Alejo Carpentier
Alejo Carpentier Valmont (born December 26, 1904 in Lausanne , Switzerland , † April 24, 1980 in Paris ) was a Cuban-French writer .
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.
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
- Claudius Armbruster: The work of Alejo Carpentier, Chronicle of the “Wonderful Reality” . Vervuert, Frankfurt / M. 1982, ISBN 3-921600-13-8 .
- Timothy J. Cox: Postmodern tales of slavery in the Americas. From Alejo Carpentier to Charles Johnson . Garland, New York 2001, ISBN 0-8153-3853-8 .
- Hans-Otto Dill : Latin American miracles and Creole sensitivity. The narrator and essayist Alejo Carpentier . Kovač, Hamburg 1993, ISBN 3-86064-108-5 .
- Rita de Maeseneer, Patrick Collard (eds.): En el centenario de Alejo Carpentier 1904–1980. (Foro Hispánico; vol. 25). Rodopi, Amsterdam 2004, ISBN 90-420-1731-7 (in Spanish and French).
- Werner Müller: Latin American magic - European objectivity? A critical examination of the short prose by Robert Musil , Franz Kafka , Heimito von Doderer , Jorge Luis Borges Alejo Carpentier and Gabriel García Marquez . Rombach, Freiburg / B. 2011, ISBN 978-3-7930-5059-9 .
- Thomas Sträter: Celebrations and Protests. Literature and music in Latin American modernism with Jorge Luis Borges, Mário de Andrade , Alejo Carpentier and José María Arguedas Edition Tranvia, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-938944-41-7 .
- 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
- Literature by and about Alejo Carpentier in the catalog of the German National Library
- Works by and about Alejo Carpentier in the German Digital Library
- Literature by and about Alejo Carpentier in the catalog of the Ibero-American Institute of Prussian Cultural Heritage, Berlin
- Literature by and about Alejo Carpentier in the catalog of the library of the Instituto Cervantes in Germany
- Short biography and reviews of works by Alejo Carpentier at perlentaucher.de
Remarks
- ↑ 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 |