As the singer Mickey and Sylvia’s 1956 hit single Strange Love told us, love is strange. Love will become more and more strange as we grow up, until at a certain moment, death comes into our vision. At that time, we will be trapped in the few hours left, but at the same time, we continue to discuss a game about eternity. That is, at that moment, our attitude towards those love songs, love novels, soap operas and any declaration of young people with the theme of love became increasingly impatient, even unbearable.
At the same time, without the construction of romantic love and the hope of adolescence before death, where would we be? At least it will be far away from the branches of life. Assuming that it is feasible to take the oath of eternal love, is it also possible to fulfill this oath throughout his life, build this long, rich and true life on this oath, and pour his only precious time into his heart? This is the bold assumption put forward by Marquez in his new book “Love in the Period of Cholera”. He realized this assumption in the book and successfully realized it.
In the post-romantic trend of thought in the 1970s and 1980s, everyone was brainwashed and even had extreme fear of love. Love was once a popular word that fascinated a generation, but now any writer should have enough courage to take this step, write in the language of love, and take the theme of love seriously, although love is sometimes stupid and ambiguous, and it is no longer popular. That is to say, this theme is worth using the more advanced word game that is valued in fictional literature. For Marquez, this step is also revolutionary. He once said in a conversation with his journalist friend Plinio Mendoza [who published the Fragrance of Guava with Marquez (1982)]: “I think novels about love are as valuable as other novels. A writer’s real duty – in other words, that revolutionary duty is to write well.”
So, did he write well? Marquez wrote with enthusiasm, but not excessive, and with a kind of almost crazy tranquility: we have seen the typical Marquex-style voice in another novel of him, but now this voice is more mature. After discovering many new resources, it has reached a new level – both classical and casual, both fuzzy and clean, laughing and cursing, anger and sorrow, both allegory, It is also a ballad, and once awakened, the voice will soar and sing heartily, just like the hot air balloon trip at the turn of the century described below:
“Like God, they looked down from the sky at the ruins of the heroic ancient city of Cartagena, which is the most beautiful city in the world. For three hundred years, its residents have resisted all kinds of encirclement by the British army and the relentless invasion of pirates, but now they abandoned it because of the fear of cholera. They saw intact city walls, grassy streets, ancient castles engulfed by pansies, marble palaces, and worshipped those who were in armor due to the plague The rotten golden altar of successive governors. ”
Edith Grossman paid special attention to this principle when translating “Love in the Age of Cholera”. She was very sensitive and imaginative to cater to the author’s changeable voice. My Spanish is not good, but I can see that she has kept up with the pace of Marquez’s writing and mastered the transparency of his writing with no effort. She vividly translated the slang and elegant words he used, as well as those lyrical chapters and words that Marquez likes to use to imply that the end of our sentence hit the point.
For a moment, in his early career in the river transportation company, Florentino could not write a simple business letter without those romantic poems. He discussed his problem with his uncle Leon XII, the operator of the river transportation company. He defended himself and said, “The only thing I am interested in is love.”
“Unfortunately,” my uncle said to him, “there is no love without river luck.” For Florentino, this happened to be the fact: his life path was shaped by two landmark river voyages, which were separated by half a century. In the first part of the voyage, he made the decision to return to Fermina’s city and live there permanently. In the second part of the voyage, he crossed the desolate land and started a love journey against time with Fermina. I have never read such an amazing ending again. Its rhythm and vitality are like symphony, and its rhythm is like a boat sailing in a river. The author of this chapter, who is also the navigator of our voyage, has guided us through our life experience, sailing on the river we all know, and shuttling between suspicion and compassion without losing our way. If there is no sailing on this river, there will be no love. It is against the current of this river that the effort to return is worthy of respect and memory: the best products of such sailing are those works that return our broken souls to us, and this undoubtedly includes the dazzling and heartbreaking novel “Love during Cholera”.
