

The French regarded the island as a colony, but during the French Revolution there was a humanitarian decision made in Paris that slavery should be abolished. Hispaniolan slave leaders such as Toussaint Louverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines took advantage of this, seized power, and declared the first ever black republic. Napoleon Bonaparte sent troops (such as Leclerc) to crush the rebellion, but they lost two thirds of their forces – largely due to cholera.

Voodoo

The slaves imported from West Africa brought with them a form of witchcraft that in Haiti became known as Voodoo. Like other religions this is founded on a belief in a supreme and unknowable creator. It has ritualistic ceremonies, a hierarchical system of priests, a belief in evil spirits, talismanic icons, reincarnation, trance-like states, and the sacrifice of animals.

When the colonial authorities tried to impose Christianity on the slaves, they merely incorporated European saints, altars, holy water and votive candles into their rituals. They also used religious celebrations as covert political meetings to strengthen their bonds of allegiance. The fictional character Boukman was a real historical person and religious leader who helped to prepare the 1791 revolt against the French.

Magical realism

Carpentier incorporates these elements of mystical beliefs into his narrative quite naturally, using the device he called ‘magical realism’. That is, elements of rational, material, and realistic depiction of the world are mixed with fanciful, non-realistic elements such as the slaves’ belief that Macandal can change himself into a bird or an animal to evade capture.

Their belief is a metaphoric reflection for the hope of salvation being kept alive in a community. Despite their beliefs, Macandal is eventually captured and executed horribly by being burned alive in an auto-da-fe. Carpentier thus combines his modernist technique of el real maravilloso with a realistic and historically accurate account of events. It is the past re-imagined and expressed in a literary style that combines some of the traditional elements of the realist novel with modernist techniques of a particularly Latin-American flavour.

Literary style

It should be obvious from even a cursory reading of Carpentier that he delivers his narrative in a manner that is radically different from conventional European novels of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

For instance there is less emphasis on the psychology and the emotional experience of individual characters. He is more interested in providing an overview of events – of showing historical forces at work.

In addition he does not create a continuous narrative, with events following in detailed chronological sequence. Instead, he arranges his scenes as a series of tableaux which represent, either symbolically or metaphorically, the important stages of historical development.

For example, the sudden emergence and even more rapid death of General Leclerc at first appears somewhat arbitrary. He had not been mentioned before this brief appearance. But he represents the counter-revolutionary forces sent by Napoleon to quell the revolution. Leclerc is on a ship with a cargo of savage dogs that will be used to track down and terrorise slaves.

But Leclerc does not complete his commission – because he dies of cholera. This might appear to be another accidental episode to an inconsequential character. It is not – because Leclerc represents the French government’s counter-revolutionary forces – two thirds of whom died of cholera in their attempt to repress the slave revolt.

The narrative

A great deal of the novel is related from the point of view of Ti Noel, who is an uneducated slave with no material possessions. He starts out enslaved on the de Mezy plantation; he takes part in the uprising; and he even thinks of raping de Mezy’s French mistress – though it is not made clear if he does or not.

He is eventually sold on to another slave owner in Santiago de Cuba. Technically, he then becomes a free man, but on return to Haiti he is enslaved anew during the construction of the fortress by the new ‘King’ Henri Christophe I.

When the ‘King’ is in his turn overthrown, Ti Noel returns to the former, now devastated de Mezy plantation and and lives in makeshift accommodation amongst the ruins. Many critical commentators have seen this sequence of events as Carpentier offering a cyclic view of history. That is, when one system of oppression is overthrown by a revolution, it will be replaced by another system imposing a similar tyranny under a different name.

This is a short-sighted view in my opinion that does not take into account Carpentier’s generally positive view of social development. It certainly does not take into account the heroic epiphany which is accorded to Ti Noel in the finale of the novel – in which he replaces his former religious views with one which takes a realistic and material view of the world.

In the Kingdom of Heaven there is no grandeur to be won, inasmuch as there all is an established hierarchy, the unknown is revealed, existence is infinite, there is no possibility of sacrifice, all is rest and joy. For this reason, bowed down by suffering and duties, beautiful in the midst of his misery, capable of loving in the face of afflictions and trials, man finds his greatness, his fullest measure, only in the Kingdom of This World.

The Kingdom of This World – study resources

The Kingdom of This World – at Amazon UK – (text in English)

El reinido de este Mundo – at Amazon UK – (text in Spanish)

The Harp and the Shadow – at Amazon UK – (text in English)

El arpa y la sombra – at Amazon UK – (text in Spanish)

The Kingdom of This World – plot summary

Part One

I   Poor black slave Ti Noel compares feeble European rulers with the warrior kings of his African ancestors.

II   Macandal’s arm is crushed in the de Mezy plantation sugar mill – then amputated.

III   Macandal collects herbs and poisonous plants, then takes them to a Voodoo witch. He poisons a dog, then runs away.

IV   Ti Noel misses Macandal’s African influence. He finds him hiding in the mountains, having made contact with other resistance fighters. Macandal begins to spread poison in the plantations

V   The poisons spread, killing animals and humans alike. Slaves are tortured until one reveals that Macandal is the culprit.

VI   There is a search for Macandal but he is not found. People believe he can change his form into that of birds and animals.

VII   Four years later M. de Mezy remarries at Christmas. Ti Noel attends a Voodoo ritual celebration where Macandal reappears in human form.

VIII   Slaves are herded into the town square to witness Macandal being burned alive. They believe his spirit escapes in a different form.

Part Two

I   In twenty years the island prospers. M. de Mezy imports a French actress as a mistress but continues raping slave girls. Ti Noel keeps the memory of Macandal alive.

II   Ti Noel attends a meeting at which Bouckman brings news of freedom won in the French revolution. They seek help from the Spanish in adjacent San Domingo.

III   A general revolt against the whites takes place. The slaves pillage de Mezy’s house and estate.

IV   de Mezy finds Mlle Floridor murdered in the house. The revolt is supressed, with severe reprisals. Ti Noel is spared for his re-sale value.

V   de Mezy escapes to Santiago de Cuba along with other landowners. He sells off his slaves and gambles away the proceeds.

VI   Self-indulgent Pauline Bonaparte arrives from France with her husband General Leclerc who is to put down the revolt.

VII   General Leclerc contracts cholera and dies. His wife Pauline returns to France.

Part Three

I   Ti Noel returns from Cuba to Haiti as a free man.

II   Ti Noel arrives at the magnificent palace of Sans Souci built for the new ‘King’ Henri Christophe.

III   Ti Noel is forced into a new form of slavery – building the Citadel La Ferriere which Henri Christophe constructs as a bulwark against the French.

IV   When the Citadel is finished Ti Noel returns to live in the remains of the de Mezy estate. He travels to Cap Haitien but the city is in the grip of fear. Henri Christophe has buried his personal confessor alive.

V   The confessor reappears at a mass, and the King falls into a terrified spasm, afraid that the people will rise against him.

VI   A week later there is a revolt of the King’s officers, and Henri Christophe is stranded alone in Sans Souci. He watches from the palace as the fires and the insurgents close in on him. He dresses in ceremonial uniform then shoots himself.

VII   The queen and her retinue escape to the fortress whilst the palace is being looted. The king’s body is submerged in a vat of mortar then intered as part of the Fortress

Part Four

I   The queen and princesses escape to Rome with Solimon. He is an object of curiosity in the city. In the Villa Borghese he comes across a statue of Venus modelled by Pauline Bonaparte. The experience unnerves him, and he wants to go home again. He dies dreaming of his African roots.

II   Ti Noel equips his makeshift lodgings with furniture looted from Sans Souci. He dresses in Henri Christophe’s old uniform and imagines himself the ruler of a kingdom.

III   Mulatto surveyors arrive to take over the land. Ti Noel tries to hide from them by assuming various animal forms.

IV   Ti Noel contemplates the geese that have escaped from Sans Souci. He then has an epiphany that man finds his greatness by suffering and enduring in the real world, not in some imaginary afterlife.

The Kingdom of This World – characters

© Roy Johnson 2018

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

The Lost Steps was first published as Los pasos perdidos in Mexico in 1953. It was written whilst Alejo Carpentier was living in Caracas, Venezuela, an exile from his native Cuba which at that time was under the dictator Batista. The novel appeared in English translation (by Harriet de Onis) in 1956, published by Victor Gollancz in London.

The Lost Steps – critical commentary

Geography

The novel; begins in what seems to be New York City. It is never named as such, but in the early chapters Carpentier satirises a cultural Bohemia which is reminiscent of Greenwich Village. The protagonist works as a musical composer in conjunction with film studios, and characters later circulate in ‘Central Park’.

He then moves to Latin-America – at first to what appears to be Caracas in Venezuela. His journey then takes him through what is a geographic composite of South America, initially across the Andes mountains, then into the great plains, and finally into the most impenetrable parts of the jungle.

This journey also includes a historical element – and one which involves travelling backwards in time (a favourite trope of Carpentier’s). The protagonist progresses from the contemporary metropolital city to what are essentially farmlands, then to a primitive village, and finally to encampments where people live in an almost stone-age elementalism.

Geography is centrally important to the novel, because its principal theme is the tension between European-based and Latin-American culture. Carpentier was born in Switzerland, his parents were French and Russian, and he was educated in Europe. He later became a citizen of Cuba, but following the political disruptions of the 1920s he moved to Paris and became an active participant in the Surrealist movement.

The essential tension in Carpentier’s world view is therefore one between European language, literature, and culture in general – and the desire to give voice to less well-known cultural ‘experience’ of Latin America. His novels – including The Lost Steps – are packed with the concrete nouns of indigenous cultural phenomena – the geography, the architecture, the plant life, music, food, and social customs of Southern America (and the Caribbean). This is now a well-observed feature of modern Latin-American writing – as if its authors were trying to give authenticity to their culture by naming its parts.

The main character

We are not told the protagonist and narrator’s name, nor are his origins made clear. But on arriving in Latin America he feels re-united with his native language, which is Spanish. So we take it that he is a Latin-American who has been living in a commercialised and somewhat ‘decadent’ western culture, and who feels rejuvenated by his exposure to the older culture of the jungle and the native tribes.

It is very difficult to ignore the fact that there are unmistakable similarities between Carpentier’s own biography and that of his protagonist. Carpentier worked for a while in an advertising agency; he had studied music; and whilst living in Latin-America he had made a number of excursions into jungle regions as part of musicological research. He eventually produced a study of La musica en Cuba which was published in 1946. So – at a thematic if not a biographical level, it seems safe to assume that the protagonist is exploring issues in which Carpentier himself had a profound interest.

The narrator makes a very convincing case for the lives of the natives he encounters being no less sophisticated, because their skills exactly meet their needs, and they live in harmony with their environment. He gives a reasonably persuasive account of being enthusiastic about this travelling backwards into native primitivism. He has shed a legitimate wife in New York, taken with him on the journey his Bohemian mistress, then ditched her in favour of a native replacement because she could not adapt to conditions on the expedition.

But it is hard to escape the feeling that there is also a sort of cultural wish-fulfilment on Carpentier’s part here. His protagonist feels the experience of his journey into the ‘heart of darkness’ as a form of spiritual re-birth. He is connecting with native life forces and experiencing ‘real’ Latin-American culture in a manner which is almost unthinkable to someone from a Western European culture. He swaps his ‘western’ lover Mouche (and his wife, who is on tour) for an un-named native woman who he takes as a more satisfying physical and spiritual soul-mate. This part of the novel makes uncomfortable reading in the light of ‘machismo’ Latin culture.

But Carpentier finally rescues himself from crude caricature. The narrator thinks he can go back to complete the task of academic research he has undertaken (as a matter of honour) then return to the native experience he has discovered. But he discovers that he can’t – because his route is obscured by the very forces he has celebrated (the rains, the jungle) and the fact that native life has continued to meet its own needs, leaving him exposed as an outsider. He cannot integrate ‘here’ (amongst native life) because he belongs ‘back there’ (in the metropolitan city).

Cultural complexities

Carpentier obviously felt a great deal of tension between his European education and cultural heritage, and his Latin-American sympathies – but he turned this tension to creative account by fusing the two.

His major works deal with the impact of European ideas in the Latin-American region – The Kingdom of This World (1949) covers the first successful slave revolution in San Domingo (Haiti) and El siglo de las luces (Explosion in a Cathedral) (1962) deals with the consequences of the French Revolution in the Caribbean and South America.

He also drenches his works in references to the two academic disciplines in which he was formally educated – architecture and music – as well as the general embedding of events into their historical and political context.

He was the first to use the techniques of ‘magical realism’ (and he coined the term, lo real maravilloso) in which the concrete, real world becomes suffused with fantasy elements, myths, dreams, and a fractured sense of time and logic .

The Lost Steps – study resources

The Lost Steps – at Amazon UK – (text in English)

Los pasos perdidos – at Amazon UK – (text in Spanish)

The Lost Steps – at Amazon US – (text in English)

Los pasos perdidos – at Amazon US – (text in Spanish)

The Lost Steps – chapter summaries

Chapter One   A jaded and un-named musicologist is living in what seems like New York City, partly estranged from his actress wife, who is on tour. His friend, a museum curator offer to send him on an expedition to recover primitive musical instruments in South America. Together with his mistress Mouche and friends he watches a showing of a commercially sponsored film for which he has composed the soundtrack.. Mouche wants to go with him on the expedition and proposes buying fraudulent antiques.

Chapter Two   He arrives in a coastal Latin-American city whose fabric is vulnerable to the vigorous natural elements of the region. He feels reunited with his native language and his sympathetic responses to the unsophisticated local culture leads to friction with Mouche. Whilst he is searching for antique shops, a revolution breaks out. He is besieged in the hotel, which is invaded by insects. The revolution ends, but snipers hold him down in a grocer’s shop.

He and Mouche escape to the villa of a Canadian painter friend in a nearby town. He becomes irrationally jealous of the friendship between the two women. He is also critical of the Paris-centred enthusiasms of three lkocal artists and vows to continue his expedition and assignment.

Chapter Three   They make a bus journey across the Andes, collecting en route an Indian woman who he sees as the embodiment of native culture. A radio broadcast of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony leads him to recall his family’s musical heritage and his own connections with Europe, from which he has been forced to flee by the horrors of the Second World War. They befriend Rosario the native woman and arrive at an oilfield town, where prostitutes ‘entertain’ the local miners. He begins to criticise Mouche for her lack of sensitivity and admire Rosario for her composure. They reach horse-rearing lands, and then visit the City of Ruins.

They reach Puerto Anunciacion on the edge of the jungle where he argues violently with Mouche, then meets Adelantado, who recounts tales of semi-secret life in the jungle. Rosario’s father dies, followed by ritualistic funeral rites and a swarm of butterflies. There os an excursion to an abandoned mission on an island, where they meet a crazy herbalist and there are tales of El Dorado and ancient mythologies.

Mouche makes a sexual approach to Rosario, who responds by beating her. Mouche develops malaria, during which period Rosario and the narrator become lovers. Mouche is sent. Back to Puerto Anunciacion, and he congratulates himself on his relationship with Rosario. A small party continues up river in canoes.

Chapter Four   They locate the hidden entrance to a tributary that leads into the heart of the jungle. The narrator is intimidated by the tropical atmosphere, and feels as if he is undergoing some sort of trial. The plant and animal life of the jungle. Imitate each other. There is a thunderstorm that threatens to capsize the canoes. The party finally reach a native village where the narrator gets the musical instruments he has been commissioned to find. Surrounded by primitive life and customs, he feels as if he has travelled back in time to the medieval age. They move on and encounter even more primitive tribes where he witnesses ‘the birth of music’ in a ritual funereal celebration.

Chapter Five   The party arrive at Santta Monica de las Venados, a ‘city’ village established almost from nothing by Adelantado. The narrator decides to stay in the village and live the simple life, but he also feels an obligation to deliver the collection of primitive musical instruments. He visits the ‘devil’s cauldron’ of voracious prehistoric plants.

Inundated with days of ceaseless rain, he conceives a new type of musical composition, and uses a copy of The Odyssey for his text, but he quickly runs out of paper and ink. Pressure is put on him to marry Rosario, but when he asks her she refuses. Then one day an aeroplane arrives, in search of the lost explorer. He is divided in his allegiances, but decides to go back, stock up on essential supplies (paper and ink) then return to live in the village.

Chapter Six   The narrator flies back home and is received as a celebrity and a hero. His wife Ruth is pregnant. He sells his story (which he describes as ‘a pack of lies’) to a newspaper. But Mouche sells her version of events to a scandal sheet, which arouses Ruth’s anger. The narrator then tells Ruth about Rosario, and that he wants a divorce, which she refuses to accept.

He finds the culture of New York frivolous and decadent. The divorce drags on; he runs out of money and is reduced to living in student accommodation.. He meets Mouche, spends the night with her, and feels full of self-disgust afterwards.

Finally he sells a film score and returns to Puerto Anunciacion. But he fails to find the entrance to the hidden tributary because it is submerged in the flooded river. He meets Yannes who tells him that Rosario has married Marcos and is pregnant. The narrator realises that he is unable to retrace his steps and his previous experience.

The Lost Steps – principal characters

Alejo Carpentier – other works

The Kingdom of This World is a marvelously compressed account of the slave uprising and first revolution of the early nineteenth century in San Domingo – now Haiti. Carpentier uses ‘magical realism’, long before it became fashionable, to depict the contradictions between political reality and religious or mythical beliefs. The story passes rapidly in a series of vivid scenes from the early unsuccessful uprising led by Macandal, then Bouckman who led Haiti in its fight for independence from France, and finally to Henri Christophe the revolutionary leader who later became Emperor of Haiti, and who built Sans Souci and La Ferrière Citadel.

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The Chase is set in Havana of 1956 where Batista’s tyrannical rule serves as the backdrop for the story of two young men whose lives become intertwined with the prostitute, Estrella. An anonymous man flees a team of shadowy, relentless political assassins, and ultimately takes refuge in a public auditorium during a performance of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony. This novella is particularly interesting because of the multiple, disjointed narrations and its polyphonic structure.

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Alejo Carpentier web links

Carpentier at Wikipedia
Background, biography, magical realism, major works, literary style, further reading

Carpentier at Amazon UK
Novels, criticism, and interviews – in Spanish and English

The Kingdom of this World
Lecture by Rod Marsh – University of Cambridge

Carpentier at Internet Movie Database
Films and TV movies made from his novels

Carpentier in Depth
Spanish video documentary and interview with Carpentier (1977)

© Roy Johnson 2016