Love in the Time of Cholera (1985, Spanish; 1988, English)
5 Stars out of 5
Gabriel García Márquez
348 pages (English Hardback Edition)
“It was time when they both
loved each other best, without hurry or excess, when both were most conscious
of and grateful for their incredible victories over adversity. “
Gabriel García Márquez is a widely admired and celebrated
Columbian writer. He is in fact one of the most significant writers from the 20th
century. His use of “Magic Realism” wherein magical events in one of his stories are
treated as something quite mundane (and the converse with the normally mundane
being treated in the story as something extraordinary) is a technique that Marquez
perhaps more than any other writer has made critically effective use of. This was especially true for one of his most
successful books, “100 Years of Solitude” (1967) wherein the intermingling of
ghosts and people (who might as well have been ghosts) was a brilliant use of
this technique to illustrate a deeper meaning. Márquez added to his critical
notoriety with “The Autumn of the Patriarch” (1975), and most significantly
with the book reviewed here: “Love in the Time of Cholera” (1985). This latter
book may well be the most praised of his novels landing as it does on many Best
Novels of the 20th Century lists. It may seem at times a simple love
story between two star-crossed lovers, but there are deeper waters swirling
about this story; waters of more than sufficient depth and character to keep
every reader engrossed.
Márquez begins his story in the early part of the 20th
century in an unnamed town on the Caribbean Sea. Márquez used a similar literary technique
in “100 Years of Solitude” wherein he drops plenty of hints about the time and
place, but refuses to identify them without any ambiguity. In this story, it
seems to be Cartagena in 1930. Márquez structures the early parts of his story
almost like a series of train stations that he as the author/engineer will take
the reader down the line in order to introduce the various characters we will
follow later in the bulk of the novel.
First up is Dr. Juvenal Urbino. He is investigating (in the
role of coroner) the body of a minor actor, Jeremiah de Saint-Amour. Poor
Saint-Amour is not much more than a plot device to help peer into the soul of
Urbino. Urbino is the prime character in these early scenes and will be shown
to be an actual archetype; that of the successful, dispassionate Man of
Science. Márquez’ train leaves this first stop to take us to Urbino’s home in order
to meet his wife, Fermina Daza. Fermina is less an archetype than a fulcrum. We
will quickly learn of her fiery temper, of her privileged but disrespected
youthful position in society, and of her past relationship to the third corner
of the triangle (if you will allow me to use two separate analogies
contemporaneously), Florentino Ariza. Florentino is (besides being the third
part of the romantic triangle soon to be described) also an archetype. His archetype
(as a youth) is Urbino’s opposite: poor, unrecognized and uncelebrated by
society, but he is also very passionate. We will learn via Márquez starting the story near
its temporal end, that Urbino won the first round in the contest for Fermina
(though he never knew he was in a contest) as we quickly learn that Urbino and
Fermina have been married at this point in the novel for roughly 50 years; poor
Florentino has seemingly been forgotten by all.
In point of fact, the true first round in the contest for
Fermina took place in a time and location that never included Urbino at all,
1880 Cartagena. Márquez tells this part of the story in flashback fashion and
in the process explicating both Florentino’s and Fermina’s character. He also
weaves in considerable detail late 19th Century Columbia, and as in
“100 Years of Solitude” he describes the love of two people during war time.
And love it was in the beginning for Floretino and Fermina. Their love and
relationship may have been forbidden by the forbidding character of the
muleteer Lorenzo Daza, Fermina’s father, but Márquez tells in several clever
ways the manner in which the two lovers carry on their relationship. For some
time, it looks like love will triumph, but Márquez has a very believable angle
in the story that will take Fermina from Florentino’s to Urbino’s arms. There
is the usual “she hates him at first” (meaning Urbino) routine, but Fermina
will make Urbino her choice. In a manner typical of the distracted Urbino,
he will never perceive half of what is taking place around him, let alone his new
wife’s actual motives.
Fermina’s motives are a part of the central theme to the
book’s storyline. She is the fiery, very angry Latina of a modern telenovela.
She will have her way, and pity the fool that tries to frustrate her or doubt
her will. Urbino will find out who is the real boss of his household over
something as insignificant as a bar of soap. Frustrated with his lot, he will at a point in their
marriage begin to doubt his own maxim about marriage: “the most important thing
in a good marriage is not happiness, but stability”. Urbino will risk his
cherished steady marriage for a relationship based on love with a Jamaican biracial
woman (I use this term, though Marquez uses mulata). The fact of this woman’s
racial identity plays a role in Fermina’s eventual volcanic reaction to Urbino’s
infidelity. Consider the irony in this part of the story: Urbino gambles with
his steady relationship with Fermina for love; this is a complete repudiation
of this life’s principles.
Florentino will find himself shut out for over 50 years
before he finally gains access to Fermina’s heart. But Florentino will not give
up, he will in his own words pursue Fermina “forever”. This is an example of
Marquez’ clever use of magic realism in the contrary sense; that is the mundane
comes across in this book as the magical. Consider how Florentino will obsess
over Fermina for more than 50 years and then when he finally captures her heart
for the remainder of their lives, he will sacrifice everything within his power,
and there is a great deal within the power at the end of the book of this
formerly poor bastard child.
Throughout this story of love and loss, Márquez will employ
a variety of motifs to make his case: there is a constant use of birds
throughout the story, and they generally are omens of bad tidings in this book;
there is the oft-repeated comparison of cholera and being in love as being so
nearly identical that one cannot be easily differentiated from the other; there
are several situations where a character will ponder the effects of aging and
death on one’s perspective (consider the fact the book begins with a suicide), there
is the use of Magic Realism (of course) in the more typical manner (both a ghost
and a doll that grows), there are multiple references to color (yellow in
particular to indicate something bad is pending), and there is the use by
Márquez of a superficial story about a love triangle masking a deeper story
about the definition of love and motive.
What a trite, over-asked question, what is love? Márquez
provides two examples in an effort to answer the question: the steady, largely
dispassionate case presented by Urbino, and the almost life-long unrequited and
obsessive version of Florentino. Fermina will have a family, a comfortable life
and a sense of security with Urbino. With the sexually-obsessive/love obsessive
Florentino, she has what? Here is a character that will turn to compulsive sex
with virtually every woman he encounters after his rejection by Fermina; all in
an effort to forget her. He will have moments of peace, but they never last. He
will be the proximate cause of death to two of his lovers; deaths that come as
the direct result of his careless and in some cases, reckless lovemaking. In
one case, he will act the role of pederast (though not identified as such by
Marquez). Florentino is so compelled to seek out Fermina, he will renew his
offer of marriage on the actual day of Urbino’s death. Fermina astounded, will
become choleric with rage (throughout
her life except for its latest stages, this was a common state for her) and
force Florentino to leave. But then Fermina thinks about it some more; what
will her character allow her to do?
If her motives for marrying Urbino centered on wealth,
societal position, and stability, what would her motives be in renewing her
relationship with Florentino be, and in which case would she be the happier;
which case better answers the question of what love is? Márquez will spend the
second half of his book exploring this not “really-that-trite” at all question.
He develops in a beautifully layered narrative the personalities of all three
parts of the love triangle he is exploring. By the time he brings the flash
back part of the book to the day of Jeremiah’s death, the reader has a very
clear idea of all three characters and their individual situations. The reader
may wonder at Fermina’s rage, at Urbino’s passivity, and Florentino’s warped
behavior and obsessive manner, but no reader will be surprised by the book’s conclusion.
Marquez’ book is deceptively simple, but it is in fact
wonderfully complex. The language alone is a kind of poetry in prose. It is
very much a joy to just read the latter half of this book luxuriating in
Marquez’ various analogies and barely suppressed sarcasm. He directs his
sarcasm at the social norms and attitudes of the upper classes, and his aim is usually
true. He will discuss at the very end of the book his concerns over
deforestation and man’s effects on his environment. It is in fact tempting to
see the damage to the river-lands as a metaphor to the ravages done to the
human body by time. Marquez will explore in detail the effects of time and
aging on his three heroes. He will use some clever symbolism with birds and
color to foreshadow pending catastrophe. However, in my
opinion the primary aim Marquez has in this book is his desire to explore the
nature and definition of love. He does not hide his opinions; it seems clear
that as much as one might admire Urbino for his accomplishments, it will be the
rare reader (one presumably without any sense of romanticism) that will think
Urbino’s definition of marriage is the path that Marquez thinks is the best one
for marriage, let alone for love.
“Love in the Time of Cholera” is a remarkable novel that can
be read for multiple reasons: language, symbolism, theme, and the topic of
love. It is weak in my opinion in one area: if we view his two primary
characters of Florentino and Fermina, I think both characters are better as
icons or metaphors to help Marquez to make his point, than as fictional
characters that might be understandable as people anyone might meet in the
course of one’s life. They might be instructive characters, but they do not
seem human to me. There are many believable human characters in “Love in the
Time of Cholera”, but I do not find the two lovers to be so. That being said,
this is a book for the ages. I highly recommend it.
No comments:
Post a Comment