The Depressing and Dignifying Everyday Life in the novel «Love in the Time of Cholera» by Gabriel García Márquez

Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel is about love and cholera, as the title suggests. However, the plot is far from either. Garcia Marquez created a life story of two characters that slowly passes in a provincial Colombian town on the bank of the Magdalena River at a time of a cholera epidemic. He showed how truly incredible miracles can happen in the «quiet story» of everyday life. Love in the novel is not a loud drama, but a titanic effort of the soul against the despondency of everyday life, the «cholera» of the time and conventions, in which the characters live for decades. Everyday life is the contradictory duality of life itself, which is inextricably linked to death: life can de joyful or sad, happy or unhappy, successful or unsuccessful. Social dichotomies of the time, such as poverty vs. richness, traditional vs. bourgeois lifestyles, rational vs. irrational actions permeate the everyday life of the characters. The poles of life form rigid dichotomies of thought patterns and behavior, i.e. decent and indecent, acceptable and unacceptable, permissible and impermissible, etc. Conventions, restrictions and barriers separate the characters like cordons sanitaires. Each character has their own destiny and remembers their first love in their own way. The paradoxical essence of the novel is rooted in the contact of opposites, in the existential nature of life, which is the heart of the routine and the sublime at the same time. Dichotomies have no power over love, and real life eschews their dubious oppositions. This is where the path to Garcia Marquez’s magical realism begins, with everyday life becoming mystical. The ambivalence of everyday life and the symbolism inherent in it are key to unraveling the novel. Garcia Marquez deliberately creates a monotonous narrative so that love can shine through the layers of time. Love is not a passion, but the air of the novel, which the characters and the reader breathe, while everyday life is not a background, but a protagonist, which the alchemical actions of the author transform into eternity, opening unknown horizons of love at all times of life, even during the «cholera».

1. Астахова Е.В. (2023) Испания как метафора, Москва, МГИМО-Университет, 287 с.

2. Astakhova E.V. (2023) Ispaniya kak metafora [Spain as a metaphor], Moscow, MGIMOUniversitet, 287 p. (In Russian)

3. Мальковская И.А. (2022) Чума как фон литературного повествования (Габриэль Гарсиа Маркес: «Любовь во время чумы»), Россия и Ибероамерика в глобализирующемся мире: история и современность: Доклады V международного форума, Санкт-Петербург, 04–06 октября 2021 года, под ред. В.Л. Хейфеца, Л.С. Хейфеца, Санкт-Петербург, Скифия-принт, с. 394–398.

4. Malkovskaya I.A. (2022) Chuma kak fon literaturnogo povestvovaniya (Gabriel' Garsia Markes: «Lyubov' vo vremya chumy») [The Plague as а Background of Literary Narrative (Gabriel Garcia Marquez: «Love In The Time Of Plague»)], Rossiya i Iberoamerika v globaliziruyushchemsya mire: istoriya i sovremennost': Doklady V mezhdunarodnogo foruma, Sankt-Peterburg, 04–06 oktyabrya 2021 goda [Russia and Iberoamerica in a Globalizing World: History and Modernity: Papers of the Vth International Forum, St. Petersburg, October 4–6, 2021],

5. V.L. Kheifets, L.S. Kheifets (eds.), Saint Petersburg, Skifiya-print, pp. 394–398. (In Russian)

6. Мамардашвили М.К. (1995) Лекции о Прусте (Психологическая топология пути), Москва, Ad Marginem, 548 с.

7. Mamardashvili M.K. (1995) Lektsii o Pruste (Psikhologicheskaya topologiya puti) [Lectures on Proust (Psychological Topology of Path)], Moscow, Ad Marginem, 548 p. (In Russian)

8. Плужникова К.Н. (2013) Эволюция поэтики чуда в творчестве Габриэля Гарсиа Маркеса в 1990–2000-х гг., автореф. дис. канд. филол. наук, Москва, 22 с.

9. Pluzhnikova K.N. (2013) Evolyutsiya poetiki chuda v tvorchestve Gabrielya Garsia Markesa v 1990–2000-kh gg. [The evolution of the poetics of wonder in the works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez in the 1990s and 2000s], PhD Thesis Abstract, Moscow, 22 p. (In Russian)

10. Трубина Е.Г. (2011) Город в теории: опыты осмысления пространства, Москва, Новое литературное обозрение, 520 с.

11. Trubina E.G. (2011) Gorod v teorii: opyty osmysleniya prostranstva [The city in theory: experiences of understanding space], Moscow, Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 520 p. (In Russian)

12. Aptekar L. (1988) The Street Children of Colombia: How Families Define the Nature of Childhood, International Journal of Sociology of the Family, vol. 18, no. 2, pp. 283–295.

13. Braudel F. (1985) Civilization and Capitalism, 15th–18th Century. Vol. 1: The Structure of Everyday Life. The Limits of the Possible, London, William Collins Sons & Co., 624 p.

14. Escobar Villegas J. (2024) El río Magdalena como guardián de memoria y árbol de agua de Colombia en Los escogidos y Grávido río [The Magdalena River as Guardian of Memory and Water Tree of Colombia in Los escogidos and Grávido río], reCHERches, no. 32, pp. 169–179. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/11uz8 (In Spanish)

15. Gardiner M. (2000) Critiques of everyday life, New York, Routledge, 242 p.

16. González Pérez M. (coord.) (2011) Fiestas y nación en América Latina: las complejidades en algunos ceremoniales de Brasil, Bolivia, Colombia, México y Venezuela [Holidays and nation in Latin America: the complexities in some ceremonials of Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela], Bogotá, Cultura, 266 p. (In Spanish)

17. Gutiérrez Sierra E.J., Cunin E. (coord.) (2006) Fiestas y carnavales en Colombia: La puesta en escena de las identidades [Fiestas and carnivals in Colombia: The staging of identities], Medellín, Lealon, 236 p. (In Spanish)

18. Highmore B. (2002) Everyday Life and Cultural Theory: An Introduction, New York, Routledge, 200 р.