Gabriel García Márquez will be forever remembered as the creator behind the vivid world of Macondo, a fictional town filled with gypsies on flying carpets, characters perpetually swarmed by yellow butterflies and women whose beautiful looks brought men immediately to their deaths. The prolific Colombian author penned the masterpieces “100 Years of Solitude,” “Love in the Time of Cholera” and “The General in His Labyrinth”—novels that lured readers in with Mr. García Márquez's signature style of magical realism and cemented the author’s place as an international literary titan.
Mr. García Márquez died of pneumonia last Thursday in his home in Mexico City. The loss resonated across the globe, including at the George Washington University, where Professor and Director of Spanish Literature Isabel Vergara teaches an entire seminar dedicated to Mr. García Márquez’s work. She spoke with George Washington Today about the profound influence Mr. García Márquez had on literature, and how he will continue to inspire scholars and writers for years to come.
Q: Mr. García Márquez is widely credited as the father of magical realism—a recent New York Times editorial by Salman Rushdie emphasizes the “real” aspects in his style that are often overlooked. Can you talk about the characteristics of the genre and why magic realism became such a force in Latin America in particular?
A: It can be argued that magic realism has existed in literature since medieval times. However, magic realism, as a literary genre, was introduced in Latin America by the Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier in the prologue of his novel, “The Kingdom of This World.” The novel narrates the slave revolt in the French colony of Saint-Dominique from 1791 to 1804, culminating with the elimination of slavery.
Mr. Carpentier invited Latin American writers to narrate the marvels of America, in opposition to a surrealistic Europe, focusing on its history, religion and everyday life. Mr. García Márquez interpreted Mr. Carpentier’s idea in his own terms, becoming the main exponent of the genre. He uses “imagination to enrich reality,” as Mr. Rushdie claims. Mr. García Márquez’s works are rooted in the “real” everyday life and in historical events that took place in Latin America, including colonization and civil wars.
Q: Although he was a native Colombian, countries throughout Latin America have held memorials for the author in the last week. What is it about Mr. García Márquez that made him such a beloved figure across borders?
A: Mr. García Márquez spoke a universal language in which everybody seems to be able to connect. People relate to him as a humanist and humorist but also to the common history and certain traits of his characters. He integrates private and public life, sexual desire and romantic love. His works were celebrated by academics and intellectuals, as well as by common people. People all over Latin America feel that they “came from Macondo,” and that human history is about repetition and change.
Q: How will Mr. García Márquez's influence continue to make a mark on literature?
A: He is a classical and world writer who will be read for many years to come. “One Hundred Years of Solitude” will last, just as “Don Quixote” has survived several centuries. There are many lessons to learn from his works and I will continue teaching them.
Q: Many of the tributes and eulogies in honor of the author have included favorite passages from his work. What is your own favorite line and why?
A: The last page of “100 Years of Solitude” amazes me, when Aureliano is reading his own story—and that of Macondo—in the manuscripts to discover that he is also going to disappear. He is dying as he is physically reading the manuscript. The family line comes to an end at the exact time as the foundations of the house. The precision of language, imagery and time are perfectly achieved.
“[Aureliano] was so absorbed that he didn’t feel the second surge of wind either as its cyclonic strength tore the doors and windows off their hinges, pulled off the roof of the east wing, and uprooted the foundations. Only then did he discover that Amaranta Ursula was not his sister but his aunt, and that Sir Francis Drake had attacked Riohacha only so that they could seek each other through the most intricate labyrinths of blood until they could engender the mythological animal that was to bring the line to an end.”