The Vulture of History in The Kingdom of This World by Alejo Carpentier

Abstract

In thesis IX of the Theses on the Philosophy of History, Walter Benjamin indicates, from the painting “Angelus Novus” by Paul Klee, that the Angel of History has his face turned back, contemplating a catastrophe. He wants to stay, but the great wind of progress is pushing him forward into the future, leaving rubble on its pass. The new historical novel The Kingdom of this World by Alejo Carpentier narrates the long and tortuous process of the Haitian Revolution and beyond. At the end of the novel, there is a great green wind that sweeps across the Northern Plain and the ruins of the old sugar mill. In Carpentier's novel, there is a “wet vulture”, which I will call the Vulture of History, which is thrown over Bois Caïman, the sacred space where the revolution originated. My purpose in this essay is to explore the Vulture of History as a baroque allegory of the Haitian Revolution. Unlike the angel from Benjamin's thesis, who wants to go back to the past to reconstruct history, Carpentier's vulture is an angel of death who feeds on the detritus of history.