Love and Decay

"My heart has more rooms than a whorehouse," sighs Florentino Ariza, in great harmony with the general spirit of Gabriel Garcia Marquez' Love in the Time of Cholera. Because even though he spends fifty years waiting for Fermina Daza, object of his adolescent infatuation, by no means is she the only woman he ever loves. Neither does Fermina Daza's juvenile love for Florentino Ariza stop her from dearly loving her husband during fifty years of happy marriage, nor her long, happy marriage stop her from falling back in love with Florentino Ariza.

After having been rejected by Fermina Daza, Florentino Ariza whiles the years away in no less than 622 love affairs. Obviously some of these are casual encounters; yet others seem to reside in some of the nicest suits of his brothel of a heart.

It's all about timing. If Florentino Ariza had made a pass at Leona Cassiani in time, they might have shared a long and happy life together, and he might have forgotten about Urbina Daza. According to the narrator, Leona Cassiani and Florentino Ariza are the real loves of each other's lives. If Urbina Daza's father had not made her travel with him for a year she might never have rejected Florentino Ariza. Marquez plays with these little twists of fate quietly, without ever directing the reader's attention to them. They are just part of being human.

A picture of Urbina Daza and Florentino Ariza in their old age, from the 2007 movie. 

This novel is a celebration of love; love of all shapes and varieties. It is a manifest for love happening in any and all circumstances: in old age, in youth, between old men and young women, in the time of cholera. 

Ah, the cholera. Despite the title it is never all that central. It is merely the background picture; a subtle shadow present throughout the book. It may not be in sharp focus, but it is always there, like a quiet threat; a reminder of mortality. 

Aging serves to much the same purpose as cholera, only more bluntly. Love in the Time of Cholera has by no means a linear story, but it still offers a very real picture of how the characters move through middle, old and older age, slowly decaying. Still, in the midst of this decay, there is extraordinary, as well as ordinary, love. 

More than trying to deliver some message, though, this novel is an exquisite work of art; a pure pleasure to read. Despite its subject it never becomes sappy, tacky or banal. It is an ode to life and to love, bursting at the seams with humor and narrative joy.