SOURCE: "The Image of Art in Carpentier's Los pasos perdidos and El acoso," in Romance Notes, Vol. XX, No. 3, Spring, 1980, pp. 304-09.

[In the following essay, Townsend discusses the thematic similarities between Manhunt and the novel The Lost Steps, concentrating on the role of music in the texts.]

The themes of the role of art in society and the responsibilities of the artist are of tremendous importance in Alejo Carpentier's novel of 1953, Los pasos perdidos. These concerns are developed through the persona of a composer who seeks the roots of his art among the primitive peoples of the Latin American jungle. His encounter with a group of Indians mourning the death of a comrade destroys his previous theories as to the origin of music. The primitives' rhythmic howls are seen as "intento primordial de lucha contra las potencias de aniquilamiento que se atraviesan en los cálculos del hombre."¹ He is left with the realization that "acabo de asistir al Nacimiento de la Música" (L.p.p. p. 148).

Thus the art of music, born of tragedy and fear, is seen as the human response of rage, grief and terror before the harsh facts of death. Returning to twentieth-century life, the narrator finds that modern man is now completely dominated by fear; fear of everything, not just of death: ". . . detrás de esas caras, cualquier apetencia profunda, cualquier rebeldía, cualquier impulso, es atajado siempre por el miedo" (L.p.p. p. 203). Further, he has already discovered that the sterility of modern music signals its absolute failure to respond to the horrors and terrors of modern life, "un mundo en ruinas" (L.p.p. p. 20).

El acoso (1956) is about one twentieth century man in this crumbling world who is besieged by the most profound of fears—his imminent death. Unlike Los pasos perdidos there are no artists as characters and no overt exploration of the function of art in society. However, art itself in the form of Beethoven's Symphony No. 3, the "Eroica," does have a prominent role to play in the novel, for it forms the background to the entire plot. The "acosado" takes refuge in a concert hall where this music fills his senses as he relives past events and suffers present terrors in the last forty-six minutes of his life, before his personal "aniquilamiento." The special characteristics of this work of art and its intrusion into the scene of this novel reflect some of the preoccupations expressed by Carpentier in the earlier novel.

Beethoven dedicated the "Eroica" to Napoleon Bonaparte in his guise of the revolutionary hero of Europe, and it is the desire to be a hero which has brought the "acosado" to his present misery. As a member of a revolutionary group he reflects that in their acts of terrorism "Todo había sido justo, heroico, sublime en el comienzo; las casas que estallaban en la noche; los Dignatarios acribillados en las Avenidas. . . ."² While the Terror of the French Revolution set Napoleon on the road to glory, for the "acosado" there is to be no glory; only the realization of his own weakness and the impossibility of heroism in the world he inhabits. Captured by the opposition, he breaks down under torture and betrays his comrades who are decimated. The survivors of this group are now pursuing him to kill him in vengeance. The "acosado" has treated the revolutionary struggle as a sort of schoolboy's game of "Dare." He has been unable to resist the temptation of glory, just as Napoleon was unable to resist the temptation of absolute power; both were unable to recognize their limitations in time. This inability led Bonaparte to St. Helena as it now leads the young man to his execution in a concert hall.

But in his last moments of agony only the music of triumph and the idealized heroism of Napoleon ironically surrounds him. He cannot confront failure and imminent death in dignity or be consoled by this perfect reminder of what he will never achieve. The music presages his death but even the Funeral March, as John N. Burk points out, "soon ceases to be elegaic. Its solemnity has no odor of mortality; death has no place in Beethoven's thoughts as an artist."³ Death is not present as a reality or even a possibility in the "Eroica" and therefore the fear and rage which the "acosado" feels cannot be expressed or exorcized. Instead the music presents triumph and loftiness, and even the representation of triumph is not an authentic reflection of the violence and bloodshed of the wars which brought Napoleon to power. "The shouting triumph of the close has no tramp of heavy feet."⁴

Emil Ludwig's biography of Beethoven⁵ indicates that while composing the "Eroica" between 1802 and 1804 the artist came to know that his hero had become a despot when Bonaparte seized absolute power in 1803. While there is a famous anecdote which depicts Beethoven tearing up the dedication to his erstwhile hero in rage and disgust on hearing that the tyrant had crowned himself Emperor in 1804, it is likely that this highly dramatic gesture was more an angry reaction to the final symbolism of the Imperial crown rather than a complete denial of the man. The composer continued to admire Bonapatre, although he could no longer do so openly, for the French leader had become the arch-enemy of Germany in those years.

In view of the above, and in the light of the ideas which Carpentier expresses in Los pasos perdidos, the "Eroica" is unfit to perform the vital function of art in society. Its basis is artificial, born solely of enthusiasm and misplaced admiration, and the resulting artistic creation can have no value to suffering humanity. In this sense Beethoven has not fulfilled his responsibilities as an artist to his fellow men, represented in El acoso by the terrified protagonist.

The music remains as a portrait of abstract heroism, a heroism which Burk opines is more to be attributed to the composer himself who created the work at a time of deepest personal anguish.⁶ The pain and self-discipline involved in the harsh task of overcoming the disability of deafness in order to create the masterpiece of technical innovation which is the "Eroica" raises Beethoven to authentically heroic stature. The "acosado" on the other hand, for all his longings for "nobles tareas" and his conscious desire for heroism, lacks the strength and above all the self-discipline to achieve those goals. In El reino de este mundo (1949) Carpentier affirms that "la grandeza del hombre está precisamente en querer mejorar lo que es. En imponerse Tareas,"⁷ and in his struggle to complete his self-imposed task of creation, to rise above his pain and despair, resides the nobility of Beethoven. That creation, the Third Symphony, while it is a splendid monument to Beethoven's heroic success as a man marks the composer, in Carpentier's terms, as a conspicuous failure as an artist, for his music does not help another human being to face his own futility.

As well as this negative quality, the Symphony has positively pernicious effects on the "acosado." It causes him actual physical distress as the exhausted man hears the First Movement: "¡Oh! esos instrumentos que me golpean las entrañas . . . desgarrando, rechinando en mis nervios; este crece, crece, haciéndome daño" (A. p. 201). The work of art does not alleviate but aggravates his sufferings.

Again on a practical level, his lack of experience causes him to applaud at the wrong moment drawing dangerous attention to himself. Scorned by the more sophisticated audience around him for this breach of etiquette, he hears a woman's admiring "¡Qué bella es esta marcha fúnebre!" and his immediate thought is "Nada sé de marchas fúnebres; ni puede ser bella ni agradable una marcha fúnebre" (A. p. 202). His natural reaction is a further indication of the inauthenticity of this art; his life and sufferings in the reality of a Latin American dictatorship are totally at variance with the images of Western European art as represented by the Third Symphony.

Finally, the music weaves an ironic and tragic deception around the "acosado." He recognizes the work, for he has heard it played many times on his neighbour's gramophone during his days in hiding, and he sees its performance now as a sign that the God he has prayed to for mercy has suddenly responded: ". . . no te he invocado en vano" (A. p. 204). The deceptive tones of the music restore the protagonist's serenity and optimism by the end of the performance but he cannot escape death at the hands of his pursuers. Here the image of art is one of deceit, of false optimism and hollow promises.

The "Eroica" is a symbol of all that Western art cannot do for suffering humanity. The music does not give meaning to the senseless pain and loss of which life is compounded; it does not give order to the fearful chaos which assaults mankind; it merely reflects the sterility and artificiality of human existence, pointing up fears and failures without purging or consoling those miseries. What is worse, it imbues its listeners with nebulous hopes, destroying their integrity and their grasp on reality in the process. In both novels Carpentier shows that art may condition our responses to reality so that we cannot live directly and authentically anymore. The "acosado," for example, hears what he thinks is God's message in the music, while the audience in the self-congratulatory—civilized' ambience of the concert hall can delightedly praise funeral marches and ignore the slaughter which stems from the dictatorship under which they live.

Beethoven's Ninth Symphony came under Carpentier's scrutiny in Los pasos perdidos. In Chapter IX the narrator listens to the technical virtuosities of the work with recognition, and memories of his youth return to haunt him. At that time the music had stood for progress, moral excellence and the triumph of reason, contrasting with the backwardness and superstition of his own country. When he visits Europe, however, he discovers the deception, "el sortilegio de esa visión" (L.p.p. p. 72) of mankind in the twentieth century. Its falsity is most apparent when he witnesses the horrors of a concentration camp after the fall of the Third Reich. There, "la noche de mi encuentro con la más fría barbarie de la historia" (L.p.p. p. 78), he hears the now imprisoned camp guards sing the "Ode to Joy" from the Ninth Symphony. The tragic and terrifying incongruity of the music disgusts him and he turns to condemn "esta Novena Sinfonía con sus promesas incumplidas, sus anhelos mesiánicos . . ." (L.p.p. p. 79).

In El acoso Beethoven's Third Symphony is the means by which Carpentier points out once more the chasm between the images of art and the reality of twentieth-century life. As the music pervades the action of the novel it is a constant reminder of the inefficacity of an art cut off from its roots. Once, "al Nacimiento de la Música," art was a medium of struggle to maintain dignity in the face of overwhelming adverse powers; to Carpentier it has now become an accomplice to those very powers.

Notes

¹ Alejo Carpentier, Los pasos perdidos (Santiago de Chile: Editorial Orbe, 1969), p. 147. All references are to this edition, hereafter cited as L.p.p.

² Alejo Carpentier, El acoso in Novelas y relatos (Havana: Bolsilibro Union, 1974), p. 264. All references are to this edition, hereafter cited as A.

³ John N. Burk, The Life and Works of Beethoven (New York: Random House, 1943), p. 88.

⁴ Burk, p. 89.

⁵ Emil Ludwig, Beethoven: Life of a Conqueror (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1943), p. 166.

⁶ Burk, p. 86.

⁷ Alejo Carpentier, El reino de este mundo in Novelas y relatos (Havana: Bolsilibro Unión, 1974), p. 185.