Marquez is a master of the minutiae of love. From the first two chapters the readers are given two perspectives of love—both in different stages of life and time. Love between the elderly is different love than between two young hearts and Marquez exquisitely expresses the difference.
Love between the elderly is out of comfort, security, and dependence. Fermina Daza and Dr. Urbino had been married for half a century when he accidentally died. In their elderly years Fermina had to dress Urbino every morning and while “at first she had done it for love,” later she was “obliged to do it” because the Dr. could no longer dress himself. She felt a motherly tenderness towards him instead of the fiery passion of youth’s love. I have seen and experienced that after the initial stages of passion, love evens out to a comfortable, protective form of caring.
The security a long life of love offers is the most reassuring feeling. One’s significant other because a constant in their life, something that should be unchanging. However, lovers can forget the value of this constant. As the saying goes, “You only miss something when it’s gone.” Fermina and Urbino’s epic fight over a bar of soap was their worst argument in fifty years of marriage. This battle almost separated them forever; however when their threats were close to becoming reality Urbino admitted his faults and confessed that “there was soap” at the fear of losing his other half. That confession was all Fermina needed to take him back into her heart.
The most endearing thought Fermina Daza had was after her husband’s death. She lay in bed as she always did with her husband, however this time “the weight of the other body on the other side” was missing. This detail wrenched my heart. The simple presence of a loved one’s existence is enough to send the heart and mind into a frenzy. But the absence of the weight of a loved one can do the same. After feeling Urbino’s weight on the other side of her bed for fifty years, its absence was a physical reminder that he was lost forever.
Although Fermina and Urbino’s love leveled out over the years and became a nuisance rather than a pleasure, Fermina “loved him despite all their doubts” and had an “irresistible longing to begin life with him over again so that they could say what they had left unsaid and do everything right that they had done badly in the past.” The sudden realization that a constant in one’s life is gone is like pulling a crutch from someone with a broken leg. My own experience with love and the loss of love makes this episode very relatable.
The second form of love presented is the love between new, young lovers. Fermina at the tender age of thirteen has no conception of the “love” between a man and a woman. She is endeared that a stranger loves her. The novelty of love is what really attracted her to Florentino. She was naive and easy to persuade, and so Florentino stalked and captured her heart. While Florentino serenaded her with his violin in the velvety darkness of night, her love was too idealized while Florentino’s love was too real. After their separation and anguish, Fermina and Florentino meet again. However at the mere sight of Florentino, a man she loved through letters and casual meetings, she “erased him from her life with a wave of her hand.” She dismissed his love without giving it a real chance. Their long-distance relationship, years of separation, and Fermina Daza’s growth and realization that one can be happy without love broke their relationship piece by piece. Like a crumbling wall, stones were slowly removed, till the entire structure came down with one swift end.
Not to delve too deeply into my personal life, I can say that my experience with love was eerily similar to what I have read so far. I’ve experienced the excitement of the novelty of finding love. I’ve experienced the comfort and security of (somewhat) aged love. And I’ve experienced the gradual loss of love as well as the rapid realization that a constant in my life is gone. Everyone encounters love in their lifetime and Marquez speaks the blunt language of the heart.
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1 comment:
Deeps--two thoughts:
1. I hadn't really made a point of it in class, but you're right that the structure of the novel, especially that of moving from the doctor's last day to the first meeting of Fermina and Florentino, puts side by side the differences between old love and young love.
2. No, you certainly don't need to put your own history into your blog, but I think most readers recognize some parts of themselves in one or more of the characters a few times along the way as they read this novel.
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