1. Lil Ryan & Charlotte Skeffington
Alejo Carpentier
Lil Ryan & Charlotte Skeffington

2. Carpentier 1902 Born in Cuba 1920’s avant-garde artist
-French and Russian heritage
-Interest in music, history, architecture and painting
1920’s avant-garde artist
1928 Self initiated exile in Paris
Lived in Venezuela during Castro’s armed insurrection
Writing Achievements:
-1949 The Kingdom of This World
-1953 The Lost Steps
-1974 Concierto Borraco
-1979 The Harp and The Shadow
Died in Paris in 1980
Carpentier

3. Classification The marvelous real (el real maravilloso)
Specifically Latin American: what it has to offer in terms of myth, dreams, and the subconscious as a result of its hybrid history
Latin America itself is marvelous (ontological)
Criticized surrealism, but was influenced by it
He rejected the magic realist label
Elements of primitivism in his work
Primitivism: extraordinary explained as manifestations of the primitive mentality
Archival writer
Archival narrative: concerned with the act of writing
The Lost Steps: archival, The Kingdom of This World: non-archival

4. Defocalized narrative
Focalization: “perspective from which events are presented” (Faris)
Defocalization(term coined by Faris): simultaneous presentation of two perspectives
Baroque descriptiveness
In Carpentier’s opinion, inherent in Latin American literature
Classification in terms of comparison with Borges
Borges:questions meaning, Carpentier: restores meaning with marvelous real

5. Does Classification Matter?
Classification is secondary
Latin America is like the literature it produces
The inability to classify is one of its best qualities

6. Viaje a la semilla Journey Back to The Source
1944
The War of Time
(1958)

7. Musicology Influence
Musical Form: canon cancrizans (recurring canon, crab canon)
First voice: enunciates a given theme
Second voice states a copy of it in reverse
Theme: fa la do mi sol si re
Copy: re si sol mi do la fa

8. VI
And a splendid evening party was given in the music room on the day he achieved his minority. He was delighted to know that his signature was no longer legally valid, and that worm-eaten registers and documents would now vanish from his world. He had reached the point at which courts of justice were no longer to be feared, because his bodily existence was ignored by the law. After getting tipsy on noble wines, the young people took down from the walls a guitar inlaid with mother-of-pearl, a psaltery and a serpent. Someone wound up the clock that played the “Ranz-des-vaches” and the Ballad of the Scottish Lakes,’ Someone else blew on a hunting horn that had been lying curled in a copper sleep on the crimson felt suitcase, beside a transverse flute brought from Aranjuez. Marcial, who was boldly making love to Señora de Campolorido, joined in the cacophony, and tried to pick out the tune of “Trípili-Trapala” on the Piano, to a discordant accompaniment in the bass. Then they all trooped upstairs to the attic, remembering that the liveries and clothes of the Capellanías family had been stored away under it beams which were recovering their plaster.

9. Historical Influences
Caribbean Syncretism
Indigenous, European Imperialist, African Slaves
Santeria, Voodoo

10. References to syncretism found in Journey Back to the Source
I & II:
-The old Negro reciting the “monologue of incomprehensible remarks (222)”
-Orisha Elugua from Yorubu and Ewe-Fon West African Cultures
-Keeper of doors, keys, locks, and houses often takes shape of an old Negro with a cane
- In Cuba, Eshu, a devil who at times speaks backwards
IV:
- The Old Negress who keeps pigeons under her bed…iyalocha
-Warning of “Never trust rivers, my girl; never trust anything green and flowing!”
-Serpent river, the snake river of African and Caribbean myths
-Mother of Waters, lives in the rivers of Cuba, Brazil, Guyana and Haiti. mermaid who demands sacrifices

11. Bibliography
Angulo, Marâia-Elena. Magic Realism Social Context and Discourse. New York: Garland Pub., 1995.
Benitez-Rojo, Antonio. The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and the Postmodern Perspective. 2nd ed. London: Duke UP,
Faris, Wendy B. Ordinary Enchantments Magical Realism and the Remystification of Narrative. 1st Ed. ed. Nashville: Vanderbilt UP, 2004.
Gonzalez Echevarria, Roberto. Alejo Carpentier: The Pilgrim At Home. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1977.
Kristal, Efrain, ed. The Cambridge Companion to the Latin American Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
Sanchez-Boudy, Jose. La Tematica Novelistica De Alejo Carpentier. Miami: Ediciones Universal, 1969.