Baron von Humboldt’s Travels to Cuba: Views/Visits from his Personal Narrative

Abstract

Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) traveled a lot and wrote a lot. Belonging to a noble Prussian family, he studied botany, geology, and mineralogy at the School of Mines in Freiberg and at the University of Göttingen. In 1799, at the age of 30, Humboldt undertook a journey of approximately ten thousand kilometers through Spain and America. His two brief visits to Cuba (1800-1801, 1804) resulted in the Ensayo Político sobre la isla de Cuba (Political Essay on the Island of Cuba). Considered a minor book compared to his vast oeuvre, von Humboldt reinvents and takes stock of both the Cuban flora and fauna in what he called “views”. His “personal narrative” or views, which constitute the poetics of his book, do not contradict his politics; on the contrary, they shape it. My purpose in this essay is to examine the aesthetic elaboration of the German naturalist's “views” of the Cuban landscape. Not only is the aesthetic conception of his book romantic, but also its exoticism prefigures, in a certain way, Latin Americanism, as an exotic and magical discourse. [Article copies available for a fee from The Transformative Studies Institute. E-mail address: journal@transformativestudies.org Website: http://www.transformativestudies.org ©2023 by The Transformative Studies Institute. All rights reserved.