Yesterday, April 17, was the death anniversary of the legendary Latin American singer Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Why has he gained worldwide popularity as a ‘serious’ writer? Why are the characters in his novel repeatedly approached by sex?
“Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning from an uncomfortable dream to find himself transformed into an Arshola in his bed.”
‘Metaphoresis’ – Franz Kafka
Writing the opening sentence of the novel is the most difficult and important. An advance message of how the story, plot, characters will be is available in the first sentence. As a ship anchors following a distant harbor light, the reader gets an idea from the first sentence before turning page after page. There are very few novelists who can be satisfied with an opening sentence. After tearing out one page after another or giving back space, suddenly the first line is found like a lightning bolt. Only the writer knows how many novels have remained in the embryo after thinking about the plot-character but not finding the right sentence.
Again, a great novel can be created from a dream sentence without any advance plot-character. It is not known which of the two Gabriel García Márquez (6 March 1927-17 April 2014) was moving through while writing ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’. But that opening sentence is sure to give you chills of ice discovery even today. Let’s re-read the first sentence with a flash of memory – ‘Many years later, standing in front of the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia will remember that distant afternoon when his father took him with him to discover ice.’
Just as the creation of the world from the ‘sound’ of God, the fictional village of Macondo started from this word. The story of the Buendia family’s hundred years of solitude outside of our known world. There are few beginnings as influential as this sentence by Marx in world literature. However, many believe that he wrote such long and poetic sentences influenced by the opening sentence of Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis.
Gabo said to live, not a magical reality, life in Latin America is so supernatural, unreal and full of mystery. Maybe that’s why Florentino Ariza’s 622 women sleeping with 622 women to forget his childhood sweetheart Fermina Daza in the novel “Love in the Days of Cholera” doesn’t seem unrealistic. Even though the age is over 70, the meeting of the two on a ship floating in the sea seems normal.
Such is Marquez’s way of telling stories—big sentences wrapped in poetry. But they do not move at all, but build a bridge to another sentence. In Bengali literature, since Humayun Ahmed, there is a tendency to speak in short sentences in all cases. Be it in stories, novels or newspapers. Incongruous, perhaps in an attempt to avoid complications and entertain the reader.
But even after writing big sentences that Marx’s readers have not decreased! Mark’s lesson is, on the way to a distant destination, stop under a shady tree. Then start walking again singing. In the middle of long sentences, Marquez suddenly says funny and philosophical things like “Caution herd, life is two days”. It gives the reader some relief in the midst of long reading. Marquez tells the story in such a way that you have to sit and listen beyond belief. He learned this story telling in his childhood, from his grandmother. In the Colombian village where she grew up, she also chooses to tell stories in a grandmotherly way, through ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’.
Initially, after the discovery of the ice, Gabo began to spread the novel. Macondo tells the story of seven generations of the Buendia family over a hundred years, sometimes singly, sometimes in parallel, with Ursula as witness after the fall.
Marquez describes Latin American life and culture through the entire Buendia family. At times this description will seem surreal. But cannot be ruled out as unbelievable. Herein lies the value of Marx’s writings. In the language of literature, it may be termed as ‘magic realism’. But Gabo said to live, not a magical reality, life in Latin America is so supernatural, unreal and full of mystery. Maybe that’s why Florentino Ariza’s 622 women sleeping with 622 women to forget his childhood sweetheart Fermina Daza in the novel “Love in the Days of Cholera” doesn’t seem unrealistic. Even though they are over 70 years old, the meeting of the two on a ship floating in the sea seems normal. The Colonel waits day after day at the port in the novel ‘Cornel Ke Keo Chitthi Lekhe Na’, in the novel ‘Gotrapitar Hemant’ he survives two hundred years after the death of the patriarch through a despotic regime or in ‘Memoirs of a Sorrowful Whore’ the 90-year-old man sleeps with a first-time menstruating maiden. Wishes don’t seem exaggerated.
The fictional but realistic story of novels and stories is throughout Marx’s literary career. In the beginning, he was a journalist by profession. However, like journalism, he did not want to tell the absolute truth in literature. Whatever novels or stories he wrote, like poets, Marx spoke through metaphors and symbols. In the story ‘Sarla Erendira’, Erendira’s life-long punishment for a small mistake by her grandmother simplifies our understanding of the powerful and the powerless. The face of Marx that we see in all his writings, including stories like ‘Thutthude Danaala Buro’ or ‘I came only to make a telephone call’, is completely human. on the side of the exploited. He painted a terrible picture of dictatorship through humor. In Gabo’s native Colombia, conflict is commonplace. He grew up watching bloody anti-dictatorship and anti-dictatorship movements. Efforts to expand the US empire in Colombia, the encroachment of banana companies from village to village—all are captured in his writings. Sometimes through humor, sometimes through love.
Marquez’s main characters are completely ‘unpredictable’
