Alejo Carpentier

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Alejo Carpentier Valmont (born December 26, 1904 in Lausanne , Switzerland , † April 24, 1980 in Paris ) was a Cuban-French writer .

Alejo Carpentier (1979)

Life

Carpentier was the son of the French architect Georges Julien Carpentier and the Russian language teacher Lina Valmont. After Alejo's birth, the family emigrated from Europe to Cuba, where he grew up in Havana, the capital. He studied architecture , literature and musicology . Carpentier was a collaborator and editor of various newspapers and magazines.

After a short stay in prison for oppositional activities against the dictator Gerardo Machado , he went into exile in Paris for eleven years in 1927/28 . There he moved in the circle of the surrealists André Breton , Tristan Tzara , Louis Aragon and Pablo Picasso . With the victory of fascism in Europe in 1939, Carpentier returned to Havana, taught as a professor of musicology at the university, wrote newspaper articles and worked for a state broadcaster. From 1945 to 1959 he lived in exile in Venezuela in Caracas .

In the preface to his novel El reino de este mundo from 1949 ( Eng. The Empire of this World , 1964), Carpentier formulates his concept of the “wonderfully real” (Spanish: “Lo real maravilloso”), the basic idea of magical realism ( Spanish: realismo mágico), which had a major influence on the independent development of Latin American literature : “ I encountered the wonderfully real everywhere. But I also thought that this presence and validity of the wonderfully real was not a privilege of Haiti, but the heritage of the whole of America. The wonderfully real can be found at every turn in people's lives. “For Carpentier, especially at a time when Europe was ruled by totalitarian systems, Latin America became a positive utopia in which the wonderful can be found not only in the designs of artists, but in reality.

In 1959 Carpentier returned to Cuba , where he worked as a professor of literature at the University of Havana. In 1967 Fidel Castro appointed him State Secretary and made him head of the Cuban State Publishing House. From 1966 Carpentier lived in Paris as a cultural attaché to the Cuban government . As such, he died there at the age of 76 on April 24, 1980. He was buried in the Cementerio Cristóbal Colón cemetery in Havana.

Alejo Carpentier's grave in the Cementerio de Colón cemetery in Havana

In 1977 Alejo Carpentier was awarded the Cervantes Prize.

Works

  • ¡Ecué-Yamba-O! . 1933, novel
  • El reino de este mundo . 1949, Roman (German: The Empire of this World . 1964)
  • La música en Cuba . 1946, musicological non-fiction book
  • Los pasos perdidos . 1953, Roman (German: The lost traces . 1982, ISBN 3-518-39744-3 )
  • El acoso . 1956, Roman (German: Finale on Cuba . 1960; Hetzjagd . 1989)
  • El siglo de las luces . 1962, Roman (German: Explosion in the cathedral . 1964)
  • El recurso del método . 1974, Roman (German: Staatsraison . 1976; The method of power . 1989)
  • Concierto barroco . 1974, novella (German: Barockkonzert . 1976)
  • La consagración de la primavera . 1978, Roman (German: Le Sacre du Printemps . 1993)
  • El arpa y la sombra . 1979, Roman (German: The Harp and the Shadow . 1979)
  • El amor a la ciudad . Narration (German: Mein Havana ; Amman Verlag; 2000, ISBN 3-250-30001-2 )

Film adaptations

  • 1977: Long Live the President ( El recurso del método )
  • 1989: Barroco

literature

Monographs
Essays
  • Hortensia Campanella: Alejo Carpentier dossier . In: Cuadernos hispanoamericanos. Vol. 649/650 (2004), ISSN  0011-250X , pp. 8-88.
  • Markus Ebenhoch: Alejo Carpentier . In: Christopher F. Laferl (Ed.): America and the norm. Literary language as a model? Niemeyer, Tübingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-484-50726-5 .
  • Liliana Gómez: Havana. Alejo Carpentier or "fieldwork" in the urban . In this. (Ed.): The sacred in the city . Continuum, London 2012, ISBN 978-1-4411-7295-2 , pp. 227-243.
  • Marike Janzen: Messenger writers. Anna Seghers and Alejo Carpentier in the Cold . In: Comparative Literature. Vol. 62 (2010), Issue 3, ISSN  0010-4124 , pp. 283-301.
  • Gerhard Poppenberg: Take it back. Lo fáustico en el " Doctor Faustus " de Thomas Mann y la revocation de lo fáustico en "Los pasos perdidos" de Alejo Carpentier . In: 200 ° aniversario del " Fausto I. " de JW von Goethe . AAG, Buenos Aires 2009, ISBN 978-987-22406-5-3 .
  • Caroline Rae: In Havana and Paris. The musical activities of Alejo Carpentier . In: Music & Letters. Vol. 89 (2008), No. 3, ISSN  0027-4224 , pp 373-395.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Readable both in German online stores and on the publisher's website (chapter by chapter as .pdf).
personal data
SURNAME Carpentier, Alejo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Carpentier Valmont, Alejo (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Cuban-French writer
DATE OF BIRTH December 26, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Havana , Cuba
DATE OF DEATH April 24, 1980
Place of death Paris , France