The first direct translation into English of a trend-setting novel
EXPLOSION IN A CATHEDRAL ALEJO CARPENTIER Translated by Adrian Nathan West 368pp. Penguin Classics. Paperback, £14.
EL SIGLO DE LAS LUCES (1962) – a foundational text of the Latin American “Boom” – has at last been translated directly into English. Alejo Carpentier’s novel, known in the anglosphere as Explosion in a Cathedral, was previously available only in John Sturrock’s translation of 1962, which was based on a French edition. Sturrock’s dodgy version contributed to the novel’s neglect. Adrian Nathan West’s new translation is a reparation. He is more faithful to Carpentier’s ornate style and, whereas Sturrock’s text can be twee, even corny, West generally reproduces the gravitas of the Spanish original.
The novel explores the impact of the French Revolution on the Caribbean. The plot is spurred by a fictionalized version of Victor Hugues – a merchantcorsair and Jacobin who became known as the “Robespierre of Guadeloupe”. The story begins in Havana at the close of the eighteenth century, as Victor calls on Sofía and Carlos – orphaned scions of a wealthy family who care for their infirm cousin Esteban. Victor, who is “thirty or forty perhaps, or maybe much younger”, is charismatic, well-travelled and idealistic. He earns the family’s trust by insisting (against Sofía’s wishes) that an urbane mestizo doctor can cure Esteban. The cousin makes an extraordinary recovery, but Victor’s politics and freemasonry make him unwelcome in Havana. Esteban and, briefly, Sofía depart with him. Out of his sick bed, Esteban becomes the novel’s protagonist, and the dominant lens through which we follow Victor around the Caribbean.
Victor captures Guadeloupe from the British and becomes commissar. He frees the enslaved and transforms the island’s economy, partly through the use of punitive labour. Esteban, initially awed by Victor’s personality, observes how loyalty to the whims of the French Revolution turns his friend into a despot.
He watched as the Commissar played his part with implacable rigor, spurring on the tribunals, giving the guillotine no rest, bellowing yesterday’s rhetoric, dictating, editing, legislating, judging, always in the middle of everything; but whoever knew him well could see that the motive for his immoderate activity was a recondite desire for self-abnegation.
The symbol of Victor’s power – and of the Revolution – is the guillotine. Its blade is suspended over the novel from the eerie first line: “Last night, I saw the Machine rise up again”. On his voyage to Guadeloupe, Victor, who is bringing the decree to abolish slavery, places the “Machine” at the prow of his ship, “unveiled for all to see, that they should come to know it well�
