The one good thing that came out of me watching the embarrassingly bad movie adaptation of 'love in the time of cholera' is that it reminded me of the great book, and Marquez's ideas on love.
The book tells of such an unconventional love story: the two main characters fall in love when they are very young, exchange passionate letters and agree to marry each other. The girl's father predictably disagrees, because he wants a better luck for his daughter, and takes her away, hides in the heart of the Amazon for a year, hoping that the love of the two lovers will go away. They keep in touch with letters and when she comes back, he is waiting. In a brief encounter, the first time they see each other in a year, she tells him that she realized she is not in love with him any more. He swears eternal love, she marries another. He spends his whole life in numerous (622?) insignificant affairs, she stays happily married to her doctor husband. He waits. Her husband dies, and so she asks her to marry him. She sends him out of the house. He perseveres. He perseveres and flirts with her, sending her letters again, like 50 years ago when their love begun. He manages to win her over but the conventions of their lives, their age, her children, comes to haunt them again, like her father did 50 years ago. Their only choice is to live away from everyone. In a river-ship, raising the flag of cholera, forever cruising up and down the river. Forever the cursed lovers or maybe blessed with being eternally together, alone?
All this made me think about second chances in life and love. It made me think (once again) that things are not black and white: you might love someone and then not love them anymore and then (oh, the blasphemy) love them again. Who cares? Who says that this not supposed to happen, who says that it's wrong? If there is one thing life ever teaches us, I think, is that there is no good reason of getting stuck to what people think is right and wrong. This might sound a bit immoral, but I don't mean it like that. I just mean the very (very) cliché thought that morality is a social construct, and a ridiculous one indeed. It only restrains feelings, and leads to miserable lives. Marquez tells us that love, in all its glory, cannot survive inside this ridiculous society, it can only survive in a lonely riverboat, with a flag of cholera proudly raised.
2 comments:
A very accurate reflection, I think. Although I believe love is not that abstract - you fall in and out of love for a person, but you can control it to an extent.
My problem with Love in Times of Cholera is that I think it is beautiful but should only happen in books. For me, it is a lot more optimistic to believe that if it were real life the broken hearted lover would find someone else to make him happier instead of waiting 50 years. Who waits 50 years?! Love is hard enough without cholera and a boat and whatever. Let alone a 50 year wait. No one deserves to have someone waiting for him or her so long.
So, I do agree that things are not black and white and that love cannot follow conventions all the time. But love ,like everything else, also knows limits. If you don't want it, someone else will and they'll not make you wait half a century for it.
Nobody should wait 50 years, I agree.
But it's nice to know that people change their minds, so radically.
Post a Comment