Paradiso is both the story of a Cuban upper-middle-class family during the first quarter of the twentieth century and a Bildungsroman that traces a young man’s path to artistic creation. Although the novel focuses on the protagonist, Cemí, and begins with a description of an asthma attack that he suffers in early childhood, from chapter 2 to chapter 6 it tells the story of his parents’ families, their meeting, and his father the Colonel’s early death at the age of thirty-three.
The death of the Colonel is the event that endows his widow, Rialta, and his son Cemí with a spiritual mission in life. She becomes convinced that the loss of her husband cannot have been meaningless and that her son, in some way, will fulfill his father’s truncated destiny. Cemí seems to accept that destiny without question, but he does not know how he will fulfill it. Through a series of mystical experiences precipitated by Cemí’s intense observation of objects and by his meditation about a particular image or idea, he comes to realize that he will make his contribution through the cultivation of poetry and the search for poetic images that will lead to truth. Poetry fills the vacuum left by the death of Cemí’s father, and it endows that seemingly purposeless death with meaning.
The rest of Paradiso follows Cemí’s education in art and in the ways of the world. Leaving behind the safety of family life, Cemí enters the...
(The entire section is 455 words.)