Carpentier never succeeded in synthesizing the mixture of cultures from which he sprang, and perhaps it is to this failure that one can attribute the tension behind his creative impulse.
Carpentier frequently journeyed to France, and he spent many years in this, his father's homeland. When he was a teenager, the Carpentier family traveled as far as Russia to collect an inheritance. On their return, they made a long stop in Paris, where he attended the Lycee Jeanson de Sailly. In Paris, among French students, he must have felt different but at the same time in his element—a Charles Bovary from the tropics. When he returned to Havana, he finished his bachelor's degree and soon enrolled in the school of architecture at the Universidad de La Habana. Like any good, provincial, French son, Carpentier wanted to join in his father's business. He had also learned music from his father, although by the time he started at the University he had abandoned the piano. As time went on, Carpentier would acquire an impressive knowledge of music as well as architecture, even though he would never finish his degree.
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