El Acoso: Alejo Carpentier's War on Time

Author(s): Frances Wyers Weber

Source: PMLA, Vol. 78, No. 4 (Sep., 1963), pp. 440-448
Published by: Modern Language Association
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/461257
Accessed: 22-10-2018 14:28 UTC

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 EL ACOSO: ALEJO CARPENTIER'S WAR ON TIME
BY FRANCES WYERS WEBER
HE PROTAGONIST of Alejo Carpentier's
short novel El acoso is an informer fleeing
from men who would avenge the deaths he has
caused. The pursuit and punishment of an in-
former, not a new plot, is usually developed with
rapid pacing and suspense. But Carpentier
modifies this traditional story of the chase by
breaking it into a mosaic of fragmentary incid-
ents and remembrances arranged without chron-
ological sequence. Adopting certain techniques of
the stream-of-consciousness writers, he reduces
external action to a minimum and uses interior
monologues and confused shreds of memory to
show the inner life of his characters. Yet his work
is not primarily a psychological study: the com-
bination of two apparently disparate approaches
to the novel (one a story line based on a closely-
knit, causal-temporal progression and the other a
narrative structure determined in part by the
flux and shift of consciousness) creates a static
and almost allegorical depiction of Betrayal in its
various modes and incarnations.' This duality of
presentation is also evident in the subject matter:
definite historical happenings, tied to actual sites
in the city of Havana, are the factual ingredients
in a drama that seems to be just one possible
version of a constant theme. Uniting the particu-
lar and the abstract, intertwining the external
chain of events (shattered and rearranged accord-
ing to noncausal principles) with pictures of
internal chaos, Carpentier presents both the
vision of a traitorous, degenerate world in which
man plays out certain prescribed roles and the
artistic or literary organization of this drama of
the fall. Underlying these elements and binding
them together is one of Carpentier's repeated
themes-the representation, domination, or de-
nial of time.2
El acoso was first published separately (Buenos
Aires, 1956) and later included with three shorter
works in a volume entitled La guerra del tiempo
(Mexico, 1958). The other tales are fantastic,
either because of the narrative situation itself or
because of the peculiar temporal distortions to
which the author submits it. In "El Camino de
Santiago," a single man's self splits into two dif-
ferent roles played at successive periods in his life
(Juan el Romero, Juan el Indiano), and they con-
front each other at the beginning and at the end
of the story in identical, duplicated scenes, told
from opposite points of view (Chs. iv and x); in
"Viaje a la semilla," the normal passage from
440
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birth to death is simply reversed, as in a film run
backwards; in "Semejante a la noche," diverse
avatars of the departing warrior are telescoped
into a single person and scene. In all three stories,
the unreality of the plot constitutes a negation of
time as the medium of essential change: temporal
succession reveals only varying combinations of
changeless parts. In El acoso, perfectly real and
even ordinary events appear in such a way as to
suggest that both for the author and his hapless
protagonist, time and causality are purely phe-
nomenal, without meaning in view of a fixed
dramatic scheme. A single episode, or even a
simple physical gesture, may splinter into distinct
images inserted at widely spaced sections of the
narrative; past happenings are juggled and
shuffled so that the reader must infer the action
on the basis of dispersed clues and signals. The
principal characters, the A cosado and the
taquillero, see the course of their own lives not as
a psychological unfolding but as a kind of time-
less, mythical drama of primal innocence de-
stroyed by the fall into sin.
I. The Narrative
The novel has three main parts, subdivided
into eighteen unnumbered sections. But the
progression of the narrative seems at first dis-
ordered and chaotic. Part i (first section) begins
I The Russian formalists established a useful distinction
between the story line, which they called the fable and the
narrative structure or "plot," which they called sujet. The
fable is the basic story stuff, the sum-total of events to be
related in the work of fiction; its order is that of realistic
temporal-causal sequence; it is not truly a literary entity,
part of an esthetic structure, but rather the raw material that
is elaborated in the sujet. Narrative structure or sujet is the
artistically constructed arrangement of events, the story as
actually told. According to Victor Erlich-Russian Formalism
(The Hague, 1955) p. 211-the difference between fable and
sujet "lies often in the deviation from the natural chrono-
logical sequence, in temporal displacements." See also Austin
Warren and Rend Wellek, Theory of Literature (New York,
1956), p. 208.
2 In Los pasos perdidos (Mexico, 1953), history is viewed
as a process of development and degeneration. Contrasted to
the purity of primitive human forms of life, our modern
epoch, which has produced the empty culture of the great
cities and barbaric and frightening social disorders, un-
doubtedly is the most vile. Carpentier evokes a lost Golden
Age (actually referring to two separate periods: the age of
great art of the past and, more remotely, the age of original
innocence) and this retrospective nostalgia forms the basis of
the mechanically simple structure of the novel: the narrator
regresses through various historical levels as he moves through
space from the coastal city to the heart of the jungle.
 Frances Wyers Weber 441
with a description of the thoughts of an unnamed
ticket-taker during a concert intermission; next
appears a torrential interior monologue in the
mind of we know not whom (". . . ese latido que
se me abre a codazos; ese vientre en borbollones;
ese corazon que se me suspende.. ."-second
section, p. 147).3 Only when the third section re-
introduces the ticket-taker does the reader
realize that the anguished inner voice was that of
another person, one whose external shape will not
become visible until Part II.4 Meanwhile, through
the taquillero's memories, we piece together the
story of a youth from a provincial village who has
come to Havana to study music. For weeks he
has been preparing himself for the evening's
performance of Beethoven's Eroica, but no sooner
does the orchestra begin than, giving in to a
sexual impulse, he leaves the concert hall and
hurries to the house of the prostitute Estrella.
When she refuses him, he returns to the concert
in time to catch the last nine minutes of the
symphony.
The whole of Part ii deals with the six previous
days in the life of the novel's main character, the
Acosado. Present action is interwoven with dis-
ordered recollections of past incidents in such a
way that the reader must himself deduce the
linking of causes and effects: by keeping careful
track of fleeting allusions, of details charged with
significance for the protagonist, by relating
minute coincidences and mentally establishing a
system of cross-references, one can recompose the
biography of this other provincial student who
had come to the capital to study architecture.
The order of events is as follows: on arriving in
Havana, he stays a short while with his aged
former nurse (p. 181); he joins the Communist
Party (p. 182), but after witnessing the violent
police repression of a student demonstration, he
goes over to the "bando de los impacientes" (p.
183). Although his terrorist acts begin idealistic-
ally enough ("Todo habia sido justo, heroico,
sublime en el comienzo," p. 229), the kangaroo
trial of a student friend ("epoca del Tribunal,"
pp. 230-235) and his first political murder (pp.
242-243) precipitate him into what he recognizes
as a "burocracia del horror" (p. 243), a crime
syndicate that cynically makes use of the idealis-
tic fervor of its members. Finally, no better than
a paid assassin, he accepts a salary to direct the
elimination of the political foe of a certain Alto
Personaje (pp. 225, 244). Arrested the morning
after the killing, he informs under threat of tor-
ture (pp. 244-246), and when he is released from
prison, he finds himself hunted by his former
associates. The present action of six days relates
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his hiding-out in his old nurse's house, his depar-
ture from that refuge, and his attempt to get help
from the Alto Personaje. Spotted on the street by
two of his pursuers, he has slipped into the con-
cert hall just at the beginning of the Eroica.
The first section of Part iii continues the
Acosado's turbulent interior monologue as he
listens to the concert; the second and final section
returns to the taquillero and then concludes with
the indirect reporting of the Hunted Man's
execution.
II. Motif
In a narrative lacking normal time sequence,
made up out of the subjectivity of the characters
and jumbled bits of action described or merely
alluded to, some unifying elements must serve as
guide posts to the reader in his reconstruction of
events. The order imposed upon this novel does
not derive from causal plotting but from the
disposition of motifs and the patterns of theme
and structure.5 In the composition of any fiction
we can distinguish between dynamic motifs that
generate action and static motifs that effect no
change of situation but contribute to the setting
or mood. These last may or may not be directly
related to the central action.6 In El acoso the
numerous static motifs at first appear extraneous
to the story, but gradually their true import
I All page references to El acoso are taken from La guerra
del tiempo (Mexico, 1958).
4 In an introductory comment to the English translation-
Manhunt, in Noonday 2 (New York, 1959), p. 109-the
author forewarns the reader that there are two characters in
his tale. The sections dealing with the ticket-taker are set
off in this edition bv the use of italics.
5 In his analysis of the techniques of the stream-of-
consciousness novel, Robert Humphrey-Stream of Conscious-
ness in the Modern Novel (Berkeley, 1958)-discusses the
necessity of creating, in the absence of a unifying external
drama, formal links to hold together the scattered materials
of psychic processes: "If . . . the stream-of-consciousness
writer cannot draw on the conventional use of plot to provide
a necessary unity, he must devise other methods.... This
accounts for the unusual reliance on formal patterns which is
found in the works of stream-of-consciousness fiction" (p. 86)
He lists several kinds of patterns: 1) the unities (time, place,
character, and action); 2) leitmotifs; 3) previously established
literary patterns; 4) symbolic structures; 5) formal scenic ar-
rangements; 6) natural cyclical schemes; 7) theoretical cycli-
cal schemes (musical structures, cycles of history, etc.). In
El acoso, the fable does offer the materials for a conventional
plot, but the author has deliberately chosen to fracture it,
replacing chronological order with an apparently illogical
sequence.
6 Boris Tomashevsky, in his Teoriya literatury (Moscow,
4th ed., 1928), makes these distinctions between dynamic and
static motifis and between connected and free motifs. Free
motifs are usually static, but not all static motifs are free
(pp. 138-139; based on notes by James E. Irby on unpub-
lished translated selections).
442 A lejo Carpentier's War on Time
emerges to reveal a system of chance connections
and exchanges between Acosado and taquillero;
they form a bundle of Ariadie threads that guide
the reader through the narrative's cross-cutting
paths. The delayed disclosure of the pertinence
of these motifs weakens the sense of time, for a
vision of the entire action must be suspended
until all the elements can be coordinated; non-
sequential articulation is an effective weapon in
Carpentier's "guerra del tiempo."
Certain occurrences (which, however, do not
come in chronological order) tie together the
parallel lives of the informer and the ticket-taker:
the yellow-papered cigarette butt, thrown out of
Estrella's window by the taxi driver, burns the
hand of the Hunted Man crouching against the
wall of her house (p. 233); a few hours later
(though the passage is situated in the narrative
some seventy-seven pages earlier), the ticket-
taker finds Estrella's bed surrounded by "colillas
de papel de maiz" (p. 156). The storm that the
ticket-taker watches from the concert-hall lobby
(p. 137) surprises the Hunted One with the
Becario at the ocean shore (pp. 260, 263). The
screech of ambulance brakes that heralds the
entrance of the hurried ticket buyer in Part i
("En aquel instante una ambulancia que Ilegaba
a todo rodar paso frente al edificio, ladeandose en
un frenazo brutal," p. 142) sounds again at the
end of Part ii when the fugitive darts in front of
the speeding vehicle: "Una ambulancia, brutal-
mente frenada, habia quedado entre su cuerpo y
los gestos que estaban en suspenso a la altura del
bolsillo del corazon" (pp. 263-264). Other com-
monly perceived things and events indicate the
physical proximity in which the two men have
been living for the past two weeks: the old
mansion next to the modern apartment house,
the wake for the old woman. Alternately shared
objects and experiences (the new bill, Estrella,
and the Beethoven symphony) weld these two
lives into a single action, a mechanism with rotat-
ing parts (or, to use the image of the Acosado in
describing the third movement of the Eroica,
"con algo de esos juguetes de nifios muy chicos,
que por el movimiento de varitas paralelas,
ponen dos mufiecos, a descargar martillos, alterna-
tivamente, sobre un mazo," p. 197). The new
bill, a dynamic motif, appears now in the hands
of one, now affects the life of the other, and these
exchanges are vital to the plot's complication.
The meshing of the visits paid by both to
Estrella is a descriptive, static device, because
the prostitute, as her name implies, is a fixed
point of convergence, the motionless, timeless
center in the lives of her clients and the pivot
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between Acosado and taquillero. Beethoven's
Eroica not only determines the fictional time of
the narrative but also creates the strongest bond
between the former architecture student and the
music student. For days the man hiding on the
roof-terrace hears the music played by his
neighbor on the phonograph, at times almost
unaware of its persistence, but finally convinced
of its significance in his drama ("Estaba eso
en la casa al lado, porque Dios quiso que asi
fuera . .," p. 152). The symphony that accom-
panied him in his refuge and that now marks the
temporal limits of his last anguish is one of the
many signs of a divine plan.
Some motifs are connected with the Acosado
alone and serve as directives for fitting together
the story-line (frequently what appears first as a
fragment of memory is later included as dramatic
scene enacted in the present): the pistol (pp. 173,
211, 262, 263); the explosive Antologia de ora-
dores: de Dem6slenes a Castelar (pp. 225, 244);
the prayer book with the Cross of Calatrava on
its cover (pp. 153, 186, 256); the Alto Personaje
and the Casa de la Gesti6n (pp. 185, 218, 224);
the attempted assassination in the graveyard
(pp. 232, 242); the fugitive's vomiting of the
warm water drunk in desperation after three
days of enforced fast (pp. 152, 190); the learning
of the Apostles' Creed (pp. 148, 153-154, 186,
196); his torture (pp. 174, 227, 228, 245-246).
Other motifs, however, not only show the careful
workings of the plot but are to the Hunted Man
himself evidence of an unavoidable tragedy of sin
and atonement. Thus, in the first interior mono-
logue, he is horrified by an acne-scarred neck:
"No mirar ese cuello: tiene marcas de acne;
habia de estar ahi, precisamente-iunico en toda
la platea-, para poner tan cerca lo que no debe
mirarse, lo que puede ser un Signo" (p. 148; see
also pp. 153, 268); the explanation of this deliri-
ous obsession comes on pp. 242-243 when the
Acosado recalls his first act of political terrorism.
The dog that barked at him in the ruins of the
Casa de la Gesti6n (pp. 153, 248) is yet another
fixture in the divine plan of expiation, as are the
Beethoven symphony, the overheard dialogue of
a Sophoclean tragedy, and the words engraved
in bronze on the fagade of the University of
Havana: Hoc erat in volis. This phrase, although
taking on different connotations in different
contexts,7 announces, in the first internal mono-
7On p. 153, it obviously refers to the will of God; on p. 185,
it stands as emblem for the heroic illusions of the protagonist;
on p. 228, in connection with the short distance between the
University and the prison cell where he informed, it points
to the abyss separating his first enthusiasm and the abomi-
 Frances Wyers Weber 443

logue, the protagonist's awareness of the ineluc- complication of the action but through the place-
tability of his tragedy: it is the summary and ment-counterpoint, shifts, juxtapositions-of
prophetic declaration of a total and minutely anecdotal and descriptive fragments. By replac-
detailed program of ensnarement. The terrible ing the expected consecutive order with a dis-
march of events is due neither to chance nor to crete arrangement, the author destroys temporal
the voluntary acts of the informer: progression and turns the narrative into a stable
complex whose parts are simultaneously appre-
[Era] Dios, que no perdonaba, que no queria mis
hended.
plegarias, que me volvia las espaldas cuando en mi
In addition to the intricate fretwork of con-
boca sonaban las palabras aprendidas en el libro de la
Cruz de Calatrava; Dios que me arrojo a la calle y crete particulars, Carpentier unifies the novel
puso a ladrar un perro entre los escombros; Dios que through a series of variations on the topic of
puso aqui, tan cerca de mi rostro, el cuello con las betrayal and on the related theme of a world
horribles marcas; el cuello que no debe mirarse. Y crumbling into moral and esthetic decay. The
ahora se encarna en los instrumentos que me obligo a Acosado's traitorous acts are many: he abandons
escuchar, esta noche, conducido por los truenos de su his studies, he defects from the Communist
ira.... Se ahora que nunca ofensor alguno pudo ser
Party ("recordo que de eso tambien habia
mas observado, mejor puesto en el fiel de la Divina
renegado," p. 227), he refuses, out of cowardice,
Mira, que quien cayo en el encierro, en la suprema
to stand up for a companion tried and sentenced
trampa-traido por la inexorable Voluntad a donde un
lenguaje sin palabras acaba de revelarle el sentido by a kangaroo court, he becomes a criminal
terrorist (thereby distorting his revolutionary
expiatorio de los (ultimos tiempos. Repartidos estan los
papeles en este Teatro, y el desenlace esta ya estab- ideals), and, finally, he steals his old nurse's
lecido en el despues-ihoc erat in votis!-como est& la meager food. The ticket-taker, whose function in
ceniza en la lefia por prender. (p. 153) the novel is to echo, as if in a minor key, the
theme of the fall from original innocence, re-
In this allegorical scheme of transgression and gards his surrender to sexual temptation as a
punishment, the old trunk containing the sou- betrayal of his high ideals ("la imagen de una
venirs of his student life, reminders of an uncor- prostituta bastara para apartarlo de lo Verdadero
rupted youth ("mis cosas puras," p. 271: books, y lo Sublime," p. 165); his lost purity is person-
architectural drawings, photographs of famous ified by the old negro woman in the mansion
buildings, a Communist Party card, "la uiltima ("Necesitaba saberla viva, en la noche, por rito
barrera que hubiera podido preservarlo de lo
abominable," p. 182), is to the Hunted One a
symbol of man's innocence before original sin: nation of his betrayal ("lo corto que habia sido el transito
"una figuracion, solo descifrable para el, del entre aquel edificio de altos peristilios, con el HOC ERAT IN
Paraiso antes de la Culpa" (p. 183). VOTIS que pod'a leerse a distancia ... y la fortaleza ex-
piatoria, tenebrosa, donde le tocara vomitar abyectamente-
Listening to the Eroica in the concert hall, the
'cantar,' Ilamnaban a eso-lo aprendido de hombres encon-
fugitive, only recently converted to a belief in trados, mal encontrados, en los pasillos de las Facultades,"
God, sees the necessity of the episodes in his p. 228). The source of the quotation, the opening words of
assigned role. Although this happens in Part i, Horace's Satire, "The Country Mouse" (Satires ii, 6, 1) pro-
vides an ironic reminiscence for this tale of a disastrous dis-
the reader is not yet aware of the portentousness
placement from country to city. Nor are these words the only
of the events recalled. The author scatters refer- assertion of divine will before which man must submit.
ences to them throughout the text, sometimes in Carpentier prefaces Part ii, which relates the past life of the
a very unobtrusive way, so that the realization of Hunted One, with this quotation from Job x.13: "Aunque
their importance, both in the make-up of the plot encubras estas cosas en tu coraz6n yo s6 que de todas te has
acordado." The words of the Biblical citation, echoed twice
and in the emotional life of the protagonist, is
within the story, assume, in addition to the notion of God's
acquired only gradually. Motifs that seem unre- omnipotence and omniscience, the connotation of a desired
lated to the story-chance occurrences and forgetfulness on the part of the fugitive, the obliteration or
apparently insignificant acts and objects-are concealment of painful memories: "aunque haya tratado de
eventually revealed as indispensable to its de- encubrirlo" introduces the recall of one of his betrayals; he
longs for the peace of church naves to "liberarme de cuanto
velopment. The reader retrospectively fits details tengo encubierto en el coraz6n" (p. 250).
into a meaningful unit and recognizes, along with 8 In his discussion of the composition of modern novels,
the Hunted One, a rigorously preordained plan.8 Enrique Anderson Imbert-"Formas en la novela contempo-
This halting, piecemeal disclosure of an unchang- rainea" in Critica interna (Madrid, 1960)-describes El acoso
as "un rompecabezas de trebejos cuidadosamente mezcla-
ing, inextricable web of facts divests a conven-
dos"; the pattern emerges clearly with a second reading: "A
tional dramatic plot of its normal pattern of la primera lectura sentimos v6rtigo. A la segunda lectura el
suspense: tension arises not out of an evolving caos se ilumina en una esplendida geometria" (p. 270).

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444 Alejo Carpentier's War on Time
de purificacion," p. 167). All the other characters
betray or deceive, some intentionally, some un-
wittingly: Estrella, the Becario, the taxi-driver,
the police inspector. The very roles of delator and
of expiatory victim are transferred indifferently
from one man to another: the acne-marked
dignitary who was once "el emplazado" ("el
emplazado parecia feliz en el frescor mafianero,"
p. 242) bequeaths the title to his murderer, the
informer ("Una ambulancia llegaba a todo
rodar ... el emplazado se arrojo delante de ella,"
p. 263). Thinking of his condemned friend, the
Acosado remembers a corporeal image of guilt
("una miserable espalda se redondeaba en la
sombra de los alamos," p. 234) that the narrator
applies to him a few pages later ("Miserable era
ahora su espalda que se redondeaba en la
sombra de los alamos," p. 237). A kind of
chiasmus, whose terms must be held in mind by
the reader, ties together the two men in the
anonymity of the victim's role. Even the land-
scape across which the characters move is dis-
integrating: the former architecture student sees
the decline of his epoch in the debasement of
style and form: "Se asistia, de portal en portal, a
la agonia de los ultimos ordenes clasicos usados
en la epoca" (p. 178).
The use of multiple, coexisting embodiments of
a single theme reinforces the novel's static qual-
ity, for that which occurs only in time, the fall
into corruption, is pictured as an invariable com-
ponent in a repetitive design.
III. Style
By interchanging the characters' roles Carpen-
tier denies them individualized behavior; by
excluding proper names he shows them to be
mere actors in the play. All have abstract or
generic titles ("el Acosado," "el taquillero," "el
Becario," "el Alto Personaje"), with the single
exception of Estrella, less a name than a sign for
her function-the fixed point around which the
others revolve. Not only does the narrator with-
draw from his fictional creatures but they too
disassociate themselves from their deeds: decisive
acts appear as autonomous happenings not as the
results of a conscious will. Both the Acosado and
Estrella consider their treacheries in a curiously
depersonified way: Acosado: "Habia una fisura,
ciertamente; un transito infernal. Pero, al con-
siderar las peripecias de lo sucedido en aquel
transito . .." (p. 184); Estrella: "Al medir el
abominable alcance de lo dicho para quitarse de
encima a los de la inquisicion . . ." (p. 213); "Un
indicio, dado para desviar una amenaza sin
mayor gravedad . . . habia hecho de ella una
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puta" (p. 215). The Hunted Man thinks of his
original sin not as a deliberate act but as a
mechanical response. He did not kill, he only made
a certain gesture: "Jamas repetiria el gesto que le
hiciera mirar tan fijamente un cuello marcado de
acne" (p. 184). The memory of his first murder is
derationalized into a rapid succession of photo-
graphic images and interruptive sounds that
impose themselves in a passive sensory appara-
tus: "la nuca, a poco, se le coloco tan cerca que
hubieran podido contarse las marcas dejadas en
ella por el acne. Luego fue un perfil, una cara
empavorecida, dos ojos suplicantes, un aullido y
una descarga" (pp. 242-243). His own death is
reported with laconic indirectness: "Entonces,
dos espectadores que hablan permanecido en sus
asientos de penuiltima fila se levantaron lenta-
mente, atravesaron la platea desierta . . . y se
asomaron por sobre el barandal de un palco ya en
sombras, disparando a la alfombra" (p. 274).
The event toward which the entire story moves,
the Hunted One's execution, becomes a second-
ary action, inserted as a modifying adverbial
phrase-and the human target itself goes unmen-
tioned.
Man, devoid of individuality and volition, is
nothing but a congeries of automatic motions:
"Un gesto resignado . . . aparto la cortina de
damasco" (p. 144); "La mano ha dejado la
inservible brocha" (p. 179); "Una mano crispada
se hundio en la masa resquebrajada ... Y fue
luego la lengua, ansiosa, presurosa, asustada de
comer robando, la que limpio el plato con gru-
fnidos de cerdo en las honduras de la loza, y
salto pronto al esparto de la silla, para lamer lo
derramado. Levantose luego el cuerpo sobre sus
rodillas, y fue la mano, otra vez, en el envase del
Cuaquero, escarbando con las ufias en la avena
cruda" (pp. 191-192); "La boca se hundio en esa
sopa de Domingos, resoplando y royendo antes de
arrimarse al carton del Cuaquero" (p. 198). A
mindless body motivates or performs the cow-
ardly act: "su carne mas irreemplazable se
habla encogido atrozmente ante la amenaza del
tormento" (p. 227); "Y hay que levantar la
mano y sentenciar.... La mia permanece
inerte, colgante, buscando un pretexto para no
alzarse en el lomo de un perro ... mi codo al fin
se mueve, elevando dedos cobardes" (p. 234). As
for the occasion of his informing, the man remem-
bers not the human semblance of his interroga-
tors but their disembodied hands, gestures,
voices: "Y luego de dos dfas de olvido, sin
alimento . . habia sido la luz en la cara, y las
manos que empufiaban vergajos y las voces que
hablaban de Ilegarla a las rafces de las muelas con
 Frances Wyers Weber 445
una fresa de dentista, y las otras voces que habla-
ban de golpearlo en los testiculos" (p. 244). The
physical gesture is not only autonomous but at
times its very import substantializes it, convert-
ing it into a material object: "Una ambulancia
. . . habia quedado entre su cuerpo y los gestos
que estaban en suspenso a la altura del bolsillo
del corazon" (p. 264). Or it becomes magnified
into a divine revelation: "La portentosa novedad
era Dios. Dios, que se le habia revelado en el
tabaco encendido por la vieja . . . De sutbito,
aquel gesto de tomar la brasa del fogon y elevarla
hacia el rostro ... se la habla magnificado en
implicaciones abrumadoras" (p. 193).
Estrella is aware of this mysterious independ-
ence of the flesh: "Hablaba de su cuerpo en
tercera persona, como si fuese, mas abajo de sus
claviculas, una presencia ajena y energica,
dotada, por si sola, de los poderes que le valian la
solicitud y la largueza de los varones. Esa pre-
sencia actuaba, de pronto, como por sortilegio,
alentando prolongadas asiduidades por gentes de
ambitos distintos" (p. 213). Her clients too are
reduced to physical existence and appetite,
"identificados en los mismos gestos y apetencias"
(p. 214). Indeed, Carpentier habitually presents
people in the guise of pure corporality: the char-
acters see each other as moving flesh: "Despues
del sofocante anochecer los cuerpos estaban como
relajados" (p. 138); "Mas alla de las carnes era el
parque de columnas" (p. 139); flesh that the
pursued man thinks of as a protective wall
("rodeado de gente, protegido por los cuerpos,
oculto entre los cuerpos; de cuerpo confundido
con muchos cuerpos," p. 150), or flesh that he
has envied ("Yo envidiaba aquella carne cefiida
a su contorno mas viril," p. 234), or, in the case
of his own, impersonally considered as bulk to be
hidden (f'cargado con el peso de un cuerpo
acosado," p. 183). The man condemned by the
revolutionary tribunal lives his last moments
only in the automatic reactions of his body:
"El cuerpo presente-presente ya ausente-se
desprende el reloj de la mufneca . . . le da cuerda,
por habito conservado por el pulgar y el indice de
su mano derecha" (p. 233). In a sense the body,
or more exactly the body's sexuality, is held
responsible for the parallel falls into sin of
Acosado and taquillero, the fear of castration in
the former (pp. 244-245), simple sensuality in
the latter ("habia dejado la Sublime Concepcion
por el calor de una ramera," p. 167). It is their
sexual life, their commerce with Estrella, that
provides one of the most important ties between
these duplicating lives.9
And the description of the body is usually
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purely sensory, frequently an optical impression:
an ineradicable pictorial memory-the acne-
scarred neck (pp. 148, 153, 184, 243, 268)-
afflicts the Acosado. Pictorial images are so insis-
tent that physical qualities synecdochically re-
place their possessor. The characteristic of an
object or person (which may be nominalized and
subsequently modified by another adjective
appropriate to the object) so predominate over
the bearer that the latter disappears entirely
behind an abstract construction: "Silencio ya en
lo despues. En lo que ya dejo de ser; palpito y
movimiento que ya saben del hierro arrojado a la
rueda maestra, de la tierra que caera sobre la
todavia caliente inmovilidad de lo detenido"
(p. 233). Independent of its owner, the change in
a human attribute signifies the death of a man:
"lo que se movia, dejo de moverse; la voz
enmudecio en la bocanada de sangre que ya
viste, como un esmalte compacto, el menton sin
rasurar" (p. 235). A further degree of abstraction
is reached when the very substance of the cadaver
is only circuitously alluded to: "Sobre el arbol del
tronco mas espeso se detienen las moscas,
buscando los plomos que traspasaron" (p. 235).
The body evaporates into a lingering warmth:
"La casa estaba tibia auin de una presencia que
demoraba en el desorden de la cama rodeada de
colillas de papel de maiz" (p. 156).
Apposite to the dehumanized view of man is
the sickly animation of the architectural setting.
Buildings, pillars, decorative motifs and devices
assume just enough life to suffer organic dissolu-
tion: "Habia capiteles cubiertos de pu'stulas
reventadas por el sol; fustes cuyas estrias se
hinchaban de abscesos levantados por la pintura
de aceite" (p. 177); "Alli se afirmaba la condena
impuesta por aquella ciudad a los ordenes que
degeneraban en el calor y se cubrian de llagas,
dando sus astragalos para sostener muestras de
tintorerias, barberias, refresquerias ... (p.
185).
IV. Temporal Structure
The disorder of the narrative's progress is, I
have noted, only apparent, for scenes and evoca-
I While the taquillero's narrative (Part i, section one) de-
scribes the sensuous incitements of the warm night and the
bare backs of gowned women, the contemporaneous action in
the Acosado's narrative (Part ii, section twelve) tells how the
fugitive and the Becario witness the violent coupling of two
negroes on the beach; they see them depersonified, reified:
"un nuevo relimpago ilumin6, por un segundo, un cuerpo en
metamorfosis. ... De pronto, aquella carne anudada rod6 del
banco, con desplome de odre ca do" (p. 262). The carnal
forces linking Acosado and taquillero through Estrella here
unite the two stories in a moment of time.
446 A lejo Carpentier's War on Time
tions are actually carefully woven together
through a system of clue-like motifs and a strict
temporal arrangement. This last, however, is
not immediately evident and the reader must
reconstruct it on the basis of various references.
We discover two time levels. The events of Parts
i and ii occur during the present-time frame of
the Sunday evening concert,10 a period of about
one hour-the action begins shortly before the
performance of the Eroica (the correct interpreta-
tion of which, according to the taquillero, takes
forty-six minutes, p. 165) and ends shortly after-
wards; the action of Part ii begins, one gathers,
on the previous Tuesday when, because illness
has confined the old woman to her bed, the
Acosado must hide in the belvedere of the decrep-
it mansion, and takes us up to a moment before
the start of the symphony; the repeated screech
of the ambulance brakes indicates the confluence
of the two time periods." The two-week span of
the action of Part ii (concerned exclusively with
the A cosado) corresponds to the two weeks during
which the ticket-taker has studiously listened to
recordings of the Eroica: "Le habia observado
[a la vieja] hacia dos semanas-dos semanas
exactas, puesto que era el dia de su compleafios,
cuando, con el pequenlo giro recibido del padre, se
habia regalado a si mismo la Sinfonia Heroica en
discos de mucho uso" (p. 166).
In terms of real chronology, the events of Part
ii are prior to those of Parts i and iii, but instead
of appearing as a remembrance in the conscious-
ness of a character, a flashback illuminating pre-
vious material, they occur as present action that
unfolds dramatically before the reader.'2 Al-
though they are the temporal and causal ante-
cedents of what happens in Parts i and iII, the
narrative structure makes them seem independ-
ent and exclusive so that they do not truly
constitute the preparation for the denouement.
Between Parts i and ii is an unexplained time-
shift reminiscent of the film-run-in-reverse device
used in "Viaje a la semilla." At the end of Part i
the ticket-taker anxiously wonders if the wake in
the old mansion is for the aged negro woman who
symbolizes to him the lost purity of childhood:
"Necesitaba saberla viva en la noche. Tanto lo
necesitaba que correria a la casa del Mirador, en
cuanto terminara el Final, para cerciorarse de
que no era ella la persona de cuerpo presente"
(p. 167). The first lines of Part ii suddenly
resuscitate this laid-out corpse: "La vieja se
habia recogido, encogida, en su estrecha cama de
hierro .. . volviendose hacia la pared" (p. 171).
The order of remembered events is determined
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by the emotional reactions of the protagonist.
Part ii reveals, albeit in a fragmentary way, the
confession that led to the man-hunt; but this
revelation lies submerged in the account of the
fugitive's life in the old mansion, being post-
poned, in fact, until the end of the section and
preceded by matters of more immediate concern
to the character (his religious conversion, the
memories of his revolutionary activities, etc.).
For the Hunted One customarily considers his
plight as the punishment for his original fall into
sin-the betrayal of youthful ideals-rather
than the necessary consequence of his cowardice
in prison; his flight and suffering are part of a
divinely decreed plan of atonement ("una
perenne expiacion por el tormento," p. 174;
"fases de una expiacion necesaria"). Because his
crime is against God, not man, the recall of the
"fisura," of the abominable gesture that makes
him stare so fixedly at an acne-scarred neck, dis-
10 We know that the day is Sunday because the previous
morning the pursued man heard the children singing "Tilingo,
tilingo-Maniana es domingo" (p. 194).
"1 One can reconstruct the following schedule: on a
Saturday, two weeks before the day of the concert, the pro-
tagonist successfully carries out the Antologia de oradores
project-the book explodes, killing the addressee (pp. 225,
244); that evening he goes to Estrella's house and the next
morning is arrested in the cafe where he usually takes coffee
(p. 244). After two days in jail without food, he breaks down
at the beginning of torture and informs (pp. 244-246);
through the intercession of the Alto Personaje, he is released
the next morning (p. 247); that afternoon he sees the news-
paper photographs of his murdered comrades and barely
escapes death at the hands of unseen gunmen in a speeding
car (it is Carnival, for he sees "un autom6vil negro de placa
oculta por una marafia de serpentinas-pues se estaba en
carnavales," p. 248). He seeks aid from various acquaintances
but is everywhere rejected until at one place he receives,
"como una limosna," the new bill (p. 207); his old nurse,
overcome with pity, agrees to hide him in the decrepit
mansion (pp. 201-202); this probably occurs on Ash Wednes-
day; soon afterwards he undergoes a religious conversion
(p. 193), and the old woman lends him the prayer book with
the Cross of Calatrava on its cover from which he derives his
first religious instruction (pp. 153, 186, 256); when the old
woman takes to her bed, he must confine himself to the belve-
dere (p. 171); he suffers hunger and falls unconscious for three
days (p. 188); he eats the old woman's soup (pp. 188-192)
that day and the next (the Sunday of the concert), when she
dies (pp. 198-199). The subsequent events, from the old
woman's wake to the racing ambulance that cuts between
him and his pursuers (pp. 204-264), are arranged in chrono-
logical order-his brief appearance at the wake, his visit to
Estrella, her attempt to go to the house of the Alto Persontaje,
the incident with the cab driver, his wanderings through the
city, the encounter with the priest and later with the Becario.
12 This reminds us of the interpolations of past scenes in the
classic epic, which are also inserted as present foreground ac-
tions, but the intent of Carpentier in using this technique, as
well as its effect in the total structure, is quite different.
 Frances Wyers Weber 447
solves into a vision of penitent sinners: "Eran
gemidos las palabras con que los atormentados,
los culpables, los arrepentidos, se acercaban a la
Santa Mesa, para recibir el Cuerpo del Cruci-
ficado y la Sangre del Sacrificio Incruento" (p.
184). The temporal rupture between Parts i and
iii on the one hand, and Part ii on the other, is
the literary reproduction of that psychological
dissociation that divorces the denunciation of
friends and comrades from its inevitable after-
math. For the reader, as well as for the Acosado,
the pursuit is not directly linked to the inform-
ing.
This incision in the temporal continuity, this
severing of determinants from results and the
subsequent destruction of the normal causal
relation between a crime and its punishment,
transforms the episodes of a fast-moving sus-
penseful tale into the predictable stages of a
ritual drama removed from time and the human
world of motivation and will: "Se ahora que
nunca ofensor alguno pudo ser mas observado,
mejor puesto en el fiel de la Divina Mira, que
quien cayo en la suprema trampa-traido por la
inexorable voluntad" (p. 153). A man's deeds are
nothing but the posturings of an actor playing an
assigned role. "Repartidos estan los papeles en
este Teatro y el desenlace esta' establecido en el
despues" (p. 153). (At the close of his drama, the
Acosado unsuspectingly comments on his own
imminent disappearance from the stage: "Nadie
se queda en un teatro cuando ha terminado el
espectaiculo. Nadie permanece ante un escenario
vacio, en tinieblas, donde nada se muestra," p.
171). Human behavior does not evolve in time
because the characters are cast as unvarying
types.'3
The religious motifs woven into the story
reinforce its representative quality, for they
allude to what is timeless and archetypal. The
action takes place during the first two weeks of
Lent, the preparation for the great drama of
betrayal and sacrifice ("el mayor de los dramas,"
p. 195). After his conversion, the fugitive reen-
acts the practice of the Christian catechumens in
using this period to instruct himself for his initia-
tion. Intrigued by the ceremonies of the mass
that symbolically transpose the Mystery of
salvation, he one day comes to understand how
the liturgy of the Church, like architecture or any
other art, gives form to man's experience: "Y
ahora que se daba por enterado, hallaba en los
simples movimientos que acompafiaban el Gloria,
el Evangelio, el Ofertorio, esa prodigiosa sub-
limacion de lo elemental que, en la Arquitectura,
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habia transformado el trofeo de caza en bucranio;
la anilla de cuerdas que cifie el haz de ramas del
fuste primitivo, en astragalo de puras propor-
ciones pitagoricas" (p. 196). The liturgical refer-
ences suggest not only the eternal but also the
theatrical: religion becomes art.
The artist's conversion of the primary elements
of his world (particularly of his perceptions of
space and time) is schematically indicated in the
novel by the pairing of the two characters, the
student of architecture (the organization of
spatial relations) and the student of music (the
organization of temporal progression). The frame
of their action is fiction, an image of time as
memory. Music, Carpentier has written, is the
achievement of human dominion over time, its
submission to man's will.14 But the novel is also
a manipulation of temporal sequence. The
author successfully fuses these two modes in
composing his narrative. Although he has de-
stroyed normal chronology with the apparently
illogical disposition of events, he carefully deter-
mines the duration of the action by the playing
of the Eroica, thereby molding it to a musical
order. The novel's abstractly executed plot is a
literary parallel to the musical conformation of
time.
The narrative display of esthetic transforma-
tion is evident not only in the ingenious temporal
displacements but also in the story's strangely
impersonal, hieratic quality; the passivity and
powerlessness of the characters shows, as well as
their human deficiency, their essential unreality,
their literary nature. The author, precisely direct-
ing the paces of his actors according to a fixed
program of betrayal and degradation, affirms
human will in the very act of his novelistic con-
13 One character is consistently portrayed as the embodi-
ment of timelessness-Estrella, in her own eyes "inmovilidad
y espera" (p. 214); the ticket-taker is sensitively aware of her
waiting quietude: "la que esperaba-no podia pensarla sino
esperando" (p. 143); "Aquel billete que le harfa duefno de la
casa sin relojes" (p. 146); "percibiendo, como siempre, que
desde el instante en que hubiera Ilamado a la puerta, los pen-
samientos, sensaciones y actos, se sucederian en un orden in-
variable ... El 'hoy' se reiteraba en una apetencia sin
fecha" (p. 156).
14 "El tiempo dejaba de acarrear sonidos incoherentes para
verse encuadrado, organizado, sometido a una previa volun-
tad humana, que hablaba por los gestos del Medidor de su
Transcurso (Los pasos perdidos, p. 21). The composer does
not relinquish his authority over time at death: "Conservaba
derechos de propriedad sobre el tiempo, imponiendo lapsos
de atenci6n o de fervor a los hombres del futuro" (pp. 21-22).
In music, man solidifies time so that one can speak of "un
tiempo hecho casi objeto por el sometimiento a encuadres de
fuga o de forma sonata" (p. 22).
448 Alejo Carpentier's War on Time

triving. Volition, so noticeably absent in the
characters, is manifest in the shape and fact of
the story itself. The informer's crime becomes a
drama and, as artistic object, acquires value. The
writer places his tragedy beyond the realm of
incomprehensible motivations and unexpected
changes, beyond the element in which these exist
-beyond time. Harassed and obsessed by time,
man seeks to subject it to his desired measure in
music, religion, and narrative.
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
Ann Arbor

IN THE HISTORY of European thought, the discussion of aesthetics

has been almost ruined by the emphasis upon the harmony of the
details. The enjoyment of Greek art is always haunted by a longing
for the details to exhibit some rugged independence apart from
the oppressive harmony. In the greatest examples of any form of
art, a miraculous balance is achieved. The whole displays its com-
ponent parts, each with its own value enhanced; and the parts lead
up to a whole, which is beyond themselves, and yet not destructive
of themselves. It is however remarkable how often the preliminary
studies of the details-if preserved-are more interesting than the
final details as they appear in the complete work. Even the greatest
works of art fall short of perfection. Alfred North Whitehead,
Modes of Thought, "Lecture One."

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