Alejo Carpentier The Kingdom of This World 1949

Alejo Carpentier, The Kingdom of This World (1949) “On the Marvelous Real in America”

Birth of Magical Realism: literary expression of postcolonialism Carpentier’s question underlying Kingdom: Method for writing 20 th-century novels about formerly colonized territories and peoples: How to find a language adequate to the task of telling Latin American history in a European form (the novel)? • How to describe a reality alien to European experience (the Haitian slave rebellion, inspired by magical beliefs)? • How to break free of the European outlook to describe Latin American realities (such as the rebellion of enslaved blacks against European planters)? • decolonization: newly independent nations est. a “literature of their own” • assert authority of native/local culture against the metropolitan center (Europe)

History: Haitian Revolution (French slave colony of Saint Domingue) • religious beliefs (Vodou) as historical agent in making of the Haitian Revolution (vs rational outlook of French Revolution: universal rights of liberty) 1750 s Macandal poison campaign 1789 French Revolution: Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen 1791 Haitian Revolution begins: Boukman (Vodun priest) leads insurrection 1793 General Toussaint L’Ouverture conquests force 10, 000 planters into exile (Cuba) 1801 Haitian constitution abolishes slavery 1802 Toussaint captured, exiled to France, dies 1804 Proclamation of Haitian Independence (Dessalines): Black Republic of “Haiti”;

“On the Marvelous Real in America” (1949; preface to The Kingdom of This World) Surrealism (Europe) vs manufactured: “a literary ruse” “encounter of the umbrella and the Sewing machine on the dissecting table” “marvelous invoked in disbelief” Marvelous American Real marvelous IS reality (ontological) “the marvelous presupposes faith” Ex: Haiti: miracle of Macandal’s salvation at execution “After all, what is the entire history of America if not a chronicle of the marvelous real? ”

The Kingdom of This World (1949): • set during Haiti’s wars of Independence at the end of the 18 th century; and focalized through the eyes of the black slave Ti Noel • anthropological: turns to Haitian popular beliefs and practices (Vodou); oral histories of Macandal juxtaposes European planter vs black viewpoints (Ti-Noel) = about modernization in colonial territories CO-EXISTENCE OF INCOMPATIBLE LOGICS OF THE REAL modern skeptical-rational outlook vs pre-modern mythical outlook (Vodou) EX power of magical belief Marvelous = part of ordinary reality (unquestioned, taken-for-granted reality) into which narrator = embedded myth = debunked as naïve illusion, mythic beliefs = valid knowledge superstition NOT REAL: marvelous IS real, part of everyday life

• protagonist Ti-Noel (enslaved) ordinary person, representative of the people vs historical figures (Macandal; Boukman) at the margins of narrated events 4 parts (relatively autonomous) unified as episodes in life of protagonist Ti-Noel I— 1750 s: the terrorist Vodou campaign of the mandinga Mackandal against the white French colonists II—the Haitian & French Revolutions (the 1791 rebellion of the black slaves led by Boukman; the exile of the plantocracy in Santiago de Cuba; Paulina Bonaparte in Haiti; the failed French attempt to shore up the colonial regime on the island in 1802) III— 1820: the downfall of the ruthless black King Henri Christophe, the prototype of the modern European-identified dictator IV— 2 nd half of 1820 s: Henri Christophe’s family, exiled in Rome; Paulina Bonaparte’s statue; the rise of the mulattoes in Haiti, the new rulers & oppressors of the blacks; Ti Noel’s illumination & metamorphosis through Vodou

Questions for discussion: 1) Make a list of marvelous, fantastic, and supernatural elements, characters, events that are accepted as constituents of the real in The Kingdom of This World. • How does Carpentier succeed in making the fantastic seem as believable and real as ordinary, everyday reality? 1) To what extent are Carpentier’s propositions in his foundational essay “On the Marvelous Real in America, ” supported by his novel, The Kingdom of This World?