The Journey Back To The Source-the Time In Carpentier's Fictions

Alejo Carpentier, the most important writer in the 20th century of Cuba, was a key figure of the modern Latin American Literature along with Jorge Luis Borges, Garcia Marquez and Vargas Llosa. Compare with the massive research in Cuba, France and America, the research of Carpentier in China was not deep enough. Time, an important theme in Carpentier's fictions, had not been specially discussed much. In this background, the author analyzed the time in Carpentier's fictions in this paper. By describing and generalizing the cyclical and dazzling forms of time in his fictions, the author hoped to provide some help to the deeper research of the time in Carpentier's works.In the first three chapters, the author analyzed the three forms of the time in the fictions—the backward time, the cyclical time and nontime. And the author suggested that Carpentier should have given some definite time marks superficially, but in fact he steered time to spread in different dimensions, and to shape different forms. Then he denied the former definite time, and established a nontime relation of time. It could be regarded as a "journey back to the source" from definite time to nontime. The writer controlled the characters traveling in the stream of time. And he expressed the wish to transcend time, and the enterprising spirit to throw oneself to the flush of history and cognize our age better.In the view of Latin American literature and culture, the author compared the forms of the time in Carpentier's fictions with the ones in Marquez's and Borges', which were the most remarkable time forms of contemporary Latin American literature, to find the particular characteristics of the journey back to the source in Carpentier's works. Then the author analyzed the influence Carpentier performed in the Root-seeking Movement in Latin America in 1930s and 1940s, and suggested that his treatment of time should be one of the best methods to represent the multicultural and marvelous real time in Latin America. It is remarkable that the writer kept himself away from the irrationalism in the 20th century, and inherited the rationalism, the optimism and the steadiness from the realistic writers of the 19th century. He controlled the crazy age by his ration, and exhibited the Latin American experience through the self-conscious journey back to the source. Carpentier bore the responsibilities of the Latin American nation and history, and especially he is a rational searcher in an irrational age.