“It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.”

Love is not patient, love is not kind. It’s envious, it’s boastful, it’s proud. It’s most definitely self-seeking. This book takes the illusion of pure love and turns it upside down. It’s absolutely brilliant. I basked in the beauty of individual sentences and marveled at the epic scope. Don’t expect a romantic, traditional love story or a loveable character to fall for, because you won’t find those things here. What you will find is a sometimes humorous yet painfully truthful story about obsession, marriage, aging, sex, and death. I have to admit that the honesty of Márquez’s brutal points occasionally made me laugh out loud. All of this is set in the sultry heat of a Caribbean coastal city at the turn of the nineteenth century during ‘the time of cholera’.

“At nightfall, at the oppressive moment of transition, a storm of carnivorous mosquitoes rose out of the swamps, and a tender breath of human shit, warm and sad, stirred the certainty of death in the depths of one’s soul.”

Stories about obsession and rather unsavory characters always fascinate me, but I’m aware these elements don’t appeal to every reader. Here we have a young man, Florentino Ariza, who believes he has fallen in love with the adolescent Fermina Daza. When he can’t have her, he spends the next several decades with the intent to grab what he failed to obtain during his youth. Fermina, in the meantime, has married a renowned physician, Dr. Juvenal Urbino. We spend the next three hundred odd pages immersed in the lives of these three (plus some secondary characters) with occasional time shifts that are mastered flawlessly. The idea of “love” is scrutinized without a single reservation on the part of Márquez – both that of the married as well as the unwed. Fermina and Dr. Urbino have their ups and downs; while Florentino has his mad affairs to fill the time before hazarding another attempt at his previously failed conquest.

“The problem with marriage is that it ends every night after making love, and it must be rebuilt every morning before breakfast.”

“Florentino Ariza learned what he had already experienced many times without realizing it: that one can be in love with several people at the same time, feel the same sorrow with each, and not betray any of them.”

Nothing about this novel is sentimental; rather, it’s a bit tongue in cheek, in my opinion. There are no answers to the question of true love to be found in its pages. If your experience is anything like mine, you’ll nod your head a lot, shake it from time to time, and smirk every now and then. You’ll absolutely admire the prose. You’ll hungrily go looking for the next Gabriel García Márquez book.

“… nothing in this world was more difficult than love.”

Time is a River, I am a Tiger, You are a Goddess

"Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire. The world, unfortunately, is real; I, unfortunately, am Borges."

Jorge Luis Borges: "A New Refutation of Time" (1946)

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

Leandro Díaz - "La Diosa Coronada" ("The Crowned Goddess")



Every Day I Write the Book

For countless millennia, artists, writers and philosophers have thought that n  Time is a river.n Each life flows from its source, the date of our birth, to the mouth of the river or the ocean, where, upon our death, it merges with the rest of time and starts again. Apart from this temporal recurrence, it flows in one direction.

The river of Florentino Ariza’s life was cut off in his youth. He has waited for 51 years, nine months and four days for the opportunity to resume the flow of his relationship with Fermina Diaz, which could only occur after the death of her husband.

Now that this has happened, and another year has passed, he gets to n  crown his goddessn and they embark on a voyage up the Rio Magdalena to a destination in the centre of early 20th century Colombia.

This allows them to sail back down the river in the right direction towards the river’s estuary, thus replicating the n  voyage of loven that was originally ordained for them.

The flow of time does not always imply progress. The boat’s Captain has sailed the river long enough to see it desecrated by de-forestation. Female manatees are slaughtered for amusement, leaving their progeny to die on the riverbanks (unless saved by a good samaritan).

Soon the progress of modern technology means that river boats will be replaced by seaplanes. The life of the river is threatened, compromised and potentially short-lived, but: "It is all the river we have left."

When they return home, they learn that they cannot disembark, because of an erroneous (but self-generated) suspicion that some of the passengers have cholera.

In the only aspect of the novel that can be called "Magic Realism", Florentino thinks of the river as n  "waters that could be navigated forever".n He suggests to the Captain (who is accompanied by his own lover) that they turn back: "Let us keep going, going, going, back to La Dorada." (The name of this upstream town means "the golden one".) The Captain asks how long they can keep up "this goddamn coming and going". After 53 years, seven months and 53 days and nights, Florentino’s answer is ready, "Forever."

Every man hopes to be a source of perpetual light in the lives of those around him. Men want to be the light of their lover’s life. The repudiation of Florentino’s love by Fermina’s father condemned him to the darkness of the shadows, which is symbolized by the cholera of the title. His mother, who was gradually losing her mind, if not her memory, remarks, n  "The only disease my son ever had was cholera."n She had confused cholera with his love-sickness, the darkness being a symptom of his lack of success in love.

Nevertheless, Florentino nurtured his flame, keeping it alive by writing a generic lovers’ companion and hundreds of individual love letters, both for himself and for younger word-challenged or "un-lettered lovers". As Fermina’s cousin acknowledges, n  "whatever [happens] to one love [affects] all other loves throughout the world."n We inhabit a passionate ecosystem.

Florentino observes Fermina occasionally in her new life married to an eligible doctor and philanthropist. Like Jay Gatsby, he makes a "fierce decision to win fame and fortune in order to deserve her," ultimately rising to be Managing Director of a shipping company and thus a Rio Magdalena shipping magnate.

Despite his vow to win Fermina and the fact that he is supposedly ugly, bald, sad and looks like he is desperate for love, Florentino has not been unlucky during his waiting period. In his coded journal "Women", he records 622 long-term liaisons, not to mention countless fleeting adventures and one-night stands.

The novel details a dozen, some of which might even have come close to love of some sort or another. n  Marquez doesn’t attempt to differentiate too strictly between love and sex.n One lover describes love as everything we do naked: "spiritual love from the waist up and physical love from the waist down." It doesn’t need to be any more complicated than that.

The most controversial aspect of the novel (which is surprising, given its relative brevity, but not surprising given its moral character) is n  the 76 year old Florentino’s illicit relationshipn  with América Vicuña, a 14 year old girl of whom he is the guardian and a recognised blood relative. She is his lover immediately before the death of Fermina’s husband. Thus, she is the measure of the difference in sexual intensity between a minor and an aging adult: "After so many years of calculated loves, the mild pleasure of innocence had the charm of a restorative perversion." As with Nabokov’s "Lolita" and a less well-known scene in Thomas Pynchon’s "Gravity’s Rainbow", there is no excusing this relationship from a moral or legal point of view.

On the one hand, Marquez wants to say: n  "Nothing one does in bed is immoral if it helps to perpetuate love."n As long as there is love, it mightn’t matter that the sex is immoral in the eyes of others.

On the other hand, it asserts that love and sex can be differentiated, that sex isn't necessary to love. The book's greatest concern is aged love, not illicit sex.

As a result, the explicit physical detail about the relationships reveals that there can still be some sexual pleasure at an advanced age, but equally, if not more importantly, that love can exist without acrobatic or tantric sex: n  "It was as if they had leapt over the arduous calvary of conjugal life and gone straight to the heart of love.n They were together in silence like an old married couple wary of life, beyond the pitfalls of passion, beyond the brutal mockery of hope and the phantoms of disillusion: beyond love. For they had lived together long enough to know that love was always love, anytime and anyplace, but it was more solid the closer it came to death."

Artistically, then, whatever readers think of the moral issues, the difference in ages of Florentino’s lovers suggests that love is different from sex, and that it survives the onset of old age.

Moreover, it cements the bond of love, if you can say that I could have had her or them, younger lovers, but I chose you.

It also makes sense at a meta-fictional level. Marquez wrote this novel for his wife n   "Mercedes, of course".n No matter how promiscuous his life or his imagination, this novel crowns her as a goddess. He could have had all of these real or fantasy lovers, but in the end, he chose her, he crowned her, he had her, and they had each other.

This novel is his testament to the permanence of their love. It is n  a bundle of love letters, a literary workn designed to repudiate the ephemerality of true love. Love will often tear us apart, but it will also help us to stick together. Even if it takes over half a century.

However long love takes, however long it lasts, the letters, the literary work written in its honour will survive.





A map showing the Rio Magdalena, complete with 21st century air routes.



VERSE:

The Stallion's Stream

No more a good shot
As such, his wife felt
The loo smelled a lot
Like a rabbit hutch.


Soap Opera Haiku

Three days or a week
Is far too long at our age
To replace the soap.


A Medicinal Cognac

Doctor Urbino,
Mild man of fable,
Earned his place and was
Toasted at the table
When after dinner
He still proved able
To quaff a brandy
And re-main stable.


Write It Down Love Haiku

Shorn of memory,
A practical man contrives
One out of paper.


Leave Nothing Behind But the Memories
[Haiku in the Words of Gabriel Garcia Marquez]

The people you love
Should take all their possessions
With them when they die.


The Crowned Goddess
[After Leandro Díaz]

Oh God, let me find
A girl, any girl,
Who’s perfect for me,
And when she is found,
It doesn’t matter
A skerrick to me
Wherever she’s bound
Or whether she calls
Home Cartegena,
I’ll make sure she’s crowned
With these words, though they
Lack any finesse:
The light of my life,
My girl, my lover,
My wife, my goddess.


Your Fragrance
[Haiku in the Words of Gabriel Garcia Marquez]

Little by little,
Your fragrance lived only in
White gardenias.


Light

Love is light.
Without it,
We live in
Shadowy
Darkness.


SOUNDTRACK:

Leandro Díaz - "La Diosa Coronada" ("The Crowned Goddess")(Live in Norway)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZXC6X...

"The words I am about to express: they now have their own crowned goddess."

Silvio Brito - "La Diosa Coronada" ("The Crowned Goddess")

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6AYnL...

Elvis Costello - “Every Day I Write the Book”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhLztd...

Bob Dylan - "Love Sick”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3x3jUI...

"I'm sick of love, but I'm in the thick of it."

Bob Dylan - "Not Dark Yet”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZgBhy...

Lady Lamb the Beekeeper - "Aubergine”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHU_A9...



RECIPES:

Eggplant and Plantain Dip (with Cumin Pita Chips)

http://www.mycolombianrecipes.com/egg...

This will have to suffice until we invent or discover the recipe for Eggplant al Amor.

Martin Hederos (from The Soundtrack of Our Lives) - "Lamb Tagine" (Featuring Eggplant)

http://cookingwithrockstars.com/artis...

Márquez sends message to anyone who will attempt to write a romance novel after Love in the Time of Cholera. no offence intended to writers of romance.

There are many wonderful reviews of the book on here, so I will abstain from indulging in lengthy reflections, but I cannot leave this space unfilled without recording a short paean born out of the immense aesthetic pleasure, and grief, and education, this book afforded me.

Stretching a notion to its limits would ultimately make it sufficiently unrealistic for ordinary mortals living the uneventful reality of moderation to check their imagination, but it is only through this agency can one expect to understand the full extent of the great illusions that frame and define life. Márquez weaves a rich, dense and unbroken interplay of themes – death, decay, sacrifice, patience, desire, obsession, wars, modernity, experiments on your sense of smell etc – in a story whose each part reads like a whole to inform on the essential romance of two, or three, protagonists inhabiting the wild heart of life.

To tell the story of Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza (how I love these poetic, smooth-sailing, metrical Hispanic names) Márquez does not need those abundant magical realist tricks up his sleeve; in this case he relies on his prodigious capacity to create an internal logic that, despite its unearthly stretch, enchants and entrances and bamboozles you with its powers of persuasion. It has the power to claim and possess your mindscape.

So what is this novel? It’s a story of love and it’s a story of everything besides love.

Here endeth the paean.

August '16

OK, Marquez is not for me. I wanted to like this book. He has a sort of magical command of words and sometimes I was enthralled by the language and cadence, but I was not charmed by the book and I would not call it a love story. There was little or nothing of love in any of these relationships, and I would go so far as to say that Ariza is a psychopathic sexual deviant and a stalker.

In what world is it an enhancement to character when a 76 year old man sleeps with a 14 year old girl who is in his charge as a guardian? But Marquez describes this as both natural and "love". Not in my world...and when she commits suicide and he knows it is because she is in love with him, it is ludicrous. As well, another prominent character is described as having been raped by a man and then spending her life looking for him because he is the only man who can satisfy her "love". Truly? This is Nobel Prize plot conception?

I know there are many who believe Marquez is a great writer. I have read two of his books and can say with conviction that this will be my last. Every writer is not for every reader. The best thing about this book is its lyrical title, it makes me feel duped.

One of the few writers I have read who can show sex convincingly on the page, so that it reinforces character and extends action, and doesn't become a narrative sinkhole in which entropy prevails.

Depressingly great. One of those books one knows one could never write yet still one wishes -- pointlessly -- that one could do so.

Laden with vivid detail. It moves almost flawlessly, from sequence to sequence with nary a foot put wrong in terms of diction or tone.

Relentless storytelling, like diamonds pouring endlessly from a sack. Enormous reading pleasure. A bit too lacrhymose toward the end for my taste, but this is a quibble. On the whole a shattering novel despite it conventional structure.

Warmly recommended.

Love like cholera is invisible with only the effects apparent. I loved this novel that explores the notion of love. That pure, obsessional, undying, passionate love can only ever be towards someone that you don’t know intimately. That the notion of love the drama, the romance of it is preferable to the lover. This is the nature of the love between Fermina and Florentino whose paths cross as teenagers and after spending several years exclusively communicating by letter culminating in deciding to elope, Fermina sees Florentino in the flesh again and the spell is broken. She determines she cannot marry him. For Florentino this rebuff is merely an obstacle that he will overcome and he spends over half a century waiting for her to be widowed (she goes on to marry the well-connected and urbane Dr Juvenal Urbino a man who she doesn’t love but offers a good substitute, “…worldly goods: security, order, happiness, contiguous numbers that once they were added together might resemble love…”) so that he can re-offer himself.
Now before we feel too sorry for Florentino imagining him losing his hair and his teeth as he marks off the days until his love rival falls off the perch (a euphemism that is particularly apt in this book) be reassured that fortunately he is a man who stridently believes that sex and love are two very separate things. It would seem that he goes out of his way to prove this by sleeping with over 600 women while his love for Fermina continues to burn strong. I know his relations with the women in this book is problematic for some but I genuinely thought it was more tongue-in-cheek than anything else. The notion that this prematurely bald, archaically dressed figure was such a sexual dynamo that an afternoon in the sack with him turns chaste widows into prostitutes, and turns married society women onto acts that would make the Kardashians blush all while managing to keep all these liaisons so secret that the town thinks he is homosexual I found funny. He is the testosterone equivalent of Impulse body spray. If you want to look for a more profound meaning then I would suggest it is perhaps a musing on the Madonna /whore dichotomy that has been a millstone around women’s neck. The women he sleeps with are not worthy of what Florentino determines is love (although he does love many of these other women, often having a relationship with them that lasts years, “…he learned …without realising it that one can be in love with several people at the same time…”), the only woman who is, is the one he has never touched.
The writing is beautiful and insightful into the difficulties of love but done with a deftly playful hand. I could have read another 50 years of Fermina and Florentino quite happily.

- عندما تنهين رواية ملك الأدب اللاتيني ستتمنين زواجاً مستقراً متماسكاً وزوجاً رائعاً كالدكتور خوفينال أوربينيو أو رفيقاً حبيباً أبدياً من المراهقة وحتى الشيخوخة لا يساوم عليكِ مع أحقاد الحب و خيباته كفلورينتينو أريثا .
لصاحبة الرواية ..


كان عليه أن يعلمها التفكير بالحب على أنه حالة غير وسيطة لأي شيء ، بل هو منشأ و مستقر بحد ذاته .

- ثلاث و خمسين سنة و ستة شهور و أحد عشر يوماً بليالها لم تثني عزيمته عن الظفر بها و لم يدخل اليأس لقلبه بفقدانها وزواجها ، حاول استبدال ذكراها عشرات المرات مع عشرات العشيقات و العاهرات و التي زار أسرتهن الكثير من المرات على مدار الخمسين سنة والتي احتلت قصصهن أغلب صفحات الرواية ، كل تلك المغامرات لم تمحو أثر عاطفة حقيقة و حب صافي لم يدنسه لقاء .
قصة رومانسية عذبة جداً و ساحرة و بذات الوقت واقعية جداً بلا مبالغات و شطحات حدثت في زمن وباء الكوليرا الذي لم يُذكر الا مرات قليلة في الكتاب كان موضوع الوباء هامشياً .

" ذاكرة القلب تمحو كل الذكريات السيئة، وتضخم الذكريات الطيبة، وإننا بفضل هذه الخدعة نتمكن من تحمل الماضي "

- على وقع ذكرى الحب الأول والنظرة الأولى و المراسلات الورقية المحمومة في زمن المراهقة استطاع نسيان خيبة حبه بل و البدء من جديد في الحياة وانتظارها .

- تعمقت الرواية بالحياة الزوجية في كل مراحلها في ألمع سنواتها و في أيامها التعيسة ، صراعات الاختلاف الطبقية ، مشاكل الماضي و تأثيرها ، الخيانة ، الصداقة ، الاهتمام ، المرض ، الشيخوخة و هذا أروع جزء منها لم أقرأ مسبقاً رواية تطرقت لموضوع الشيخوخة و مشاكلها وانفعالاتها بهذا التوسع و العمق النفسي الرائع ، وكذلك كان للسياسة طرف و التجارة والحركة البحرية بكل جوانبها وحقباتها من خلال حياة فلورينتينو العملية ، كل تلك الجوانب عاينها الكاتب ما بين عامي 1880 و1930 بعد استعمار مرير وحروب أهلية استنفذت كولومبيا بشعبها و أرضها وخيراتها . الرواية بعد أن انتصفت دخلت بطور الملل و الحشو والتفاصيل الزائدة وهذا ما أسقط النجمة الأخرى ، أما الترجمة موضوع ثاني كانت من أروع و أفخم الترجمات التي قرأتها في حياتي .


" لقد عاشا معاً ما يكفي ليعرفا أن الحب هو أن نحب في أي وقت و في أي مكان . وأن الحب يكون أكثر زخماً كلما كان أقرب للموت "

Una de las más grandes historias de amor jamás contada.

Una de las mejor contadas historias de amor jamás vivida.

من مدت‌ها درباره‌ي اين موضوع تعمق كرده‌ام و چون مدت زماني، خيلي برايم مهم شده بود شب و روز غرق اين فكر بودم كه: چرا زن و مرد پس از اين‌كه مدتي از زمان ازدواجشان گذشت و ازدواجشان "دچار" مقوله‌ي "زمان" شد، نسبت به يكديگر سرد مي‌شوند؟
و يا حضور يكديگر برايشان عادي مي‌شود؟
و يا به هم "عـادت" مي‌كنند؟
و يا براي حفظ منافع به زندگي مشترك ادامه مي‌دهند؟

نه زن ديگر در چشم مرد زيباترين و ناب‌ترين زن جهان است(البته اگر مرد اين ديدگاه را قبل از ازدواج نسبت به همسر خود داشته بود) و نه به چشم زن، همسر آن استواري و اطمينان و مردانگي را مي‌تواند به وي منتقل مي‌كند. واقعاً چرا اين گونه مي‌شود؟

چرا آن گوهر كه من "عشق" مي‌ ناممش در طول زمان دچار روزمرگي و ابتذال مي‌شود و در آخر معلوم مي‌شود عشقي در كار نبود و آن چيزي هم كه خيال مي‌كردند عشق بود بيشتر به درد مرغ عشق مي‌خورد تا آنان
و آيا اصلاً ازدواج شيوه يا راه‌كار خوب و مناسبي براي تداوم و بقاي "عـشــق" است؟

درباره‌ي اين موضوع سخن بسيار است و در اين مختصر مجال نمي‌گنجد؛ اما اين مقدمه را آوردم تا بگويم (فلورنتينو آريثا) قهرمان مرد داستان (عشق در زمان وبا) عاشق واقعي قهرمان زن داستان يعني (فرمينا داثا) مي‌شود و به قول انگليسي زبان‌ها "در عشق او فرو مي‌رود". در ابتدا رابطه‌ي اين دو نفر پا مي‌گيرد و هر دو از اين رابطه شادند و راضي. ولي طبق همه‌ي امور اين جهان و به قول (روباه داستان شازده كوچولو): " هميشه يه پاي قضيه مي‌لنگه " و در اين رابطه، يك سفر باعث لنگيدن اين رابطه مي‌شود. سفري كه پدر دختر براي بيرون كردن خاطر پسر از ذهن دختر خود انجام مي‌دهد و دختر ره‌سپار اين سفر مي‌گردد. به قول اخوان
نه مهر فسون، نه ماه جادو كرد
نفرين به سفر كه هر چه كرد او كرد

بله. بعد از دو يا سه سال كه پسر داستان ما كه حالا مردي شده و شب و روز
خود را در انتظار اين عشق خود در تب و تاب زندگي مي‌كرده مي‌فهمد كه (فرمينا داثا) برگشته و زيباتر و "بانــو"تر از گذشته در بازار قدم بر مي‌دارد و مرد داستان (عشق در زمان وبا) با دسته گلي در يك دست و قلب خود در دست ديگر به دنبال او در بازار مي‌گردد تا خود را نشان دهد اما عكس‌العمل فرمينا داثا از ديدن فلورنتينو آريثا ديدني‌‌ست و يا بهتر است بگوييم مثال‌زدني‌ست

به هر حال، روايت (گابريل گارسيا ماركز) از اين مرد و زن در داستان (عشق در زمان وبا) خواندني ست و از آن خواندني‌تر نام بسيار زيباي اين كتاب است: عشــق در زمان وبا: آن‌چنان كه مي‌دانيم بيماري "وبا" نماد مرگ و پايان زندگي‌ست و اين چه اكسيري است كه در دل مرگ و نيستي مي‌تواند پايدار و زنده بماند؟
اگر زندگي باشد، مرگ قصه‌اش را به راحتي كوتاه مي‌كند؛ پس اين اكسير چيست؟
اين چه اكسيري‌ست كه از ابتداي خلقت جهان تا پايان آن، مردمان به دنبال آن هستند و شب و روز خود را دنبال يافتنش مي‌گذرانند و به قول مولاي روم، آرزوي آن را دارند
آن چه يافت مي‌نشود، آنم آرزوست

آن چيز كه "يافت مي‌‌نشود" و در روز چراغ به دست گرد شهر دنبال آن مي‌گردند، چيست؟

الحب في زمن الكوليرا ، الحب في الزمن الجميل ، الحب الذي استمر لأزيد من خمس عقود ولم يندثر أو يذبل

♥️

من الروايات التي أجلت قراءتها لمدة ليست بالقصيرة لإحساسي المسبق أنها ستحتاج مني التركيز و الاهتمام الكاملين ،و لم يخب ظني أبدا ..

قصة رقيقة تلامس القلب لرجل ظل وفي لحب حبيبته سنين طويلة وحين عادت إليه بعد وفاة زوجها وجدته العاشق المتيم نفسه ، محاولاته للظفر بها كانت عديدة ومغامراته خلال سنوات شبابه يمكنني تسميتها محاولات تافهة لنسيان حبه الحقيقي و باءت كلها بالفشل و كأنه يمني نفسه بالحب الخالد أخيرا ..

نهايتها كانت كئيبة إستمتعت بها رغم معارضتي لمواقفه العبثية أحيانا و لمشاعرها المتبلدة أحيانا أخرى

إحساسي وأنا أقرأ سطور هذه الرواية كان يتأرجح بين السعادة و التعجب و بلغ إستمتاعي أقصاه حتى و إن كانت مجرد رواية إلاَّ أنها تترك في القلب ذالك الأثر الجميل من الزمن الجميل

♥️

مسألة مبالغة الكاتب في هذه القصة لا أحب أن أغوص فيها أبدا فجرعة إستمتاعي كانت أكبر من أن أفكر بواقعية القصة أساسا

وما الحب إلاَّ إخلاص و التضحية ♥️

وما الحب إلاَّ شرارة شوق لا تنطفئ و لمسة حنين لا تزول أبد الدهر ♥️

وأنت يا قلب سواء كنت مقبرة الذكريات أو جَنَّتـَـها ستظل تنبض بالوهج نفسه أو بالألم ذاته مهما حييت لآخر نبضة فيـــك
...

i have to say something about this book: i tried reading this thing three times, and the farthest i got was about halfway through. why? it pissed me off beyond belief. this is romance at its most frustrating. why do all these epic, sweeping love stories involve loving someone from afar? haven't we moved beyond that petrarchan form of idealized love? hasn't beatrice left the building? why is waiting and self-sacrificing the ultimate testament to passion?

love is not a one-sided emotion - it is created between two people in a physical time and space. it is temporal. it is tangible. it is created in the air directly between two people (or more than two people, as is sometimes, but rarely, the case). it is not simply eating roses and writing poetry to someone always sitting across the courtyard.

please please please argue with me if i have this wrong. explain to me the points that i'm missing. detail for me the ways that this is a real love story. tell me that marquez was even possibly satirizing the idealized but intangible love. i'm not goading here - i actually want to believe i'm wrong about this, if only because i don't want to believe that i've missed something in those last 200 or so pages, for the sake of both my time and my ego.

A mesmerizing tale of love as an obsessive disease or an endless journey on a river. A young telegraph operator, Florentina, falls for a schoolgirl, Fermina, but he is rejected as unworthy by her father. Through secret letters he successfully woos her, but she changes her mind, judging it as nothing more than a fantasy. She later submits to a proper suitor, Dr. Urbino, respected for his work fighting cholera. Florentina never stops loving her and hopelessly waits while pursuing numerous surreptitious affairs and working his way up in a riverboat company. From the first chapter we learn that 50 years later, the doctor dies and he has a chance to woo his love again.

This is my first read of Marquez and was expecting a lot of fantastical and supernatural elements that mark him as a master of magical realism. I have read my share of writers whose works fit that tag (Isabel Allende, Esquivil, Rushdie, Alice Hoffman), but, with the exception of Native American spirituality such as in Louise Erdrich’s novels, I tend to favor authors who take a comic approach to that form (Sherman Alexie, Tom Robbins, Chris Moore). On one level this book appears as simple epiphany on the power of love to sustain one through the long travails of life and thus not conform to magical realism. Yet in the Wikipedia entry, the Mexican scholar Leal identifies a key element of magical realism that applies here, namely an attitude of “a state of heightened awareness of life's connectedness or hidden meanings”, a focus on “the mystery that breathes behind things.”

I am no linguist, but the very names of the characters evoke for me representations of certain qualities at play in life against death. Fermina, as in firm or steady, the opposite of infirm, as in frail or sick, with shades of ripening as in fermentation. Florentina, as in flores or flower, a stage of waiting for pollination, the gardenia scent he perpetually identifies with Fermina and her letters. Juvenal Urbino, as in the young, urbane man of wealth, the civilized one who steals his love away from the unworthy Godless bastard Florentina. Civilization of science that conquers cholera, the disease of the poor spread from contaminated water. The same root as in choleric, or infected with rage. Florentina wants Urbino to die. Fermina is often haughty and initially responds with rage to the effrontery of each suitor. Throughout the novel, war continually rages in the background. Sometimes the characters encounter bodies on the river bank, and they can’t tell if they are victims of cholera or of war. Love apparently has the power to erase or surpass such sickness. On the other hand, love as fever and disease keeps cropping up. To Florentina, that is the only dis-ease worth living for: “The only regret I will have in dying is if it is not for love”.

So there is a lot of mystery and hidden meanings in this tale that aligns with Marquez as practitioner of magical realism. We can’t help rooting for Florentina. He becomes a bit of a master at seductive wordsmithing from all his letter writing. In the most endearing example of his state, he makes money writing love letters for illiterate peasants. At one point he realizes that one of his female customers is seeking his help responding to a letter he composed for her suitor, and he successfully pulls off a correspondence for both that leads to a marriage. Is this charming or the epitome of his abilities in subterfuge and deception? Among his many affairs he recounts, he admits to forcing some women, and in another case his words of endearment painted on a married woman’s abdomen leads to her murder by a jealous husband. Is Florentina the ideal of a romantic lover or practitioner of the worst kind of machismo. He never brags about his affairs, but that is in service to a twisted form of faithfulness to Fermina. At one point in old age he seduces an underage girl to whom he has become a guardian to. As a reader, I somehow forgave him as a victim of a sickness for which he was on the verge of being healed of by the prospect of fulfilling his love for Fermina.

The last scenes of requited love between the old couple on the riverboat were wonderful and magical in many senses. They lifted me out of my confusion and judgments and recovered my respect for the power of love to conquer death and human folly.