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.