Resumo de The Lost Steps - Alejo Carpentier

Orrrrinoco. The name rolls off the tongue, a musical tribute to the life force of the powerful river, a muddy turbulent ribbon with force times greater than any name it might be given. One of the longest tributaries in South America--best estimates have it stretching 1,700 miles--putting it among the world's most extensive river systems. The aboriginal inhabitants who survive along its banks live in tenuous harmony with its alternately nurturing then wrathful destructive power--real life without the fixin?s. Tracing the southern borders of Venezuela and Brazil, its home, the canopied state of Amazonas of voluptuous flora and fauna is then the ideal setting for the spiritual journey portrayed in The Lost Steps. A musicologist living in a major Latin American capitol is disenchanted with his vacuous existence; he ventures into the jungle, ostensibly to study the hereditary roots of music but in reality to escape the dual entrapments of hyper-civilization and a marriage faded as the decayed interiors of the unnamed city he inhabits. Alienation is certainly not a unique theme in twentieth century literature. Uruguayan novelist Juan Carlos Onetti, after all, made a religion of depicting isolated modern man, though in words and language far inferior to his Latin American contemporary, Cuban-born master, Alejo Carpentier, whose mesmerizing narrative in Steps comes close to incomparable as the acknowledged precursor to the genre of magical realism. In addition to sublime literary talent, Carpentier was also an accomplished musicologist; this synchronous relationship between protagonist and author in Steps is obvious. In the years after World War II, he lived in Venezuela, the area bordering the Orinoco which undoubtedly inspired the story, at least from a locale perspective. Other than that it?s hard to know his state of mind at the time of writing. More than once, though, during the course of many writings did Carpentier express his view that one day Latin America would find its unique identity, incorporating aspects of ancient and modern heritage in grand cultural confluence, a theme played out throughout the book with river as symbolic conductor. The main character?s search for meaning in his own life is presented before a backdrop of assorted characters, each alternately clashing and harmonizing with the raw nature that envelopes them. In the end, hesitation and one final return to civilization costs the protagonist the pure, natural love of woman and peace he?s found in the jungle. Upon his return, she is disappeared. Like the bent tree marking the jungle entrance to the Shangri-la he once discovered, she is lost to him, symbolically swept away by the relentless flooding river. A creature with natural primitive needs, she?s away with another untainted by the lure of civilization.

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