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Authors: Alejo Carpentier
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in the days of the Conquest by an inspired Jewish architect, a fugitive from the Holy Inquisition, to whom we owe the most beautiful colonial churches in the country—the finest of all being the National Sanctuary of the Divine Shepherdess in Nueva Córdoba.
When the Head of State appeared on the balcony of honour, he was greeted with acclamations that sent a great cloud of pigeons over the roofs and terraces that chequered the valley with red and white, between thirty-two more or less aspiring belfries. After the cheering had died down, the President slowly and with marked pauses, as was his custom, began to make a clearly articulated speech in his resonant tenor voice, exact in its purpose, though embellished, so thought some, with too many expressions such as “nomadic,” “myrobalantic,” “rocambolesque,” “eristic,” “apodeictic”; before this he had already elevated the tone by a glittering mobilisation of“acting against the grain,” “swords of Damocles,” “crossing the Rubicon,” trumpets of Jericho, Cyranos, Tartarins, and Clavileños, all mixed up together with lofty palm trees, solitary condors, and white pelicans; he then set about reproaching the “janissaries of nepotism,” the “imitative demagogues,” the “condottieri of fastidiousness,” who were always ready to break their swords in some wild undertaking: creators of discord, whereas industry and a patriarchal view of life should make us all members of one great family—but of a Great Family, which although reasonable and united was always severe and inexorable to its Prodigal Sons—who, instead of repenting of their errors as in the biblical parable, tried to set fire to and destroy the Homestead where they had grown to Man’s estate and been heaped with honours and degrees. The Head of State was often a good deal jeered at for the affected turns and twists of his oratory. But—or so Peralta believed—he didn’t use them out of love of pure verbal baroque; he knew that such artificial language had created a style that was part of his image, and that the use of words, adjectives and unusual epithets seldom understood by his hearers, far from being prejudicial, flattered some atavistic taste of theirs for what was precious and flowery, and thus gained him fame as a master of language, whose tone was in strong contrast to the monotonous, badly constructed military pronouncements of his adversary.
The speech ended with an emotional call to all citizens of good will to be calm, peaceful, and united, worthy heirs of the Founders of the Nation and Fathers of the Country, whose revered tombs were lined up in the aisles of the pantheon close by (“… turn your heads and contemplate with the eyes of your mind the tall Babylonian tower that …” etc., etc.).
Hearing an end to the cheering, the orator retired into the Council Chamber, where several maps were spread out ona large mahogany table. With little flags on pins—one sort for the nationalists, another for the reds—Colonel Walter Hoffmann, President of the Council and now Minister for War, traced a compact and clear picture of the military situation. On this line were the bastards and sons of bitches; here, here, and here, the defenders of the national honour. The bastards and sons of bitches had been joined by other bastards and sons of bitches during the last few weeks: this was obvious. But now that the Pacific zone had been handed over to United Fruit, the possibility of their landing munitions in the Bay of the Negro had been nullified. The loyalists had contained the advance of the revolutionaries to the north-east.
“But if we had had more arms we could have done more.”
“Within a week we shall have everything we need,” said the Head of State, checking the invoices of the cargo put aboard in Florida. Meanwhile he must strengthen the morale and combativeness of the constitutional troops. He would set off himself that same night for the zone of
When the Head of State appeared on the balcony of honour, he was greeted with acclamations that sent a great cloud of pigeons over the roofs and terraces that chequered the valley with red and white, between thirty-two more or less aspiring belfries. After the cheering had died down, the President slowly and with marked pauses, as was his custom, began to make a clearly articulated speech in his resonant tenor voice, exact in its purpose, though embellished, so thought some, with too many expressions such as “nomadic,” “myrobalantic,” “rocambolesque,” “eristic,” “apodeictic”; before this he had already elevated the tone by a glittering mobilisation of“acting against the grain,” “swords of Damocles,” “crossing the Rubicon,” trumpets of Jericho, Cyranos, Tartarins, and Clavileños, all mixed up together with lofty palm trees, solitary condors, and white pelicans; he then set about reproaching the “janissaries of nepotism,” the “imitative demagogues,” the “condottieri of fastidiousness,” who were always ready to break their swords in some wild undertaking: creators of discord, whereas industry and a patriarchal view of life should make us all members of one great family—but of a Great Family, which although reasonable and united was always severe and inexorable to its Prodigal Sons—who, instead of repenting of their errors as in the biblical parable, tried to set fire to and destroy the Homestead where they had grown to Man’s estate and been heaped with honours and degrees. The Head of State was often a good deal jeered at for the affected turns and twists of his oratory. But—or so Peralta believed—he didn’t use them out of love of pure verbal baroque; he knew that such artificial language had created a style that was part of his image, and that the use of words, adjectives and unusual epithets seldom understood by his hearers, far from being prejudicial, flattered some atavistic taste of theirs for what was precious and flowery, and thus gained him fame as a master of language, whose tone was in strong contrast to the monotonous, badly constructed military pronouncements of his adversary.
The speech ended with an emotional call to all citizens of good will to be calm, peaceful, and united, worthy heirs of the Founders of the Nation and Fathers of the Country, whose revered tombs were lined up in the aisles of the pantheon close by (“… turn your heads and contemplate with the eyes of your mind the tall Babylonian tower that …” etc., etc.).
Hearing an end to the cheering, the orator retired into the Council Chamber, where several maps were spread out ona large mahogany table. With little flags on pins—one sort for the nationalists, another for the reds—Colonel Walter Hoffmann, President of the Council and now Minister for War, traced a compact and clear picture of the military situation. On this line were the bastards and sons of bitches; here, here, and here, the defenders of the national honour. The bastards and sons of bitches had been joined by other bastards and sons of bitches during the last few weeks: this was obvious. But now that the Pacific zone had been handed over to United Fruit, the possibility of their landing munitions in the Bay of the Negro had been nullified. The loyalists had contained the advance of the revolutionaries to the north-east.
“But if we had had more arms we could have done more.”
“Within a week we shall have everything we need,” said the Head of State, checking the invoices of the cargo put aboard in Florida. Meanwhile he must strengthen the morale and combativeness of the constitutional troops. He would set off himself that same night for the zone of
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