I saw a movie the other day, Love in the times of Cholera, by Mike Nell,in which I caught the following dialogue: “What’s wrong with love?”. Now I appreciate a piece of lyricism when I hear one, so if you’re interested in what makes a contemporary man interested in this kind of literature, you will have to turn to someone else. The original story, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, mesmerized us in such a way that it is hard to describe it in one single language. All I can say is: it’s like this and it’s like that—there are traditionalists for whom the story is paramount and so they resort to a straightforward narrative style and technique (Graciliano Ramos, João Cabral de Mello Neto), and there are writers who, committed to a specific subject, return to it book after book, and whose writing is characterized by highly wrought, polished styles and a worldview, sometimes even a dramaturgy, that is distinctly their own (Cortázar, Borges). Then there are the intrepid modernists, some of whom seem not to give a hoot about storylines, or stories for that matter, not even traditional literary forms—what’s more, not even grammatical rules—and for whom the act of writing is equal to the act of creating a new universe that did not exist before they set pen to paper. For them, not thoughts, but words are the stuff of prose (or poetry), or as Marquez has said, “My stories are made of the raw flesh of language.” Also, a while back I asked Arthur da Távola why he put something in a certain way, and he gave his famous smiling shrug and said, “I have no idea. That’s what the sentence wanted.” All of which implies that these modernists and postmodernists (oh, how they hate being called that!) conceive of literature in a radically new way. Once you read their works, life will move to a different rhythm, it will take on a different tone and hue, and you will be enriched by a new type of reading experience which calls for an interaction with the text that is often quite intense, if at times baffling. It is from this group of writers that I have chosen nine, hoping that their works will provide readers with a sense of what one exciting face of contemporary literature is like, and that once they have read these pieces and proceed to read others like it, they will be able to cry out, “Ah, if this isn’t Marquez-like, I’ll eat my hat!” I am, in short, hoping to present one exciting face of contemporary Colombian literature by having chosen and translated pieces that will speak for themselves and, as you read, will reveal their nature, and divulge what it is they share. Where they come from, and why, mainly.
I claim no form or standard of objectivity, except for one, which I shall leave for last, for when all is said and done, almost nothing is really objective. Which, considering that we are human beings, is nothing to hang our heads about. Subjectivity is the noblest form of self-expression, and informed subjectivity is the surest guarantee that we are pursuing the right path. That’s how we should understand the love story between Florentino ariza and Fermina Daza and how Marquez interwoven the lines ins a such delicate way that, by the end of the book, for those who can feel, the best thing to do is to cry for having or for not having lived such a beautiful and sweet story.
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LIVRO: "O Amor nos Tempos do Cólera", de Gabriel Garcia Marquez. É o livro mais lindo que já li, além de excepcionalmente bem traduzido pelo mestre Antonio Callado. Para quem não tem medo do amor. Veja: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6diEygozpXk&feature=related
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