I’ve been having some sort of crisis trying to fill the wide gaping void left behind by Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera.
Really, I think it is going to take a while. It is such a winner!
The novel centres on Florentino’s hopeless love for Fermina from his youth all through to his dying days. Unfortunately for him, Fermina decides to marry the distinguished Dr. Juvenal, leaving our loveless hero heartbroken but not despairing.
I’m not sure why cholera… I’m not sure of any intended analogy of the disease to an all-consuming love perhaps? Sure the story is set amidst the cholera pandemic overtaking Spain. But there is little reference except in the end when Florentino Ariza uses it as a means to orchestrate the final journeys of his never-ending love for Fermina Daza.
But what really was the main star of the whole novel was Love. Love in almost all forms possible – passionate youths, endearing tolerance of husband and wife, a highly expectant father and his daughter, woman and son, a friendship made out of a love passed up on, loads of flings, companionship in old-age.
The most beautifully written one of all must of course be the undying love Florentino Ariza has for Fermina Daza. It was so unbridled and untested, it almost resembled some form of idolatry – an idealistic frenzy of a hopeless romantic incapable of writing a formal letter even, because his prose is so engineered, and his soul so consumed, by the lyrical language of literary romantics.
[As usual, the emphasis on literature as the source and expression of passion and ideals - the food of soul. 
]
And then in the end, when Fermina and Florentino finally reunite after the timely death of the otherwise bizarre death of her husband, the story does not give way to careless passion despite the unadulterated idolation of Fermina. Instead, it recognises that love will never work unrequited; that it is unrealistic for a woman to bear love for a man she has come to lose touch with for 51 years. And so, Fermina and Florentino tackle their relationship with a maturity earned with age and experience, and work at rediscovering and accommodating each other’s personalities.
Only to result in very sweet [and very believable] ending:
“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 have 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.”
A very clear contrast to and brilliant transition of attitudes we hold towards love from youth to old.
Another thing I liked was how Marquez tackled the idea of married life. Like many women of her age, Fermina sought marriage as a means to an end to an otherwise dull life. But Marquez delves into life after “happy ever after” and honestly presents the many stages that come after – the honeymoon, the grouses and petty impatience of two people too close for and too long in comfort, and finally the indispensable familiarity and habit that an aged couple can count on after a whole age together – a confident dependence on the other for company.
But best of all was the idea that life holds a million possibilities. And the idea that we should never give up on love. Love, in all its forms, and especially in hope and worship, is a marvel.
“After 53 years, 7 months, and 11 days and night, my heart was at last fulfilled. And I discovered, to my job, that it is life and not death that has no limits”
I don’t know how Marquez does it. Apart from pulling off this overworked love story without coming across as cliched, he also managed to set charm to the almost magical backdrop of a cholera-infested Carribean coast.
All the while, something along the lines of this was set in my mind.
Perfect backdrop to a love story. Made to life by his very charming prose. I think it was the attention he paid to providing a backdrop for most senses: sight, smell, touch – and a heightened sensitivity to transitions and memory. And how he used the backgrounds to characterise and introduce his characters such that you could read their personalities in the structures that surrounded them.
This book is very wordy though. But once you’re in it, it is dreamlike and vivid. Marquez describes everything with a fondness and earnestness such that you feel as if he is really wanting to go back in that space in time. There is an overwhelming tone of nostalgia as he enjoys pitting old and new aside each other.
This one is a definitely a keeper. And worth many reads. I feel as if I haven’t even gotten to the bottom of everything yet. The text is so rich, I bet I’d pick up tons of new things on a 2nd, maybe even 3rd read.
I also hear there’s a movie. I would love to watch it, even though I hear it didn’t do very well at the box office. It’d be fun to watch an interpretation of the novel – sort of like a visual bookclub of sorts.
But really, it’d be great seeing his imagery come to life!
