A Melomaniac at War: Alejo Carpentier, Correspondent in the Spanish Civil War

Abstract

In July 1937, Alejo Carpentier travels from Paris to a Spain which, despite being inmersed in a Civil War, is succesfully holding the Second International Congress of Writers for the Defence of Culture. Taking his report “España bajo las bombas” as a starting point, this paper studies the role of Alejo Carpentier as a war correspondent within the context of the intellectual production at the time. A close examination of the text reveals a peculiarity –the large number of sonorous and musical references, remarkable in warlike context but fundamental in Carpentier’s writing– and a shared experience with other correspondents –the intellectual’s inferiority complex who compares himself with the soldier–. Finally, I delve into “España bajo las bombas” as a palimpsest of his later novel La consagración de la primavera (1937).