Book #8: Love in the Time of Cholera

Book #8: Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez (translated by Edith Grossman)

January 14, 2013

I hesitated to add this book to my list. Not because I felt like it wasn’t worth reading (it was), but because there was a part of me that felt like I wouldn’t be reading the “real” book, and that somehow, it wouldn’t “count.”

See, I studied translated poems in a course that I took on European literature in my undergrad days. I wasn’t into poetry until I read Baudelaire’s The Flowers of Evil (translated, of course, from the original French). This version had the originals and the translated poems, side-by-side. I imagine that translating poetry would be quite difficult; only a complete moron would think it’s as simple as translating each and every word. I even wrote an essay about how translations can change the message, the feel, of a poem, and it made me feel as though I had not really experienced Baudelaire, or Rilke, or Gogol, or any of the other foreign authors that we read that semester.

Now, okay, prose is different from poetry, and translators don’t necessarily have to worry about duplicating rhyme, meter, etc. But there are nuances in every language, things that just don’t translate, things that are culturally significant to the people who speak that language primarily. I have a lot of reverence for the complexities of language, because I struggled mightily when I took Level 1, 2, and 3 in 8^th, 9^th, and 10^th grades, respectively, switching to French 1 in 11^th for an “easy A” (which I got), but also because, after 3 years, I still couldn’t say or understand any more in Spanish than when I’d started. When I took three semesters of Spanish in college, I got my worst undergrad grade in Spanish 3 (a C…*shudder*). For whatever reason, I haven’t been able to learn another language. Not that I’ve put in the effort.

Anyway, I comfort myself in knowing that the author himself is still living (I was under the mistaken impression that this book was older than it was, and though it takes place many decades ago, it was published in my lifetime), so I would hope that any published translations in English would get run past him. Or something. I don’t know. But I’m going to shift gears dramatically here, and I am going to talk about…love.

This book is about love. At times it focuses on familial love: the love between Florentino Ariza and his unwed mother, the love that made Lorenzo Daza risk so much to give Fermina the life of a privileged young lady. But this book is mostly about romantic love, sexual love, love that lasts for only a moment and love that lasts for a lifetime. The story revolves around Florentino and Fermina, who meet when they are young (Fermina is only 14, and still in school, while Florentino is a young apprentice of sorts at the local post office). Florentino, an absolutely hopeless romantic, falls in love with her on first sight, and is in love with her for the rest of his life, even as they both love others.

There are many things that I do not like about Florentino. At the beginning of the book, as he is eating flowers (to the point of being physically sick) and mooning over Fermina, a girl whom he barely knows but loves desperately for all of his life, he seems like a complete sap. Though dramatics over romance is a part of Latin culture (the book takes place in an unnamed Caribbean city, though it could be speculated that it is in Columbia, where the author is from…apparently he is quite the Shakira fan), it is acknowledged in the text that Florentino is not normal.

Fermina is fascinated by this romantic young man, who plays a violin waltz that he wrote for her outside of her window and writes her passionate love letters, but she is very practical. My favorite line in the whole book is: “…she was also not convinced that love was really what she most needed to live.” This is in reflection on her marriage to Dr. Juvenal Urbino, a respected physician in their city whose innovations in urban hygiene kept the deadly cholera plague at bay. After Florentino waited for her for four years, after her father found out about her secret engagement to him and she was kicked out of her prestigious (and terribly strict) Catholic school and dragged her away on a many months-long trip to see relatives, she ultimately rejected Florentino. She married Dr. Urbino, even though she did not really love him…though she came to in time.

Meanwhile, Florentino becomes a ladies man. What bothers me about all of his relationships is how much suffering he caused…not meaning to, only wanting to find some relief from the ache of losing Fermina, but still. One woman, a married poet who kept pigeons, had her throat slashed by her husband when he saw the message that Florentino had painted teasingly on her stomach: This pussy is mine. Or Florentino’s last lover before he finally got to be with Fermina, a teenage student who was left in his care by her parents while she was at a local boarding school. He was in his 70s. After Florentino stopped sleeping with her, her grades dropped dramatically. When she learned of his relationship with Fermina, she killed herself.

When Florentino learned this, from a telegraph from his assistant (who he also loved, but never got to sleep with), he decided to forget it, put it out of his mind. In the end, he got what he’d spent years longing for, Fermina all to himself, on a private boat. Even though they are old, they are able to begin a love affair (to the chagrin of Fermina’s children), which is nice. But still, all the damage he caused…did Florentino deserve to get what he wanted in the end? I’m not entirely certain.

Fermina was not necessarily trapped in an unhappy marriage. Dr. Urbino did have an affair on her, and she left him for a couple of years, and they reunited happily. She seemed more bitter about growing old. The story seemed to tell a lot more about their earlier years, and their later years, while the middle years (from about mid-thirties to sixties) is somewhat blurred. She never loved Florentino during all of those years, but she did think about him, and wonder about rejecting him, even feeling a bit of guilt about it. But she reflected (more than once) that she did not regret marrying Dr. Urbino, and she was devastated at losing him.

Dr. Urbino, at the beginning of the book, makes some observations that imply that he has seen many people commit suicide because of love. He also observed that the symptoms of cholera sometimes resemble the symptoms of being “love sick.” Someone in the book, at some point (probably Florentino, but I’m not 100% sure) said that dying for love is the best way to die, or something to that effect. I don’t believe that, and I’m certain that Fermina would agree. Most of Florentino’s loves are fleeting in the book, though his love for Fermina never dies, even after more than half a century, even though she did not love him in return.

I was very drawn into this book…not so much for the love story itself (being the obnoxiously practical person that I am), but for the author’s descriptions of the unnamed city. I love books that take place in exotic settings. I would have wanted to know more about the struggles between the “Conservatives” and the “Liberals” that, while so much a part of the book, is really not explored in depth. I also would be interested in knowing the class system in this city, which was still so traditional even during a time of dramatic change. I would imagine that the elite (like the Urbino family) were light-skinned, of European descent. Some mention is made of natives and black people, and while their place in this society was not clearly defined, some remarks were made by characters to imply that black or “mixed” people were considered in a lower class (Fermina in particular made disparaging remarks about black women, especially when learning that her husband’s mistress was a “mulatto”).

I will admit that this book forced me to reflect on the romantic love (or too often, lack thereof) that I have experienced in my life. I’ve had my heart broken twice, when I was 17 and when I was 18. I have guarded my heart since then, and though I do want to find love (even just a physical love, like the many, many, many, many relationships that Florentino had in the book), I still feel like I am too vulnerable, for some reason. But I’ll keep in mind that my life won’t wait for me, and I won’t be young forever. It’s never too late to find love, would be a major message in this book…but why wait if you don’t have to?

(to the left) A parrot. There's a lot of bird imagery used in this book. Dr. Urbino dies trying to catch his pet parrot while it's sitting on a tree branch. The prostitutes who Florentino befriends are called "birds of the port." 

(to the left) Jason Radnor as Ted Mosby on How I Met Your Mother. In one episode, it is revealed that Love in the Time of Cholera is his favorite book. He is a hopeless romantic himself, and, much like Florentino, has many love affairs in an effort to find love. Unlike Florentino, he is not trying in vain to replace a love that he cannot have, but rather trying to find his true love (which we know happens...I mean, hello, that is the premise of the show!). There are some cute moments in this show, and some very funny ones, but I have not been fond of the more recent episodes. The actors just look too old to be as silly as they are. Except NPH...that guy is absolutely ageless.