Alejo Carpentier's The Lost Steps

Insincerity, a treatise on self-delusion

    The narrator of Los Pasos Perdidos takes us on a journey of discovery with him as he attempts to metaphorically and literally return to his roots
as a Latin American man living in the United States of America in the 20th Century. His journey is filled with trials and tribulations as he makes his sojourns to a picturesque village in the jungle known as Santa Monica de los Venados. The narrator uses emotive and evocative language in his descriptions to pull the reader into the Magical Realist world he creates. The novel follows the narrator on his path and the story takes on a timeless, cyclical feel as the author attempts to cope with his dual nature and find himself. The problem is made apparent to the reader but the narrator seems to remain unaware of the fact that he is himself a synthesis of cultures and has no “home” to which to return. The narrators ethnic background as a Latin American give him a mestizo or mixed background which gives him problems as he attempts to identify himself as one or the other–a South American, indigenous Indian versus a college-educated North American living in the 20th Century and working as a composer in the film industry.
    His 20th Century side is incredibly analytical, especially in regards to himself, and we often find him trying to logically categorize and group his encounters based on his Western education; specifically comparing situations in which he finds himself to encounters about which he has read in hegemonic literature. The literary references Carpentier use are incredibly important in order to fully understanding the story and one can get a good sense of the sequential nature of the stories and narrators development by examining the quotations Carpentier employs at the beginnings of each of the five chapters as well as the many literary references contained within the text.
    His journey is multifaceted and his growth, both literal and figurative, is formative. For the narrator an important part of the self he is attempting to pin down is how he views religion and spirituality and many of the chapter introductory quotations are of a spiritual nature. The first chapter begins with a quote from the Bible, specifically Deuteronomy, which is the Book of Laws–also known as the copy of the book of laws–of the dominant Western, imperialistic religion. This is rife with meaning and can be seen to demonstrate the authors general distrust of Christianity because the book of Deuteronomy was actually the Christians copy of a pre-existing religious orders set of beliefs–the Jews–which was taken and conglomerated by the Christian juggernaut. This allegorically shows how the West and the United States have stolen pieces–of art, religion, law, and anything else that held power–and incorporated them; claiming them as a part of their own Society. This is a recurrent theme in Los Pasos Perdidos, and one that Carpentier manages to conceal beneath the surface quite effectively in many different symbols and signs.
    The book of Deuteronomy is roughly composed of three sermons followed by three appendices which tell short stories. The sermons are about the justice of God, Gods laws, and the sanctions or penalties of failing to comply with Gods laws, respectively. The narrator struggles with right and wrong throughout the tale as he attempts to decide whose laws he wishes to follow: those of the West, those of his Mestizo past, or some other set of internal parameters. Although he is married in the United States, the narrator takes his mistress with him on his trip to South America during which time he falls in love with another woman–a local who for him represents indigenousness–which acts he finds no moral fault with and in fact only thinks about when questioned by the errant priest in the small village about whether or not he is going to marry Rosario, the native woman. He reacts to the query with an aloofness of its illegality because of the feeling of distance he has with North America and its laws. Although he eventually does try and do what he thinks is right, it ultimately ends up badly because he is trying to abide by the laws of two cultures simultaneously which cannot be accomplished successfully.
    The three appendices of Deuteronomy are The Song of Moses, the Blessing of Moses, and the story of the death of Moses respectively. Each of these appendices hold value in their comparative meaning with Los Pasos Perdidos. The Song of Moses is, purportedly, created by man–Moses–at the request of God–which can be seen as the inspiration one feels to create art. The Song of Moses is an interesting piece in that it was written mostly in the future tense and speaks of a time when the trials of Moses and the wandering through the desert are far in the past. This sentiment is paralleled in the name of the bar in which the narrator makes many of his most important self-discoveries: Memories of the Future. The Song also relates how the chosen people will fall into idolatry and be on the verge of ruin, when Yahweh will come and save them. It is within the walls of Memories of the Future that the narrator first discovers his love for Rosario, as well as where he learns of her departure from him in order to marry another local man from the pueblo of Santa Monica de los Venados. This could be interpreted as the narrator being punished for failing to follow Gods laws, but it is also beneficial for him to come to a better understanding of himself.
    The contrast between Rosario and the narrator show his disconnectedness from her and her culture–in which culture the narrator had hoped he would fit. For her the love they shared was simply a moment in her life, but the narrator is unable to live in the moment and is constantly striving for something else–a reflection of his modern, North American, hegemonic personality–which is contrasted against Rosario’s simple, take-things-as-they-come and live from moment to moment culture and style. The narrator is on the verge of ruin, and he needs the inspiration of God–or art–to come into his life and save him. The double edge of this sword is that he is unable to produce his art in the only place that inspires him to create it; which the author relates sarcastically in saying “it has never occurred to me that the imagination could founder on anything so stupid as lack of paper.” In the jungle with his indigene common-law wife he is so contented that a symphony comes pouring out of him at such a pace that he has nothing left on which to write it. Carpentiers use of sarcasm gives hints to his possible prerogatives and judgements of occurrences of the story.
    The second appendix, the Blessing of Moses, is a poem that presents an opinion of the merits and attributes of the various tribes of Israel. Allegorically this can be seen as a reference to Los Pasos Perdidos itself in that Carpentier is demonstrating, through the thoughts and words of his characters, his own judgements of the different cultures which they represent. The amalgamation that is the narrator comes from his different elemental properties which create his essence. He is a product of thousands of years of cultural intersection and exchange which makes it incredibly difficult for him to look at one pure culture or society and definitively fit in. He starts and ends the story with a similar refrain–although the emotional attachment of each saying is incredibly different–that of “I am empty.” At the beginning he is bored and disassociated with his life as a motion picture score composer when he happens upon an old colleague of his when he had done his “pure” studies of ancestral instrumentology. This colleague reminds the narrator of the theory he had put forth of why ancient societies felt the need to make music which he simplifies as a relative: mimetism-magic-rhythm. He believes tribes created instruments in order to mime the sounds of certain animals whereby owning the sound the tribal hunters were able to magically or metaphorically own the animal before the actual hunt took place. The old colleague tells him of an opportunity to take a trip to South America to retrieve some instruments wanted by a University for their collection when the narrator makes the very full statement about being empty. He feels empty because he has been performing his repetitive, redundant, and unsatisfying daily routine which he describes as being Sisyphean. The allegory is not hastily chosen and his own life does relate to that of the mythical Sisyphus. The story of Sisyphus states that he was punished by the Gods for his illicit and underhanded business practices as well as for claiming to be a peer of the Gods who could rightfully report their indiscretions–which indiscretion was Zeus’ rape of a mortal girl; metaphor abounds.
    The narrators heart is not in his work as a composer and he reports feeling guilty for being paid so much to do a task in which he had no real interest. He also has no legitimate love for his wife and he states that their love has been reduced to a routine of weekly fornication; as well as the fact that he has at least one known mistress in whom he also has little or no attachment other than sexually. It is during his vacation time between projects for the movie industry that the narrator is confronted by his past colleague, the museum curator, with the task of finding a certain tribe and bartering with them for some of their ancestral instruments. And at the very end of the novel, when he has completed his task but also divorced his wife and left his mistress to pursue Rosario only to find that in his short absence from her to handle the divorce she has found and married another man in her moment-to-moment way of life, does he repeat the sentiment when he states “I looked at myself in the mirror”...”and what I saw was a body sitting at a table, looking hollow, empty.” Even after his incredible journey he finds himself essentially unchanged; still striving and pontificating instead of enjoying what he has as he has it. Towards the end of the novel the narrator knows that his fantasy of recapturing his past has ended and fate has returned him to his routine stating “today Sisyphus’ vacation came to an end.”
    Finally in Deuteronomy is the death of Moses which is the death of the messenger of that which God decrees. The narrators story must end, but it cannot end in a romantic, ideal way. There can be no storybook ending because this is a reflection on the self in terms of reality. Carpentier shows the narrators inability to be aware of his true nature by reflecting on things in an idealized manner instead of relating what he felt when he was actually in the situation being described. The whole time he is in Santa Monica de los Venados he is plagued by the need for paper in order to compose his symphony, but when he makes his short departure which is lengthened by the divorce he reflects that in the pueblo he “was the master of [his] steps, and [he] could set them where [he] chose.”
    As a result of this we see how his decisions brought him back to the United States under the guise of needing paper and other simple items for his life in the pueblo. This need for things brought him back to his wife where she learned the truth of his absence and divorced him, humiliating him publicly and concurrently severing the ties he had with the small village–specifically his relationship with Rosario–during the absence. The narrator becomes aware of the transient nature of life in the final pages of the novel when he admits “me digo que la marcha por los caminos excepcionales se emprende inconscientemente, sin tener la sensacion de lo maravilloso en el instante de vivirlo: se llega tan lejos, mas alla de lo trillado, mas alla de lo repartido, que el hombre, envanecido por los privilegios de lo descubierto, se siente capaz de repetir la hazana cuando se lo proponda–dueno del rumbo negado a los demas–. Un dia comete el irreparable error de desandar lo andado, creyendo que lo excepcional pueda serlo dos veces, y al regresar encuentra los paisajes trastocados, los puntos de referencia barridos, en tanto que los informadores han mudado el semblante...”
    With all the analyzing the narrator does he fails to see the importance of that which he already had and it is because of this that he is left alone and uncertain at the end. The destination of the trip was his focus instead of the journey itself. Moving to chapter two the introductory quotation is from Percy Shelleys Prometheus Unbound, itself an amalgamation of different cultures and epochs ranging from ancient Greek tragedy to 19th Century English Romanticism. The quotation “Ha! I scent life!” is an invocation by one of the Furies who hope to torture Prometheus, who was imprisoned by Zeus until Zeus was overthrown and Prometheus released, but who are sent away by the god Mercury. This quotation takes place chronologically right as the narrator and his mistress’ plane is going into its final descent. The pantheon of the Greeks and Romans itself was a combination of earlier proto-gods who came together through cultural intersection to be created. In the story Shelley writes that Zeus was overthrown so that Prometheus could have his freedom which marks the point in the narrators development when he has done away with God in order to find himself. Once he has established himself in the jungle many memories of his childhood come flooding back to him filled with scents and scenes of repose and relaxation before he entered into his formal schooling and the work-a-day world.
    At the start of chapter three is a long quotation from the Chilam-Bilam, an amalgamation of legends from differing Maya cities which were collected and put together into a tome over a span of hundreds of years during the time of the Spanish conquest. The quotation is “...it will be a time when he takes the road, when he uncovers his face and talks and vomits what he swallowed and lays down his load” which fits exactly with what the narrator does during this section of the novel. He remembers his boyhood attachments to simple, natural things such as walking a path through the jungle, enjoying a rest by a running river, eating simply, talking simply and living simply. This should be the happiest time of the narrators tale, but he is incapable of recognizing it and still strives: to find the village and the instruments, to be in a relationship with Rosario, to rid himself of his mistress who he finds increasingly distasteful in this new setting as she reminds him of all that he willingly left behind. What he fails to realize is that he has everything he needs which is made apparent by the fourth chapters quotation from the Popol Vuh, which could be called the Maya Bible or legends of creation and genesis. It is here that we sense the narrators incapacity for happiness because of his constant striving with the line “will there be only silence, repose at the foot of the trees, of the vines?”
    One can glean from this quotation that there is to be a new development and change in the story. If the narrator were truly of the indigenous South American culture he would be able to recognize that he has, at this point, everything he needs. But because he does not have a strong connection to this culture he cannot learn from its historical texts and must make his own mistakes–or missteps. His return to his other side and away from the indigenousness that attracted him and through which he had hoped he would find happiness follows the return of chapter five to the Bible and Psalm 119:54 which states “Thy statues have been my songs” in the introductory quotation but which has an ending that was left unpublished in Los Pasos Perdidos of “in the house of my pilgrimages” or sojourns, depending on the translation. Thy statues are the words of God and the Psalm is a positive appraisal of Gods words and works. This foreshadows the narrators return to European hegemony and spiritual dominance as this is the point in the novel that the narrator first discovers the town of Santa Monica de los Venados. It is here that he tells himself how happy and content he is until he is inspired to create which leads to his downfall. The naming of the city is said to have been after the daughter of the founder, a man whose own name literally is Advanced or Progressed. But the story of Santa Monica is important as the name of the town especially when contrasted with de los Venados. De los Venados, or of the stags, places the city in nature, in the natural setting invoked by the though of deer in their normal location. Whereas Saint Monica was the mother of Saint Augustine, who spent her entire life trying to get her son to remit his sinful ways and become a good Catholic which he eventually did and his actions caused them both to be sanctified. Saint Monica was an important religious icon for Catholicism and her presence in a secluded jungle village is not insignificant. Santa Monica de los Venados is the mixture of the name of a Western, hegemonic religious icon with the middle of a South American jungle that has no church and whose people violently refuse conversion by killing, quartering, and placing in a canoe set to float downstream so that others will take the warning, of a priest. It is within this turmoil that we see the true, mixed nature of the narrator who is both apathetic towards his own religious practices and temporarily horrified to hear of the way with which the priest was dealt by the locals.
    Finally, at the beginning of the end, the quotation from chapter six brings the reader back to what may be Carpentiers own tenets. From his famous discourses on dreams comes a quotation from Francisco de Quevedo which states “what you call dying is finally dying, and what you call birth is beginning to die, and what you call living is dying in life.” With this sentiment we again find the narrator descending from the clouds in an airplane but this time to return to New York the most representative City where the narrator must make amends to his wife so that he may return to Santa Monica and his Rosario; both of which he lost the moment he left them. The tragedy of the narrator is in his constant self-reflection he is still unable to see what is made obvious to the reader, namely that he is losing what he has by trying for something more. He names his unfinished symphony Threnody, which is a dirge or lament in song with the intent of bringing someone dead back to life. This is a clever title in that it demonstrates the narrator as being subconsciously aware of his situation as a mixture of cultures. The narrator is a composer and he is creating the most advanced form of musical art by writing the notes for many different instruments to work together
to create a complex piece of art. Each note holds importance for the direction he wants to take the symphony which he knows to be the lament for his lost, indigenous self. What is implicit in his threnody is related to a short passage hidden by Carpentier in the middle of the text during what should have been the denouement for the narrator. The narrator makes his long trip and gets so caught up in his self discovery that the original reason for his journey, to collect the instruments for the University, is pushed aside as tertiary. When the traveling group do meet the Indians and are able to trade with them for the instrument, the narrator sees the fault with his own mimetism-magic-rhythm theory of the origin of music when he views the shaman of the tribe chanting over the corpse of a snake-bitten man. The chanting takes on the semblance of an early fugue with two rival timbres playing back and forth with one another to create a tempo of sadness over the loss of their companion. Here the narrator is able to step back in time to see the action completed when it had an easily-discerned meaning. The threnody is the lament for a lost life, but it is more than a dirge because, in the words of the narrator, the threnody was “a magic song intended to bring a dead person back to life.” This revitalization is demonstrated by the jungle and its inhabitants which the narrator is unable to finish himself because of his disconnection to his lost steps.