An essay in comparative literature done by me in Spanish and translated into English. the accompanying notes are shown with letters of the Greek alphabet.

The photo belongs to Juan Rulfo, the remains of a Mexican church in the middle of the desert. source

A comparative analisis.

One hundred years of solitude is according to my way of seeing the greatest literary epic of the twentieth century in America. There is no novel that equals it, but many that resemble it; the genius does not believe because creating is impossible, the genius reinvents and Gabriel García Márquez closed an already old chapter of the long history of literature. For some new readers - among which I include myself a year ago - it could seem that in this novel everything was created as an enormous instantaneous artifice, and the more than two years that the Colombian was doing the draft of his work Summit has similarity with the seven days of God's creation.

But One Hundred Years of Solitude does not invent characters, however varied and numerous they may seem, military, alchemists, circus characters, spinsters and eternal virgins were already part of the imaginary of Marquez's previous work. Nor does he invent the myth of the city that is diluted like the ember of a cigar, that merit is of Onetti (α). The long and decisive decadence of the long progeny of the Buendias is a Faulkner resource(β). The prolonged and zigzagging prose, the flowery language and the excess of adjectives have too much to do with Alejo Carpentier's American Neo-Baroqueism (γ). The fantastic implement, the magic touch that is demarcated is each page is indebted to Borges and perhaps to Julio Garmendia (δ). And that mythical convergence of that magic mentioned with everyday life can not be like anything other than Miguel de Asturias (ε) ...

So this novel does not contemplate a unique but unrepeatable case in the American literature. Perhaps in this historical moment full of science, marked by the progress of the machines and now almost devoid of any non-religious magical thought, the Work that today brings us may seem at this extravagant date. A story of characters who do not know the ice, who die in federal wars, who practice witchcraft, sorcery and alchemy and where a hundred years seems to be little time for the life of an old woman could be anachronistic… But Nothing could be further from the truth

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the literary and photographic work of rulfo has in common with the Colombian the sombre and solitary place, filled only by the culture of the own ethnic group. In Rulfo loneliness is an almost environmental circumstance, in Garcia Marquez it is a condition that emanates from the human being and his history (ζ). source

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Symbolic study of history and literature

The novel in question is closer to a study of American history than to an account of pure fiction. I do not mean that this is the ultimate meaning of the novel, the ultimate meaning of the novel is the novel itself, but it is undeniable that many of the actions that the characters commit carry a symbolic burden in our history, an x-ray staff since the floor of American soil. For example; the incestuous relationship that occurs in several occasions of the novel rather than being a depraved portrait is a true detail in the culture of rural life, in the case of Venezuela populations such as Casanay, Rio Caribe or Zaraza are still suffering from vestiges of this problem that was once so common, in the North American case several rural populations follow these practices. In another scenario, starting the novel very close to the founding of Macondo there is an interesting episode that is worth bringing up because it happens in parallel in the recently founded Macondo as in the newly discovered America; the Indians ignorantly exchange mirrors for gold to the Spaniards, in the case of Macondo they exchange gold for ice to the gypsies. (η)

These symbolic charges are a constant throughout the text and the most attentive reader could find many more, this obviating the directly historical and literary allusions; the compression of the novel and the enormous amount of time that flows in it forces the novel to absorb the epochs and recent characters, it is documented since the arrival of the pirate Francis Drake, whom the grandmother of Úrsula Iguaran escaped, going through the war of independence where Colonel Aureliano participated until the lighting, the railroad and the industrialization. In addition to multiple Metatextual references; Artemio Cruz the character of Carlos Fuentes is compadre of a colleague of Colonel Aureliano, while on another occasion it is mentioned that Rocamadour, son of la maga (Character of the Argentine novel Rayuela, by Julio Cortazar), dies in a cold apartment in Paris (θ)

As mentioned before his characters are certainly archetypal in the American ideal, liberal leaders, priests who believe themselves to be the direct ministers of god, midwives, women who only devote themselves to giving birth and alchemists of arcane powers, if one asks his grandfather about this class of people you will have the fortune to confirm the realistic factor of the work, these characters and these events, although they are very typical of Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador, sister nations, can be extended to the entire territory of the continent. And it is not surprising, the virtue of the novel is to gather all these elements and combine them in such an enjoyable way.

the conjugation of American literature

Voltaire said that if God did not exist, he would have to invent it (ι). I believe that a hundred years of loneliness did not exist, someone else would have written it, not because the sum of its elements are obvious and they are not, but because it is the peak phase and the beginning of the decadence of a way of history and a way of literature. I am almost certain that a hundred years of solitude must have existed even independently of Gabriel García Márquez, because he only lent his mind to that great project that literature had for us; Son of man, the death of Artemio Cruz, Mr. President, Brief life, noise and fury, fictions among other novels and unprecedented ingenuity were brewing the seven generations of the Buendía, who in turn were gestated by Proust, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky to finally fall in the mind of another genius, a Colombian who with his pen decided to conclude one of the most glorious chapters of the American epic when he decides to destroy Macondo and take the opportunity to the stocks that resisted 100 years of cruel loneliness

-Luis Rafael Moya Marcano

Notes

α: Juan Carlos Onetti Borges (Montevideo, 1909) is a pioneer in the Latin American metafiction, in the case of Brief life the whole plot happens only in the head of Brausen, while in GGM it is condensed in the book of melquiades.

β: Vargas Llosa in his thesis story of a decided (1971) "the major impact of the work of Faulkner in García Márquez has more to do with the project of this work, globally considered, than with thematic and formal details"certainly the prolongation of the plot through successive lines and family conflict relationships reveal in both an ambition to achieve a kind of total novel

γ :Alejo Carpentier y Valmont (Lausana, 1904)ac creates the divergence between his style, the real marvelous, and that of Marquez, and magical realism. his sentences have Quevedian influence given the load of adjectives and their extension.

δ: Borges(Buenos Aires, 1899) and Julio Garmendias(Caracas, 1898) are respectively the reinventor and founder of fantastic literature. In Borges it can be read clearly, a greater impact.

ε:Miguel Ángel Asturias (City of Guatemala, 1988) ,In all his work you see the first modern effort to combine the American legend with history.

ζ : Finally an influence of Juan Rulfo (Acapulco, 1917), already in this case self declared by the Colombian.

η: Although there are doubts about whether the exchange of mirrors for gold is real, it is understood as a kind of metaphor about deception and apocaryption.

θ:

" Aureliano could visualize him then in a turtleneck sweater which he took off only when the sidewalk Cafés on Montparnasse filled with springtime lovers, and sleeping by day and writing by night in order to confuse hunger in the
room that smelled of boiled cauliflower where Rocamadour was to die" (Pag 197, One Hundrede Years of solitude)

ι:

"Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer".