Part 10 (1/2)

Despite all his success and his exciting activities in Cuba, these were exceptionally difficult years for Garcia Marquez Even he had to recognize that perhaps he had taken on too y too thin He found hiht and involved in numerous polemics and controversies for which he had little appetite at this time, not to mention a nuossip which were not entirely becoe In March 1988 he celebrated both his sixtieth birthday and his and Mercedes's thirtieth wedding anniversary (21 April) in Mexico City and Cuernavaca Belisario Betancur and thirty other friends from all over the world were in attendance Much fun was had in the Colombian press as to whether it was Garcia Marquez's sixtieth or sixty-first birthday-it was his sixty-first, of course-including headlines like ”Garcia Marquez sixty again,” and he would not be able to continue with the farce of this deception forthe blurb writers at his publishers, would continue to use a 1928 birth date until the publication of Living to Tell the Tale Living to Tell the Tale in 2002, and some even beyond that in 2002, and some even beyond that

It was this month also that he published his much reprinted, definitive-hu the Word,” in which he stressed Castro's verbal rather than military attributes He referred to his friend's ”iron discipline” and ”terrible power of seduction” He said it was ”impossible to conceive of anyone more addicted to the habit of conversation” and that when Castro eary of talking ”he rests by talking”; he was also a ”voracious reader” He revealed that Fidel was ”one of the rare Cubans who neither sings nor dances” and admitted, ”I do not think anyone in this world could be a worse loser” But the Cuban leader was also ”a man of austere ways and insatiable illusions, with an old-fashi+oned formal education, of cautious words and delicate reatest idealists of our tih it has also been his greatest danger” Yet when Garcia Marquez asked hireat leader had replied: ”Hang around on some street corner”23 Now came a temporary turn to the theatre In January 1988 it was announced that the Argentinian actress Graciela Dufau would be starring in an adaptation of a brief work by Garcia Marquez entitled Diatribe of Love Against a Seated Man Diatribe of Love Against a Seated Man24 Garcia Marquez would say that the play was a Garcia Marquez would say that the play was a cantaleta cantaleta, a repetitive, nagging rant, a word that iets no answer from the object of her attentions, nor does she expect one (Throughout his adult life Garcia Marquez had always said that there was no point arguing omen) This theme, this form, had obsessed Garcia Marquez for many years and indeed one of his early ideas for The Autumn of the Patriarch The Autuainst the dictator by one of the ainst the dictator by one of the main women in his life25 The premiere in the Cervantes Theatre in Buenos Aires had to be delayed froust 1988 In the end Garcia Marquez, too anxious-”as nervous as a debutante,” in his oords-to cope with the stress of confronting a live performance of his work, remained in Havana and sent Mercedes, Caruel to face the critics of Buenos Aires, thein Latin America The whole of Buenos Aires's ”political and cultural world” was in attendance, including several government ministers The notable absences were President Alfonsin and the distinguished playwright hireat theatre in Buenos Aires did not repeat the previous experience of 1967 The play received noovation Reviews from the Buenos Aires draative A typical reaction caht La Nacion: La Nacion: ”It is difficult to recognize the author of ”It is difficult to recognize the author of One Hundred Years of Solitude One Hundred Years of Solitude in this longhappy without loveIt shows his coe It cannot be denied that in this longhappy without loveIt shows his coe It cannot be denied that Diatribe Diatribe is a superficial, repetitive and tedious melodrama” is a superficial, repetitive and tedious ue, is set, like Love in the Time of Cholera Love in the Tiena de Indias Graciela's first words, subtly changed since first quoted by Garcia Marquez, are: ”Nothing is e!” Novels have narrative irony built in but a play relies on dramatic irony, which needs a different kind of creative intuition, one for which he appears to have little feel Worse than this, though, worse even than the lack of dra flaw appears to be a deficit of serious reflection and analysis Like Love in the Time of Cholera Love in the Tiainst a Seated Man Diatribe of Love Against a Seated Man deals with marital conflict (as indeed had deals with marital conflict (as indeed had No One Writes to the Colonel No One Writes to the Colonel, over thirty years before);27 and the central proposition-that traditional e doesn't work for most women-is obviously an important one, albeit one that this sixty-year-old author was by now perhaps insufficiently ful way Sadly, and the central proposition-that traditional e doesn't work for most women-is obviously an important one, albeit one that this sixty-year-old author was by now perhaps insufficiently ful way Sadly, Diatribe of Love Against a Seated Man Diatribe of Love Against a Seated Man is a one-dimensional hich, unlike Love in the Tireat works about love Garcia Marquez had said not long before that he had never wanted to be a movie director because ”I don't like to lose” is a one-dimensional hich, unlike Love in the Tireat works about love Garcia Marquez had said not long before that he had never wanted to be a movie director because ”I don't like to lose”28 The theatre was an even riskier venture Here for once he had lost He would never try again The theatre was an even riskier venture Here for once he had lost He would never try again

AFTER THE TRIUMPHANT publication of publication of Love in the Ti, anguished sense of fragility which kept appearing in the un to act as if there were no lih level over a whole range of different activities Yet there were un Clandestine in Chile bore obvious traces of haste; Diatribe of Love Against a Seated Man Clandestine in Chile bore obvious traces of haste; Diatribe of Love Against a Seated Man was an experi on six film scripts simultaneously was perhaps too much for any man, added to all of which he had already started his nextless than a novel on Latin Aure of all time, Simon Bolivar was an experi on six film scripts simultaneously was perhaps too much for any man, added to all of which he had already started his nextless than a novel on Latin Aure of all time, Simon Bolivar

Garcia Marquez had been intensely committed to the politics and administration of the new film foundation and film school but he had devoted much less time in recent months to international politics and his conspiracies and rim, Cuba had seemed to be in one of its inning to change there too Garcia Marquez was about to find that his brief sabbatical froan to gather over both Cuba and Coloain for the rest of the century

In July 1987 he was the guest of honour at the Moscow Film Festival On the 11th he was received by Mikhail Gorbachev at the Kreed the radical reformist Soviet leader to travel to Latin America At this time Gorbachev was the most talked-about politician on the planet They discussed, so an official co carried out in the USSR, its international implications, the role of intellectuals and the transcendence of humanist values in the world today”29 Gorbachev said that in reading Garcia Marquez's books you could see there were no schemes, they were inspired by a love of humanity Garcia Marquez said that Gorbachev said that in reading Garcia Marquez's books you could see there were no schemes, they were inspired by a love of hulasnost and and perestroika perestroika were great words ie- of Fidel Castro-were sceptical, he said Was he sceptical himself? That he was in two minds about the outcome was shown by later comments in which he revealed that he had told Gorbachev he was anxious that soan, Thatcher, Pope John Paul II-ood faith and so there were dangers ahead He said it was obvious to him that Gorbachev was sincere and declared that for hi had been the reat words ie- of Fidel Castro-were sceptical, he said Was he sceptical himself? That he was in two minds about the outcome was shown by later comments in which he revealed that he had told Gorbachev he was anxious that soan, Thatcher, Pope John Paul II-ood faith and so there were dangers ahead He said it was obvious to him that Gorbachev was sincere and declared that for hi had been the most important event of his recent life30 For once heFor once he

Towards the end of the following year he finally came into intimate proximity with power in Mexico, the country in which he had lived for more than twenty years in total In December 1988 Carlos Salinas de Gortari became President and Garcia Marquez moved quickly to secure his relationshi+p with the new leader They would work closely together on international politics during the co years From Mexico he travelled to Caracas to attend Venezuelan Carlos Andres Perez's second inauguration-in fulfilment of a proht that the ht everon the Bolivar novel almost since the moment that he completed Love in the Tih all his novels had been based on an understanding of Latin Ah he had read widely about dictators and dictatorshi+p in order to write The Autumn of the Patriarch The Autumn of the Patriarch, he had never had to consider thehistory as such Now, because his central character was a historical actor, and one of the best-known ones at that, he felt that every event in his novel had to be verified historically and every thought, statement or foible of Bolivar's in the book had to be appropriately researched and contextualized This would involve not only personally reading dozens of books about Bolivar and his era and thousands of Bolivar's letters but also consulting a whole range of authorities, including several of the leading experts on the life and ti his Patriarch in the 1970s, Garcia Marquez had been free to choose whichever facet of whichever dictator he liked at any given moment in order to fashi+on a creative synthesis which would h every historian discovers, or invents, a different persona, the basic material was inevitably much more established and intractable, and he soon learned that for the historian each interpretative assertion has to be based on more than one, and inthat what appears in the eventual work is 32 Somehow he had to process that vast archive of information and yet maintain his own creative faculty so that Bolivar would somehow arise refreshed from the research rather than lie buried under a mountain of desiccated facts Somehow he had to process that vast archive of information and yet maintain his own creative faculty so that Bolivar would somehow arise refreshed from the research rather than lie buried under a h the Liberator had written or dictated ten thousand letters and there were innumerable memoirs written about him both by his own collaborators and others who ca his life, there hole swathes of time when little was known about what he was involved in, and the question of his private life-especially his love life-remained relatively open Moreover the sequence that most interested Garcia Marquez, for both personal and literary reasons-Bolivar's last journey down the Magdalena River-had been virtually untouched by either letters orthe novelist free to invent his own stories within the limits of historical verisimilitude

The novel would be dedicated to Alvaro Mutis, whose idea it was and who had even written a brief fragment of a first version, ”The Last Face,” when he was in prison in Mexico at the end of the 1950s Eventually Garcia Marquez got hi to finish the project and seized it for himself The title, The General in His Labyrinth The General in His Labyrinth, was established al of Garcia Marquez's research on the book

Simon Bolivar was born in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1783, a member of the Creole aristocracy At that time the whole of the continent ofcall Latin Aal, as it had for alland and France each controlled a few islands in the Caribbean Slavery existed in every Latin American country, as it did also in the recently independent United States of America By the time Bolivar died in 1830 almost the whole of Latin America had become independent of external powers and slavery had been officially condemned and in some cases abolished All of this owed le individual

Bolivar's father, a landowner, died when he o and a half; his e When he elve he rebelled against the uncle who had taken hiuez; after travelling in Europe hewoht months later At that moment he seems to have decided that it was his destiny to be alone in the world (He would never h he would be linked with dozens of wohty Ecuadorean mistress, Manuelita Saenz, herself by now a not inconsiderable legend, who saved his life onto Europe he was present at the coronation of Napoleon in Paris in December 1804; he was inspired by Napoleon's achievements as liberator of Europe but repelled by his decision tovowed to give his life to the liberation of the colonies held by Spain, he began a military career which eventually saw hihout the continent and the honourable title of Liberator All other leaders, even great generals such as San Martin, Sucre, Santander, Urdaneta and Paez, were consigned willy-nilly, one after another, to Bolivar's shadow

Beyond the matter of battles won and lost, when one considers the statistics of Bolivar'sthe raphy, the facts and figures of his twenty-year ca; yet he was never seriously wounded in battle His first e of twenty-nine; at the age of thirty he was proclaiht he was elected President of Colombia, which then included present-day Venezuela and Ecuador During this period he wrote some of the key documents of Latin American identity, most notably his Jaued that all Latin Aions had more similarities than differences and that the continent's mixed-race identity should be accepted and eued that all Latin Aions had more similarities than differences and that the continent's mixed-race identity should be accepted and embraced

Yet once the Spaniards were vanquished local leaders began to assert their local and regional interests and the fragan; anarchy, dictatorshi+p and disillusionic spectres on the horizon; and Bolivar's overriding dreaan to fade He became a nuisance, the voice of an iht never have been able to achieve the almost impossible feats which Bolivar had undertaken but they now considered themselves far more realistic than he in the post-emancipation situation The prime example was Colombia's Francisco de Paula Santander, Bolivar's neins at the moment when Bolivar has realized that there is no future for hi prestige, and begins the retreat frorandiose vision At forty-six years of age, ailing and disillusioned, the great Liberator sets off down the Magdalena River on his way towards exile, though Garcia Marquez suggests that Bolivar never finally gave up hope and was still intending to organize another expeditionary can of liberation, should that prove possible

The novel is in eight chapters, and falls, once more, into two halves The first half, chapters 1 to 4, narrates the journey down that great river that Garcia Marquez himself would travel, over a century later, on his way to school33 In Bolivar's case, this last journey took place between 8 and 23 May 1830 The second half, chapters 5 to 8, narrates Bolivar's last six months of life, 24 May to 17 December 1830, six months spent by the sea on that Costa which would later be the scene of Garcia Marquez's childhood and e Manrique's In Bolivar's case, this last journey took place between 8 and 23 May 1830 The second half, chapters 5 to 8, narrates Bolivar's last six months of life, 24 May to 17 December 1830, six months spent by the sea on that Costa which would later be the scene of Garcia Marquez's childhood and e Manrique's Verses on the Death of My Father Verses on the Death of My Father, composed at the end of the medieval period, is known above all for the line, ”Our lives are the rivers that flon into the sea which is death” And for one further verse which states that death is the ”trap,” the ”aht say, following Bolivar hih Garcia Marquez does not ic as Manrique's great poenifies power but the concept of ”the labyrinth” suggests before the work even begins that not even the powerful can control fate and destiny Of course such impotence may also imply exculpation of, even sympathy for, the powerful, which the infant Garcia Marquez may have felt when Colonel Nicolas Marquez was the only ”powerful”-protective, influential, respectable-person he knew Is his entire oeuvre in so on to that oldas a ”father” someone so old and vulnerable that the most important lesson you learn as a srandfather, must ”soon” die? Such a lesson teaches that all power is desirable, essential, yet frail, false, transient, illusory Garcia Marquez is almost alone in contemporary world literature in his obsession with, indeed his syh he has always been a socialist this permanent note of aristocratic identification, however much moderated by irony (or even moral condemnation), may explain why his books have an apparently inexplicable power of their own: tragedy, it goes without saying, is greater, wider and deeper when protagonists are aggrandised by power, by isolation, by solitude and, not least, by their influence on the lives of millions of people and history itself

By the time he wrote The General in His Labyrinth The General in His Labyrinth Garcia Marquez had long been closely acquainted with Fidel Castro, undoubtedly a leading candidate for the number two position-after Bolivar-in the list of Latin Aevity-almost half a century in power-Fidel Castro's record is difficult to deny And Fidel, Garcia Marquez once told ” Garcia Marquez himself, in contrast, has always insisted that he has neither the talent, the vocation nor the desire-still less the ability-to endure such solitude The solitude of the serious writer is enormous, he has always averred; but the solitude of the political Great Leader is of quite another order Nevertheless here, in this novel, although Bolivar's character is, undoubtedly, based factually on that of the Liberator, many of his foibles and vulnerabilities are a combination of Bolivar's, Castro's and Garcia Marquez's own Garcia Marquez had long been closely acquainted with Fidel Castro, undoubtedly a leading candidate for the number two position-after Bolivar-in the list of Latin Aevity-almost half a century in power-Fidel Castro's record is difficult to deny And Fidel, Garcia Marquez once told ” Garcia Marquez himself, in contrast, has always insisted that he has neither the talent, the vocation nor the desire-still less the ability-to endure such solitude The solitude of the serious writer is enormous, he has always averred; but the solitude of the political Great Leader is of quite another order Nevertheless here, in this novel, although Bolivar's character is, undoubtedly, based factually on that of the Liberator, many of his foibles and vulnerabilities are a combination of Bolivar's, Castro's and Garcia Marquez's own

The central subject, then, is power, not tyranny In other words, Garcia Marquez's books are sometimes seen from the side of the powerful, sometimes from the side of the powerless, but they are not priainst tyrants or the ”ruling class”-unlike hundreds of protest novels written within the main current of Latin American literary narrative His constant themes, constantly interwoven, are the irony of history (especially power turning to i to death), fate, destiny, chance, luck, foreboding, presentiment, coincidence, synchronicity, dreas, the body, will and the enigma of the human subject His titles frequently refer to power (Colonel, Patriarch, General, Big Maed in some way (”no one writes,” ”solitude,” ”autu”), and to the different forms of representation of reality as related to the different ways of conceiving and organizing time into history or narrative (”no one writes,” ”one hundred years,” ”time of,” ”chronicle of,” ”news of,” ”memoir of”) His works al, which is, of course, merely the other side of power, the experience of the ih this novel, for exaota, then fro pohile pretending to hi, least of all this life, though nothing can delay that inevitable departure So waiting is again a huge the (which the powerful-Castro, for exaer the his departure fro reality, death )

Some of the impetus for the book must have come from Garcia Marquez's work on his nobel Prize speech in which, like others before him, he felt it incumbent upon himself to speak as a representative not of one country but of a whole continent Much of what he said on that occasion was tacitly ”Bolivarian” and ain in the novel; indeed, the nobel speech provides indispensable background to a reading and interpretation of the work This is all the more ironic since Garcia Marquez, as we have seen, was very slow to co his stay in Europe Only after visiting both the centre of capitalism and the centre of communism did he come to see that, despite his moral and theoretical attraction to socialism, neither system was the answer for Latin America because in practice both systems functioned primarily in the interests of the countries that advocated them Latin America had to look after itself; and thus had to unify Bolivar in the novel has trenchant views about the different European nationalities, favouring the British, of course, given the assistance Great Britain gave at that time to the South American liberation movements; the French come out badly; and the United States, in Bolivar's oords, is ”omnipotent and terrible, and its tale of liberty will end in a plague of miseries for us all”

Such are the themes involved in the book and the central problems which structure it But no matter how much research Garcia Marquez had put into it, no n and the literary architecture which supported it, the novel would have failed absolutely if the central character had not come alive And he does Garcia Marquez takes on the ives his own version, with breathtaking audacity and astonishi+ng naturalness Though this is certainly not his greatest work it nitude of the challenge is there for all to see Any reader fa this book, is likely to conclude that Garcia Marquez's version of thethe whole of the life within the journey completed in the last six months of it, will henceforth be inseparable froe of Bolivar is carried down to posterity