El amor en los tiempos del cólera

In an unstated city (Cartagena, in an unnamed country, Colombia), was born an illegitimate son by a rich father, and a poor peasant woman, in the latter part of the nineteenth century. The married man never confirmed publicly this, dying young ... The struggling mother tried very hard to survive, Transito Ariza gave her only name to her child, she had, Florentino Ariza. The bright lad grew up rather aimless and lazy, nothing was important, or interested him, the mother supported them selling notions in her shop, a rented home. Then he saw a girl, the most beautiful in the world to him, Fermina Dada, daughter of a man with money, and a dubious reputation, ( he was secretly a former mule driver) involved in shady dealings, in the mountains, who desires that Fermina marry into a rich, distinguished family, bringing respectability to him too. But Mr. Ariza is so in love, nobody in history is more so, that he literally becomes severely sick, his distraught mother , thinks he's going to die... She nurses him back to health and he recovers quickly. Florentino spies on the girl, while she walks with her Aunt Escolastica, the sister of Mr.Dada to school and back. The ladies are not fooled, it scares the teenager and excites also. Sitting on a bench across the street from her house, in the tiny park pretending to read poetry , but always watching. A rather small, unattractive boy in reality he is. Her chaperon doesn't do the job she was told to , the aunt is a romantic and encourages the young couple. Helping them get letters from one to the other, in hidden places along their path. His passionate full of love, hers mundane. After a few years, of correspondence the father finds out, sends his sister packing and threatens to kill Florentino at a tense meal, in a restaurant. Still the young man is not frightened by the revolver, so enchanted by his "goddess," to be. The best physician and dynamic celebrity, Juvenal Urbino in town, treats Fermina for a minor illness and unexpectedly returns. The suspicious girl feels uncomfortable and believes he is here on a nonprofessional visit, and is right. The thrilled father encourages the romance, this is why he came here. The doctor comes from a wealthy and prominent family. A sophisticated healer, who studied medicine in Europe, loves Paris and wants to clean up the dirty, putrid, disgusting city of its filth, modernize and make livable . And prevent cholera epidemics from devastating his cherished home town of Cartagena, again. The heartbroken Florentino is crushed, how can he stop this! Asks his unofficial Uncle Leo ( the brother of his late father), who runs the prosperous riverboat company R.C.C., to give him a job. Determined to rise and make something of himself, to be worthy of Fermina and her suppose love. The Magdalena River flows near his native port city, to the wide Caribbean Sea and business is good, he'll climb up fast... but gets sick on his first trip up the scenic, perilous, river . However nothing can stop the longing Florentino, has in his heart, (this feeling will never cease) he must have his beloved ...

⛅️ They meet when young, are unable to marry, we follow their lifetimes through heartbreak, loss, fiery affairs and broken dreams until they find each other again in their 70s and finally live as one.

كانت تبدو له جميلة جدا. فاتنة جدا. و مختلفة جدا عن الناس العاديين. بحيث لا يدرك كيف لا يختل الأخرون مثله بصناجات كعبيها على بلاط الشارع. و لا تضطرب قلوبهم بهواء تنهدات كشكشها. و لا يصاب العالم كله بالجنون حبا بحركة ضفيرتها و طيران يديها. و لجين ضحكتها.

و أنت في حضرة الماركيز لا تتوقف عن الانبهار في كل لحظة. انه لا يحكي بقدر ما يبث لك من أحداث بل يجعلك تراها رأي العين. ليس ذلك فحسب و لكنه أيضا يطلعك على ما في النفوس و يجلي خفايا القلوب بسرد بسيط و مسترسل لا تكلف فيه و لا عناء و كأنه أنفاس حسناء مستغرقة في النوم.

جميعهم كانوا متأكدين من أنهم رأوه مرات عديدة بل و دخلوا معه في صفقة ما. لكن أيا منهم لم يستطع تحديد ملامحه في ذاكرته. عندئذ انكشفت لفرمينا داثا الأسباب الكامنة في اللاوعي و التي منعتها من حبه. و قالت: يبدو و كأنه ليس شخصا و انما طيفا. طيف شخص لم يره أحد من قبل.

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هوّ ثابت
هيّا مشيت
هوّ طبّق بالساعات
هيّا سابت
هوّ تبّت
هيّا عاشت
هو مات

الزواج هو أن شخصين لا يكادان يعرفان بعضهما و لا تربطهما أية صلة قربى. مختلفي الطبائع و الثقافة. بل و مختلفي الجنس أيضا. وجدا نفسيهما ملزمين فجأة بالعيش معا. و النوم في السرير نفسه. و المشاركة في مصيرين ربما كانا مقررين في اتجاهين مختلفين. انه ينتهي كل ليلة بعد ممارسة الحب و لابد من العودة إلى بنائه كل صباح قبل تناول الفطور.

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ما كانت قادرة على تصريف إحساس عميق بالغضب من الزوج الذي تركها وحيدة وسط بحر الظلمات. كان كل شيء من أشيائه يدفعها للبكاء. البيجاما التي تحت الوسادة. و الخف الذي كان يبدو لها دوما و كأنه خف مريض. و ذكرى صورته المطبوعة في عمق المرآه و هو يخلع ملابسه فيما هي تسرح شعرها للنوم. و رائحة بشرته التي ستبقى عالقة في بشرتها لوقت طويل بعد موته. كانت تتوقف عن أي عمل تقوم به و تضرب جبهتها بكفها لأنها تذكرت فجأة شيئا نسيت أن تخبره به و ترد في ذهنها في كل لحظة الأسئلة اليومية الكثيرة التي لا يستطيع الإجابة عنها أحد سواه. لقد قال لها في أحد الأيام شيئا لم تستطع تصوره: ان المبتورين يحسون آلاما و خدرا و دغدغة في أرجلهم التي لم ما عادوا يمتلكونها. و هذا ما شعرت به هي من دونه .. كانت تشعر بوجوده حيث لم يعد له من وجود.

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اصطدم برسالة مبللة بالماء المتجمع وراء الباب و تعرف من المغلف في الحال على الخط المتسلط الذي لم تستطع تبديله كل تقلبات الحياة. بل انه أحس برائحة العطر الليلي لأزهار الياسمين الذابلة. لأن قلبه حدثه بكل شيء منذ الرهبة الأولى. انها الرسالة التي انتظرها دون لحظة راحة واحدة خلال أكثر من نصف قرن.

ولما تتلاقى الوشوش مرتين
ما بيتلاقوش يوم اللقا التاني
عمر الوشوش ما بتبقى بعد السنين
نفس الوشوش دي بتبقى شيء تاني

بتبدّل الأيام ملامحنا
ترعشنا, تنعشنا تشوّشنا
يا ترى اللي بيعيش الزمن إحنا
والا الزمن هوة اللي بيعيشنا

كلاهما كان مرتعدا. لا يعرف ما الذي يفعلانه بعيدا عن شبابهما. على شرفة بلاطها كرقعة الشطرنج في بيت ليس ملكهما و لا يزال يعبق برائحة الميت. انهما يجلسان معا للمرة الأولى لا تفصل بينهما سوى هذه المسافة الضيقة و لديهما فائض من الوقت ليريا بعضهما بهدوء بعد نصف قرن من الإنتظار.

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"Love in the Time of Cholera" is one of those novels whose beauty fits the title.
At the time of its publication in 1985, readers' enthusiasm was in keeping with the prestige of its author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature three years earlier.
The story is set in Colombia from 1870 to 1930, in a port of average importance, Barranquilla, flowing into the Caribbean Sea at the Magdalena River's mouth.
Three riverboats, each with two wheels propelled by a wood-fired boiler, ascend the Magdalena several hundred kilometers. A natural decoration of postcards if there were no endless civil war and frequent cholera epidemics in the region.
The writer built his novel by adopting an inverted chronology.
The first part describes the last day of a local personality, Dr. Juvenal Urbino, who is eighty-one. Their strength in medical studies in Paris illustrated his comeback to the country through a fierce fight against cholera.
The last hour overflows with activities depicted on a sustained rhythm, alternating the comic of situations and fate; despite a start and a similarly disastrous end, this long introduction often borders on hilarity and constitutes a promising entry.
Fermina, the wife of Dr. Urbino for fifty years, will become the central character of a grand love affair with antiquated romanticism at the death of her husband.
The paternal authority prevented Fermina from fully living their love of youth with a young telegraphist of his age, Florentino Ariza. Yet, despite everything, a three-year inflamed epistolary relationship created a special bond between these two beings.
Fifty-one years, nine months, and four days have passed since Fermina was disregarded, yet the heart of Florentino never stopped fighting for this gracious woman's eyes.
Paradoxically, this melancholy man during this half-century collected no less than six hundred and twenty to two love affairs, women enjoying home very discreetly.
In their seventies, will Fermina and Florentino find the love that once fled them in the late days?
This novel, probably Gabriel Garcia Marquez's most popular and accessible book, is an excellent entry to Latin American literature, whose richness can initially disorient young readers.
A small cruise on the Magdalena in the company of the great Colombian writer would allow you to taste a few more days of summer scenery!

Lush, sensual and poetic in its prose, Marquez spins a vivid tale about a man's love for a woman that waits fifty years to come to fruition. Beneath the imagery and romance, however, lies Marquez's sharp observations on the nature of relationships, marriage and old age all told with Marquez's brand of humor, wisdom and unflinching veracity.his book is not about the relationship of Fermina and Florentino. The book is about love in all of its forms, and the characters in the book exist as vehicles to examine the strangest and most powerful of all human emotions. Love in the Time of Cholera is about: unrequited love (Florentino for Fermina); marital love (Fermina and Juvenal); platonic love (Florentino and Leona); angry love (Florentino and the poet who makes him so furious); jealous love (the adulterous wife killed because of her affair with Florentino); young love (Florentino and Fermina in the beginning); dangerous love (the mental patient and Florentino); adulterous love (Juvenal and his affair, Florentino and many of his women); love from afar (Florentino and Fermina); elderly love (Florentino and Fermina, Fermina and Juvenal; the cyanide suicide); May-December love (Florentino and his ward); the relationship between sex, age, society, art, death and love (pretty much the whole book).
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http://more2read.com/?review=love-in-the-time-of-cholera-by-gabriel-garcia-marquez

n  "The words I am about to express:
They now have their own crowned goddess."n
–Leandro Diaz

Love in the Time of Cholera is not a book that can be taken like a shot of tequila—slammed down then sit back and feel the burn. No, no, this book is like a fine aged wine. I swirled it around the glass and drank in the beauty of his prose. The delicious writing slipped through my brain and settled into my core until I was on fire. I had to commit, to give Gabriel García Márquez my undivided attention.

Love in the Time of Cholera is about passion. Not just desire in love, but many different kinds of craving. The kind of intensity that consumes the soul in a way that will never let go. Many stories are going on at once in this tale. They all swirl around love and loss, be it a person, money, or a life not fully lived. Márquez spoke of the unfathomable pain that can make people go completely mad when their yearnings are not fulfilled. On the other side of the coin, that kind of hunger can drive a person to succeed beyond anything they had ever imagined.

The novel takes place between 1880 and 1930 in an unnamed port city in the Caribbean. A Cholera outbreak devastates the town. Can the new doctor, Juvenal Urbino, who follows in his father’s footsteps, make the changes needed to keep another at bay? We are also introduced to Fermina Daza, and Florentino Ariza who suffer from young love, as well as so many other brilliant characters as the lives in this city unfold in all their magnificent splendor.

Márquez uses foreshadowing exquisitely to draw the line of where you might be going but is that truly the destination? If you don’t keep reading, you’ll never know.

I can’t bring myself to give away spoilers. The story is too beautiful, too heartbreaking, too everything, not to read. Márquez will seduce you if you allow him, but you must give yourself over to the Latino heat of the sweltering Caribbean. You won’t be sorry.

------pág. 80------
Li o Cem Aos de Solidão até meio, acabando por desistir por que não conseguia seguir tantos personagens masculinos com o mesmo apelido. Sabia que estava perante um grande escritor, mas é neste "O Amor nos Tempos de Cólera" que estou a sentir o poder das suas palavras, a crueza visceral do amor por ele descrito.
Estou a saboreá-lo com calma e entusiasmo.

------Review final------
Em 1985, quando publicou “O Amor Nos Tempos de Cólera”, Gabriel García Márquez tinha 58 anos. Diria mesmo que é uma idade ainda precoce para uma obra tão madura quanto a que terminei agora de ler. Como sempre se disse que “Cem Anos de Solidão” era o ex-libris da obra do escritor colombiano falecido a 17 de Abril 2014 (faz depois de amanhã um ano), comecei por lê-lo nesse registo. Mas as repetições dos nomes familiares, os amores e desamores surrealistas de uma mesma família ao longo de várias gerações enevoaram-me. Terá sido há, talvez, cinco anos. Talvez vinte anos não seja idade suficiente para se compreender a grandeza de um escritor com este nível de profundidade.
“O Amor nos Tempos de Cólera” é, sim, um livro de amor. Um livro sobre um amor maior, daqueles que tudo esperam e tudo suportam. Por vezes é angustiante ver como os anos engolem as personagens principais, Fermina Daza - a “Deusa Coroada” -, Florentino Ariza, que aos 20 anos já parecia velho, e o Dr. Juvenal Urbino, pragmático e metódico em cada gesto. Faz-nos pensar acerca da vida e das suas coincidências e tragédias, como a de um homem que, tão jovem, se deixa enlevar por uma menina-mulher, e o que torna esse amor tão grande que o obriga a levar uma meia-vida, uma vida sempre vivida na expectativa de um dia vir a ganhar o afecto de Fermina. Que fez Fermina Daza para o encantar deste modo? Ela nunca se esforçou por conquistar-lhe as graças, nem por mantê-las. Pelo contrário, é teimosa, por vezes um tanto rude, e não é decerto alguém acessível ou com quem dê gosto falar. É uma mulher difícil, de mais acção do que palavra, que se deixa iludir por um amor que se lhe apresenta proibido e, dando azo à casmurrice que a caracteriza, compromete Florentino para a vida. Quando se dá conta de que o que sentia era uma mera ilusão de jovem, já Florentino vive somente para ela, e por ela gere toda a sua vida, a ela dedica todas as suas lágrimas, e nela deposita a sua única esperança de felicidade numa vida que está condenada à banalidade.
A beleza do livro consiste, claro está, na mestria com que o Nobel colombiano dirige a passagem do tempo, as perspectivas dos três personagens principais, o modo como os sentidos se conjugam para criar imagens vívidas do afável Urbino, do reservado Florentino, da volúvel Fermina. A narrativa crua do autor, que não recai em floreados mas sim num poder de descrição que só pode ser descrito como um “dom”, atribui uma beleza quase negra ao romance. Tudo nele tem um lado belo e um lado oculto. A vida que se vive de prazeres fugazes porque a felicidade total nos está vedada. A vida enganosa de quem teimou em seguir pela estrada tal, e que só se dá conta de que o faz por teimosia, e por nada mais, quando é demasiado tarde. O retrato da sociedade da época, das viúvas-alegres às carpideiras, as ruas da cidade dos vice-reis, os vícios e virtudes dos humanos, todos os estratos sociais tão bem ilustrados, caídos nas mesmas fraquezas, rastejantes nos mesmos receios… - a morte, a velhice, o desamor.
Histórias de amor há muitas, mas o imaginário de García Márquez é um só e presenteou-nos com esta obra singular: um amor diferente de todos, sofrido, calejado, cimentado ao longo de mais de cinquenta anos, mas concretizado, como todos os amores que realmente o são.
Um livro cujas páginas, mais tarde, quererei, com certeza, revisitar. Quem nunca leu um livro assim – que vejo um tanto aproximado, de facto, de um Saramago ou de uma Isabel Allende, pelo modo como as pessoas vivem em diversas dimensões (a realidade, o passado, o futuro projectado, a superstição e o sonho) – não pode, tão-pouco, imaginar a complexidade desapiedada de uma obra assim.

-------Review in ENGLISH------
In 1985, when he published "Love in the Time of Cholera", Gabriel García Márquez was 58 y old. It is a rather early age for such a mature novel. As I always heard that "One Hundred Years of Solitude" was the masterpiece of this colombian writer, who passed away on April 17th 2014, I started to read him with that book. But the constant appliance of the same familiar names, the unrealistic love and distress of the same family along many generations kept me from loving it... This happened, probably, 5 y ago. Maybe being 20 y old isn't age enough to understand the depths of such a writer.
"Love in the Time of Cholera" is a book about love. A book about a bigger love, one of those which always wait and endure everything. Sometimes it is heartbreaking to see how the years swallow the main characters, Fermnina Daza - the crowned goddess -, Florentino Ariza, who looked old when he was only 20 y old, Dr. Juvenal Urbino, pragmatic and methodic in every gesture. The book makes us think about life and its coincidences and tragedies, like those of a young man who is mislead by a young woman, and what makes of this such a bigger love that this man is condemned to live a half-life? A life always lived with the expectation of receiving Fermina's affections one day. What did Fermina do to enchant him in such a way? She never made any effort towards gaining his love, or keeping it. On the contrary: she is stubborn, a little rude, not someone to whom you can speak easily. She is a difficult being, inclined more to actions than to words. First, she lets herself be eluded by the obstacles of a forbbiden love, and her stubbornness compromised Florentino for life. When she realizes that what she felt wasn't more than a little girls illusion, it is too late for Florentino: his life is already bonded by hers. He manages his life around her, dedicating her all of his tears and considering her his only chance for happiness in a life condemned to boredom.
The beauty of the book consists, obviously, in the way the colombian Nobel conducts the passage of time, the perspectives of the three main characters, the way senses connect to create vivid images of the warmful Urbino, the instrospective Florentino and the inconstant Fermina. The writer expresses himself in a nude, rather raw, way, not falling onto useless floweries. His power of description can only be described as a gift which gives an almost dark beauty to the novel.
Life made of fleety pleasures, for true happiness is blocked away from us. The deceptive life of who insisted in following a road, only realizing it was all done out of stubborness, and stubborness alone, when it is already too late. The portrait of th society, every class really well represented with the same vices, weaknesses and virtues, all struggling with the same ghosts: - getting old, death, broken hearts.
There are many love stories, but the immaginary of GGM is very peculiar. He presented us with this unlikely story: a love different than any other, painful, cemented for more than 50 years and then finally materialized into something real, as only true love can be.
A book whose pages, later on, I will surely revisit. Who never read a book like this - somehow similar to Isabel Allende's and Saramago's work (the reality, the past, the expected future, the superstition and the dream) - cannot, surely, imagine its complexity.

Pretentious, rambling chick lit

LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA is in my reading history books. Gabriel Garcia Marquez is doubtless a wordsmith of the highest calibre. I would characterize his ability to craft a compelling sentence and to weave a descriptive narrative as neo-Dickensian. But the fact is, a boring, tedious, repetitive piece of rambling chick lit that gave away what little plot actually existed in the first few chapters still qualifies as a boring tedious, repetitive piece of rambling chick lit despite the writing's pretensions to literary grandeur.

Paul Weiss