Writing of Love in the Letters of Separation In Love in The Time of Cholera (1985[1988]) By Gabriel Garcia Marquez

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Writing of Love in the Letters of Separation In Love in The Time of Cholera (1985[1988]) By Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Journal Title: International Journal of English and Literature (IJEL) - Year 2018, Vol 8, Issue 1

Abstract

A ‘writerly’ production, Love in the Time of Cholera by Marquez with its love letters invites the reader as a producer of the text, as a co-author to investigate the infinite possibilities of the dimensions of love as dramatised in the novel. Love in the Time of Cholera is a profound love story, an ode to unrequited love and its extraordinary final consummation, an investigation of a rejected lover’s obsession, a saga of the day to day happenings of a marriage based on the idea of stability and a pluralistic delineation of love as sickness and obsession has not been seen from the perspective of “ourselves writing” (Barthes 1973:5). In this paper I argue for a re-reading of the text for ‘rewriting’ it and for placing the reader as not the producer of the meaning, “but merely a privileged site where meanings interweave.” (Stafford & McManus 2004:78). Florentino Ariza falls in love with the young Fermina Daza and expresses his love through letters and telegrams for fifty one year, nine months and four days. His letters are ‘a dictionary of compliments, inspired by books he had learned by heart because he had read them so often’ (Marquez LTC 40, quoted in Simpson LRB 1988). On the other hand, the letters of the young Juvenal Urbino are seen by Fermina as “brief and proper” (Marquez LTC 82-83) and she is “impressed by [their] simplicity and seriousness” and recognises that they are written with “a physician’s handwriting.” (Ibid.) The romance of Florentina Ariza and Fermina Daza continues before the time she gets married to Dr. Juvenal Urbino, but Florentino Ariza’s one-sided epistolary romance continues until after Fermina Daza’s husband’s death, when Florentino Ariza declares his love to Fermina Daza. As septuagenarians, they go together on a ship and their love goes on and when the Captain of the ship asks and Ariza replies, “Forever” (Marquez LTC 228). The novel with its dynamic and spiral narrative unfolds a complex love triangle, with its rich language. The very opening line of the novel: “It was inevitable...” (Marquez LTC 7) is ironical in its foreshadowing of a plot that is open-ended and unpredictable. It has been remarked in a brilliant study by Bell (1993: 50) that, letters have been used as a “central narrative device defining the emotional ambivalence” of Florentino Ariza but the textual evidences suggest that Ariza does not reflect any ambivalence but shows singular devotion to meet Fermina Daza through the half century of his interminable waiting. Against this background the paper will investigate, how the different aspects of love are manifested through letters in Love in the Time of Cholera. The paper will further explore the different aspects in Florentino Ariza’s choices of relationships for survival for a prospective union with Fermina Daza for which, he has been waiting so long.

Authors and Affiliations

ANIL KUMAR PRASAD

Keywords

Writerly Letters Spiral Narrative Foreshadowing & Ourselves Writing

EP ID EP277659
DOI 10.24247/ijelfeb20182
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