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Gabriel García Márquez

Gabriel José García Márquez was born in Aracataca (Magdalena State) on March 6, 1927. He is a journalist and writer who won the Nobel Prize of Literature in 1982, being the only Colombian so far to receive such international recognition. It gave to him a great appreciation in his country and abroad and became one of the most read contemporary writers of the world. His work Hundred Years of Solitude, has been translated in several languages around the world. modestly analyzer  

Garcia Márquez and the Magic Realism

By Albeiro Rodas

It is not easy to understand what is the meaning of Magic Realism and its development in Latin American, also if we do not face the Spanish background of it and its history. Even if the term was used at the beginning by the German critic Franz Roh, (1) as "Magischer Realismus", it was used by the Venezuelan writer Arturo Uslar-Pietri as "Realismo Mágico" as a literature genre of some Latin American writers.

Magic Realism is not referred of course to a kind of fantastic story at the best corner of Harry Potter, as many could assume if they do not know works with that kind of genre. It belongs first to the development of literature during the 20th century in a fusion between reality and psychology, thoughts and emotions, drems and culture, mythology and imagination, symbolism and a mixture of cultures. In such frame, Magic Realism had to be born mostly in a cultural context like Latin America with the fusion of all those elements in the most varied region of the world with the historical encounter of three continents, three races and many peoples. Reading One Hundred Years of Solitude, for example, gives such idea of universality where white, black and indigenous interact with their hopes, myths, historical events and daily worries in a big mixture of psychological consequences.      

Macondo, for instance, is not an imaginary town, as it can be presumed, but it is that kind of Aleph pointed out by Jorge Luis Borges in his story, the point where everything combined. Maybe defining Macondo is this place or this other is also wrong, because the town comes to be placed in the psychological level of the characters and events. Something similar we can say of Magroll El Gaviero of Álvaro Mutis. Maybe, it explains why Magic Realism became of universal proportions and why a work like One Hundred of Solitudes can be read with the same passion in China, England or Egypt, because it is recalling the most deep essence of humanity.

However, Magic Realism is not the only Latin American manifestation of literature and even philosophy during the 20th century. Another proposals came out, maybe hidden by the brightness of Magic Realism that has in Gabriel García Márquez one of its most notorious head. Recently, the Chilean writer and critic Alberto Fuguet has started a compilation of the work of the Colombian poet, storyteller and playwright Andrés Caicedo to whom Fuguet called "The First Enemy of Macondo". What Fuguet is meaning is something we have to wait, but his proposal seems to be interesting, moreover taking a very turbulent and passionate writer like Caicedo who committed suicide in 1976 after the publication of ¡Qué viva la música! What it is placed in the work of Caicedo is something far from a psychological Macondo and more a psychological Cali, that represents any Latin American city and even any world city in its more intimate corner. Maybe Fuguet should review also authors like Tomás Carrasquilla, Fernando González Ochoa and Gonzalo Arango, among others, to discover that other "hidden Boom", as he calls it.(2) 

Notes

(1) Franz Roh: Nach-Expressionismus. Magischer Realismus. Probleme der neuesten europäischen Malerei. Klinkhardt & Biermann, Leipzig 1925.(2) CAREAGA, Roberto, "Fuguet prepara antología de Andrés Caicedo, el primer enemigo de Macondo", La Tercera, Santiago de Chile, 22 de febrero de 2008, enlace revizado el 14 de junio de 2008.

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