“The discoverer discovered” or questioning Christopher Colombus in Alejo Carpentier’s "El arpa y la sombra"

Abstract

In his last book El arpa y la sombra (1979) the Cuban writer, Alejo Carpentier (1904-1980), propose an inquiry, personal and historical, about life and voyages of Christopher Colombus to the New World. Carpentier’s novel confronts the human aspect of the discoverer to the political and religious impact of which would have been the eventual beatification of a man whose acts determined, in a certain way, the dynamic relations between Spain and the New World. This article analyses the way which the “discoverer” is “discovered” through the process of unveiling. Far from the historical discourse but taking it as a point of departure by diverse documents and facts, Carpentier build an intense fiction that recovers the life of Christopher Colombus in an intimate way. The double perspective of America’s discoverer allows inverting the concept of the “discovery” and creates an ironical distance that questions the man and the historical character equally.