biographical notes and major works
1904. Alejo Carpentier was born in Lausanne, Switzerland. His father was a French architect and his mother a Russian professor of languages and a musician. The family moved soon afterwards to Havana, Cuba. He speaks French, but writes in Spanish.
1916. The family moved to live in Paris. Studies music theory at the Lycee; begins writing.
1920. The family return to Havana, He studies architecture – a course he never completed.
1921. Goes into journalism when father abandons family. His writing was considered leftist. He helped to found the Cuban Communist Party.
1924. Editor of Carteles; writes music and theatre criticism; studies black music; his oratorio La Passion Noire is performed in Paris.
1927. Founds avant-guard review Avance – which lasts for only one issue.
1928. Cuba – arrested for political activity against dictator Machado; writes novel Ecue-yamba-O! in seven days in jail – an exploration of Afro-Cuban traditions among the poor of the island; the novel was later revised then disowned.
1929. Escapes to Paris, where he becomes active in avant-guard literary movement with Louis Aragon, Tristan Tzara, and Paul Eluard; works as a journalist and publicist for magazines and radio; absorbs European avant-guard culture, but meanwhile studies Latin-American history, anthropology, and music; writes librettos for operas; association with composer Edgar Varese. Meets Guatemalan author Miguel Angel Asturias, whose work on pre-Columbian mythology influenced his writing.
1930s. Visits Berlin, Madrid, and Paris; works as musical director for French radio; works with Maurice Chevalier and Mistinguette; produces Kurt Weil; meets Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, and John dos Passos.
1933. Ecue-yamba-O! published.
1939. Returns to Cuba to work in radio; commissioned to write history of Cuban music.
1943. Makes an importantl 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 provided the inspiration for his second novel, El Reino de Este Mundo (The Kingdom of this World).
1945. Political problems in Cuba under dictator Batista; Carpentier emigrates to Caracas (Venezuela) to work in an advertising agency.
1946. La musica en Cuba published.
1947. Trip up Orinoco river into the Venezuelan jungle – provides material and background for The Lost Steps.
1949. El reino de este mundo (The Kingdom of this World).
1953. Los pasos perdidos (The Lost Steps) written three times.
1956. El Acoso published (The Chase).
1959. Returns to Cuba following Castro’s overthrow of the Batista regime; appointed Professor of History of Culture at Havana University.
1962. El siglo de las luces (Explosion in a Cathedral); appointed head of state publishing house.
1966. Appointed cultural attache/ambassador in Paris.
1974. El recurso del metodo (Reason of State) and Concierto barroco published.
1977. Awarded the Cervantes prize.
1978. La consagracion de la primavera (The Consecration of Spring).
1980. Dies in Paris – his remains were taken back to Cuba, and he was buried in the Cemetery Colon, Havana.
© Roy Johnson 2004
More on Alejo Carpentier
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Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008 ) was both the continuation of the nineteenth century Russian realist literary tradition, and the nearest the twentieth century had to a Tolstoy figure – a great writer who became a self-appointed conscience to the Russian nation. Solzhenitsyn survived four of the most severe tests known to human beings – war, cancer, unjust imprisonment, and exile. He made all of them the materials of his fiction. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970. This did not prevent him being expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974 under Brezhnev. He then lived in the United States until he was invited back to his homeland in 1994 following the collapse of communism.
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch (1962) is a short novel that made Solzhenitsyn famous overnight. It recounts a typical day’s work, deprivation, and suffering of a prisoner in one of Stalin’s labour camps. Publication was ‘allowed’ because it suited Krushchev in his post 1956 reforms and his criticism of Stalin. The facts of prison camp life were deliberately understated to meet the censor’s requirements. It catapulted Solzhenitsyn to fame, and yet within two or three years his work was banned all over again. Beginners should start here.
The Gulag Archipelago (1973-1978) could eventually turn out to be Solzhenitsyn’s masterpiece. It’s a three-volume encyclopedia of the forced labour camps which underpinned the communist system – from Lenin onwards. It was written in secret under incredibly difficult conditions and smuggled out to the West. It’s a history, a sociology, a complete political and social record of the labour camps. Rather unusually for Solzhenitsyn it is recounted via a series of poetic metaphors which hold together a wonderful collection of stories, statistics, and anecdotes. There are heartbreaking tales of endurance, survival, escape, and recapture. It is truly one of the great documents of historical witness. In retrospect it probably helped to bring about the collapse of the totally corrupt communist regime in the USSR. But most importantly it helps to document a tragically bleak period of quite recent European history. This is a work which could significantly affect your life.
The First Circle (1968) is set in a special research-cum-detention centre reserved for mathematicians and scientists who are nevertheless political prisoners. This is what might be called a novel of ideas, as the characters discuss the political and historical forces which have brought them to their present unjust imprisonment. Of the main characters, one is eventually released, another is sent off to a much harsher regime, and the third remains where he is. Includes a satirical portrait of Stalin.
August 1914 (1971) is the first part of a multi-volume epic, a historical novel on a grand scale about the origins of the Soviet Union and how communism came to take root there. The cycle is called The Red Wheel, and was never finished. Solzhenitsyn sees the Battle of Tannenberg at the start of the First World War as the first major turning point in this process. Using a range of modernist and vaguely experimental techniques, he sets in motion a huge cast of characters against the backdrop of this decisive battle.
Lenin in Zurich (1976) is a short section from The Red Wheel which focuses largely on Lenin in exile, immediately prior to his triumphant return in a sealed train to St Petersburg’s Finland Station. It’s a very interesting study, because Solzhenitsyn is clearly critical of Lenin as one of the central architects of communism – yet he narrates the novel largely from Lenin’s point of view, blending a psychological character study and real historical detail with a witheringly ironic critique. Steeped in history, this is a major attempt at a political and psychological portrait of a historical figure.
At the outset of the novel Almayer thinks back to his earliest days in Macassar when Captain Lingard offered him a partnership in exchange for marrying his adopted Philippino daughter. Since then Almayer’s fortunes have sunk, and he yearns to become wealthy and return to Europe with his half-caste daughter Nina. He now feels distinctly hostile towards his wife – a feeling which is reciprocated. He sends Nina to Singapore to be educated amongst Europeans. The experiment is not successful, and she returns home. Lingard seems to be missing somewhere in Europe.
An Outcast of the Islands
Lord Jim
The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad offers a series of essays by leading Conrad scholars aimed at both students and the general reader. There’s a chronology and overview of Conrad’s life, then chapters that explore significant issues in his major writings, and deal in depth with individual works. These are followed by discussions of the special nature of Conrad’s narrative techniques, his complex relationships with late-Victorian imperialism and with literary Modernism, and his influence on other writers and artists. Each essay provides guidance to further reading, and a concluding chapter surveys the body of Conrad criticism.
Heart of Darkness
Ella Marchmill is a romantic young woman with an artistic temperament and an unfulfilled personal life. She is bored with her marriage, and has written and published poetry under the pseudonym John Ivy. On holiday with her husband and three children in Solentsea (Southsea) they find lodgings normally occupied by a young poet Robert Trewe, who moves out to accommodate them.
Tess of the d’Urbervilles
The Woodlanders
Wessex Tales
The Aspern Papers
The Spoils of Poynton
