Alejo Carpentier - La verdad de la historia y la historia de la verdad
Alejo Carpentier - The Truth of History and the History of Truth

Summary/Abstract: This essay has as a main purpose to examine the subtle relationship established between two fundamental concepts that could be found in the great majority of the Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier’s writings: truth and history. Starting from a theoretical approach made by the author himself in several essays, we focus on the narrative technique as far as his great novels are concerned, especially El arpa y la sombra (1979). Columbus, the great explorer who discovered America, is the main character and the novelist’s intention is to convince his readers that the only truth that might be expected within the field of literature is the aesthetic one. Therefore, at times, history itself may become important not only for its truth, but also for the possibility of being rewritten from very different points of view. At the same time, Carpentier pays, implicitly, his tribute to Cervantes; this is his most important literary model and he is trying to identify in the work of the great Spanish writer the roots of aesthetic fiction itself.

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