Third child of José Arcadio Buendía and Ursula. Amaranta grows up with her second cousin Rebeca, they simultaneously fall in love with Italian Pietro Crespi, who reciprocates Rebeca, and since then she has become Amaranta's worst enemy. In moments of hatred, Amaranth even tries to poison her rival. After Rebeca marries Jose Arcadio, she loses all interest in the Italian. Later, Amaranta also rejects Colonel Herineldo Márquez, remaining in the end an old maid. The nephew of Aureliano José and the grand-nephew of José Arcadio were in love with her and dreamed of having sex with her. But Amaranta dies a virgin at a ripe old age, exactly as death itself predicted for her - after she finished embroidering the burial shroud.
Rebeca is an orphan who was adopted by José Arcadio Buendía and Ursula. Rebeca came to the Buendía family at the age of about 10 with a sack. Inside it were the bones of her parents, who were Ursula's first cousins. At first, the girl was extremely timid, hardly spoke and had the habit of eating dirt and lime from the walls of the house, as well as sucking her thumb. As Rebeca grows up, her beauty captivates the Italian Pietro Crespi, but their wedding is constantly postponed due to many mourning. As a result, this love makes her and Amaranta, who is also in love with the Italian, bitter enemies. After José Arcadio's return, Rebeca defies Ursula's wishes to marry him. For this, a couple in love is expelled from the house. After the death of Jose Arcadio, Rebeca, embittered by the whole world, locks herself in a house alone under the care of her maid. Later, 17 sons of Colonel Aureliano try to renovate Rebeca's house, but they only manage to renew the facade, they do not open the front door. Rebeca dies at a ripe old age, with her finger in her mouth.
Arcadio is the illegitimate son of Jose Arcadio and Pilar Turner. He is a school teacher, but takes over the leadership of Macondo at the request of Colonel Aureliano when he leaves the city. Becomes an oppressive dictator. Arcadio is trying to uproot the church, and persecution of the conservatives living in the city begins (in particular, Don Apolinar Moscote). When he tries to execute Apolinar for a malicious remark, Ursula cannot bear it in a motherly way, butcher him like a small child. Having received information that the forces of the Conservatives are returning, Arcadio decides to fight them with the small forces that are in the city. After the defeat and capture of the city by the Conservatives, he was shot.
The illegitimate son of Colonel Aureliano and Pilar Ternera. Unlike his half-brother Arcadio, he knew the secret of his origin and communicated with his mother. He was raised by his aunt, Amaranta, with whom he was in love, but could not achieve it. At one time he accompanied his father on his campaigns, participated in hostilities. Returning to Macondo, he was killed as a result of disobedience to the authorities.
Son of Arcadio and Santa Sophia de la Piedad, twin brother of Jose Arcadio II. You can read about his childhood above. Grew up huge like his grandfather José Arcadio Buendía. Thanks to the passionate love between him and Petra Cotes, her cattle multiplied so rapidly that Aureliano Segundo became one of the richest people in Macondo and also the most cheerful and hospitable owner. "Be fruitful, cows, life is short!" - such a motto was on the memorial wreath brought by his many drinking companions to his grave. He married, however, not Petra Cotes, but Fernanda del Carpio, whom he had been looking for after the carnival for a long time, according to the only sign - she is the most beautiful woman in the world. With her he had three children: Amaranta Ursula, José Arcadio and Renata Remedios, with whom he was especially close.
Amaranta Ursula is the youngest daughter of Fernanda and Aureliano Segundo. Very similar to Ursula (the wife of the founder of the clan), who died when Amaranta was very young. She never found out that the boy sent to Buendía's house was her nephew, the son of Meme. She gave birth to a child from him (with a pork tail), unlike her other relatives - in love. She studied in Belgium, but returned from Europe to Macondo with her husband, Gastón, bringing with her a cage of fifty canaries so that the birds, which were killed after Ursula's death, would return to Macondo. Later, Gaston returned to Brussels on business and, as if nothing had happened, he received the news of the romance between his wife and Aureliano Babilonia. Amaranta Ursula died giving birth to her only son, Aureliano, who ended the Buendía family.
Son of Aureliano Babylonia and his aunt, Amaranta Ursula. At his birth, Ursula's old prediction came true - the child was born with a pig's tail, marking the end of the Buendía family. Despite the fact that his mother wanted to name the child Rodrigo, the father decided to give him the name Aureliano, following the family tradition. This is the only family member in a century who was born in love. But, since the family was doomed to a hundred years of loneliness, he could not survive. Aureliano was eaten by ants that filled the house because of the flood, just as it was written in the epigraph to parchments of Melquíades: "The first in the family will be tied to a tree, the last in the family will be eaten by ants."
Melquiades
Melquiades is a member of the Gypsy camp who visited Macondo every March to showcase amazing items from around the world. Melquiades sells several new inventions to José Arcadio Buendía, including a pair of magnets and an alchemy lab. Later, the Roma report that Melquiades died in Singapore, but nevertheless returns to live with the Buendía family, stating that he could not bear the loneliness of death. He remains with Buendía and begins to write mysterious parchments, which in the future will be deciphered by Aureliano Babylonia, and on which a prophecy is inscribed about the end of the Buendía family. Melquiades dies a second time, drowning in a river near Macondo, and, after a large ceremony organized by Buendía, becomes the first person to be buried in Macondo. His name comes from the Melchizedek of the Old Testament, whose source of authority as high priest was mysterious.
Pilar Turner
Pilar is a local woman who slept with brothers Aureliano and José Arcadio. She becomes the mother of their children, Aureliano José and Arcadio. Pilar reads the future from maps and very often makes accurate, albeit vague, predictions. She is closely associated with Buendía throughout the novel, helping them with her card predictions. She dies some time after she turned 145 (after that she stopped counting), living up to the very last days of Macondo.
The word "Ternera" is Spanish for veal, which matches the way it was treated by José Arcadio, Aureliano and Arcadio. It can also be modified by the word "ternura", which means "tenderness" in Spanish. Pilar is often presented as a loving figure, and the author often uses names in a similar manner.
She plays an important part in the plot, because is the link between the second and third generations of the Buendía family. The author emphasizes its importance, declaring after her death: "It was the end."
Pietro Crespi
Pietro is a very handsome and polite Italian musician who runs a music school. He sets up a piano in Buendía's house. He gets engaged to Rebeca, but Amaranta, who was also in love with him, manages to postpone the wedding for years. When Jose Arcadio and Rebeca decide to get married, he starts wooing Amaranta, who was so embittered that she brutally rejects him. Overwhelmed by the loss of both sisters, he commits suicide.
Petra Cotes
Petra is a dark-skinned woman with golden brown eyes similar to those of a panther. She is the lover of Aureliano Segundo and the love of his life. She came to Macondo as a teenager with her first husband. After the death of her husband, she strikes up a relationship with Jose Arcadio II. When she meets Aureliano Segundo, she strikes up a relationship with him, not knowing that these are two different people. After Jose Arcadio Segundo decides to leave her, Aureliano Segundo receives her forgiveness and stays with her. He continues to see her, even after his wedding. He eventually begins to live with her, which greatly embitters his wife, Fernanda del Carpio. When Aureliano and Petra make love, their animals reproduce at an unprecedented rate, but they all end up dying out during 4 years of rain. Petra makes money by running lotteries and providing food baskets for Fernanda and her family after the death of Aureliano Segundo.
Mr Herbert and Mr Brown
Mr. Herbert is a gringo who once showed up at Buendía's house to dine. Having tasted local bananas for the first time, he seeks to open a plantation in Macondo by a banana company. The plantation is run by the imperious Mr. Brown. When Jose Arcadio Segundo is pushing for a strike of workers on the plantation, the company lures over 3,000 strikers and machine guns shoot them in the town square. The Banana Company and the government are completely covering up the incident. Jose Arcadio is the only one who remembers the massacre. The company orders the army to destroy any resistance and leaves Macondo for good. The incident is most likely based on the Banana Massacre that took place in Cienaga, Magdalena in 1928.
Mauricio Babylonia
Mauricio is a brutally honest, generous and handsome mechanic who works for a banana company. He is said to be a descendant of one of the gypsies who came to Macondo when the town was still a small village. He had an unusual feature - he was constantly surrounded by yellow butterflies, which even followed his beloved for a certain amount of time. He begins a romantic relationship with Meme until Fernanda finds out about it and tries to put an end to it. When Mauricio tries to sneak into the house once again to see Meme, Fernanda gets him shot as a chicken thief. Paralyzed and bedridden, he spends the rest of his long life alone.
Gaston is the wealthy Belgian husband of Amaranta Ursula. She marries him in Europe and moves to Macondo, leading him on a silk leash. Gaston is 15 years older than his wife. He is an aviator and adventurer. When he and Amaranta Ursula moved to Macondo, he, thinking that it was only a matter of time before she realizes that European methods do not work here. Be that as it may, when he realizes that his wife is going to stay in Macondo, he gets his airplane transported by ship so that he can start the air mail delivery service. The plane was taken to Africa by mistake. When he goes there to get it, Amaranta writes to him about her love for Aureliano Babilonia Buendía. Gaston steps over the news, only asking them to transport him his bike.
Colonel Gerineldo Marquez
He is a friend and comrade of Colonel Aureliano Buendía. He wooed Amaranta to no avail.
Gabriel García Marquez
Gabriel García Marquez is only a minor character in the novel, but he is named after the author. He is the great-great-grandson of Colonel Gerineldo Marquez. He and Aureliano Babilonia are close friends because they know the history of the city that no one else believes in. He leaves for Paris, winning a competition, and decides to stay there, selling old newspapers and empty bottles. He is one of the few who managed to leave Macondo before the city was completely destroyed.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Historical context
One Hundred Years of Solitude was written by García Márquez over a period of 18 months, between 1965 and 1966 in Mexico City. The original idea for this piece appeared in 1952, when the author visited his home village of Aracataka in the company of his mother. His short story "The Day After Saturday," published in 1954, introduces Macondo for the first time. García Márquez planned to call his new novel "Home", but eventually changed his mind in order to avoid analogies with the novel "Big House", published in 1954 by his friend Alvaro Zamudio.
The first, considered a classic, translation of the novel into Russian belongs to Nina Butyrina and Valery Stolbov. The modern translation, which is now widespread in the book markets, was made by Margarita Bylinkina. In 2014, the translation by Butyrina and Stolbov was reprinted, this publication became the first legal version.
Composition
The book consists of 20 unnamed chapters, which describe a story that is looped in time: the events of Macondo and the Buendía family, for example, the names of the heroes, are repeated over and over again, combining fantasy and reality. The first three chapters deal with the resettlement of a group of people and the founding of the village of Macondo. From 4 to 16 chapters tells about the economic, political and social development of the village. The final chapters of the novel show its decline.
Almost all sentences of the novel are built in indirect speech and are rather long. Direct speech and dialogues are almost never used. An interesting sentence from chapter 16, in which Fernanda del Carpio laments and pity herself, is two and a half pages long in print.
Writing history
“... I had a wife and two little sons. I worked as a PR manager and edited film scripts. But to write a book, you had to give up work. I pawned the car and gave the money to Mercedes. Every day, one way or another, she got me paper, cigarettes, everything that was needed for work. When the book was finished, it turned out that we owe the butcher 5,000 pesos - a lot of money. There was a rumor in the neighborhood that I was writing a very important book, and all the shopkeepers wanted to take part. It took 160 pesos to send the text to the publisher, and there were only 80 pesos left. Then I put in a mixer and a Mercedes hairdryer. Upon learning of this, she said: "It was not enough for the novel to be bad."
From an interview with García Márquez magazine Esquire
Central themes
Loneliness
Throughout the novel, all of its characters are destined to suffer from loneliness, which is a congenital "vice" of the Buendía family. The village where the novel takes place, Macondo, also lonely and separated from the world of its day, lives in anticipation of the visits of the gypsies who bring new inventions with them, and in oblivion, in constant tragic events in the history of the culture described in the work.
Loneliness is most noticeable in Colonel Aureliano Buendía, as his inability to express his love forces him to go to war, leaving his sons from different mothers in different villages. In another case, he asks to draw a three-meter circle around him so that no one approaches him. Having signed a peace treaty, he shoots himself in the chest so as not to meet with his future, but due to his unluckiness he does not achieve his goal and spends his old age in the workshop, making goldfish in honest harmony with loneliness.
Other characters in the novel also endured the consequences of loneliness and abandonment:
- founder of Macondo Jose Arcadio Buendía(spent many years alone under a tree);
- Ursula Higuarán(she lived in the solitude of her senile blindness);
- Jose Arcadio and Rebeca(went to live in a separate house so as not to disgrace the family);
- Amaranta(she was unmarried all her life);
- Gerinéldo Marques(all my life I was waiting for the pension and love of Amaranta that had not yet been received);
- Pietro Crespi(rejected by Amaranta the suicide);
- Jose Arcadio II(after the execution he saw he never entered into a relationship with anyone and spent his last years locked in Melquíades's office);
- Fernanda del Carpio(was born to become a queen and left her home for the first time at the age of 12);
- Renata Remedios "Meme" Buendía(she was sent to the monastery against her will, but completely resignedly after the misfortune with Mauricio Babilonia, having lived there in eternal silence);
- Aureliano Babilonia(he lived in the studio of Colonel Aureliano Buendía, and after the death of José Arcadio Segundo he moved to Melquíades' room).
One of the main reasons for their lonely life and detachment is the inability to love and prejudice, which were destroyed by the relationship between Aureliano Babilonia and Amaranta Ursula, whose ignorance of their relationship led to the tragic ending of the story in which the only son, conceived in love, was eaten by ants. This family was not capable of love, so they were doomed to loneliness. There was an exceptional case between Aureliano II and Petra Cotes: they loved each other, but they did not and could not have children. The only way a member of the Buendía family can have a child of love is in a relationship with another member of the Buendía family, which happened between Aureliano Babilonia and his aunt Amaranta Ursula. In addition, this union was born in a love destined for death, a love that ended the Buendía family.
Finally, we can say that loneliness manifested itself in all generations. Suicide, love, hatred, betrayal, freedom, suffering, craving for the forbidden are secondary themes that throughout the novel change our views on many things and make it clear that in this world we live and die alone.
Reality and fiction
In the work, fantastic events are presented through everyday life, through situations that are not anomalous for the characters. Also, the historical events of Colombia, for example, civil wars between political parties, the massacre of banana plantation workers (in 1928, the United Fruit transnational banana corporation, with the help of government troops, brutally massacred hundreds of strikers who were awaiting the return of the delegation from negotiations after mass protests), reflected in the myth of Macondo. Events such as the ascension to heaven of Remedios, the prophecies of Melquiades, the appearance of deceased characters, unusual objects brought by the gypsies (magnet, magnifying glass, ice) ... burst into the context of real events reflected in the book and urge the reader to enter a world in which the most incredible events. It is in this that such a literary movement as magical realism, which characterizes the latest Latin American literature, lies.
Incest
Relations between relatives are indicated in the book through the myth of the birth of a child with a pig's tail. Despite this warning, relationships arise over and over again between different family members and across different generations throughout the novel.
The story begins with the relationship between José Arcadio Buendía and his cousin Ursula, who grew up together in the old village and heard many times about their uncle who had a pig's tail. Subsequently, José Arcadio (the founder's son) married Rebeca, his adopted daughter, who was believed to be his sister. Arcadio was born to Pilar Turner, and did not suspect why she did not respond to his feelings, since she did not know anything about her origin. Aureliano José fell in love with his aunt Amaranta, proposed marriage to her, but was refused. You can also call the relationship close to love between José Arcadio (the son of Aureliano Segundo) and Amaranta, which also failed. In the end, a relationship develops between Amaranta Ursula and her nephew Aureliano Babilonia, who did not even know about their relationship, because Fernanda, Aureliano's grandmother and mother of Amaranta Ursula, hid the secret of his birth.
This last and only sincere love in the history of the family, paradoxically, was the fault of the death of the Buendía clan, which was predicted in the parchments of Melquíades.
Plot
Almost all of the events in the novel take place in the fictional town of Macondo, but relate to historical events in Colombia. The city was founded by José Arcadio Buendía, a strong-willed and impulsive leader, deeply interested in the mysteries of the universe, which were periodically revealed to him by visiting gypsies led by Melquíades. The city is gradually growing, and the government of the country shows interest in Macondo, but José Arcadio Buendía leaves the leadership of the city behind him, luring the sent alcalde (mayor) to his side.
Excerpt from One Hundred Years of Solitude
“Don’t, Fields, take them,” Natasha said.
In the middle of the conversation in the couch, Dimmler entered the room and walked over to the harp in the corner. He took off the cloth, and the harp made a false sound.
- Eduard Karlich, please play my beloved Nocturiene Monsieur Field, - said the voice of the old countess from the living room.
Dimmler took a chord and, turning to Natasha, Nikolai and Sonya, said: - Youth, how quietly they sit!
- Yes, we are philosophizing, - said Natasha, looking around for a minute, and continued the conversation. The conversation was now about dreams.
Dimmler started playing. Natasha quietly, on tiptoe, went up to the table, took the candle, carried it out and, returning, quietly sat down in her place. It was dark in the room, especially on the sofa on which they were sitting, but through the large windows the silver light of a full moon fell on the floor.
- You know, I think, - Natasha said in a whisper, moving closer to Nikolai and Sonya, when Dimmler had already finished and was sitting, weakly playing the strings, apparently hesitating to leave, or to start something new, - that when you remember that, you remember, you remember everything , you remember so much that you remember what happened before I was in the world ...
“This is metampsikova,” said Sonya, who always studied well and remembered everything. - The Egyptians believed that our souls were in animals and will again go to animals.
“No, you know, I don’t believe it, so that we were in animals,” Natasha said in the same whisper, although the music ended, “but I know for certain that we were angels somewhere and here we were, and from this we remember everything ...
- May I join you? - said Dimmler, who quietly approached and sat down next to them.
- If we were angels, why did we get lower? - said Nikolay. - No, it can't be!
“Not lower, who told you that lower?… Why do I know what I was before,” Natasha objected with conviction. - After all, the soul is immortal ... therefore, if I live forever, this is how I lived before, lived for an eternity.
“Yes, but it's hard for us to imagine eternity,” said Dimmler, who approached the young people with a mild contemptuous smile, but now spoke as quietly and seriously as they did.
- Why is it difficult to imagine eternity? - said Natasha. - Today it will be, tomorrow it will be, it will always be, and it was yesterday and the day before it was ...
- Natasha! now it's your turn. Sing me something, - the countess's voice was heard. - That you sat down like conspirators.
- Mama! I don’t want to, ”Natasha said, but at the same time she got up.
All of them, even the middle-aged Dimmler, did not want to interrupt the conversation and leave the corner of the sofa, but Natasha got up, and Nikolai sat down at the clavichord. As always, standing in the middle of the hall and choosing the most advantageous place for the resonance, Natasha began to sing her mother's favorite piece.
She said that she did not want to sing, but she did not sing for a long time before, and for a long time after, as she sang that evening. Count Ilya Andreich from the office where he talked with Mitinka, heard her singing, and like a student in a hurry to go to play, finishing the lesson, he got confused in words, giving orders to the manager and finally fell silent, and Mitinka, also listening, silently with a smile, stood in front of graph. Nikolai did not take his eyes off his sister, and took his breath with her. Sonia, listening, thought about what a huge difference there was between her and her friend and how impossible it was for her to be in any way as charming as her cousin. The old countess sat with a happily sad smile and tears in her eyes, occasionally shaking her head. She thought about Natasha, and about her youth, and about how something unnatural and terrible is in this upcoming marriage of Natasha with Prince Andrey.
Dimmler sat down next to the Countess and closed his eyes, listening.
“No, Countess,” he said at last, “this is a European talent, she has nothing to learn, this softness, tenderness, strength ...
- Ah! how afraid I am for her, how afraid I am, ”said the Countess, not remembering who she was talking to. Her maternal instinct told her that something was too much in Natasha, and that she would not be happy about it. Natasha had not yet finished singing when an enthusiastic fourteen-year-old Petya ran into the room with the news that the mummers had arrived.
Natasha suddenly stopped.
- Fool! - She shouted at her brother, ran to the chair, fell on him and sobbed so that for a long time then she could not stop.
“Nothing, mamma, really nothing, so: Petya frightened me,” she said, trying to smile, but her tears kept flowing and sobs squeezed her throat.
Dressed up courtyards, bears, Turks, innkeepers, ladies, terrible and funny, bringing with them coldness and gaiety, at first shyly huddled in the hall; then, hiding one behind the other, they were forced out into the hall; and at first shyly, and then more and more merrily and more amicably songs, dances, choral and Christmas-time games began. The Countess, recognizing the faces and laughing at the dressed up, went into the living room. Count Ilya Andreevich was sitting in the hall with a beaming smile, approving of the players. The youth disappeared somewhere.
Half an hour later, in the hall between the other mummers, an old lady in tansas appeared - it was Nikolai. Petya was a Turkish woman. Payas - it was Dimmler, the hussar - Natasha and the Circassian - Sonya, with a painted cork mustache and eyebrows.
After condescending surprise, unrecognition and praise from those who were not dressed up, the young people found that the costumes were so good that they had to be shown to someone else.
Nikolai, who wanted to drive everyone along an excellent road in his troika, suggested taking with him ten dressed-up men from the courtyards to go to his uncle.
- No, why are you upsetting him, the old man! - said the countess, - and he has nowhere to turn. Already go, so to the Melyukovs.
Melyukova was a widow with children of various ages, also with governesses and governors, who lived four miles from the Rostovs.
- Here, ma chere, cleverly, - the old count, stirring up, picked up. - Let's dress up now and go with you. I'll stir up Pasheta.
But the countess did not agree to let the count go: his leg ached all these days. They decided that Ilya Andreevich was not allowed to go, and that if Louise Ivanovna (m me Schoss) went, then the young ladies could go to Melukova's. Sonya, always timid and shy, most urgently began to beg Louise Ivanovna not to refuse them.
Sonya's outfit was the best. Her mustache and eyebrows went extraordinarily towards her. Everyone told her that she was very good, and she was in a lively energetic mood unusual for her. Some inner voice told her that now or never her fate would be decided, and in her man's dress she seemed a completely different person. Louise Ivanovna agreed, and half an hour later four troikas with bells and bells, screeching and whistling undercuts through the frosty snow, drove up to the porch.
Natasha was the first to give the tone of Christmas gaiety, and this gaiety, reflecting from one to another, intensified more and more and reached the highest degree at the time when everyone went out into the cold, and, talking, calling, laughing and shouting, sat down in the sleigh.
Two triplets were accelerating, the third was an old count's troika with an Oryol trotter at the root; Nicholas' fourth own with his short, black, shaggy root. Nicholas, in his old lady's attire, on which he put on a hussar, belted cloak, stood in the middle of his sleigh, picking up the reins.
It was so bright that he saw the plaques gleaming in the monthly light and the eyes of the horses, looking fearfully at the riders rustling under the dark canopy of the entrance.
Natasha, Sonya, m me Schoss and two girls sat in Nikolay's sleigh. In the sleigh of the old count sat Dimmler with his wife and Petya; the rest were filled with dressed-up courtyards.
- Let's go ahead, Zakhar! - Nikolay shouted to the coachman of his father, in order to have a chance to overtake him on the road.
The three of the old count, in which Dimmler and other mummers sat, screeching with runners, as if freezing to the snow, and rattling with a thick bell, moved forward. The guards huddled on the shafts and got stuck, turning hard and shiny snow like sugar.
Nikolai started after the first three; the others rustled and screamed from behind. At first we rode at a small trot along a narrow road. As we drove past the garden, the shadows from the bare trees often lay across the road and hid the bright light of the moon, but as soon as we drove beyond the fence, a diamond-shining, with a bluish reflection, a snowy plain, all bathed in monthly radiance and motionless, opened up on all sides. Once, once, he pushed a bump in the front sleigh; the next sleigh pushed in the same way, and the next, and, boldly breaking the chained silence, one after another the sleigh began to stretch out.
- Trail of a hare, many tracks! - Natasha's voice sounded in the frosty, constrained air.
- Apparently, Nicolas! - said the voice of Sonya. - Nikolay looked back at Sonya and bent down to take a closer look at her face. Something completely new, sweet, face, with black eyebrows and mustache, in the moonlight, near and far, peeked out of the sables.
“That was Sonya before,” thought Nikolai. He looked at her closer and smiled.
- What are you, Nicolas?
“Nothing,” he said, and turned back to the horses.
Having driven out onto the torny, high road, oiled with runners and all cut by the traces of thorns visible in the light of the month, the horses began to pull the reins of their own accord and add speed. The left attachment, bending her head, twitched its strings in leaps and bounds. Root swayed, waving his ears, as if asking: "Should I start or is it too early?" - Ahead, already far apart and ringing a receding thick bell, Zakhar's black troika was clearly visible on the white snow. From his sleigh could be heard shouting and laughter and the voices of the dressed up.
- Well, you, dear ones, - Nikolay shouted, tugging on the reins on one side and withdrawing his hand with the whip. And only by the wind, which seemed to intensify in a head-on, and by the twitching of the fasteners, which were tightening and adding all the speed, it was noticeable how quickly the troika flew. Nikolai looked back. With shouts and squeals, waving whips and forcing the indigenous people to gallop, the other troikas kept up. The root staunchly swayed under the arc, not thinking to knock down and promising to add more and more when necessary.
Nikolai caught up with the top three. They drove down some mountain, drove onto a wide-traveled road through a meadow near the river.
"Where are we going?" thought Nikolay. - “There should be a slanting meadow. But no, this is something new that I have never seen. This is not a slanting meadow or Demkina Mountain, but God knows what it is! This is something new and magical. Well, whatever it is! " And he, shouting to the horses, began to go around the first three.
Zakhar restrained the horses and wrapped his face, which was already frosty to the eyebrows.
Nikolai let his horses go; Zakhar, stretching out his hands, smacked his lips and let his own people go.
“Well hold on, sir,” he said. - Threes flew nearby even faster, and the legs of galloping horses quickly changed. Nikolay began to pick up ahead. Zakhar, without changing the position of outstretched arms, raised one hand with the reins.
“You're lying, sir,” he shouted to Nikolai. Nikolay put all the horses into gallop and overtook Zakhar. The horses covered the faces of the riders with fine, dry snow, next to them there were frequent busting and fast-moving legs confused, and the shadows of the overtaken troika. The whistle of runners in the snow and women's screams were heard from different directions.
Stopping the horses again, Nikolai looked around him. All around was the same magical plain soaked through with moonlight with stars scattered over it.
“Zakhar shouts that I should take to the left; why left? thought Nikolai. Are we going to the Melyukovs, is this Melyukovka? We God knows where we are going, and God knows what is happening to us - and it is very strange and good what is happening to us. " He looked back at the sleigh.
“Look, he has both mustache and eyelashes, everything is white,” said one of the strange, pretty and strangers sitting there with thin mustaches and eyebrows.
“This one, it seems, was Natasha, Nikolay thought, and this one is m me Schoss; or maybe not, and this is a Circassian with a mustache, I don’t know who, but I love her. ”
- Aren't you cold? - he asked. They didn't answer and laughed. Dimmler was shouting something from the back of the sleigh, probably funny, but you couldn't hear what he was shouting.
- Yes, yes, - the voices answered laughing.
- However, here is some kind of magical forest with iridescent black shadows and sparkles of diamonds and with some kind of enfilade of marble steps, and some kind of silver roofs of magical buildings, and the piercing squeal of some kind of animals. “And if it really is Melyukovka, then it is even stranger that we went, God knows where, and arrived at Melukovka,” Nikolai thought.
Indeed, it was Melyukovka, and girls and footmen ran into the entrance with candles and joyful faces.
- Who it? - asked from the entrance.
- Counts dressed up, I see the horses, - answered the voices.
Pelageya Danilovna Melukova, a broad, energetic woman, with glasses and a swing-open hood, was sitting in the living room, surrounded by her daughters, whom she tried not to let get bored. They quietly poured wax and looked at the shadows of the figures emerging, when footsteps and voices of visitors rustled in the hall.
Hussars, ladies, witches, payas, bears, clearing their throats and wiping their frosty faces in the hallway, entered the hall, where they hastily lit candles. The clown - Dimmler with the lady - Nikolai opened the dance. Surrounded by screaming children, the mummers, covering their faces and changing their voices, bowed to the hostess and were placed around the room.
- Oh, you can't find out! But Natasha! Look what she looks like! Really, it reminds someone. Eduard then Karlych is so good! I didn't know. Yes, how she dances! Oh, priests, and some kind of Circassian; right, as it goes for Sonyushka. Who is this? Well, they consoled me! Take the tables, Nikita, Vanya. And we sat so quietly!
- Ha ha ha! ... Hussar then, hussar! Like a boy, and legs! ... I can't see ... - voices were heard.
Natasha, the favorite of the young Melyukovs, disappeared with them into the back rooms, where a cork and various dressing gowns and men's dresses were demanded, which, through the open door, received bare girls' hands from the footman. Ten minutes later, all the youth of the Melukov family joined the mummers.
Pelageya Danilovna, having ordered the cleaning of the place for guests and treats for gentlemen and courtyards, without taking off her glasses, with a suppressed smile, walked between the mummers, looking closely into their faces and not recognizing anyone. She did not recognize not only the Rostovs and Dimmler, but also could not recognize either her daughters or those husband's robes and uniforms that were on them.
- Whose is this? - she said, turning to her governess and looking into the face of her daughter, who represented the Kazan Tatar. - It seems that someone is from the Rostovs. Well, you, mister hussar, in which regiment do you serve? She asked Natasha. “Give the Turk, give the Turk some marshmallows,” she said to the bartender who was carrying it, “this is not prohibited by their law.
Sometimes, looking at the strange but funny steps that the dancers performed, who decided once and for all that they were dressed up, that no one would recognize them, and therefore were not embarrassed, Pelageya Danilovna covered herself with a handkerchief, and her whole fat body shook with irrepressible kind, old woman laughter ... - Sashinet is mine, Sashinet is mine! She said.
After Russian dances and round dances, Pelageya Danilovna united all the servants and gentlemen together, in one big circle; they brought a ring, a string and a ruble, and the general games were arranged.
An hour later, all the suits were crumpled and upset. Cork mustache and eyebrows were smeared over sweaty, flushed, and cheerful faces. Pelageya Danilovna began to recognize the mummers, admired how well the costumes were made, how they went especially to the young ladies, and thanked everyone for making her so amused. The guests were invited to have supper in the drawing-room, and the courtyard's food was ordered in the hall.
- No, guessing in the bathhouse, that's scary! - the old girl who lived with the Melyukovs said at supper.
- From what? - asked the eldest daughter of the Melyukovs.
- Don't go, you need courage ...
“I'll go,” said Sonya.
- Tell us how it was with the young lady? - said the second Melukova.
- Yes, just like that, one young lady went, - said the old girl, - she took a rooster, two instruments - she sat down properly. She sat there, only hears, suddenly she is going ... a sleigh drove up with bells, bells; hears, goes. She enters completely in the form of a human, as an officer is, came and sat down with her at the device.
- A! Ah! ... - Natasha shouted, rolling her eyes in horror.
- Why, he says so?
- Yes, as a man, everything is as it should be, and began, and began to persuade, and she should have kept him talking until the cocks; and she grew stiff; - just grew stiff and covered herself with her hands. He picked her up. It's good that the girls came running here ...
- Well, why scare them! - said Pelageya Danilovna.
- Mother, you yourself were guessing ... - said the daughter.
- And how is it in the barn guessing? - asked Sonya.
- Yes, if only now, they will go to the barn, and they will listen. What you will hear: hammering, knocking - bad, and pouring bread - this is good; otherwise it happens ...
- Mom, tell us what happened to you in the barn?
Pelageya Danilovna smiled.
- Yes, I already forgot ... - she said. “You’re not coming, are you?”
- No, I'll go; Pepageya Danilovna, let me go, I'll go, ”said Sonya.
- Well, if you're not afraid.
- Louise Ivanovna, can I? - asked Sonya.
Whether they played with a ring, a string or a ruble, whether they talked, as now, Nikolai did not leave Sonya and looked at her with completely new eyes. It seemed to him that today only for the first time, thanks to those cork mustache, he fully recognized her. Sonya really was cheerful, lively and good that evening, such as Nikolai had never seen her before.
"So this is what she is, but I'm a fool!" he thought, looking at her sparkling eyes and a happy, enthusiastic smile that dimpled her cheeks from under her mustache, which he had not seen before.
“I'm not afraid of anything,” said Sonya. - Can I now? - She got up. Sonya was told where the barn was, how to stand and listen in silence, and they gave her a fur coat. She threw it over her head and looked at Nikolai.
"What a lovely girl this is!" he thought. "And what have I been thinking up to now!"
Sonya went out into the corridor to go to the barn. Nikolai hurriedly went to the front porch, saying that he was hot. Indeed, the house was stuffy from the crowded people.
The yard was the same motionless cold, the same month, only it was even brighter. The light was so strong and there were so many stars in the snow that I did not want to look at the sky, and the real stars were invisible. The sky was black and boring, the earth was fun.
"I am a fool, a fool! What have you been waiting for so far? " thought Nikolai, and, running to the porch, he walked around the corner of the house along the path that led to the back porch. He knew that Sonya would go here. In the middle of the road there were stacked fathoms of firewood, there was snow on them, a shadow was falling from them; through them and from their sides, intertwining, the shadows of old bare lindens fell on the snow and the path. The path led to the barn. The chopped wall of the barn and the roof, covered with snow, as if carved from some kind of precious stone, glittered in the monthly light. A tree cracked in the garden, and again everything was completely quiet. The chest, it seemed, did not breathe air, but some kind of eternally youthful strength and joy.
From the girl's porch, feet knocked on the steps, there was a loud sound on the last one, on which snow was applied, and the voice of the old girl said:
- Straight, straight, along the path, young lady. Just don't look back.
- I'm not afraid, - Sonya's voice answered, and along the path, towards Nikolai, Sonya's legs squealed, whistled in thin shoes.
Sonya walked wrapped in a fur coat. She was already two steps away when she saw him; she saw him, too, not the way she knew and which she had always been a little afraid of. He was in a woman's dress with matted hair and a smile that was happy and new for Sonya. Sonya quickly ran up to him.
"Quite different, and still the same," thought Nikolai, looking at her face, all lit by the moonlight. He put his hands under the fur coat that covered her head, hugged her, pressed her to him and kissed her lips, over which there was a mustache and which smelled of burnt cork. Sonya kissed him in the very middle of her lips and, straightening her small hands, took him by the cheeks on both sides.
“Sonya!… Nicolas!…” They just said. They ran to the barn and each came back from their own porch.
When everyone drove back from Pelageya Danilovna, Natasha, who always saw and noticed everything, arranged the accommodation so that Louise Ivanovna and she sat in the sleigh with Dimmler, and Sonya sat with Nikolai and the girls.
Nicholas, no longer overtaking, rode smoothly on his way back, and all the while peering into this strange moonlight at Sonya, in this all-changing light, from under his eyebrows and mustache his old and present Sonya, with whom he had never decided part. He peered, and when he recognized the same and the other and recalled, hearing this smell of cork, mixed with the feeling of a kiss, he breathed in the frosty air deeply and, looking at the leaving earth and the brilliant sky, he felt again in a magical kingdom.
- Sonya, are you okay? He asked occasionally.
- Yes, - Sonya answered. - And you?
In the middle of the road Nikolai let the coachman hold the horses, for a moment ran up to Natasha's sled and stood on the bend.
“Natasha,” he said to her in a whisper in French, “you know, I’ve made up my mind about Sonya.
- Did you tell her? - asked Natasha, all suddenly beaming with joy.
- Oh, how strange you are with that mustache and eyebrows, Natasha! Are you happy?
- I'm so glad, so glad! I was really angry with you. I didn't tell you, but you did wrong to her. This is such a heart, Nicolas. I'm so glad! I can be nasty, but I was ashamed to be alone happy without Sonya, - Natasha continued. - Now I'm so glad, well, run to her.
- No, wait, oh, how funny you are! - said Nikolai, still peering at her, and in his sister, too, finding something new, unusual and charmingly tender, which he had not seen in her before. - Natasha, something magical. A?
“Yes,” she replied, “you did a great job.
"If I had seen her as she is now," thought Nikolai, "I would have long ago asked what to do and would have done everything, no matter what she ordered, and everything would be fine."
- So you're glad and I did well?
- Oh, so good! I recently had a fight with my mother about it. Mom said she was catching you. How can you say this? I almost scolded my mother. And I will never allow anyone to say or think anything bad about her, because there is one good thing in her.
- So good? - said Nikolay, once again looking out for the expression on his sister's face to find out if this was true, and, hiding with his boots, he jumped off the bend and ran to his sleigh. The same happy, smiling Circassian, with a mustache and shining eyes, looking out from under a sable hood, sat there, and this Circassian was Sonya, and this Sonya was probably his future, happy and loving wife.
Arriving home and telling their mother about how they spent time with the Melyukovs, the young ladies went to their place. Having undressed, but not erasing their cork mustache, they sat for a long time, talking about their happiness. They talked about how they would be married, how their husbands would be friendly and how happy they would be.
On Natasha's table there were mirrors prepared by Dunyasha since the evening. - Only when will all this be? I am afraid that never ... That would be too good! - said Natasha getting up and going to the mirrors.
“Sit down, Natasha, maybe you’ll see him,” said Sonya. Natasha lit candles and sat down. “I see someone with a mustache,” said Natasha, who had seen her face.
“Don't laugh, young lady,” said Dunyasha.
Natasha, with the help of Sonya and the maid, found a position for the mirror; her face assumed a serious expression, and she fell silent. For a long time she sat, looking at the row of outgoing candles in the mirrors, assuming (considering the stories she heard) that she would see the coffin, that she would see him, Prince Andrew, in this last, merging, vague square. But no matter how ready she was to take the slightest stain for the image of a person or a coffin, she did not see anything. She blinked frequently and moved away from the mirror.
- Why do others see, but I do not see anything? - she said. - Well, sit down, Sonya; today you absolutely must, ”she said. - Only for me ... I'm so scared today!
Sonya sat down at the mirror, arranged a position, and began to look.
“They will certainly see Sofya Alexandrovna,” said Dunyasha in a whisper; - and you are all laughing.
Sonya heard these words, and heard Natasha say in a whisper:
- And I know what she will see; she saw last year.
For three minutes everyone was silent. "Certainly!" whispered Natasha and did not finish ... Suddenly Sonya pushed aside the mirror she was holding and covered her eyes with her hand.
- Ah, Natasha! - she said.
- Did you? Have you seen? What did you see? - Natasha screamed, supporting the mirror.
Sonya did not see anything, she just wanted to blink her eyes and get up when she heard Natasha's voice, who said "certainly" ... She did not want to deceive either Dunyasha or Natasha, and it was hard to sit. She herself did not know how and as a result of which a cry escaped from her when she closed her eyes with her hand.
- Did you see him? Natasha asked, grabbing her hand.
- Yes. Wait ... I ... saw him, - Sonya involuntarily said, not yet knowing who Natasha meant by his word: him - Nikolai or him - Andrey.
“But why shouldn't I say what I saw? After all, others see! And who can convict me of what I saw or did not see? " flashed in Sonya's head.
“Yes, I saw him,” she said.
- How? How is it? Is it standing or lying?
- No, I saw ... That was nothing, suddenly I see that he is lying.
- Is Andrey lying? He is sick? - Natasha asked with frightened fixed eyes looking at her friend.
“No, on the contrary,” on the contrary, a cheerful face, and he turned to me, “and the minute she spoke, it seemed to her herself that she saw what she was saying.
- Well, then, Sonya? ...
- Here I did not consider that something blue and red ...
- Sonya! when will he return? When I see him! My God, how I am afraid for him and for myself, and for everything I am afraid ... - Natasha spoke, and without answering a word to Sonya's consolations, she went to bed and for a long time after they extinguished the candle, with open eyes, lay motionless on bed and looked at the frosty moonlight through the frozen windows.
Soon after Christmastide, Nikolai announced to his mother his love for Sonya and his firm decision to marry her. The Countess, who had noticed for a long time what was happening between Sonya and Nikolai, and was expecting this explanation, silently listened to his words and told her son that he could marry whoever he wanted; but that neither she nor his father would give him the blessing for such a marriage. For the first time, Nikolai felt that his mother was unhappy with him, that despite all her love for him, she would not yield to him. She, coldly and not looking at her son, sent for her husband; and when he arrived, the countess wanted to briefly and coldly tell him what the matter was in the presence of Nicholas, but could not resist: she wept with tears of annoyance and left the room. The old count began to hesitantly advise Nicholas and ask him to abandon his intention. Nikolai replied that he could not change his word, and the father, sighing and obviously embarrassed, very soon interrupted his speech and went to the countess. In all the clashes with his son, the count did not leave the consciousness of his guilt in front of him for the upsetting of affairs, and therefore he could not be angry with his son for refusing to marry a rich bride and for choosing a dowry Sonya - he only remembered more vividly on this occasion that, if things were not upset, it was impossible for Nikolai to wish for a better wife than Sonya; and that he is the only one guilty of upsetting affairs with his Mitenka and with his irresistible habits.
The father and mother no longer talked about this matter with their son; but a few days after that, the countess called Sonya to her, and with a cruelty that neither one nor the other expected, the countess reproached her niece for enticing her son and for being ungrateful. Sonya, silently with lowered eyes, listened to the countess's cruel words and did not understand what was demanded of her. She was ready to sacrifice everything for her benefactors. The thought of self-sacrifice was her favorite thought; but in this case she could not understand to whom and what she should sacrifice. She could not help but love the Countess and the entire Rostov family, but she could not help but love Nikolai and not know that his happiness depended on this love. She was silent and sad, and did not answer. Nikolai, as it seemed to him, could not bear more than this situation and went to explain himself to his mother. Nikolay either begged his mother to forgive him and Sonya and agree to their marriage, then he threatened his mother that if Sonya were persecuted, he would immediately marry her in secret.
The countess, with a coldness that her son had never seen, answered him that he was an adult, that Prince Andrew would marry without the consent of his father, and that he could do the same, but that she would never recognize this intriguer as her daughter.
Blown up by the word intriguant, Nikolai, raising his voice, told his mother that he never thought that she would force him to sell his feelings, and that if this was so, then he was speaking for the last time ... But he did not have time to say that decisive word, which, judging according to the expression on his face, his mother was waiting with horror and which, perhaps, would forever remain a cruel memory between them. He did not have time to finish, because Natasha, with a pale and serious face, entered the room from the door at which she was eavesdropping.
- Nikolinka, you are talking nonsense, shut up, shut up! I tell you, shut up! .. - she almost shouted to drown out his voice.
“Mom, darling, this is not at all because ... my darling, poor,” she turned to her mother, who, feeling herself on the verge of a break, looked at her son with horror, but, due to stubbornness and enthusiasm for the struggle, did not want and could not give up.
“Nikolinka, I’ll explain it to you, you go away - you listen, my dear mother,” she said to her mother.
Her words were meaningless; but they achieved the result she was aiming for.
The countess hid her face heavily on her daughter's chest, and Nikolai got up, grabbed his head and left the room.
Natasha took up the matter of reconciliation and brought him to the point that Nikolai received a promise from his mother that Sonya would not be oppressed, and he himself made a promise that he would not do anything secretly from his parents.
With the firm intention, having arranged his own affairs in the regiment, retire, come and marry Sonya, Nikolai, sad and serious, at odds with his family, but, as it seemed to him, passionately in love, left for the regiment in early January.
After Nikolai's departure, the Rostovs' house became sadder than ever. The Countess became ill from mental disorder.
Sonya was sad both from the separation from Nikolai and even more from that hostile tone with which the Countess could not help treating her. The count was more than ever concerned about the bad state of affairs, which required some sort of decisive action. It was necessary to sell a Moscow house and a house near Moscow, and to sell a house it was necessary to go to Moscow. But the countess's health forced her to postpone her departure from day to day.
Illustration by Tom Rainford "Macondo"
The founders of the Buendía clan, José Arcadio and Ursula, were cousins and cousins. The relatives were afraid that they would give birth to a child with a pigtail. Ursula knows about the danger of incestuous marriage, and José Arcadio does not want to take such nonsense into account. Over the course of a year and a half of marriage, Ursula manages to maintain her innocence, the nights of the newlyweds are filled with a painful and fierce struggle, replacing love joys. During cockfighting, the rooster Jose Arcadio defeats the rooster Prudencio Aguilar, and he, annoyed, mocks his rival, questioning his manhood, since Ursula is still a virgin. Angered, José Arcadio goes home for the spear and kills Prudencio, and then, shaking the same spear, forces Ursula to fulfill her marital duties. But from now on there is no rest for them from the bloodied ghost of Aguilar. Deciding to move to a new place of residence, Jose Arcadio, as if offering a sacrifice, kills all his roosters, buries a spear in the courtyard and leaves the village with his wife and villagers. Twenty-two brave men overcome an impregnable mountain range in search of the sea, and after two years of fruitless wanderings, they found the village of Macondo on the banks of the river - that was a prophetic instruction for Jose Arcadio in his dream. And now, in a large clearing, two dozen huts of clay and bamboo grow.
Jose Arcadio burns a passion for knowledge of the world - more than anything else he is attracted by various wonderful things that gypsies who appear once a year bring to the village: bars of a magnet, a magnifying glass, navigation devices; from their leader Melquíades, he learns the secrets of alchemy, plagues himself with long vigils and feverish work of an inflamed imagination. Having lost interest in another extravagant undertaking, he returns to a measured working life, together with his neighbors he equips the village, unfolds the land, lays roads. Life in Macondo is patriarchal, respectable, happy, there is not even a cemetery here, since no one dies. Ursula starts a lucrative production of animals and birds from candy. But with the appearance in Buendía's house of the unknown where came Rebeca, who becomes his adopted daughter, an epidemic of insomnia begins in Macondo. The inhabitants of the village diligently redo all their affairs and begin to toil with painful idleness. And then another attack falls on Macondo - an epidemic of forgetfulness. Everyone lives in a reality that is constantly eluding them, forgetting the names of objects. They decide to hang signs on them, but they fear that after the lapse of time they will not be able to remember the purpose of the objects.
Jose Arcadio intends to build a memory machine, but the wandering gypsy, the magician Melquiades, with his healing potion, helps out. According to his prophecy, Macondo will disappear from the face of the earth, and in its place will grow a sparkling city with large houses made of transparent glass, but there will be no trace of the Buendia family in it. José Arcadio does not want to believe this: there will always be Buendías. Melquiades introduces Jose Arcadio to another wonderful invention, which is destined to play a fatal role in his fate. José Arcadio's most audacious idea is to capture God with the help of daguerreotype in order to scientifically prove the existence of the Almighty or disprove it. Eventually, Buendía goes mad and ends up chained to a large chestnut tree in the yard of his house.
The firstborn, Jose Arcadio, named after his father, embodied his aggressive sexuality. He spends years of his life on countless adventures. The second son, Aureliano, absent-minded and lethargic, masters jewelry making. In the meantime, the village was expanding, turning into a provincial town, acquiring a corregidor, a priest, and Catarino's establishment - the first breach in the wall of "good-naturedness" of the Macondians. Aureliano's imagination is amazed by the beauty of the daughter of the Corregidor Remedios. And Rebeca and another daughter of Ursula Amaranta fall in love with the Italian, piano master Pietro Crespi. There are violent quarrels, jealousy seethes, but in the end Rebeca gives preference to the "super-male" Jose Arcadio, who, ironically, is overtaken by a quiet family life under the heel of his wife and a bullet fired by someone unknown, most likely the same wife. Rebeca decides to retreat, burying herself alive in the house. Out of cowardice, selfishness and fear, Amaranta still refuses love, in her declining years she begins to weave a shroud for herself and fades away, having finished it. When Remedios dies of childbirth, Aureliano, oppressed by disappointed hopes, is in a passive, dreary state. However, the cynical machinations of his father-in-law-corregidor with ballots during the elections and the arbitrariness of the military in his hometown force him to leave to fight on the side of the liberals, although politics seems to him to be something abstract. War forges his character, but devastates his soul, since, in essence, the struggle for national interests has long since turned into a struggle for power.
The grandson of Ursula Arcadio, a school teacher appointed during the war as the civil and military ruler of Macondo, behaves like an autocratic proprietor, becoming a local tyrant, and at the next change of power in the town he is shot by conservatives.
Aureliano Buendía becomes the supreme commander of the revolutionary forces, but gradually realizes that he is fighting only out of pride, and decides to end the war in order to free himself. On the day of the signing of the truce, he tries to commit suicide, but is unsuccessful. Then he returns to the ancestral home, refuses a life pension and lives apart from his family and, locked in splendid isolation, is engaged in the manufacture of goldfish with emerald eyes.
Civilization comes to Macondo: the railway, electricity, cinema, the telephone, and at the same time an avalanche of foreigners falls, establishing a banana company on these fertile lands. And now the once paradise has been turned into a hot spot, a cross between a fair, a hostel and a brothel. Seeing the disastrous changes, Colonel Aureliano Buendia, who has been deliberately fencing off from the surrounding reality for many years, feels a dull rage and regret that he did not bring the war to a decisive end. His seventeen sons from seventeen different women, the eldest of whom was under thirty-five, were killed in one day. Doomed to remain in the desert of loneliness, he dies by the old mighty chestnut growing in the courtyard of the house.
Ursula watches with concern the extravagances of the descendants. War, fighting roosters, bad women and delusional undertakings - these are the four disasters that led to the decline of the Buendía clan, she believes and laments: the great-grandchildren of Aureliano Segundo and Jose Arcadio Segundo collected all family vices, not inheriting a single family virtue. The beauty of the great-granddaughter of Remedios the Beautiful spreads around the destructive spirit of death, but here is a girl, strange, alien to all conventions, incapable of love and not knowing this feeling, obeying free attraction, ascends on freshly washed and hung out to dry sheets, picked up by the wind. The dashing reveler Aureliano Segundo marries the aristocrat Fernanda del Carpio, but spends a lot of time outside the house, with his mistress Petra Cotes. Jose Arcadio II breeds fighting cocks, prefers the company of French heterosexuals. The turning point in him occurs when he miraculously escapes death by shooting the striking workers of the banana company. Driven by fear, he hides in the abandoned room of Melquiades, where he suddenly finds peace and plunges into the study of the sorcerer's parchments. In his eyes, the brother sees a repetition of the irreparable fate of his great-grandfather. And it starts to rain over Macondo, and it pours for four years, eleven months and two days. After the rain, lethargic, slow people cannot resist the insatiable gluttony of oblivion.
In recent years, Ursula has been clouded by a struggle with Fernanda, a cruel bigot who has made lies and hypocrisy the basis of family life. She brings up her son as a loafer, imprisons her daughter Meme, who has sinned with the artisan, in a monastery. Macondo, from which the banana company has squeezed all the juices, is reaching its limit of launch. After the death of his mother, Jose Arcadio, the son of Fernanda, returns to this dead town, covered with dust and exhausted by the heat, and finds the illegitimate nephew Aureliano Babilone in the devastated family nest. Retaining languid dignity and aristocratic manners, he devotes his time to lascivious games, and Aureliano in Melquiades' room is immersed in the translation of the encrypted verses of old parchments and makes progress in the study of Sanskrit.
Coming from Europe, where she was educated, Amaranta Ursula is obsessed with the dream of reviving Macondo. Smart and energetic, she tries to breathe life into the haunted local human society, but to no avail. A reckless, destructive, all-consuming passion connects Aureliano with his aunt. A young couple is expecting a child, Amaranta Ursula hopes that he is destined to revive the family and cleanse it of fatal vices and a vocation to loneliness. The baby is the only one of all Buendías born over a century, conceived in love, but he is born with a pork tail, and Amaranta Ursula dies of bleeding. The last one in the Buendía family is destined to be eaten by red ants that have invaded the house. With the ever-increasing gusts of wind, Aureliano reads the history of the Buendía family in the parchments of Melquíades, learning that he was not destined to leave the room, for according to the prophecy the city will be swept off the face of the earth by a hurricane and erased from the memory of people at the very moment when he finishes deciphering the parchments.
Retold
One of the most characteristic and popular works in the direction of magical realism. The first edition of the novel was published in Buenos Aires in June 1967 with a circulation of 8000 (first 3000 - then 5000) copies. The novel was awarded the Romulo Gallegos Prize. To date, more than 30 million copies have been sold, the novel has been translated into 35 languages.
Historical context
One Hundred Years of Solitude was written by García Márquez over a period of 18 months, between 1965 and 1966 in Mexico City. The original idea for this piece appeared in 1952, when the author visited his home village of Aracataka in the company of his mother. His short story "The Day After Saturday," published in 1954, introduces Macondo for the first time. García Márquez planned to call his new novel "Home", but eventually changed his mind in order to avoid analogies with the novel "Big House", published in 1954 by his friend Alvaro Zamudio.
The first, considered a classic, translation of the novel into Russian belongs to Nina Butyrina and Valery Stolbov (1970). The modern translation, which is now widespread in the book markets, was made by Margarita Bylinkina. In 2014, the translation by Butyrina and Stolbov was reprinted, this publication became the first legal version.
Composition
The book consists of 20 unnamed chapters, which describe a story that is looped in time: the events of Macondo and the Buendía family, for example, the names of the heroes, are repeated over and over again, combining fantasy and reality. The first three chapters deal with the resettlement of a group of people and the founding of the village of Macondo. From 4 to 16 chapters tells about the economic, political and social development of the village. The final chapters of the novel show its decline.
Almost all sentences of the novel are built in indirect speech and are rather long. Direct speech and dialogues are almost never used. A noteworthy sentence from chapter 16, in which Fernanda del Carpio laments and pity herself, takes two and a half pages in print.
Writing history
“... I had a wife and two little sons. I worked as a PR manager and edited film scripts. But to write a book, you had to give up work. I pawned the car and gave the money to Mercedes. Every day, one way or another, she got me paper, cigarettes, everything that was needed for work. When the book was finished, it turned out that we owe the butcher 5,000 pesos - a lot of money. There was a rumor in the neighborhood that I was writing a very important book, and all the shopkeepers wanted to take part. It took 160 pesos to send the text to the publisher, and there were only 80 pesos left. Then I put in a mixer and a Mercedes hairdryer. Upon learning of this, she said: "It was not enough for the novel to be bad."
Central themes
Loneliness
Throughout the novel, all of its characters are destined to suffer from loneliness, which is a congenital "vice" of the Buendía family. The village where the novel takes place, Macondo, also lonely and separated from the world of its day, lives in anticipation of the visits of the gypsies who bring new inventions with them, and in oblivion, in constant tragic events in the history of the culture described in the work.
Loneliness is most noticeable in Colonel Aureliano Buendía, as his inability to express his love forces him to go to war, leaving his sons from different mothers in different villages. In another episode, he asks to draw a three-meter circle around him, and so that no one approaches him. Having signed a peace treaty, he shoots himself in the chest so as not to meet with his future, but due to his unluckiness he does not achieve his goal and spends his old age in the workshop, making goldfish in honest harmony with loneliness.
Other characters in the novel also endured the consequences of loneliness and abandonment:
- founder of Macondo Jose Arcadio Buendía(spent many years alone under a tree);
- Ursula Higuarán(she lived in the solitude of her senile blindness);
- Jose Arcadio and Rebeca(went to live in a separate house so as not to disgrace the family);
- Amaranta(she was unmarried all her life);
- Gerinéldo Marques(all my life I was waiting for the pension and love of Amaranta that had not yet been received);
- Pietro Crespi(rejected by Amaranta the suicide);
- Jose Arcadio II(after the execution he saw he never entered into a relationship with anyone and spent his last years locked in Melquíades's office);
- Fernanda del Carpio(was born to become a queen and left her home for the first time at the age of 12);
- Renata Remedios "Meme" Buendía(she was sent to the monastery against her will, but completely resignedly after the misfortune with Mauricio Babylonia, having lived there in eternal silence);
- Aureliano Babilonia(he lived in the studio of Colonel Aureliano Buendía, and after the death of José Arcadio Segundo he moved to Melquíades' room).
One of the main reasons for their lonely life and detachment is the inability to love and prejudice, which were destroyed by the relationship between Aureliano Babylonia and Amaranta Ursula, whose ignorance of their relationship led to the tragic ending of the story in which the only son, conceived in love, was eaten by ants. This family was not capable of love, so they were doomed to loneliness. There was an exceptional case between Aureliano II and Petra Cotes: they loved each other, but they did not and could not have children. The only way a member of the Buendía family can have a child of love is in a relationship with another member of the Buendía family, which happened between Aureliano Babilonia and his aunt Amaranta Ursula. In addition, this union was born in a love destined for death, a love that ended the Buendía family.
Finally, we can say that loneliness manifested itself in all generations. Suicide, love, hatred, betrayal, freedom, suffering, craving for the forbidden are secondary themes that throughout the novel change our views on many things and make it clear that in this world we live and die alone.
Reality and fiction
In the work, fantastic events are presented through everyday life, through situations that are not anomalous for the characters. Also, the historical events of Colombia, for example, civil wars between political parties, the massacre of banana plantation workers (in 1928, the United Fruit transnational banana corporation, with the help of government troops, brutally massacred hundreds of strikers who were awaiting the return of the delegation from negotiations after mass protests), reflected in the myth of Macondo. Events such as the ascension to heaven of Remedios, the prophecies of Melquiades, the appearance of deceased characters, unusual objects brought by the gypsies (magnet, magnifying glass, ice) ... burst into the context of real events reflected in the book, and urge the reader to enter a world in which the most incredible events. It is in this that such a literary movement as magical realism, which characterizes the latest Latin American literature, lies.
Incest
Relations between relatives are indicated in the book through the myth of the birth of a child with a pig's tail. Despite this warning, relationships arise over and over again between different family members and across different generations throughout the novel.
The story begins with the relationship between José Arcadio Buendía and his cousin Ursula, who grew up together in the old village and heard many times about their uncle who had a pig's tail. Subsequently, José Arcadio (the founder's son) married Rebeca, an adopted daughter who was a distant relative of him. Arcadio was born of Pilar Ternera, and did not suspect why she did not respond to his feelings, since she did not know anything about her origin. Aureliano José fell in love with his aunt Amaranta, proposed marriage to her, but was refused. You can also call the relationship close to love between José Arcadio (the son of Aureliano Segundo) and Amaranta, which also failed. In the end, a relationship develops between Amaranta Ursula and her nephew Aureliano Babilonia, who were not even aware of their relationship, because Fernanda, Aureliano's grandmother and mother of Amaranta Ursula, hid the secret of his birth.
This last and only sincere love in the history of the family, paradoxically, was the fault of the death of the Buendía clan, which was predicted in the parchments of Melquíades.
Plot
Almost all of the events in the novel take place in the fictional town of Macondo, but relate to historical events in Colombia. The city was founded by José Arcadio Buendía, a strong-willed and impulsive leader, deeply interested in the mysteries of the universe, which were periodically revealed to him by visiting gypsies led by Melquíades. The city is gradually growing, and the government of the country shows interest in Macondo, but José Arcadio Buendía leaves the leadership of the city behind him, luring the sent alcalde (mayor) to his side.
Rebeca
Rebeca is an orphan who was adopted by José Arcadio Buendía and Ursula. Rebeca came to the Buendía family at the age of about 10 with a sack. Inside it were the bones of her parents, who were Ursula's first cousins. At first, the girl was extremely timid, hardly spoke and had the habit of eating dirt and lime from the walls of the house, as well as sucking her thumb. As Rebeca grows up, her beauty captivates the Italian Pietro Crespi, but their wedding is constantly postponed due to many mourning. As a result, this love makes her and Amaranta, who is also in love with the Italian, bitter enemies. After José Arcadio's return, Rebeca defies Ursula's wishes to marry him. For this, a couple in love is expelled from the house. After the death of Jose Arcadio, Rebeca, embittered by the whole world, locks herself in a house alone under the care of her maid. Later, 17 sons of Colonel Aureliano try to renovate Rebeca's house, but they only manage to renew the facade, they do not open the front door. Rebeca dies at a ripe old age, with her finger in her mouth.
Third generation
Arcadio
Arcadio is the illegitimate son of Jose Arcadio and Pilar Turner. He is a school teacher, but takes over the leadership of Macondo at the request of Colonel Aureliano when he leaves the city. Becomes an oppressive dictator. Arcadio is trying to uproot the church, and persecution of the conservatives living in the city begins (in particular, Don Apolinar Moscote). When he tries to execute Apolinar for a malicious remark, Ursula cannot bear it in a motherly way, butcher him like a small child. Having received information that the forces of the Conservatives are returning, Arcadio decides to fight them with the small forces that are in the city. After the defeat and capture of the city by the Conservatives, he was shot.
Aureliano Jose
The illegitimate son of Colonel Aureliano and Pilar Ternera. Unlike his half-brother Arcadio, he knew the secret of his origin and communicated with his mother. He was raised by his aunt, Amaranta, with whom he was in love, but could not achieve it. At one time he accompanied his father on his campaigns, participated in hostilities. Returning to Macondo, he was killed as a result of disobedience to the authorities.
Santa Sofia de la Piedad
Santa Sofia is a beautiful virgin, daughter of a small shop owner. Pilar Turner hired her to sleep with Arcadio, who later became her husband. The Buendía family took her and her children into their home after Arcadio's execution. After Ursula's death, she unexpectedly leaves, not really knowing where.
Other sons of Colonel Aureliano
Colonel Aureliano had 17 sons from 17 different women, who were sent to him during his campaigns "to improve the breed." All of them bore the name of their father (but had different nicknames), were baptized by their grandmother, Ursula, but were brought up by their mothers. For the first time, they all gathered together in Macondo, having learned about the anniversary of Colonel Aureliano. Subsequently, four of them - Aureliano Sad, Aureliano Rzhanoy, and two others - lived and worked in Macondo. 16 sons were killed in one night as a result of government intrigues against Colonel Aureliano. The only brother who managed to escape is Aureliano Lovers. He hid for a long time, in extreme old age he asked for asylum from one of the last representatives of the Buendia family - Jose Arcadio and Aureliano - but they refused him, because they did not find out. After that, he was killed too. All the brothers were shot at the ashen crosses on their foreheads, which Padre Antonio Isabel had painted for them, and which they could not completely wash off.
Fourth generation
Remedios the Beautiful
Daughter of Arcadio and Santa Sophia de la Piedad. For her beauty she received the name of the Beautiful. Most family members considered her an extremely childish girl, only one Colonel Aureliano Buendía considered her the most reasonable of all family members. All the men who sought her attention died under various circumstances, which ultimately brought her into disrepute. She was lifted up to heaven with a light gust of wind, while removing the sheets in the garden.
Jose Arcadio II
Son of Arcadio and Santa Sophia de la Piedad, twin brother of Aureliano Segundo. They were born five months after Arcadio was shot. The twins, realizing their complete resemblance in childhood, were very fond of playing those around them, changing places. Over time, the confusion only increased. The prophetess Ursula even suspected that due to the family dissimilarity with the characters, they were still messed up. José Arcadio II grew up thin like Colonel Aureliano Buendía. For almost two months he shared one woman with his brother - Petra Cotes, but then left her. He worked as a supervisor at a banana company, later became a union leader and exposed the machinations of the leadership and government. He survived the shooting of a peaceful demonstration of workers at the station and woke up, wounded, on a train carrying more than three thousand killed workers, old people, women and children to the sea. After the incident, he lost his mind and lived out the remaining days in Melquiades' room, sorting out his parchments. He died at the same time with his twin brother Aureliano Segundo. As a result of the commotion during the funeral, the coffin with José Arcadio II was placed in the grave of Aureliano II.
Aureliano II
Son of Arcadio and Santa Sophia de la Piedad, twin brother of Jose Arcadio II. You can read about his childhood above. Grew up huge like his grandfather José Arcadio Buendía. Thanks to the passionate love between him and Petra Cotes, her cattle multiplied so rapidly that Aureliano Segundo became one of the richest people in Macondo and also the most cheerful and hospitable owner. "Be fruitful, cows, life is short!" - such a motto was on the memorial wreath brought by his many drinking companions to his grave. He married, however, not Petra Cotes, but Fernanda del Carpio, whom he had been looking for after the carnival for a long time, according to the only sign - she is the most beautiful woman in the world. With her he had three children: Amaranta Ursula, José Arcadio and Renata Remedios, with whom he was especially close.
Fernanda del Carpio
Fernanda comes from a devastated aristocratic family that isolated her from the world. She was chosen as the most beautiful of 5000 girls. Fernanda was brought to Macondo to compete with Remedios for the title of queen of the local carnival; be that as it may, her appearance turns the carnival into a bloody clash. After the fiasco, she marries Aureliano Segundo, who, despite this, maintains a relationship with his mistress, Petra Cotes. Nevertheless, she soon takes the leadership in the family from the elderly Ursula. She manages the affairs of the Buendía family with an iron hand. She has 3 children from Aureliano Segundo: José Arcadio, Renata Remedios (or Meme) and Amaranta Ursula. She remains in the house after her husband's death, taking care of the house until her death.
Fernanda was never received by anyone in the Buendía family, since everyone considered her a stranger, nevertheless, no one from Buendía rebelled against her unyielding conservatism. Her mental and emotional instability manifests itself through her paranoia, her correspondence with "invisible healers" and her irrational behavior towards Aureliano, whom she tried to isolate from the rest of the world.
Fifth generation
Renata Remedios (Meme)
Meme is the first daughter of Fernanda and Aureliano Segundo. She graduated from the school of playing the clavichord. While she devoted herself to this instrument with “unbending discipline,” Meme enjoyed the excesses of the holidays and exhibitions, just like her father. I met and fell in love with Mauricio Babylon, an apprentice of the mechanic of the banana company, who was always surrounded by yellow butterflies. When Fernanda learned that a sexual relationship had arisen between them, she procured a night guard from the mayor at the house, who wounded Mauricio on one of his night visits (a bullet hit the spine), after which he became disabled. Fernanda took Meme to the monastery, in which she herself studied, in order to hide the shameful connection of her daughter. Meme, after being wounded by Babylonia, remained silent for the rest of her life. A few months later, she gave birth to a son, who was sent to Fernande and named Aureliano after his grandfather. Renata died of old age in a gloomy hospital in Krakow, without uttering a single word, all the while thinking about her dear Mauricio.
Jose Arcadio
José Arcadio, son of Fernanda and Aureliano Segundo, named after his ancestors in accordance with family tradition, had the character of previous Arcadios. He was raised by Ursula, who wanted him to become Pope, for which he was sent to Rome to study. However, Jose Arcadio soon dropped out of the seminary. On his return from Rome after the death of his mother, he found a treasure and began to squander it in lavish festivities, including having fun with children. Later, there was a kind of rapprochement, although far from friendship, between him and Aureliano Babilonia, his illegitimate nephew, to whom he planned to leave the income from the gold he found, on which he could live after leaving for Naples. But this did not happen, because José Arcadio was drowned by four children who lived with him, who after the murder took away all three bags of gold, which only they and José Arcadio knew about.
Amaranta Ursula
Amaranta Ursula is the youngest daughter of Fernanda and Aureliano Segundo. Very similar to Ursula (the wife of the founder of the clan), who died when Amaranta was very young. She never found out that the boy sent to Buendía's house was her nephew, the son of Meme. She gave birth to a child from him (with a pork tail), unlike her other relatives - in love. She studied in Belgium, but returned from Europe to Macondo with her husband, Gastón, bringing with her a cage of fifty canaries so that the birds, which were killed after Ursula's death, would return to Macondo. Later, Gaston returned to Brussels on business and, as if nothing had happened, he received the news of the romance between his wife and Aureliano Babilonia. Amaranta Ursula died giving birth to her only son, Aureliano, who ended the Buendía family.
Sixth generation
Aureliano Babilonia
Aureliano is the son of Renata Remedios (Meme) and Mauricio Babylonia. He was sent to the house of Buendía from the monastery where Meme gave birth to him, and was shielded from the outside world by his grandmother, Fernanda, who, in an attempt to hide from everyone the secret of his origin, invented that she had found him on the river in a basket. She hid the boy in Colonel Aureliano's jewelry workshop for three years. When he accidentally ran out of his "cell", no one in the house, except Fernanda herself, suspected his existence. In character, he is very similar to the colonel, the real Aureliano. He was the most well-read in the Buendía family, knew a lot, could keep up a conversation on many topics.
As a child, he was friends with Jose Arcadio II, who told him the true story of the execution of banana plantation workers. While other family members came and went (first Ursula died, then the twins, after them Santa Sophia de la Piedad, Fernanda died, Jose Arcadio returned, he was killed, finally Amaranta Ursula returned), Aureliano remained in the house and almost never left it. He spent his entire childhood reading the writings of Melquíades, trying to decipher his parchments, written in Sanskrit. As a child, Melquiades often appeared to him, giving him hints to his parchments. In the bookstore of the Catalan scholar, he met four friends with whom he developed a close friendship, but all four soon leave Macondo, seeing that the city is in irreparable decline. We can say that it was they who opened the external world unknown to him for Aureliano, pulling him out of the exhausting study of the works of Melquíades.
After the arrival of Amaranta Ursula from Europe, he almost immediately falls in love with her. They met at first in secret, but after the imminent departure of her husband Gaston, they were able to love each other openly. This love is passionately and beautifully described in the work. For a long time, they suspected that they were half-brother and sister, but without finding any documentary evidence of this, they accepted Fernanda's fiction about a baby who sailed down the river in a basket as true. When Amaranta died after giving birth, Aureliano left the house, full of pain because of the death of his beloved. After drinking all night with the owner of the salon and not finding anyone's support, standing in the middle of the square, he shouted: "Friends are not friends, but scum!" This phrase is a reflection of the loneliness and endless pain that cut into his heart. In the morning, returning to the house, he remembers his son, already by that time eaten by ants, and suddenly understands the meaning of Melquiades' manuscripts, and it immediately became clear to him that they described the fate of the Buendia family.
He easily begins to decipher the parchments, when suddenly a destructive hurricane begins in Macondo, erasing the city from the memory of people, as Melquiades predicted, "for the branches of a clan, sentenced to a hundred years of loneliness, are not allowed to repeat themselves on earth."
Seventh generation
Aureliano
Son of Aureliano Babylonia and his aunt, Amaranta Ursula. At his birth, Ursula's old prediction came true - the child was born with a pig's tail, marking the end of the Buendía family. Despite the fact that his mother wanted to name the child Rodrigo, the father decided to give him the name Aureliano, following the family tradition. This is the only family member in a century who was born in love. But, since the family was doomed to a hundred years of loneliness, he could not survive. Aureliano was eaten by ants that filled the house because of the flood, just as it was written in the epigraph to parchments of Melquíades: "The first in the family will be tied to a tree, the last in the family will be eaten by ants."
Other
Melquiades
Melquiades is a member of the Gypsy camp who visited Macondo every March to showcase amazing items from around the world. Melquiades sells several new inventions to José Arcadio Buendía, including a pair of magnets and an alchemy lab. The Roma later report that Melquiades died in Singapore, but nevertheless returns to live with the Buendía family, stating that he could not bear the loneliness of death. He remains with Buendía and begins to write mysterious parchments, which in the future will be deciphered by Aureliano Babylonia, and on which a prophecy is inscribed about the end of the Buendía family. Melquiades dies a second time, drowning in a river near Macondo, and, after a large ceremony organized by Buendía, becomes the first person to be buried in Macondo. His name comes from the Melchizedek of the Old Testament, whose source of authority as high priest was mysterious.
Pilar Turner
Pilar is a local woman who slept with brothers Aureliano and José Arcadio. She becomes the mother of their children, Aureliano José and Arcadio. Pilar reads the future from maps and very often makes accurate, albeit vague, predictions. She is closely associated with Buendía throughout the novel, helping them with her card predictions. She dies some time after she turned 145 (after that she stopped counting), living up to the very last days of Macondo.
The word "Ternera" is Spanish for veal, which matches the way it was treated by José Arcadio, Aureliano and Arcadio. It can also be modified by the word "ternura", which means "tenderness" in Spanish. Pilar is often presented as a loving figure, and the author often uses names in a similar manner.
She plays an important part in the plot, as she is the link between the second and third generations of the Buendía family. The author emphasizes its importance, declaring after her death: "It was the end."
Pietro Crespi
Pietro is a very handsome and polite Italian musician who runs a music school. He sets up a piano in Buendía's house. He gets engaged to Rebeca, but Amaranta, who was also in love with him, manages to postpone the wedding for years. When Jose Arcadio and Rebeca decide to get married, he starts wooing Amaranta, who was so embittered that she brutally rejects him. Overwhelmed by the loss of both sisters, he commits suicide.
Petra Cotes
Petra is a dark-skinned woman with golden brown eyes similar to those of a panther. She is the lover of Aureliano Segundo and the love of his life. She came to Macondo as a teenager with her first husband. After the death of her husband, she strikes up a relationship with Jose Arcadio II. When she meets Aureliano Segundo, she strikes up a relationship with him, not knowing that these are two different people. After Jose Arcadio Segundo decides to leave her, Aureliano Segundo receives her forgiveness and stays with her. He continues to see her, even after his wedding. He eventually begins to live with her, which greatly embitters his wife, Fernanda del Carpio. When Aureliano and Petra make love, their animals reproduce at an unprecedented rate, but they all end up dying out during 4 years of rain. Petra makes money by running lotteries and providing food baskets for Fernanda and her family after the death of Aureliano Segundo.
Mr Herbert and Mr Brown
Mr. Herbert is a gringo who once showed up at Buendía's house to dine. Having tasted local bananas for the first time, he seeks to open a plantation in Macondo by a banana company. The plantation is run by the imperious Mr. Brown. When Jose Arcadio Segundo is pushing for a strike of workers on the plantation, the company lures over 3,000 strikers and machine guns shoot them in the town square. The Banana Company and the government are completely covering up the incident. Jose Arcadio is the only one who remembers the massacre. The company orders the army to destroy any resistance and leaves Macondo for good. The incident is most likely based on the Banana Massacre that took place in Cienaga, Magdalena in 1928.
Mauricio Babylonia
Mauricio is a brutally honest, generous and handsome mechanic who works for a banana company. It is said that he is a descendant of one of the gypsies who came to Macondo when the city was still a small village. He had an unusual feature - he was constantly surrounded by yellow butterflies, which even followed his beloved for a certain amount of time. He begins a romantic relationship with Meme until Fernanda finds out about it and tries to put an end to it. When Mauricio tries to sneak into the house once again to see Meme, Fernanda gets him shot as a chicken thief. Paralyzed and bedridden, he spends the rest of his long life alone.
Gaston
Gaston is the wealthy Belgian husband of Amaranta Ursula. She marries him in Europe and moves to Macondo, leading him on a silk leash. Gaston is 15 years older than his wife. He is an aviator and adventurer. When he and Amaranta Ursula moved to Macondo, he, thinking that it was only a matter of time before she realizes that European methods do not work here. Be that as it may, when he realizes that his wife is going to stay in Macondo, he gets his airplane transported by ship so that he can start the air mail delivery service. The plane was taken to Africa by mistake. When he goes there to get it, Amaranta writes to him about her love for Aureliano Babilonia Buendía. Gaston steps over the news, only asking them to transport him his bike.
Colonel Gerineldo Marquez
Friend and comrade of Colonel Aureliano Buendía. I wooed Amaranta to no avail.
Gabriel García Márquez
Gabriel García Márquez is only a minor character in the novel, but he is named after the author. He is the great-great-grandson of Colonel Gerineldo Márquez. He and Aureliano Babilonia are close friends because they know the history of the city that no one else believes in. He leaves for Paris, winning a competition, and decides to stay there, selling old newspapers and empty bottles. He is one of the few who managed to leave Macondo before the city was completely destroyed.
Filming and staging
In 2018, the play "One Day in Macondo" was staged - these are improvisations and sketches inspired by the graduation student performance of GITIS "One Hundred Years of Solitude". Most of the roles are played by recent graduates of the Sergei Zhenovach Workshop, who have joined the Theater Art Studios troupe. The total duration of the performance is 5.5 hours.
In March 2019, the American streaming service Netflix acquired the rights to film the novel by Gabriel García Márquez One Hundred Years of Solitude. The work will be filmed for the first time.
Netflix intends to film a Spanish-language TV series based on the book, with a focus on Colombia.
Groups "and groups" there is a song "
What about a stupid question. And if everything is the same, but only the Bulygin family in the north of the Ural Mountains would be described? How many fewer Russian readers would be admired? Everything is so exotic, everything is “not our way”, everything is so stupid and bad. In order not to die of longing for reading "A Hundred Years of Solitude", I had to entertain myself by catching the author's fleas - and, in fact, these fleas (borrowings, first of all, which are very different from both allusions and allusions) in bulk. So I entertained myself with this flea-hunting, and the "glorified" novel itself, of course, is a purely mediocre piece.
Fashion in literature is a rather obscene thing, the fashion for certain "themes" in literature is three times more obscene, and the fashion for national literature is even more obscene. Unfortunately, Marquez with his "Stami Years of Solitude" became famous and popular precisely because of all these mods. Well, God bless him.
Marquez could not tell the story, although he chose the easiest and most primitive path - something like a parable. The author also failed to parody or really play with the genre of the parable (as well as the genres: family novel, mythological history). All events are instantly divided into categories: tragedy, love tragedy, family tragedy - perhaps this plays out some mythological conventions, but how faded it all, how obvious the parody itself! No grace or subtlety, if this is a parody, then quite some kind of areal. All Buendias are simply amazingly nonexistent: banal, flat and boring. They do not even draw on the characters of parables and myths - simple literary templates with names and labels: "passionate", "beautiful", etc. Even Homer's Achilles is a much more “living” character. But the saddest thing is that it is so with almost all images of the novel, especially the "key" ones. Take, for example, the rain, the image is strong, you can develop, you can play, but no - all the standard cliches are listed by Marquez.
Very superficial reasoning (and repeated thousands of times before him), for some reason taken for "philosophy", Marquez clothe in a stringy and melodious style - a good maneuver, but too primitively executed. And why borrow so much and so rudely from others? Pieces of Joyce thematically, pieces of Borges (with pieces of existentialists, also very fashionable at that time), stylistically. And these pieces stick straight out of the novel, they could be reworked to beat, but to squeeze in so roughly is stupid and awkward.
In my opinion, the very name "magic realism", the very mythology and stereotypes wrapped around this novel, all this background makes quite understandable impressions on some readers. The novel itself is sluggish, boring and secondary.
Scoouuuuuuuuuuuuoso!
Rating: 3
Probably those who say that this book is overestimated in the general literary canvas are right, but in itself ...
I read “One Hundred Years of Solitude” on half-empty trains for several days in a row and almost missed my own stop. It seemed to me that the endless rain of Macondo was whispering behind the dusty window, that the merry caravan of Melquíades was about to rustle, and that if I didn’t fall asleep when I returned home, I would have to walk around the house and glue on all the pieces of paper with the words: “This is the door - they open it. ".
They say that when Marquez wrote the part about the appearance of Amaranta, he was often found phlegmatically chewing on wall plaster. I hope he didn't hear the rattling of her parents' bones that would drive anyone crazy.
Why am I talking about this? And really none of those who read this book have ever felt at least a small fraction of what the heroes experienced. He did not feel the gnawing melancholy of General Buendía, the eternal bustle and concern of Ursula, the passion that the admirers of Remedios the Beautiful felt. Gabriel Márquez not only himself experienced everything that his heroes had to go through, but also plunged us into their crazy world.
Some reviewers often repeat that Márquez borrowed from Cortazar, then from Joyce, or from some of the other authors. But maybe it's worth reading only "One Hundred Years of Solitude", experience all of the above, and then, finding ways to these allusions, smile to yourself and remember the whispering rain of Macondo.
Score: 10
Well, at least ...
She opened it, gritting her teeth, preparing for a long struggle to get the novel into her head. Instead, Marquez sat down on a bench warmed by the sun and began a story. It was getting colder, the shadows lengthened, and I kept sitting, forgetting about the time and listening, listening ... I read and read ...
He unfolded panoramas of distant places and almost forgotten accomplishments, so firmly and confidently intertwining fabulousness that, barely heard, it was already clothed with ordinary life, which was “talked about” all day.
Everything is everyday, everything is simple, everything is intelligible. The civil war is filled with the same worldly serenity as rebuilding a house or baking bread. The horrifying injustice of deeds justified by duty and revolution, countless nameless deaths, executions of friends - all against the bright serenity of the background of another generation of noisy children, already planted begonias in pots ...
And then, suddenly waking up, you notice that there is no more sun-drenched bench, where everything was so comfortably told. And through the last hundred pages you have to wade yourself.
The ornamental ribbon of the story, which first flows like a fast river at the feet, thickens and fades. Colorful patterns of a happy home, family, children are already snaking in the impenetrable jungle of hermitic old age and hopeless desolation. Not having time to blossom in the extravagance of adventure, youth curls up in stunted sprouts, rotting into timelessness. By the end, you cut through all the swallowing thickets of disappointment and hopelessness. With a wet crunch, with titanic labor, you wander almost at random towards the end of the Buendía clan.
No dialogues, no extraneous feelings. Only the most important thing. Only life as it is.
Score: 10
Apparently Latin American magic realism performed by Marquez is absolutely not my genre. The first novel I read was "Autumn of the Patriarch" - I completely harassed it and gave it a deserved 3/10 just for knowing the language. The second approach to the author's work ended up with the same disgusting impression. Marquez is not Borges for you. If the second is a true genius, then the first cheap speculator who got into the stream of popularity.
Briefly about the novel. My impressions, thesis: CIRCUS, ASSOCIATIONS, THRESH, HOUSEHOLD, TASTY.
You can delve into the text as much as you like and try to find there a double bottom and hidden great philosophical meanings, but I will leave this occupation to professional philologists. I've read enough real intellectual literature to say that Marquez has nothing to do with it. Its place is next to Castaneda and Coelho.
I also see no reason to analyze the plot and characters in detail, for there is really no one or the other in the novel. I can only say that when that long-awaited moment finally came and all the cousins, grandfathers, mothers, etc. have already managed to get through with all the nieces, granddaughters, foster children, etc., a child with a pork tail was born, the last of Buendia died, - I said Hallelujah and closed this worthless book so that I would not return to the work of this mossy Colombian author ... Do not read this slag, value your time, the popularity and masterpiece of this opus has been sucked out of your finger!
Rating: 3
The novel caused me rather contradictory feelings: on the one hand, the novel is practically about nothing: a description of the life of one separate family, where the line between fiction and history is blurred so much that it even interferes with reading, but, on the other hand, the TEXT itself is so addictive that after reading even a little, you can no longer quit. At this point, the writer was able to fully realize himself, making a real masterpiece out of a banal plot.
The life of a small town presented by the history of the Buendía family appears before the eyes of the readers. The story begins from the very beginning of the town's foundation, and the narrative develops in the same way as the town develops. If at first, when the town was small, it was about miracles, alchemists, attempts to understand the unknown (as is often the case in youth), then by the middle of the novel it was about war, valor, murder (as is the case at a more mature age), well , to old age, as they say "gray hair in the beard, the devil in the rib", it was about love and debauchery.
Therefore, the text turned out to be extremely heterogeneous, which sometimes even interferes with perception, nevertheless, despite the fact that at first glance there is nothing very attractive in the plot, you cannot tear yourself away from the novel. I would like to absorb the text further, even if it comes down to the banal "what I see, I sing." Nevertheless, the author's mastery of the WORD is so strong that it is impossible to tear yourself away from the novel, and you get pleasure not so much from the development of the plot, but from the very process of perceiving the text
Score: 8
I always thought how I would behave when everyone in the room would say that the room was green, but it would seem to me that it was blue. Here it is, the opportunity presented itself.) Once I got acquainted with the work of the Brazilian Paulo Coelho, his magical realism. Then I decided that all ingenious, of course, is simple ... but it cannot be that simple. Let them be correct, but extremely banal thoughts, without much ingenuity and with a sauce of pathos.
I can't say that One Hundred Years of Solitude is entirely from the same opera. A very expressive language, colorful descriptions, it will dissolve in the text itself very nicely and easily. Literally some kind of hypnosis. But what is behind all this? I didn't see anything. Life is about wars, pain, friendship, betrayal, love and much more. But it seems that the author can and wants to talk only about love - about all its, sometimes strange, variations. But, it seems to me, you cannot tell about a big and passionate love between two cardboard boxes. And the heroes are all paper, not voluminous, like pages in an encyclopedia. They have nothing but a long name and the habit of walking naked or going off to war.
And yes, it looks like Brazilian soap operas. Apparently this is such a fetish for them - to delve into tangled family ties, fall in love, and then suddenly find out that he is in love with his sister / brother.
It seems to me that this is one of the most overrated works. The same boring, pretentious and monotonous, as well as positive reviews about him - "touched to the core", "made me think", "an amazing parable" ...
This is the opinion, sorry for the frankness.
Score: 6
4/10 Gabriel Garcia Márquez One Hundred Years of Solitude is an epic novel. A thick novel that rivals Santa Barbara in the twists and turns of history. However, the quality of the plot too. The story of the inhabitants of one settlement, lost in the mountains, is described. Ordinary everyday stories are colored by the delirium of our world. The endless twists and turns of the plot do not capture at all and catch up with melancholy. In places, the narrative is superficial - historical; sometimes the author goes into details, dialogues and retelling of people's thoughts appear: both "modes" are not interesting to read. It's written well from an artistic point of view, but I don't see the point in the novel itself. I read half of it until I realized that this everyday confusion will continue to the end.
Summary: the most boring novel, analogue of the Brazilian TV series; for an amateur
Rating: 4
Did not impress. A pile of faces, events - and all for what? For the sake of a general conclusion that a family doomed to a hundred years of loneliness is not destined to repeat itself on Earth? Excuse me, but this is a typical example of a mountain giving birth to a mouse.
Once I asked a literary critic I knew: "What is this book about?" "About life! she exclaimed enthusiastically. - About love! About the game of circumstances and the whims of fate! In short, about everything in the world! "
Again, a big pardon, but the same can be said about almost any work, from Hamlet to some kind of pulp fiction. Each book IMHO should carry some general idea for which this book was written. And if there is no such idea, the output is a chaotic interweaving of facts, for no one knows why, invented by the writer.
Score: 6
"The lion roars in the darkness of the night,
The cat groans on the pipe
Bourgeois beetle and worker beetle
They are dying in the class struggle.
Everything will perish, everything will disappear
From bacillus to elephant -
And your love and songs
Both the planets and the moon. "
(The poet Oleinikov spoke about the essence of this work long before it was written)
If I someday make a list of the people "Books that everyone should read", it will not take much of my time. More precisely, it will not take it away at all. Because such books simply do not exist.
I'll explain a little why. As for me, all people are different and live different lives. Many may have similar but still slightly different tastes. Even a person like me, who absorbs literature of all sorts, may miss certain key things at one time (for no one is able to grasp the immensity), and then, due to already by no means young age, personal preferences or general satiety, these works will no longer want to read. There were no universal creations that would be one hundred percent suitable for everyone and everyone, there are no, and will not be. Because the human environment sometimes creates too different individuals with completely different needs.
There is such a thing as the subjectivity of perception and opinion. For example, I think that one of the books that you should really get acquainted with is The Epic of Gilgamesh, because in order to judge literature, you first need to learn about its very origins. But I do not impose this point of view on anyone, since I understand that the gloomy Sumerian mythology is, to put it mildly, an amateur. If you want, read it. If you don’t want it, you don’t need it, maybe you don’t need these fundamental principles of writing at all.
And even more so, it is not worth reading our today's patient simply because he was constantly included in some kind of table of ranks there. It didn’t go - don’t even think to torment yourself further. Personally, after a third, I just started flipping fluently in order to quickly get to the empty ending. From this work, a good story could have turned out in the style of "they lived a long time and unhappily, but as a result, a meteorite fell and everyone died." But it turned out to be a long and incoherent soap opera about incest and mental fuss. And the so-called "magic realism", woven into the fabric of the narrative, rather reminded me of quite ordinary hallucinogenic parishes. You never know what will be given to the inhabitants of an isolated village, especially given their lifestyle ... By God, I don't understand at all how this Colombian booth could hook a mass reader. It may be true, perhaps only by its exotic surroundings. And what did the author want to say in the end with all this chaotic verbosity? To emphasize the burdensomeness and futility of being? An interesting thought, but, firstly, I personally do not agree with it, and secondly, why for the sake of a simple "everything will perish, everything will disappear" was so much tormenting my readers ...
What else to say about the overall experience? This is certainly not some Coelho (fieh3), but after reading this book, I still have a feeling of “a cult from scratch”. Perhaps for some it is truly a book of all time, but I pass. At close range, I do not see anything really outstanding in this work. Maybe just in old age literary myopia developed, maybe just not mine. Or maybe this is a book that lures the reader with vivid images and an unusual setting, but with its content, in the end, it does not give him anything special and deep.
As a result, I can only say one thing. Read what you really like, and look at any other people's opinion with at least a little, but an eye. For any creativity, including literature, is unstable matter.
Rating: no
It was something ... I read about half of the book on one sigh, a big greedy gulp from which my head was spinning. It was something. It was a shock. (“Isn't it okay too?” - I thought with surprise.) I read, unable to tear myself away from this strange, full of routine and miracles of family chronicle. I rolled on the floor laughing, because everything that happened seemed to me both tragic and funny to tears with all the eating of the earth and spiritual twists, both everyday and strange. Something from Kusturitsi in a shell from the ethereal philosophy of life and death, in which the rising dead and rattling bones are just a confirmation of the reality of being. And at the same time, I realized that on the whole (how crazy it is) between the reality of Latin America, the reality of Macondo, and ours, Russian, there is something similar, something very, very close, as in two branches of one river. I enjoyed my tongue, which flowed like a sweet-tasting stream, from which I do not want to tear myself away and from which everything even the most incredible seemed natural and unmistakable. It was a miracle, not a language. It was a miracle, not a story.
Then I had to tear myself away from the book. The time has come for the sessions and the writing of the diploma. I returned to Macondo in fits and starts, just a little bit. And, either the break was to blame, or I began to get used to all the miracles and oddities, the Macondo rhythm became my rhythm, but my eyes did not widen so much with surprise. In addition, this huge family began to fool me, I began to wander between all these Aureliano and Jose Arcadio, confusing them and getting confused in them. I clung to these names like thorny bushes, and sometimes I had to stomp on the spot and remember which of them was who and to whom. Towards the end of the book, I sometimes even wanted to get rid of her as soon as possible. But as soon as I found a minute to tackle it, I immediately fell under hypnosis and read page after page. I wanted to finish quickly, that book had been with me for more than one or two months (in fact, this book is my winter and a good part of spring). I wanted to finish quickly, but I swallowed it again with greed and a strange lump became in my throat because this book would soon be over and because this book threatens to end with universal sadness like a load of the dust of a century of loneliness.
And now, when it's all over, I walk around a little dazed. Now that it's all over, I understand that, despite all this confusion over duplicate names, despite the fact that over time, the surprise tends to subside, despite the fact that due to huge interruptions this book has stretched out for me so unimaginably long - this is a gorgeous book, this phenomenon is wonderful and strange and at the same time real like rain or thunderstorm. It costs a lot, a lot ...
Score: 9
For a very long time I could not take up this book. I have long known that it is very high quality and interesting, but all the time my eyes did not reach it. It's a pity, although it is possible that if I had read it earlier, I would not have appreciated it so highly, because then what is called it would not have matured to it. In the same way, it is likely that after rereading it in 5-10 years, I will understand the novel much deeper and my impressions will change. Or maybe not, in any case, this is a matter of the distant future, so it’s better to go at last directly to the work.
One Hundred Years of Solitude is a novel that has no final bottom at all. There are books that, in addition to the main plot, have a background, a bright social or political subtext, there are books that have several of these subtexts, and some works do without them at all. “One hundred years ...”, judging by my feelings, includes in general all possible subtexts. The novel does not have a clear plot idea (throughout its entire length there are themes of loneliness and love, but still this is a little different), it is just the story of the Buendía family, who founded the city of Macondo and live there. But at the same time, it is also the history of the city itself. The novel draws in itself like a tornado, demonstrates all the charms and shortcomings of human life, after which it leaves the reader to draw conclusions, each one his own.
The whole story, perhaps, has only one drawback - some chaotic narrative, which complicates perception, and, coupled with the repeated names of the characters, the book is even harder to read. Fortunately, I read Martin, so I easily perceive a large number of characters, and I have a good memory, but not everyone can boast of that.
In the end, no matter what, I would like to recommend reading this book to absolutely all fans of science fiction in general and magical realism in particular. It is far from the fact that you will like it, but having your own opinion about such a book is very good.
Score: 9
One Hundred Years of Solitude was written by Marquez over a year and a half, between 1965 and 1966 in Mexico City.
It is worth noting the peculiarities of the composition of the novel, which consists of twenty unnamed chapters. The book describes a story that is closed on itself, a kind of time ring. The events of the village of Macondo and the Buendía family are not only shown as parallel, but interconnected, closely intertwined, one essence is a reflection of the other. The history of Macondo is shown in all the laws of the development of a living organism - inception, flowering, decline and decline.
It is important that the novel is built on indirect speech, and the sentences are very long, often a whole page or even longer, with periods and many grammatical bases. The author very rarely uses direct speech and dialogues. This emphasizes the viscosity of the narrative, its unhurried flow.
One Hundred Years of Solitude is a poignant, dramatic and deeply symbolic work. Many call it the apogee of Marquez's work. The novel is characterized by the vagueness and fusion of the boundaries of time and space, fiction and reality, sleep and reality. This is a philosophical tale about human life in the big world.
Loneliness is the leitmotif of the novel and its main theme, family trait, legacy and curse of the Buendía clan, but everyone has their own reasons. The novel shows the life of several generations of this family, but it is shown in fragments, this is not a family saga, this is a novel about loneliness. Marquez shows the vices of a person, but does not give a way to overcome them. It combines the fabulousness and romance of the story, the edifying parable and the philosophy of prophecy, but the edges are blurred.
People are mired in routine, monotony, vice and immorality. They are incapable of sincere feelings, the manifestation of selfless love. They have become overgrown with prejudices that destroy their own lives and the lives of loved ones. And the punishment for this is loneliness, all-consuming, all-embracing, universal loneliness, from which nothing will help to hide.
Suicide, love, hatred, betrayal, freedom, suffering, craving for the forbidden are secondary topics that emphasize the main one, making it clear that all this is happening because of loneliness, and people doomed themselves to loneliness.
Another cross-cutting theme, although not so strongly stated, is incest, which the author presents through the myth of the birth of a child with a pig's tail.
Almost all the heroes of the novel are solid, strong-willed and strong personalities, albeit sometimes contradictory. Each of them has its own face and voice, but they are all closely related, confused, intertwined.
The author has thrown a veil of mysticism and magic over every chapter, but is this not dust? The loneliness of the Buendía family is frightening in its regularity. The heroes do not want to get rid of their vices, do not seek to change their lifestyle, turn away from the world, concentrate only on their interests, desires and instincts. Fantastic, mystical events are shown through everyday life and routine, and therefore for the heroes of the novel they are something everyday, they do not notice that this is not at all in the order of things.
The work leaves a strong impression, but very ambiguous.
Quote: One Hundred Years of Solitude is one of the most widely read and translated works in Spanish. Selected as the second most important work in Spanish after Cervantes' Don Quixote at the IV International Congress of the Spanish Language, which was held in Cartagena, Colombia, in March 2007.
Score: 9
This book could be written and then read forever. The Buendía family could breed for centuries in passion and die alone, gradually degenerating from incestuous marriages. And the same Jose Arcadio, Aureliano, Ursula, Amaranta, Remediosa would be born from generation to generation, only aggravating their vices from depletion of mental health from generation to generation: “... the history of this family is a chain of inevitable repetitions, a rotating wheel that would continue to spin indefinitely, if not for the ever increasing and irreversible wear of the axle ... ".
It is not for nothing that this work is considered a masterpiece of Latin American prose, because we all know firsthand about the genetically inherent love of the Latin people for the so-called "soap operas", although this is a too vulgar name, in other words they like to live in the style of the series, where one day is long so for a couple of million episodes, where all the secrets are in the ears of the whole world, where everyone is related to each other, where it is not clear who is whose son ... and you are sitting, looking and it seems interesting and you seem to be fed up with the constantly repeating protracted intrigues, but you cannot tear yourself away ...
The Buendía clan, like the city of Macondo, were doomed from the beginning, only on the ebullient activity of Ursula kept the entire foundation and a more or less healthy family atmosphere, but her labors were in vain. Even sending the children to study in Europe did not help; Macondo pulled them back with a magnet. A devouring feeling of inner loneliness (even under the roof of a noisy house full of relatives), each family's lack of desire and strength to stop their sinful fall (often even admiring it), turning their backs on the world around them with its foundations, including political and religious (as it is similar to Latin America in general) made it impossible for them to have a happy and long life. For 100 years, the Buendía clan and the city of Macondo have experienced birth, heyday and fall. The earth (or maybe someone from above by the force of a hurricane) could not stand these sinners and carried them off its face.
The mysticism, let loose by the author in each chapter, makes this story a fairy tale, but it is only a veil that hides a terrible reality for Latin America. For example, a train loaded with the bodies of murdered rebels disappeared into nowhere and as if there were neither his nor the killed people - it may well be a true story, slightly exaggerated by the author on a scale.
All would be fine, but the stories from the life of members of the Buendía family did not affect me at all, they did not seem interesting to me and at least in the least deserving of my attention. This is what I call pouring from empty to empty. The stories go one after another, the stories are fictional, the logic of the characters' actions is incomprehensible and illogical, everyone in this family has created a whole heap of invented problems for himself. Marquez could never finish his book and continue to invent more and more new stories, since he has enough imagination, but, fortunately, he did not do this and brought the story to its logical conclusion.
The magical realism, which in the same Petrosyan creates an atmosphere of mystery and gives the whole story a magical shade, in Marquez looks like a complete absurdity. “When he died, it rained yellow flowers all night” or “Butterflies accompanied the guy all the time,” well, what is that? For what? What for? What does this give me as a reader? It is completely incomprehensible to me.
At the same time, the author has a rather interesting style of presentation. Several stories can change in one page, they smoothly flow into one another, and while you finish reading the end of the page, you can forget what was discussed at the beginning. It sometimes seemed that the next paragraph would never end, some of them stretched for several pages ... but what are the paragraphs, in the novel some sentences stretched for a whole page, forming a hyper-complex structure. If the text were more digestible, my impressions might have been different, or they might have remained the same, but it was really hard to wade through a continuous text with dialogues, the number of which can be counted on the fingers of two hands.
In general, I read this novel slowly, for a long time, but persistently. It took me more than a month to read 400 pages - of course, yes! But I'm not saying that the novel is bad, it was simply not created for me.
It must also be said about the genre of the novel. This is the first time I come across magical realism (realizing it at the same time), as well as with such a "crowded" work. Before that, I could hardly imagine such a work (the definition from Wikipedia was clearly not enough). In short, I would describe the features of the genre as author's arbitrariness, in a good, of course, sense. An absolutely charming phenomenon, it was very pleasant to expand your reader's horizons.
Another thing that struck me in the book was love. For the overwhelming majority, it was ... defective, so to speak. I could not conquer fear and loneliness. Some of the heroes were not capable of it at all. And that's why it's not really hard to believe when the author points to specific heroes and in plain text states that they have real love. At least with a certain pair, I had it that way. Somehow I didn't manage to be happy for them.
I look at the review and understand that it is several times less than what I would like to say. The problem is that the bulk of my thoughts are speculations about specific characters, angry, approving, or frustrated. And also reasoning about the world order of the book. But since they are incoherent and overly subjective, I will not put them here.
The only thing, by the presence of these very arguments in my head, we can conclude that the novel touched me deeply enough. (Here I recall the article at the beginning of the book, which I did not have the strength to read and in which it was said about the poetry of the narrative. Here is confirmation - after all, the lyrics are aimed primarily at emotions.) And only a small number of really loved characters and plot twists prevent me from saying that One Hundred Years of Solitude is now one of my favorite books. But, it seems to me, this is a matter of time.
Score: 10
