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The FICTION& series brings into English for the first time the best and . most influential writings from around the

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A Sudden Chunk 0/ the Abyss: . .An Introduction to the Works 0/ the Marquis de Sade

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The Court Dancer and Pages from the Bedroom . ,.

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Available in bookstores or by calling Council Oak Books, 1·800-247-8850 (in Oklahoma, 918/587-6454).

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ALEJO CARPENTIER, along with Jorges Luis Borges,

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a major force in twentieth-century Latin American writ-

ing. Here in English for the first time is Concierto Barraco) the novella Carpentier called "a verbal fiesta." A wealthy, eighteenth-century Mexican and his Cuban servant travel to Spain and Venice, where the musical geniuses of three centuries come together. The . story of Montezuma becomes an opera as the New World. impacts the Old, providing through its mythic material an unexpected leap into a transformed reality Carpentier's work is set in a period when ((old

certainties are being shattered by change and the citadels 0/ the mind have been shaken ajar . . .)J

RALPH ELLISON

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COUNCIL OAK BOOKS 1428 South St. Louis Tulsa, Oklahoma 74120 800/247-8850 or 918/587-6454 in Oklahoma

©1974 by Alejo Carpentier. Translation © 1988 by Asa Zatz.

All rights reserved under international and Pan ',q

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American copyright conventions. Originally published in Spanish by Siglo Veinriuno Editores,

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Library of Congress Catalog Number 87 -073440 ISBN 0-933031 .. 12-2 ·

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act tragedy entitled Montezuma at the behest of Karl Heinrich Graun, his favorite composer. Curiously enough, in this work, the Emperor of Mexico is glorified to the detriment of Cortes, who is presented -

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as a "cruel and greedy" man. (In

the text by Frederick II, Montezuma is depicted as the victim of his own generosity and trustfulness.) From that time on, the Montezumas proliferated in such a manner that we can say he was the historical figure who inspired the greatest number of operas by composers in .~\

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the second part of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth . The theme (libretto by Cigna -Santi) was used by De Majo in 1765; in 1722, by Galuppi and Paisiello (with the same. libretto); in 1775, by Antonio Sacchini, a bust of whom decorates the fa~ade of the Opera de Paris; in 1780, by Insanguine; in 1781, by the great Niccolo Antonio Zingarelli (still using Cigna -Santi's libretto) . . . And, without considering the works of such minor composers as Mysliweczek, the parade of Montezumas continues splendidly with the magnificent Fernand Cortez ou la Conquete du Mexique by Spontini (1809),

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which was still to be heard two years ago at the Phoenix Theater in Venice. Several romantic Montezumas must also be added to this list: those by Luigi Ricci (1830), Pirola (1833),

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Giacomo Treves (1845), and Francesco Malipiero, whose name is the same as that of the contemporary

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I wish to thank the eminent musicologist and ardent Vivaldian Roland de Cande, who put me on the trail of Father Antonio's Motezuma. The enchanting milieu of the Ospedale della Pieta with its Cattarina del cornetto, Perina dell violino, Luceta della viola, etc. is described by many travelers of the period, particularly the engaging President de Brosses, libertine par excellence and friend of Vivaldi, in his spicy Lettres /amilieres sur I'Ita lie.

I should also mention that the building I describe is not the one now to be seen, which was built in 1745, but the previous one located at the same site on the Riva degli Schiavoni. It is interesting to note, however, that the present church of the Pieta, true to its musical

destiny, retains the special appearance of a concert hall with elaborate balconies like those of a theater and its grand ceremonial box in the center reserved for distinguished listeners and influential music lovers ..

ALEJO CARPENTIER

Havana and Paris, 1976

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FOREWORD

ALEJO F. CARPENTIER y VALMONT was born on 26

December 1904 in Havana, Cuba, to Georges Julien Carpentier, a French architect, and Lina Valmont, a language instructor of Russian ancestry. The couple had emigrated to Cuba from France just two years before. In 1912 they returned with their young son to Europe, traveling to Russia, Austria, and Belgium before settling briefly again in Fra-nee. The refinement and biculturalism into which Carpentier was born determined the course of his life and literary career. His first language was French, which predisposed him to assimilate easily

the avant-garde movements in Europe and accounted for the fact that his Spanish pronunciation was forever marked by a distinct Gallic r. Commenting on the crosscultural influence on Carpentier's writing, the eminent Hispanist Emir Rodriguez Monegal wrote, ('His approach to Spanish as a literary instrument was, initially, similar to that of a Conrad or a N abokov in English: he used words as if having first exhausted every available dictionary." 1 Carpentier's peripatetic beginnings foreshadowed a lifetime of extensive travel to such diverse" locales as Mexico, Venezuela, Argentina, Spain, Morocco, England, Belgium, Holland, the French Caribbean, East-

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ern Europe, China, the United States, and France, the country from which he initially redefined Latin American reality in his writings and in which he died while serving as Cuba's cultural envoy~ Most ofhislife abroad

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was spent in France, where he briefly fell under the spell of· surrealism, and in Venezuela, where he lived and worked for fourteen years and whose geography inspired the setting for his novel Los pasos perdidos (1953; Eng. The Lost Steps) 1956). Curiously, Carpentier's works have superseded him, traveling greater dis· '.',',

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tances than their creator by appearing in more than twenty-three'languages worldwide. In Paris, and earlier at home, Carpentier studied

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music and architecture, subjects he pursued more formally later on and which had a profound effect on 'his literary production, providing elements that are obvious even to the most casual reader of his works. Both his parents played musical instruments (his father had studied cello with Casals) and were responsible for instilling in their son a love for music, matched only by his

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interest in architecture, where again his father's influence could be seen. A timid, lonely, and asthmatic child, Carpentier occupied himself primarily with music and reading .

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he was enamored with the works of Balzac, Flaubert, and Zola and at fifteen he wrote his first short stories, imitating Anatole France. After attending secondary school at the Lycee Jeanson de Sailly in Paris, Carpentier returned with his family to Cuba, where in.1921 he

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:-his students. And it would have seemed that the movement had reached its climax when George Frideric) activating the great organ, pulled out the foundation stops, the mixtures, and the plenum with such abandon in the clarion, trumpet, and bombardon stops that it began to sound like the calls of the Day of Judgment. "The Saxon is fouling us all up!" yelled Antonio, infuriating the fortissimo. "I can't even hear myself!" yelled Domenico, redoub . ling the volume of his chords. . But in the meantime, Filomeno had run off to the kitchen and returned with a battery of copper kettles of all sizes that he began to beat upon with spoons, skimmers, rolling pins, stirrers, feather-duster handles, and pokers with such prodigies of rhythm, syncopation, and complex patterns that he was given a thirty-twa-bar

chorus all to himself. ((Stupendous! Stupendous!" George Frideric cried out.

"Stupendous! Stupendous!" Domenico cried out, banging enthusiastically on the keyboard of the

harpsichord with his elbows. Measure 28. Measure 29. Measure 30. Measure 31. Measure 32. "Now!" howled Antonio Vivaldi, and everybody fell upon the da capo with fearsome force, drawing the very soul out of violins, oboes, trombones, regals, barrel organs, violas da gamba, and all that was

81

able to resound in the nave, whose crystal chandeliers vibrated above as though shaken by a celestial uproar. Final cadence. Antonio put down the bow. Domenico pulled the cover over the keyboard. The Saxon took from his pocket a lace handkerchief, very slight for such a broad brow, and dried his perspiration. The students of the Ospedale laughed aloud as they watched Montezuma pass around goblets of a drink he had concocted in a busy decantation with pitchers and

glasses, blending together a little of everything . . . Such was the prevailing mood when a painting, suddenly illuminated by a candelabrum that was moved close to it, caught Filo~eno)s attention. An Eve being tempted by the Serpent was depicted. But it was not the spi~dly and yellowish Eve too heavily enshrouded in tresses unnecessarily protective of a modesty' nonexistent in times still incognizant of carnal wickedness that stood out in the picture, but the Serpent,greenstriped, fleshly, taking three turns around the trunk of the Tree, whose enormous eyes brimming with evil seemed to be offering the apple to those looking at the painting rather than to its victim, still indecisive and it is under~tandable when one considers what her acquiescence cost us .about accepting the fruit that was to cause her to give birth with the pain of her entrails. Filomeno slowly approached the canvas as though

afraid the Serpent might leap from the frame and, beating on a tray that gave out a hoarse sound, looking

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the while upon those present as though officiating at a strange ritual ceremony, he began to sing: . - . .",

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LiJI mamma) li'l mamma) Come, come} come. Snake's gonna eat me, Come) come, come.

Looka he seyes, shine like a fire. Looka tha tooth) sharp lzke a pzn. •

Make-believe) my Negra, Come, come) come. A game from back home) come. Come, And swiping at the air with a huge carving knife as though killing the snake in the painting, he shouted:

The snake is

Ca-Ia-ba-son) Son-son. Ca-Ia-ba-son) Son-son.

83

((Kabala-sum-sum-sum," chorused Antonio VlValdi, out of ecclesiastical custom giving the refrain an unex-

pected inflection of Latin litany. (Kabala-sum-sumsum, chorused Domenico Scarlatti. ({Kabala sum-sumsum,)) chorused George Frideric Handel. ((Kabala-sumJ)

sum-sum,)) repeated the sixty-six "female voices of the

Ospedale, amidst clapping of hands and laughter. And following the black, who was now banging on the tray with a pestle, they all fell into line, hands on each other's waists, swaying their hips, forming the most disparate mummers' troupe inlaginable, a troupe now led by Montezuma, twirling a huge lantern on the end of a broomstick in rhythm with the chant, repeated a hundred times. Kabala-sum-sum-sum. And so, one behind anotherin a snake dance, they made several tours of the concert hall, continued to the chapel, took three turns around the ambulatory, and then continued along the corridors and hallways, up the stairways and down the stairways, passing through the galleries, until they were joined by the nuns on duty, the sister portress, the cooks, the ~cullery maids routed out of their beds" soon followed by the shop foreman, the market gardener, the flower gardener, the bell ringer, the boatman, and even the feebleminded girl kept in the attic who left off being feebleminded when it came to singing ,P. in that institution devoted to music and the instrumental arts where a grand concert of sacred music had been given two days before in honor of the king of Denmark . . . Ca-Ia-bason-s6n-son, sang Filomeno, accenting the beat more

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strongly each time. Kabala-sum-sum-sum, replied the Venetian, the Saxon, and the Neapolitan. Kabala-sumsum-sum) repeated the others, until exhausted from so much whirling, running up, running down, going in, going out, they returned to the concert hall and collapsed, all laughing, on the red carpet, around the goblets and bottles. After a pause for much vigorous fanning, they fell to dancing figures and steps in vogue to the music that Domenico began to pluck from the harpsichord, embellishing the familiar airs with most elegant mordents and trills. For lack of gentlemen, since Antonio did not dance and the others were reposing in the cushioned depths of their seats, oboe paired offwith tromba, clarino with regale, cornette with viola, flautino with chitarrone, while the violini piccoli alia francese joined in a quadrille with the trombones. '~ll the instruments scrambled together," said George Frideric. (It's like some sort of fantastic symphony. " But .Filomeno, now standing beside the harpsichord with a goblet over the sounding board, added a rhythmic background to the dancing by scraping a key across a kitchen grater. "Black devil!" exclaimed the Neapolitan. "When I want to carry a certain rhythm, he forces me to follow him. I'll wind up here playing cannibal music!" And with that, Domenico rose from the instrument, tossed a last tot down his gullet, took Margherita Double-Action

85

Harp by the waist, and disappeared with her into the Ospedale della Pieta's labyrinth of cells . . . But dawn began to paint itself on the great windows. The white figures were quieted down,. putting instruments away in their cases and cupboards, faces glum, as though ill-disposed now to return to their daily routines. The night of gaiety expired to the adieu of the bell ringer who, all at once sober, set about tolling matins. Like phantoms in a play, the white figures disappeared through the portal right and the portal left. The nun portress appeared with two hampers packed with puff pastries, cheeses, twists and croissants, quince preserves, glazed chestnuts, pink marzipan piglets, and peeping out above all these the necks of bottles of romagnese wine: (For your breakfast on the way.)) ((I'll take them in my boat," said the boatman. "I'm sleepy," said Montezuma. ((I'm hungry," said the Saxon. "But I would like to eat in a quiet spot where there's trees and birds other than those greedy pigeons of the square, plumper-breasted than Rosalba's models, who will gobble up our breakfast if we don't look sharp." "I'm sleepy," repeated the man in disguise.' "Let yourself drift away with the rhythm of the oars," said Prester Antonio. "What are you hiding there under your cloak?" the Saxon asked Filomeno. ,

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lengthening. The days at that time· of the year were growing shorter. "TIme to move on," said Montezuma, considering that twilight would be approaching and that a cemetery in the twilight is always quite melancholy and conducive to meditation of a cheerless sort regarding the fate of all men as indulged in on such occasions by a prince of Denmark given to playing with skulls, like Mexican youngsters on the Day of the Dead . . . To the rhythm of oars dipping into water so still that ripples barely formed on eit~er side of the boat, they floated slowly toward the main square. Curled up under the tasseled awning, the Saxon and the Venetian were· sleeping off the weariness of revelry with expressions on their faces of such conteritment that it was a pleasure to look at them. From time to time their lips formed unintelligible words in the way one tries to speak during a dream . . . As they went by the Vendramin -Calergi palace, Montezuma and Filomeno noted black-clad figures the men in formal dress, the women veiled like the professional mourners of old bearing a coffin of chill-glinting bronze toward a black gondola .

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"False, false, false! " he yells. And yelling, "False, false, . false, all false!" he runs toward the Red Priest, who has finished folding the score and is mopping his forehead with a large checkered handkerchief. "What's false?" the startled musician asks. "Everything. That finale is ridiculous. History . . ." "The opera is none of the business of historians." "But. . . there was never a Mexican empress, and no daughter of Montezuma ever married a Spaniard." "Just a minute, just a minute," says Antonio with sudden irritation. "The poet Alvise Giusti, the author of this musical drama, studied Solis's chronicle, which the chief librarian of Saint Mark's holds in high 'regard as well documented and accurate. And it speaks of the empress ... yes sir, as a worthy, determined, and courageous woman . " "I've never read any such thing."

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"Part five, chapter twenty-five. And in part four it also says that two or three daughters of Montezuma married Spaniards. So, one more, one less . . .» '1\nd what about that god Uchilibos?" "It's no fault of mine that you people have gods with names nobody can pronounce. The conquistadors themselves, in their efforts to imitate the Mexican language, called him Huchilobos or something like that. " (Now I get it! You mean Huitzilopochtli." '~nd do you believe it's possible to sing a word like that? Everything in Solis's chronicle is a tongue twister. Nothing but tongue twisters all the way through: Iztlapalapa, Goazocoalco, Xicalango, Tlaxcala, Magiscatzin, Qualpopoca, Xicotencatl . . . I learned them by heart to use as an articulation exercise. But ... to whom, dammit, did it ever occur to invent such a language? " '~nd what about that Teutile being turned into a female?" "He had a pronounceable name we could use for a woman . " '~nd what happened to Guatimozin, the real hero of all this?" ('He would have broken the unity of action . . . I can use him in another drama." "But .... Montezuma was stoned to death." '.

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find the samples of marble, the Polish amber walking stick, or the Chaldean librarian's rare folio, nor of weighing down his baggage with kegs of maraschino or Roman coins. As for the mandolin inlaid with mother . of-pearl ... let the daughter of the inspector of weights and measures strum on her belly, it being well shaped and well tempered for the purpose. But that music shop over there must have the sonatas, concertos, and oratorios so modestly requested by poor Francisquillo's voice and guitar teacher. . . They went in. The clerk, to begin with, brought out some sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti for them. "Terrific guy," said Filomeno, harking back to that night. "I hear the great rascal is in Spain, where he got the Infanta Maria Barbara, a generous woman who wears her heart on her sleeve, to payoff his gambling debts, which will keep on mo~nting as long as there's a gaming table left anywhere with a deck of cards on it." ('Every man has his weaknesses. This one's has always been for the ladies," said Filomeno, pointing to concertos by Prester Antonio, Springy Summe" Autumn) and Winter, each preceded and explained by a lovely sonnet. "There's a fellow that will always live in the spring even when winter catches up with him," observed the criollo. , But now the clerk was extolling the merits of Messiah, a very well-known oratorio.

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"No less!" exclaimed Filomeno. "That Saxon doesn't work small." He opened the score. "Whew! This is

what you call writing for the trumpet! That'll be the day when I can play it!" And he read and reread with admiration the aria for basso written by George Frideric to two versicles from the Epistle to the Corinthians. c~nd underneath the notes, which only a top player could produce from the instrument, there are words that look like a spiritual or something:

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"I imagine so. . . When will you be returning to your country?" "I don't know. I'll go to Paris for the time being." "The women? The Eiffel Tower?" "No. There's women everywhere. And the Eiffel Tower hasn't been an attraction for a long time. Except maybe as a souvenir paperweight." ('So t hen ....~" "In Paris, I'll be known as Monsieur Philomene. Like that, with a Ph and a beautiful grave accent over the e. In Havana, they'll just call me 'the Negro, Filomeno.'" "That will change one day." "There would have to be a revolution first." "I don't trust revolutions." ((Because you have all that silver back there in Coyoacan. That means a pile of brass, and the people with the brass don't care for revolutions ... But the mes more and more all the time which are going to be masses and masses of us . . .)) Once again and how many times over the cen.turies? the mor£ of the Orologio Tower hammered out the hour. "Perhaps the last time I will be hearing this,)' said the criollo. "I've learned a lot through them on this trip." "Traveling is very. educational. )) "Basil, the great Cappadocian, a saint and doctor of the Church, pointed out in a rare treatise that Moses had picked up quite a bit of science during his years in Egypt and that Daniel turned out to be such a clever

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changers, in the great Platonic bazaar of ideas and consumer goods or the famous wager of Pascal and Co.) Underwriters, in the Word or the Torch. ~ For the time being, Filomeno was occupying himself with terrestrial music, since the music of the spheres concerned him not at all. He presented his ticket at the door of the theater, was shown to his place by an usherette with spectacula~ butto~ks the black looked at all things with single-minded focus on the immediate and palpable and the one-and-only Louis made his entrance to a thunder, a prodigious thunder, of applause and cheers. And raising the trumpet to his lips, he attacked, as only he knew how to, the melody of «Go

Down, Moses" before passing to "Jonah and the Whale," elevated by' the bell of his horn to the ceiling of the theater where pink pipers of an angelical chorus, perhaps from TIepolo's lucent brushes, flew, frozen in transit. And the Bible become rhythm dwelt in us again with "Ezekiel and the Wheel," before leading into a

'(Hallelujah, Hallelujah" which evoked for Filomeno all at once· the image of that one the George Frideric of that night' who reposed beneath a baroque statue by Roubiliac in the great Westminster Abbey club of marble sculptures, side by side with Purcell, who also knew so much about mystical and triumphal trumpets. And here the virtuoso was followed in improvised breaks by the instruments on the stage: saxophones, clarinets, bass, electric guitar, bongos, maracas (could they perhaps be those same tipinaguas mentioned by the poet

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Balboa?), cymbals, woodblocks that sounded like silversmiths' hammers when struck together, drums without snares, wire brushes, triangle-rattle) and the piano

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with open lid which itself didn't remember that it had once been called something like a "well-tempered clavier." "That prophet Daniel, who learned so much in Chaldea, spoke of an orchestra of horns, psaltery, zither,

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TRANSLATOR'S NOTES

1. Cortes's native mistress and interpreter, who played a key role in the realization of the Conquest. 2. A play on the words of the motto of the Catholic rulers of Spain (Tanto monta) monta tanto Isabel como Fernando) which expresses the equality of their authority. 3. State barge of Venice, used once a year by the doge in the ceremony of the marriage of the Adriatic.

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