Friday, November 2, 2012

Los pasos perdidos


I have been rereading Alejo Carpentier's Los pasos perdidos — The Lost Steps. After about 20 years I have been surprised at how much I misremembered the book, as though the jungle of my thoughts had destroyed the image of the book the way the jungle burst apart the hut at the Greeks' abandoned mine.

The main character is a composer who has lost his way in the modern world of city life & its pressures to earn a living which he says "que había torcido mi destino" (that had defelcted my destiny p.11 of the 1956 edition translated by Harriet de Onís) It was "como la de vender, de sol a sol, las mejores horas de la éxistencia. "¡Vacío!" "Además — gritaba yo ahora — ¡estoy vacío!" (like selling the best hours of your life from sunrise to sunset. "Besides I'm empty" I screamed at him "I'm empty" p.24)

He travels up remote South American rivers, and is awakened by the simple pre-historic directness of existence there ... "Por lo menos, aquí no había oficios inútiles, como los que yo hubiera desempeñado durante tantos años." (At any rate, here there were no useless callings like those I had plied for so many years.  p.173)

The narrative traces a classic hero's journey, as per Joseph Campbell's analysis, and presents the protagonist's return to the modern world, and the difficulty of integrating the knowledge/treasure found on the adventure. There's also a final failed attempt to re-enter the dream, to retrace the steps of the adventure.  "He tratado de enderezar un destino torcido por mi propia debilidad y de mí ha brotado un canto —ahora trunco— que me devolvió al viejo camino" (I had tried to make straight a destiny that was crooked because of my own weakness, and a song had welled up in me - now cut short - which had led me back to the old road, p.274)