Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
Mercury House (1992), Paperback, 176 pages
Description
El novelista cubano vuelve a incursionar en la historia, ahora para recrear todo ese proceso increíble que fue el intento de canonizar al Almirante de la Mar Océana, Cristóbal Colón y, a través de un monólogo alucinante, vital, las confesiones del marino genovés en el lecho de muerte. Las elucubraciones de papas y abogados del diablo prestan el contrapunto final que habrá de marcar para siempre la vida en el más allá del descubridor de América.
User reviews
LibraryThing member deebee1
In the latter half of the 20th century, a petition by the aristocracy of the Catholic Church for the canonization of Christopher Columbus was received by the Pope. It will be 500 years since his discovery of the Americas, and while the circumstances were extraordinary -- too long a period since the
The scene changes -- we are in a small room in a monastery in Valladolid, five centuries back. Christopher Columbus is on his deathbed, and as he waits for the priest to arrive for his last confession, he contemplates what the world knew of him and what they did not know of what it took for him to get there. Should he tell all to the priest, hiding nothing, or should he carry his secrets to his grave? He was not sure. Instead, he recalls everything -- the almost insurmountable challenges he faced before, during, and after his so-called discoveries of new lands, his singlemindedness to reach the place where gold was to be found, and the deception (always the deception) in all forms and excepting no one, that he employed without compunction throughout. Beneath all the hero worship, the celebrity status, the strong, indomitable image, the title conqueror for king and God -- and known only to himself and to the men he took with him on his voyages, however, he is none of the above. He knew he was no saint.
Fast forward, and he is a spirit wandering among the crowds in the piazza in the Vatican, and heading to the inner rooms where his possible sainthood was being deliberated, becomes a witness to the Morality Play of his life and deeds. It is all out now, the darkest of his secrets has been laid bare. He ends at the piazza where he meets the spirit of Andrea Doria, Grand Admiral of Venice and Genoa, a real hero who fought off the Turks in the Middle Ages. Columbus is embarassed -- he never did such battle for Christ or even contemplated it. He comes to a realization, and the reader does, too, that perhaps like the dreams of treasure that he spun in the imagination of the rulers of the Old World, he, too, was ephemeral.
Alejo Carpentier wrote this novel in 1979, which was translated into English in 1990, in anticipation of the quincentenary of Columbus's arrival in the New World. It is an excellent tale, written with exemplary wit and imagination in Carpentier's baroque style, which is pure pleasure to read. This is a short novel, as most of Carpentier's works are, but it is wonderful and for literary quality packs so much more than many books several times its size can.
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death of the concerned, the lack of certain biographical documentation necessary to attribute sainthood according to the canon -- still, it was pointed out, Columbus deserved sainthood at the very least, being the instrument of God to bring the light of Christianity to the heathens in those dark lands. His halo has been invisible all these centuries and the time has come to make it manifest. The Pope ponders the issue and, for his own reasons as well (Columbus would be both an "indigenous" saint as well as a European one, thus unique in bridging the two worlds, and the Pope himself believed in "political action inspired by the politics of God"), put his signature on the petition that would the start the wheels turning on the process that would lead Columbus to either sainthood or eternal subsidiarity to other hallowed figures in the Catholic firmament. The scene changes -- we are in a small room in a monastery in Valladolid, five centuries back. Christopher Columbus is on his deathbed, and as he waits for the priest to arrive for his last confession, he contemplates what the world knew of him and what they did not know of what it took for him to get there. Should he tell all to the priest, hiding nothing, or should he carry his secrets to his grave? He was not sure. Instead, he recalls everything -- the almost insurmountable challenges he faced before, during, and after his so-called discoveries of new lands, his singlemindedness to reach the place where gold was to be found, and the deception (always the deception) in all forms and excepting no one, that he employed without compunction throughout. Beneath all the hero worship, the celebrity status, the strong, indomitable image, the title conqueror for king and God -- and known only to himself and to the men he took with him on his voyages, however, he is none of the above. He knew he was no saint.
Fast forward, and he is a spirit wandering among the crowds in the piazza in the Vatican, and heading to the inner rooms where his possible sainthood was being deliberated, becomes a witness to the Morality Play of his life and deeds. It is all out now, the darkest of his secrets has been laid bare. He ends at the piazza where he meets the spirit of Andrea Doria, Grand Admiral of Venice and Genoa, a real hero who fought off the Turks in the Middle Ages. Columbus is embarassed -- he never did such battle for Christ or even contemplated it. He comes to a realization, and the reader does, too, that perhaps like the dreams of treasure that he spun in the imagination of the rulers of the Old World, he, too, was ephemeral.
Alejo Carpentier wrote this novel in 1979, which was translated into English in 1990, in anticipation of the quincentenary of Columbus's arrival in the New World. It is an excellent tale, written with exemplary wit and imagination in Carpentier's baroque style, which is pure pleasure to read. This is a short novel, as most of Carpentier's works are, but it is wonderful and for literary quality packs so much more than many books several times its size can.
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Subjects
Awards
Prix Médicis (1979)
Language
Physical description
176 p.; 8.44 inches
ISBN
1562790242 / 9781562790240