Sally Harvey considers the influence of Marcel Proust and his A la recherche du temps perdu on the works of the Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier, with particular reference to Los pasos perdidos, El siglo de las luces and La consagración de la primavera.
The focus of her study is a comparison of the authors' respective `visions of reality'and how these are communicated to the reader. It emerges that, in spite of the close parallels between the two writers, Carpentier'stask takes on quite different proportions to that of Proust as he strives to bring the reality of Latin America within the field of vision of the European and set it in a universal context. He has clearly progressed beyond the stage of dependency on the European model as, far from merely reproducing Proustian techniques, he consciously adapts and applies these to the difficult task of recording Latin American reality. Nevertheless, his debt to Proust is large one, and the Proustian viewpoint offers a key to a fuller understanding and appreciation of Carpentier's works.