Explosion in a Cathedral by Alejo Carpentier

First published:El siglo de las luces, 1962 (English translation, 1963)

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Social realism

Time of plot: 1789-1809

Locale: Caribbean islands and Europe

Principal characters

• Carlos, the son of a Cuban merchant
• Sofía, Carlos’s sister
• Esteban, Carlos’s and Sofía’s cousin
• Victor Hugues, a father figure to Carlos and Sofía
• Ogé, a Haitian doctor and revolutionary

The Story:

A wealthy Cuban merchant dies in Havana, leaving behind an orphaned son and daughter, Carlos and Sofía, and a nephew, Esteban, also an orphan who grew up with Carlos and Sofía. In the absence of paternal authority, the three adolescents are free to pass the time as they wish. They eat and sleep at odd hours and transform the family mansion into a house of “perpetual games,” a disorderly labyrinth of unpacked shipping crates. Their harmonious existence in the midst of external chaos is brought to an abrupt end, however, when Victor Hugues, a cosmopolitan businessman from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, arrives one stormy Easter Sunday. Victor, executor of their father’s will, restores order to the house and assumes the role of surrogate father. He restores the old values of their deceased father and introduces both Esteban and Sofía into the world of adulthood. He also introduces the young people to the liberal ideas of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. When Victor, a Freemason, is threatened with arrest by the colonial authorities because of his subversive ideas, Sofía offers the family’s country home as a refuge to him and his friend, Ogé, a mulatto doctor from San Domingo. Sofía and Esteban accompany the two men to the estate. There they become fascinated by heated political discussions about revolution, class war, liberty, and equality.

Although Victor and Ogé use the same language in their discussions about the necessity for social change, Victor, though he upholds the egalitarian principles of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, is primarily concerned with business. For him, the advanced ideas of the New Age are important because they challenge the colonial monopoly of trade in the Americas. He is one of several Creole merchants who set up a contraband organization to circumvent specifically the Spanish monopoly. His mission in Havana is to contact local merchants sympathetic to Freemasonry and to form a secret organization to combat the economic tyranny of Spain, but he finds little active interest in social issues among the Cubans.

In contrast to Victor, Ogé, though a man of science, espouses a form of revolutionary mysticism that aims at bringing about change by awakening the transcendental powers of the human spirit. Sofía and Esteban are more attracted to Victor’s scientific views of human progress and most of all to his powerful personality as an energetic man of action. When Victor and Ogé are forced to escape the island, they invite Sofía and Esteban to accompany them on a trip to Port-au-Prince. Esteban eagerly joins in the revolutionary adventure that he hopes would be his initiation into manhood. During the sea voyage, Sofía yields to Victor’s sexual advances.

Shortly after their ship docks at Santiago de Cuba, Victor, Ogé, and Esteban leave Sofía in that city and proceed on to Port-au-Prince. There, they find the city in flames and Victor’s business establishment burned to the ground. Despite the destruction of his property, Victor feels a sense of freedom, of being on the threshold of a new life. The uprising puts an end to his friendship with Ogé, however, whose younger brother was executed by white settlers in Cap Français. Ogé becomes bitter toward all whites and warns Victor to leave before he is killed by the black insurgents. Victor and Esteban decide to sail for revolutionary France. In Paris, Victor quickly aligns himself with the new government and begins to rise to power as agent of the Revolution of the Americas. Though infected in Paris by the fervor of the early days of the Revolution, Esteban is content to witness rather than to participate in the struggle. He perceives it in terms of a stage in the spiritual human progress toward domination over more selfish and violent instincts. After witnessing the Terror, he begins to see the contradictions of the revolutionary process and the threat it poses to those who dare to dissent. Esteban grows increasingly disillusioned and returns to Havana.

After her husband dies in an epidemic, Sofía seeks out Victor and joins him in Cayenne. Sofía’s hope of lending herself to an epic struggle that will give meaning to her life fails even more quickly than Esteban’s did in France. Victor is transformed from a libertarian to a ruthless tyrant as he leads a catastrophic campaign against the rebellious black population in Cayenne. Abandoning Victor, Sofía sails for Spain. There she secures release for Esteban, who was deported from Cuba to Spain for concealing subversive propaganda and who now engages once more in the revolutionary struggle. Victor dies defending the interests of the new bourgeoisie in Cayenne; Esteban and Sofía join the first revolution to challenge those values and die anonymously in the streets of Madrid fighting Napoleon’s troops.

At the end of the novel, Carlos, who remained in Havana tending to his deceased father’s businesses, reconstructs the last day of Esteban and Sofía in Madrid. He begins to carry on what Sofía and Esteban began. Wealthy, but with the liberal ideas acquired through his contact with the revolution, he will be the one to bring about the wars of independence in Cuba.

Bibliography

Gikandi, Simon. Writing in Limbo. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1992. An insightful study that discusses the work of Carpentier in the context of twentieth century modernism and Caribbean literature.

Gilkes, Michael. The West Indian Novel. Boston: Twayne, 1981. Carpentier’s work is analyzed within the larger context of the historical and cultural environment of West Indian literature. Includes a chronology and bibliography.

Gonzalez Echevarria, Roberto. Alejo Carpentier: The Pilgrim at Home. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1977. Asserts that the core of Carpentier’s fiction lies in the dilemma of what constitutes American history and how to narrate it. Includes a bibliography.

King, Bruce, ed. West Indian Literature. Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1979. Excellent overview of the major figures of West Indian literature. Compares and contrasts Carpentier’s work with that of other prominent novelists. Includes a bibliography.

Unruh, Vicky. “The Performing Spectator in Alejo Carpentier’s Fictional World.” Hispanic Review 66 (Winter, 1998): 57-77. Argues that Carpentier uses the concept of performance to explore subjectivity and identity; asserts he is fascinated by performance because of his interest in switching identities; claims his theater activity is a key to understanding his fictional world, in which spectatorship is an important way of experiencing the world.

Wakefield, Steve. Carpentier’s Baroque Fiction: Returning Medusa’s Gaze. Rochester, N.Y.: Tamesis, 2004. Traces the origins of Carpentier’s literary style to his interest in Spanish baroque architecture and the Spanish Golden Age. Wakefield explains how Carpentier’s historical fiction sought to create the ambience of this period through descriptions of architecture and the visual arts and parodies of Spanish Golden Age writers. Chapter 6 is devoted to an analysis of Explosion in a Cathedral.

Webb, Barbara J. Myth and History in Caribbean Fiction. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992. An excellent examination of the use of myth and history in the works of Carpentier, Wilson Harris, and Edouard Glissant. Includes an extensive bibliography.