SOURCE: "Music as a Structural Component in Alejo Carpentier's Concierto Barroco and The Lost Steps," in Romance Languages Annual, Vol. 4, 1992, pp. 438-41.

In the following essay, Feigenbaum examines the function of music in Concierto barroco and in the novel The Lost Steps.

In an essay published in El Nacional, April 8, 1948, Alejo Carpentier used the term "marvelous American reality" in referring to the Latin American novel. In 1925, however, the European critic Franz Roh had introduced the comparable term "magical realism." "Magical realism" has been especially applied to narrative fiction. It highlights the effect caused by juxtapositions of two or more elements that are not conventionally associated, thus producing a dialectic of sorts, fusing thesis and antithesis into a synthesis. "Marvelous American reality" goes one step further by attempting to incorporate the search to define an American identity.

Alejo Carpentier juxtaposes several themes in his narrative in order to illustrate...