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Year 2004 will be Alejo Carpentier?s centenary, one of the greatest writers of Ibero America. For this reason at the assembly hall in the University of Havana the Commission in charge of activities to commemorate the date has just been created.
As antechambers of the remembrance to Carpentier, German and French editorial
houses have published re-editions and fictional essays of the Cuban author recently
translated.
The German editorial house Suhrkamp translated the essay bookVision of America
under the title Farben eines Kontinents (Colours of a Continent), translated
by Anneliese Botond, and Ulrich Kunzmann. The volume contains a folder of beautiful
illustrations from Angels Fall, The Great Sabana, and Sierra Nevada National
Park from Venezuela; of Monte Albán, in Oaxaca, México; the Quetzal
Palace, Teotihuacán, also in México; a Maya temple in Tikal, Guatemala
and other images of exceptional beauty in our America, many of which are referred
to in Carpentier´s essays published in Cuba under the original title of
Vision of America.
On its behalf, the French editorial house Gallimard re-edited Le partage des
eaux( The Partition of Waters) the original title with which it was known in
France The Lost Steps, a novel chosen as the best foreign book of the year when
it was first translated in French.
At that moment, André Rousseau declared in Le Fígaro Litteraire:
His play has a deep meaning within contemporary literature, is the best
novel given to us by Latin America in theses years. The first edition
of The Lost Steps was printed in Mexico, in 1953. Of the play the renowned critic
Robert Church in the London New Chronicle asserted: This book can easily
compete with Moby Dick and the Feathered Snake. It goes beyond literature.
In the present edition from Gallimard editorial house it is said: After
reading Le partage des eaux, the word ´talent´ is not enough, our
enthusiasm with it would not match its quality. A great poet has come between
us for his style, his culture, his abundance of images and elevated thoughts
and the continuity of his inspiration. (MaxPol Fouchet).
Gallimard editorial house who has published 12 of the most important plays
of Carpentier, presented in this occasion Essais Littéraires (Literary
Essays) in Arcades collection. This play, divided in three parts, comprises
40 essays of the author written between 1927 and 1977. The last piece of writing,
the text read by Alejo Carpentier at Alcalá de Henares, Spain, at the
time of accepting Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra Award in1978.