One Hundred Years of Solitude
“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”
So begins One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Colombian writer and Nobel Prize Laureate Gabriel Gárcia Márquez. It is one of the most famous opening lines in literature, and synthesizes a concept of time that permeates the novel. Look at its construction: “Many years later” from when? Which “distant afternoon”? The sentence has no anchor in time. The narrator is speaking to us in the present about the subject — Colonel Aureliano Buendía — both in the future and in the past, but we don’t know where “we” are. We could be reading that sentence years after the firing squad or years before the discovery of ice or somewhere in between.
Claire Adam, Trinidad-born author of Golden Child, had an interesting take on the concept of time in One Hundred Years of Solitude. Both Trinidad and Aracataca, Colombia (Gárcia Márquez’s hometown) are about 11 degrees north of the Equator, a latitude at which plants are green all the time, the days are as long as the nights, and days are always hot.
In fact, the only real variation is the rain. For half of the year, it is very dry: we call this the dry season. For the other half of the year, it is very rainy: we call this the rainy season. Dry season, rainy season, dry season, rainy season: that is how it goes. Thus our rhythm is a simple one-two: dry-wet, or day-night. Dry-wet, day-night, dry-wet, day-night, a never-ending one-two one-two, like the endless ticking of a metronome. And then, of course, everywhere, at our perimeter, is the sea. Think of it. The wave comes in, then goes out. In, out. In, out. Does it ever end? Do you see any death and rebirth? Dry, wet, day, night, in, out. No, our landscape does not suggest the passing of time, as your landscape does to you in your temperate climate. Our landscape suggests something entirely different: the eternity of time, the never-endingness of time.
Time is as much of a character in the story as are the people of Macondo, the fictional town modeled after Aracataca on Colombia’s Caribbean coast.
At the center of One Hundred Years of Solitude is the Buendía family, headed by José Arcadio Buendía and Úrsula Iguarán Buendía. The story relates their journey to found Macondo, an isolated town in a swamp, the family’s (and the town’s) growth and disintegration, and the effect of the outside world’s influence — the arrival of politics (an appointed magistrate) and organized religion (a priest); the civil war known as the Thousand Days War; and the intervention of U.S. imperialism — on that growth and disintegration.
One Hundred Years of Solitude was my introduction to magical realism. J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings is an unreal world of fantastical creatures. Wizards wizard, Orcs orc, and dragons barbecue. The big question is, “who will triumph?” The outcome of the eternal struggle between Good and Evil depends to a greater or lesser extent on the actions of supernatural beings. Very monotheistic.
One Hundred Years of Solitude is a real world in which magical things happen, not apart from everyday life, but as integral and accepted occurrences. Magic is part of the fabric of the natural world. It doesn’t help or hinder the characters. Members of the Buendía family are self-centered and become richer and more elitist as the story unfolds. Indigenous people are servants to the family. Incest, greed, egoism, and a capacity for violence are inherent qualities that emerge from generation to generation. Each person is fully human. They are responsible for their actions.
Magical things happen without introduction or explanation: Rebeca, an orphan girl, shows up at the Buendía home carrying a bag containing the bones of her parents, which rattle from time to time; when José Arcadio, one of the sons of José Arcadio and Úrsula Iguarán, is killed, a rivulet of his blood runs from his house, through town, into his parents home, and stops at the feet of Úrsula; when José Arcadio Buendía, the elder, dies,
“A light rain of tiny, yellow flowers fell over the town all through the night in a silent storm. They covered the roofs and blocked the doors. So many flowers fell from the sky that they had to clear the streets away with shovels so the funeral procession could pass through.”
In a 1982 interview with the author, Marlise Simons wrote
His grandfather, Gárcia Márquez said, was “a former colonel who told endless stories of the civil war of his youth, took me to the circus and the cinema and was my umbilical cord with history and reality.” Grandmother was “always telling fables, family legends and organizing our life according to the messages she received in her dreams.” She was “the source of the magical, superstitious, and supernatural view of reality.”
Gárcia Márquez has a remarkable sense of humor and ability to turn a phrase. While Úrsula is leading some workers through the house to describe the remodeling she wants done, she tells them, “And for this room right here, it will be a large hall decorated with the finest Viennese furniture and we will host the most distinguished parties in the swamp.” Which sounds humorously dissonant — “most distinguished parties” and “in the swamp” — until you realize that this is a story about solitude, all kinds of solitude.
The narrator says of another character, Santa Sofía de la Piedad, that “she had that rare virtue of never existing completely except at the opportune moment,” and remarks of the writing in a manuscript that “the letters looked like clothes hung out to dry on a line.” These phrases are so perfectly descriptive.
In the May 5, 2024 Thoughts-letter, I wrote about the then-upcoming Netflix adaptation of One Hundred Years of Solitude: “I am excited and apprehensive. I desperately want to see the series, but I also desperately want it to be worthy of the book.”
It is worthy.
The first eight episodes of the series are available on Netflix; the other episodes are expected next year. The series was shot entirely in Colombia with mostly Colombian actors and is presented in Spanish with English subtitles.
The acting is exceptional. If I had to choose my favorites, I would have to mention Marleyda Soto as the older Úrsula Iguarán and Claudio Cataño as Colonel Aureliano Buendía. Soto dominates every scene she’s in, even if she doesn’t speak. She is the family’s anchor and her desperation grows as she watches the family’s inexorable collapse. Cataño transforms from a shy introvert with a sense of morality into something close to a homicidal maniac.
The cinematography is stunning. At the end of Episode 4, José Arcadio Buendía, the patriarch, loses his connection to reality and has to be restrained. The men named Arcadio are big and strong, and several men have to wrestle José Arcadio to the ground and eventually tie him to a tree in the courtyard of the house. His wife, Úrsula, is away and unaware of her husband’s mental collapse. When she walks in the door, she stops. The courtyard, which normally is alive with color, is awash in muted colors. The camera looks at her from a long distance, and then moves toward her and stops in front of her. As she starts to walk toward José Arcadio, the camera moves backward in front of her, with her face dominating the screen. She walks to him and kneels. Rain begins to fall. The effect is to heighten the disbelief and fear in her face and to stretch time to its breaking point.
Because the story covers so much time and contains so much detail, the book had been considered unadaptable. Much of the book is in the voice of the narrator, who takes us inside the minds of the characters and who describes scenes and contexts. These characteristics of the novel presented challenges to the creative team: how to be faithful to the original 100-year story within the constraints of a 16-week series of one-hour episodes; and how to translate some of the narration into visual effects, rather than creating dialogue that is not in the original.
The script of necessity omits much of the original, but it succeeds, at least in these first eight episodes, in adhering to the main themes. The cinematography, the production design, and the actors’ movements and expressions translated some of the narrative description in the book into visual information, which reduced the need for new dialogue. But some dialogue was added, such as the dialogue early in Episode 1 between José Arcadio and Úrsula about whether to make the journey to find a new home.
I am thankful that Netflix got behind the effort to bring such an important story to the screen; that the cast and crew treated the story with love and pride; and that English-speaking audiences will watch a story about Colombia, written by a Colombian, acted by Colombians. I hope that next year’s eight episodes will faithfully reflect the novel’s portrayal of how U.S. intervention contributed to the destruction of Macondo.
This is the last newsletter of 2024. We are taking a holiday break. We’ll be back on January 5, 2025. Be well.