Marvelous realism in the Caribbean: a second look at Jacques Stephen Alexis and Alejo Carpentier

Abstract

In 1943 the Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier (1904–1980) visited Haiti for the first time, an experience which inspired his novel El reino de este mundo and his controversial theory of marvelous realism. During the trip Carpentier gave a speech entitled “L'evolution culturelle de l'Amerique Latine” that was heard by a young Haitian writer named Jacques Stephen Alexis (1922–1961). Most critics who have studied the literary relationship between the two writers have concluded that Alexis' approach to Haitian culture and identity draws heavily upon the ideas from Carpentier's theory of marvelous realism. However, I argue that Alexis' “Du réalisme merveilleux des Haïtiens” can be read as a critique of Carpentier and an effort to break from the path he had established by creating a more grounded form of marvelous realism for the Haitian context, one with a strong social commentary. These divergent positions are reflected in the fiction of the two writers; whereas Alexis's novels concentrate on key historical events in Haiti in the twentieth century and emphasize the need for societal change via Marxist revolution in the future, Carpentier's texts look to events in Europe and Latin America in the recent past and cast a more skeptical eye on the consequences of revolutions. I trace the development of these ideas through Carpentier's two essays on marvelous realism and his novels El reino de este mundo, Los pasos perdidos, El siglo de las luces, and La consagración de la primavera and in Alexis's essay on Haitian marvelous realism and his three novels Compère Général Soleil, Les arbres musiciens, and L'espace de un cillement.

Keywords:

• Caribbean
• Jacques Stephen Alexis
• Alejo Carpentier
• magical realism
• Haiti

Notes on contributor

Nicholas Michael Kramer received his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at the University of California, Los Angeles, and is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of Spanish at Whitman College. He specializes in Southern Cone literature and culture and is also interested in the Caribbean, Inter-American literary and cultural relations, Latin American cultural studies and film.

Notes

1. Dash has a more precise account of Alexis's death: “Alexis and his group were imprisoned and later stoned to death in true Medieval style”; Dash, Jacques Stéphen Alexis, 5.

2. See the work of John Beverley, Enrico Mario Santí, Alberto Moreiras, Román de la Campa, Walter Mignolo and Jon Beasley-Murray.

3. Anderson Imbert, “El ‘Realismo mágico’,” 347–358.

4. Heady, Marvelous Journeys, 73–74.

5. Saer, El concepto de ficción, 266.

6. Saer, El concepto de ficción, 262. All translations are mine unless indicated otherwise.

7. Van Delden and Grenier, Gunshots at the Fiesta, xi.

8. Carpentier, The Kingdom, 177–178.

9. However, the narrator subsequently contrasts the belief of the slaves that their hero has escaped with reality when he tells us that “very few saw that Macandal, held by ten soldiers, had been thrust into the fire, and that a flame fed by his burning hair had drowned his last cry” (Carpentier, The Kingdom, 52).

10. Parkinson Zamora and Faris, Marvelous Realism, 93.

11. Parkinson Zamora and Faris, Marvelous Realism, 100.

12. Part of what Timothy Brennan has referred to as “Carpentier's ‘American Cycle’ of novels” in his introduction to the English translation of Los pasos perdidos: The Kingdom of This World, Explosion in a Cathedral, and The Lost Steps; Brennan, “Introduction,” xii.

13. See Brennan, “Introduction.”

14. Carpentier, Explosion, 333.

15. Gerardo Machado y Morales was President of Cuba from 1925 to 1933. See González Echeverría, The Pilgrim; and Shaw, Alejo Carpentier.

16. Shaw, Alejo Carpentier, 2.

17. Shaw, Alejo Carpentier, 109.

18. Carpentier, La novela latinoamericana.

19. See Shaw, Alejo Carpentier.

20. Carpentier, Consagración de la primavera.

21. Coates, “Introduction,” xii.

22. Mudimbe-Boyi, L'oeuvre romanesque

23. Dash, Literature and Ideology, 195.

24. Webb, Myth and History, 17.

25. Heady, Marvelous Journeys, 42–46.

26. For example, it has been anthologized by in The Post-Colonial Studies Reader by Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin.

27. See Heady, Marvelous Journeys.

28. Carpentier, “On the Marvelous Real,” 88.

29. Alexis, “Of the Marvelous Realism,” 196.

30. Alexis, “Of the Marvelous Realism,” 197.

31. Parkinson Zamora and Faris, Marvelous Realism, 86.

32. Danticat co-translated In the Flicker of an Eyelid from the French with Carrol F. Coates and has acknowledged her debt to Alexis.

33. Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina was ruler of the Dominican Republic between 1930 and 1961.

34. Alexis, “Of the Marvellous Realism,” 247.

35. See Coates, “Introduction,” xix.

36. Alexis, General Sun, 184.

37. See Heady, Marvelous Journeys, 65–71.

38. See Heady, Marvelous Journeys, 51–60.

39. Alexis, Les arbres musiciens

40. The previous novel was largely focused on working class characters, while this one centers on figures from the middle class.

41. See Coates, “Afterword,” 259.

42. Dash, Literature and Ideology, 195.

43. Dash, Literature and Ideology, 195.