Noticias
Second anniversary of the Colombian writer´s death on April 17th
One Hundred Years of Solitude, an eternal ship through which García Márquez will always remain alive
April 14, 2016The Nobel Prize in Literature Colombian Gabriel García Márquez (Aracataca, Colombia March 6th, 1927-Mexico City, April 17th, 2014) was one of the main voices who predicted the omnipresence of Latin American culture throughout the world, an aspect that was reflected in a latent work, full of passion, archetypes and so familiar faces to our identity that it seems that there was a Buendia in each family of the Latin American region.
"The young spirit of Latin America beats in my heart as the heart of a goalkeeper”, the writer who melted with a thousand faces in each of his books, once said, "bridges to understand the earth, the roots and myself " he confessed to his friends of Barranquilla with whom he began his first steps in literature and journalism with the magazine Mito.
It is hard to imagine that years later, when in mid-1966 García Márquez ended One Hundred Years of Solitude, he had to line up with his wife for several hours in the Monte de Piedad of historic center of Mexico City to pawn the dryer, the blender and the heater, and pay the correspondence of the manuscript to the Argentinian publishing house, Sudamericana.
At that time, his wife, Mercedes Barcha, better known as La Gaba said, "Hey, Gabo, now the only thing missing is that this novel is bad".
Within a few days, the publishing managers responded him with a contract and an unprecedented advance in Latin America, $ 500,000. With that money they would eventually finish their economic hardships. In Mexico, One Hundred Years of Solitude was not only enthusiastically received by Carlos Fuentes and other Gabo’s friends, but by the readers when it was released on May 30th, 1967.
Fifteen days later, a second edition of 10,000 copies was prepared, while there was a great demand throughout Latin America. In Mexico 20,000 copies were requested and foreign countries wanted to publish it in their own language. Everyone spoke of the novel illustrated by Vicente Rojo. In just three years 600,000 copies were sold and in eight, two million, the rest is history.
But where did the source come from to create such a literary work? Perhaps from those images and archetypal passages that the writer saw and lived during his childhood and adolescence in his native Colombia.
One of his aunts, Francisca, liked knitting. Every day the child Gabriel asked about that quilt to which she had devoted several months of work. The woman replied that it was a magic carpet to travel. The day the child Gabriel saw the fabric finished was at Francisca’s funeral. It was the mortuary sheet with which she had asked to be wrapped up shortly before committing suicide.
His parents moved to Riohacha because of work reasons and Gabriel was under the care of his grandfather, former colonel Nicolás Márquez, who would inspire some of the characters in his books.
Everyday Gabriel bombarded his grandfather with questions about existence, life and death, about people who seemed to suffer so much still having everything. Who invented the tears, grandpa? Is the moon the night eye of God? Why if gold cause so much misery among men, it is not buried forever in a grave in the desert?
The former colonel always answered with entertaining fables and simple stories with a moral that, unknowingly, would form the main literary influence of his grandson’s future work. Gabriel grew up almost 10 years with the old man, who would be responsible that his grandson knew the ABC of human nature, with all its joys, its hates, its passions and his curiosity to sail seas and explore inhospitable territories.
The young Gabriel missed the absence of his grandfather in his adolescence when he was sent to two boarding schools to pursue basic education and high school, missing the warm breeze of Aracataca.
The young Gabriel took refuge in adventure books such as Journey to the Center of the Earth, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, From the Earth to the Moon, Moby Dick, but especially in Emilio Salgari’s universes, whom he recognized many times as his first warm and unconditional friend at that period that went from high school to college.
In the taverns near the college, he met young poets, artists, bohemians and idealists, like Álvaro Mutis, Plinio Apuleyo and Camilo Torres, who encouraged him to guide those stories that he dedicated every night a couple of hours.
Ironically his first writings were confiscated and burned by the police after inspecting the student pension where he resided because of the turbulent political years and guerrillas lived in Colombia. However, some drafts were saved and the outline of a novel which at the beginning he entitled La casa (The house) and years later was known as La Hojarasca (Leaf Storm).
Gabriel García Márquez decided to abandon the career of law and devote himself to writing. He started working as a reporter for the newspapers El Universal and El Heraldo of Barranquilla. When passing through the editorial departments, Gabriel devoured bought and borrowed books by Albert Camus, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Franz Kafka and William Faulkner, which were piled up like Babylonian towers in his small room of the pension crowed of mice, cockroaches and bedbugs.
He was sent to Italy to cover the news of sick Pope Pius XII succession. He took advantage of his stay in Rome to enroll in the Experimental Film Center (oldest film school in W. E.) and decided to stay in Europe for a period of time backpacking around Germany, Hungary, Poland and Russia, but unlike many Latin American travelers who considered Europe as a mythical territory, Gabriel’s vision regarding those beautiful cities with all its developed cultures and social structures, was rather critical.
After his stay in Europe and the newspaper El Espectador where he worked, was forced to close its doors, García Márquez traveled to Mexico City in the late fifties, a fact that was described by himself as “the crash between the guava and the chili to give way to a new flavor. "
Our country was basic in Gabo’s life "without the memories that Mexico inspired me I could never have written One Hundred Years of Solitude”, he confessed to his closest friends on several ocassions.
The poet and writer Álvaro Mutis became his guide on Mexican soil when he and Mercedes arrived with 3 year old young Rodrigo and stayed at the Bonampak building on calle Mérida in Colonia Roma and then at Renan 21, in Colonia Anzures, which was furnished only with a double mattress on the floor, a table, two chairs and a crib for the little, Rodrigo. After three years his son, Gonzalo was born in Mexico.
Finding work was difficult, even though when Mutis and other friends such as Juan García Ponce, promoted him right and left as one of the strongest Latin American authors.
Mercedes had a habit of not interrupting Gabo when he wrote, despite the increasingly precarious economic situation. They were in debt with the landlord up to six months of rent and a similar amount to the butcher. She had to pawn the jewelry, the TV and other devices, and even she requested a loan for the Opel white car purchased with the latest savings from the given award for La mala hora (The bad time)
His first contact with Mexican literature was thanks to two books that Álvaro Mutis brought him, titled Pedro Páramo and El llano en llamas. "You have to read it in order to learn how to write”, his friend told him, without knowing the impact it had on Gabriel, who was stunned with Juan Rulfo’s richness of style.
He made the first reading of both books in just two days and since then he carried like a Bible in his jacket pocket to recite whole sentences and paragraphs to every friend.
But at the same time of that first approach with national authors, the debts piled up every day, the landlord knocked on the door in an increasingly rude manner and Gabriel agreed to make contributions for the magazine, Universidad de México and thanks to his friend Max Aub, then director of Radio Universidad, he had a series of spoken interventions for the station.
When Gonzalo, his second son, was born in 1962, the Colombian received the expected overdue royalties of his novels, El coronel no tiene quien le escriba, (No One Writes to the Colonel), Los funerales de mamá grande, (Big Mama's Funeral) and La mala hora (The bad time), and with that money he moved from the department of Colonia Anzures to a more comfortable house in Iztaccihuatl 88, Colonia Florida.
One day, Alvaro Mutis took him aboard an old red Ford to Veracruz, telling him he was going to travel to a Mexican paradise, which closely resembled his homeland. The writer was in love of that place at first sight and decided to settle with his family in that warm region soon. Looking at the jarocho sunny landscapes, he had the vision of his country and, even more, of an epic, archetypal and fantastic story developed in the Latin American context, as a testimony to its complexity, richness and diversity of cultures. Gabriel began to write One Hundred Years of Solitude.
He typed furiously on his typewriter for more than 14 months. He moved away completely from social and intellectual gatherings. During the process of creation One Hundred Years of Solitude, he suffered from severe headaches that will not leave him alone until he concluded. Some time later he confessed: "I was possessed, as if my whole body and my soul were colonized by the novel".
His sons, Rodrigo and Gonzalo, went to his father’s studio only at lunchtime or when Gabriel interrupted the book to take to them to the park to clear his head. But even so he could not separate from the plot of the legendary family who lived in Macondo. He got to the point of suffering first hand the death of the character, Aureliano Buendia.
That afternoon he went to the bedroom where Mercedes slept and told her the Colonel’s death. He laid down beside her and cried for two hours. When he completed One Hundred Years of Solitude in mid 1966, he felt confused, naked, wondering aloud what would he do next.
The original chapters were read, among others, by the literary critic Emmanuel Carballo, who immediately assured he met a masterpiece. The rest is history. That book established García Márquez in the spirit of Latin America and the world, being rediscovered by new readers.
The writer Carlos Fuentes said: "One Hundred Years of Solitude is more than a novel, it's a family book for the Latin American literary tradition, an eternal ship through which Gabriel García Márquez will always remain alive among us".
Mexico,Distrito Federal
