Stephen M. Hart - Gabriel García Márquez

Titles in the series Critical Lives present the work of leading cultural figures of the modern period. Each book explores the life of the artist, writer, philosopher or architect in question and relates it to their major works.

In the same series

Stephen M. Hart

REAKTION BOOKS

To Danyl, for putting up with me

Published by Reaktion Books Ltd
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First published 2010

Copyright Stephen M. Hart 2010

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Page references in the Photo Acknowledgements and
Index match the printed edition of this book.

Printed and bound in Great Britain

by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, Wiltshire

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Hart, Stephen M.

Gabriel Garca Mrquez. (Critical lives)

1. Garca Mrquez, Gabriel, 1928

2. Authors, Colombian 20th century Biography.

I. Title II. Series

863.6'4-DC22

eISBN: 9781780232423

Gabito on his first birthday.

Gabriel Jos Garca Mrquez was born at nine in the morning

The house in which Garca Mrquez lived with his grandparents, with its ghosts and stories, had a decisive impact on the young child. He clarified this in an interview with Plinio Apuleyo:

My most constant and vivid memory is not so much of the people but of the actual house in Aracataca where I lived with

His grandparents house would be a recurrent theme in Garca Mrquezs work indeed his first idea for a novel was called La casa (The House), and the first draft of this was the seed for the novel which made him famous when he was in his early forties, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967). Gabo slept in the house in a hammock and all night long the candles were lit next to the family saints which were as big as real people; they used to scare Gabo because he thought they were looking at him.

Servants abode in the grandparents house in Aracataca.

I visited the house in Aracataca in February 2009 and it has now been completely rebuilt based on the original plans.

Garca Mrquezs official biographer, Gerald Martin, gives a vivid image of what Tranquilina was like:

Dressed always in mourning or semi-mourning, and always on the verge of hysteria, Tranquilina floated through the house from dawn to dusk, singing, always trying to exude a calm and

The house in Aracataca had a patio garden where Tranquilina used to grow roses so she could make rose water to give to the children to keep them healthy. Margot remembers that Tranquilina was very superstitious:

In the house there was an immense garden with a small fountain where the frogs would congregate.... At night, when we heard a frog croaking, my grandmother would say: That must be a witch; thats Nicolasito whos got a woman and shes sent me a witch. Our grandfather would go down to the workshop, heat up the pincers until they were red hot and he would catch the poor frog with them to kill it.

The curious part of this anecdote is that it demonstrates that Tranquilinas superstitions were anything but innocent, for they were based on the knowledge that her husband was carrying on with other women (of which more later): in this case her use of superstition was an indirect way of castigating her husband for his waywardness. Likewise indicative of how this critique had hit home is the fact that the grandfather would kill the offending witch, in effect paying penance for his adultery. It was a ritual played out within the displaced language of superstition.

Martin gives the following description of Garca Mrquezs grandfather: He was sixty-three when Gabito was born, quite European-looking, like his wife, stocky, of average height with a broad forehead, balding and with a thick moustache. He wore gold-rimmed glasses and by that time was blind in the right eye

One can speculate that it was during this time that the young Gabito first became aware of the existence of illegitimate children within his grandfathers extended family. It is clear that a number of episodes such as the touching of ice in the United Fruit Company Shop across the road, the stories his grandfather used to tell about the War of a Thousand Days, and his grandmothers supernatural tales were the soil in which his magical-realist style would later flourish but there was, I will be arguing, one further element which would become the matrix of his early and later fiction. This was the discovery of the double life of Colonel Mrquez. A colonel who had seen distinguished service in the War of a Thousand Days, he was the mayor and treasurer of Aracataca, an upright and wealthy member of the Aracataca elite; yet he still managed to father between nine and nineteen (probably twelve) illegitimate children,