A Hopeless Romantic?
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez - A Book Review
You may have heard someone say, “Life is short to read the wrong book.” I also agree with J. K. Rowling when she said, “If you don’t like to read you probably haven’t found the right book.” For most people, the thought of reading fiction either excites them or irritates them. Both groups have resigned themselves to be at the extreme ends of the spectrum, and this has been their undoing. We need nonfiction, but so do we need fiction. Or do we need fiction more?
I think many people regard fiction as a lesser read, one that is inessential and unarguably dispensable. While fiction is not meant to be despised and derided, especially by those who consider it to be abstract and unreal, neither is it meant to be exciting and pleasurable right from the first pages, as has been the quixotic nature of the present day fictional works. Our shallowness when it comes to love has caused us to pine over romantic comedies that are only but parodies of past great and seminal works of literature, which even with the passage of time, still exude an enduring appeal and eternal resonance among their readers. That is probably why they are called classics.
One such story that still draws a great feeling of awe from me is Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s masterpiece, Love in the Time of Cholera. I read the book in a bid to lessen the hangover that had enamored me after I was done with Garcia’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, yet when I was done with Love in the Time of Cholera, I was left wondering why it wasn’t that book that earned Gabriel his Nobel Prize for Literature. Love in the Time of Cholera is a majestic tale, a thoroughly and keenly crafted story that carries every reader into an emotional roller coaster chronicling the pain and disillusionment that is the result of unrequited love. It is a story of fervent and unrelenting love, genuine love that even after being spurned doesn’t grow to be resentful or impassionate. For more than half a century, fifty-one years and nine months and four days, Florentino Ariza patiently waits for the day when he gets to repeat his vow of eternal fidelity and everlasting love to the woman he has ever genuinely loved, Fermina Daza. Probably because she is still mourning her dead husband, once again, Fermina Daza rejects Florentino, and saying the least, Florentino’s move to re-declare his love just after Juvenal Urbino’s death (Fermina’s husband), is a glaringly impertinent one.
When Florentino and Fermina initially fall in love, it’s one of those love stories we pray lasts forever. For the most part, it is probably because of the sympathy we have for the not-so-fortunate Florentino who aside his mother, Transito Ariza, seems to have nothing in the world apart from Fermina’s love. So when Fermina Daza later sends him a letter stating that she doesn’t love him anymore, going on to claim that she is surprised that she could nurse a chimera in her heart for so long and with such fervent ferocity, we are more heartbroken than Florentino could ever be. We certainly know of chimeras, crushes that we had in the evening and were gone by morning, infatuations that thawed away when we weighed them on the scales of maturity, but how could something so beautiful and perfect be a chimera. To us, Fermina makes a mistake that would make it impossible for anyone not to hate her. How can she be so mean, so selfish, so inconsiderate. But not for long, Florentino’s passion and undying love helplessly make us fall in love with Fermina once again.
Even though, it at times seems like the rejection had broken him, it later becomes the impetus that causes Florentino to work towards winning Fermina’s love back. He commits himself to improve the state of his life with a respectable career in his time, and is willing to bear all slights as he makes his way up the ladder. Fermina is clearly happily married to a man who is better than him in every reasonable way, which makes the idea of their separation impractical and insane, yet Florentino lives for the day when they will be together with Fermina again. In Garcia’s words, he considers it to be an ineluctable event that he is resolved to wait for it without impatience or violence, even if until the end of time. Florentino’s attitude, even with my flawed judgement and subjective opinion, is one that redefines the meaning of love. It is a hopeful commitment to love even when he wasn’t a direct beneficiary of it. It could never be more relatable in a time in the world as this, a time when we get into love with careful regard for what it is in it for us. Florentino loves Fermina selflessly without any scruples. Even with the several women he meets, his love for Fermina never wanes, if anything, it waxes with an even brighter and blinding coruscation.
The second rejection is a poignant one that should, quite obviously, turn Florentino away from his relentless hunt for love, yet it is exactly that that refines his pursuits later on. The five decades should have made Florentino resentful and bitter, but instead, it could be argued that it’s the fire that tries his love, and proves it. It is not the same kind of love that had earlier turned a brief love note into sixty pages of verse because he was too embarrassed to deliver it, neither is it the love that had caused him to play his music in the cemetery past midnight hoping that the wind would carry the notes to Fermina through her bedroom window, instead, it’s love that has been chastened and tried and tested by time. Florentino’s inability to grow cynical despite Fermina’s heartless jilting proves him worthy of her love, once again. This could be a reminder to some of us have been hurt and abused, the many of us who have loved but haven’t been loved back, that may be to be worthy of love, we may just have to wait, and if we can’t, may be we never really loved, not so much as we thought we did. Time proves our love.
In the end, when Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza are finally together and are setting out for a voyage that seems like he intends lasts forever, we understand Florentino’s answer to the Captain’s concerns whether he was really sure of the choice he was making, “All my life, I have never said anything I did not mean,” is his reply, as resolute and emphatic as it would be, even after another half of a century. By the end of the story, we can excuse Florentino for eating raw flowers and drinking cologne in a bid to have a taste of Fermina Daza, after all, our love isn’t as real and genuine as his clearly was. The words of his mother, Transito Ariza, have since reverberated in my mind: “The weak will never enter the kingdom of love, which is a harsh and ungenerous kingdom, women only give themselves to men of resolute spirit, who provide the security they need in order to face life.” So when we say we love someone, do we mean what we say? What cost are we willing to pay for love? Anyone who believes in love, true love, should of necessity read Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
PS: Nevertheless, One Hundred Years of Solitude remains to be my favorite read of all time.
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