Alejo Carpentier

Biography

Alejo Carpentier was born from a father French architect and from a Russian mother professor of languages.

It was thought a long time that it had been born with Havana where its family settled little time after her birth, but its certificate of birth would have been found in Switzerland after its death and would prove that it was born in Lausanne.

It was 12 years old when its family settled in Paris. It is there that it starts to study musicology. When they turn over to settle in Cuba, Alejo Carpentier begins studies of architect, that it will not finish. It is devoted to the journalism, but its engagement on the left is worth to him a stay in prison (1928), under the presidency of Gerardo Machado, before obliging it to exile itself in France. It meets the surrealist there, of which André Breton, Paul Eluard, Louis Aragon, Jacques Prévert and Antonin Artaud. During this stay in France, it makes several voyages in Spain where it develops a fascination for the Baroque.

Of return to Cuba in 1939, it continues a career of journalist and chronicler of radio. It witnesses a ceremony Vaudou and is interested in the culture Cuban Negro. In 1943, it is marked by a stay with Haiti, during which it visits the fortress of the Citadel the Tool bag and the Palate of Without-Concern, built by the black king of Haiti Henri Christophe. In 1945 it settles in Caracas (Venezuela) where it will live until 1959. After the triumph of the cuban revolution it returns with Havana. In 1966 he becomes ambassador of Cuba in France where he will reside until his death.

Alejo Carpentier is famous for its style baroque and its theory of the real maravilloso . Its most known works in France include/understand the Age of Enlightenment (1962), the War of Time (1967), Concert baroque (1974). Its first novel, Dishes-yamba-O! (1933), is of inspiration Cuban Negro. In the Kingdom of this World (1949), its first large novel, it evokes the cuban revolutionary movement. It is as in the prolog of this novel as it describes its vision of the real maravilloso or " reality merveilleux" , that criticisms will identify with the magic Réalisme.

Its stay in Venezuela of 1945 to 1959 obviously inspires to him the description of the South American country without name where the essence of its novel the Division of Water proceeds (1953).

Its novel " The Recourse of Méthode" (El Recurso del Método), published in 1974 is one of the large novels of the American literature latino to trace the standard portrait of the dictator (by taking here for model the figure of Machado). He is preceded in that by Miguel Angel Asturias with " El Senor Présidente" (1946), Augusto Roa Bastos: " Yo el Supremo" (1974) and followed by Gabriel Garcia Marquez: " El Otoño del Patriarca" (1975) and Mario Vargas Llosa: Fiesta LED chivo (2000).

In 1975 it receives the world Price Cino Del Duca. It receives the Prix Cervantes in 1977 and the Prix Médicis in 1979.

The end of its life is marked by a fight against cancer, while it finishes its last novel.

He dies in Paris on April 24th, 1980. Its body is transferred to Cuba, where it is buried in the Colón Cemetery of Havana. Its funeral is celebrated the April 28th, in the presence of the president Fidel Castro.

Random links: