In Georges Carpentier's library Alejo satisfied his curiosities as a young reader—he tells of having read works by French Romantic authors and by Pio Baroja, the modern Spanish novelist. The language spoken at home was French, but in the street the young Carpentier learned Spanish—first from the boys he played with and then in the private schools where his parents sent him. He went first to the Colegio Mimo, which had been founded by a Mason and had great intellectual pretenses. Later he attended Candler College, a Cuban-North American school that the sons of affluent families attended.
The youths Carpentier played with were different from him, not only because they spoke Spanish but because many were black. Carpentier's adult life was in many ways a struggle to bring together the two worlds of his childhood: the sheltered, refined, and European one of his home; and the livelier, more exotic and attractive world of the Cuban blacks in the street. Cuba, a mixture of several cultures, mostly African and Spanish, also included the European world of his father.
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