
Abriel Garcia Marquez was and remains Latin America’s best-known writer, spinning epic tales since the 1940s, the master of a style known as magic realism.
He started out as a newspaper reporter, and journalism remained a passion throughout his life, as did support for left-wing politics. It was that mix of real life and the bizarre that gave birth to the literary genre known as magic realism. It reached its peak of popularity in his most famous novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, which tells of the extraordinary events of one family in a small town remarkably similar to the one where he grew up.
(The first line from One Hundred Years of Solitude)
Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.
Martin: The first two lines, the first time you read them, you just felt: I’ve read this before. Where does this come from?—which is what he felt when he first, himself, thought up the first line of the book.
By the time Gabriel Garcia Marquez won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982, he was already an internationally acclaimed writer. The Colombian author’s works had already been published in multiple languages.
Garcia Marquez was among what’s known as Latin America’s literature boom of the 1960s and’70s, along with Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes and Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa, with whom Garcia Marquez differed sharply in his political beliefs. The Colombian got his leftist leanings from his grandfather. They, too, shaped his writing.
Marquez: (via translator) I write mostly about the reality I know, about the reality of Latin America. Any interpretation of this reality in literature must be political. I cannot escape my own ideology when I interpret reality in my books; it’s inseparable.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez titled his 1982 Nobel Prize acceptance speech “The Solitude of Latin America.”
Marquez: (via translator) We, the inventors of tales, who will believe anything, feel entitled to believe that it is not yet too late to engage in the creation of a new and sweeping utopia of life.
Ariel Dorfman(Chilean Writer): Garcia Marquez is speaking about all the people who are marginal to history, who have not had a voice. He gives a voice to all those who died. He gives a voice to all those who are not born yet. He gives a voice to Latin America.
加夫列爾·加西亞·馬爾克斯曾經是,也一直是拉丁美洲最有名的作家。他從上世紀四十年代開始創作史詩般的宏大故事,他是魔幻現實主義創作流派的大師。
他從一名報社的記者起步。在他的一生中,新聞始終是他鐘愛的職業;同時,他對左派政治的支持也一如既往。正是現實生活與種種荒誕的交織成就了魔幻現實主義這一文學流派,這個流派隨著他最出名的作品《百年孤獨》的面世而大受追捧。該書講述了一個家族在小鎮上非同尋常的經歷,故事中的小鎮與馬爾克斯成長的地方有著驚人的相似之處。
馬爾克斯于1967年出版的《百年孤獨》讓他在文壇上一舉成名。在作者的有生之年,該書在全世界的銷量超過三千萬本,他的作品引起了公眾對魔幻現實主義這個拉丁美洲文學流派的關注,現實世界與虛構世界在魔幻現實主義的作品中發生碰撞,以至于讀者難以分清彼此。
杰拉爾德·馬丁(馬爾克斯的傳記作者):你必須身處二十世紀六十年代,生活在甲殼蟲樂隊風靡一時,第三世界革命風起云涌,人們服用迷幻藥,諸多事情相繼發生的年代,這樣你才能明白這本書第一頁的內容有著怎樣的震撼力。當時,似乎所有人都在期待著這類作品的誕生,只是直到作品面世,人們才意識到自己對它的期待。這是當時的一股思潮。
(《百年孤獨》的第一句話)
多年以后,奧雷連諾上校站在行刑隊面前,會想起父親帶他去見識冰塊的那個遙遠的下午。
馬丁:你第一次讀這本書開頭兩行的時候,你會覺得:我以前讀過這個,究竟是在哪兒見過呢?——作者本人在寫下這兩行文字的時候,也有同樣的感覺。
到了1982年,加夫列爾·加西亞·馬爾克斯獲得諾貝爾文學獎的時候,他已經是一位在國際上備受稱贊的作家了。這位哥倫比亞作家的作品被譯成多種語言出版。
在二十世紀六七十年代,拉丁美洲出現了文學爆炸,加西亞·馬爾克斯和墨西哥作家卡洛斯·富恩特斯、秘魯作家馬里奧·巴爾加斯·略薩都是當時涌現出來的作家。不過,加西亞·馬爾克斯的政治信仰與這兩位作家有著天壤之別,這位哥倫比亞作家的左傾思想源自他祖父,他的創作也體現了這些思想。
馬爾克斯:(通過翻譯)我基本上寫的都是我自己了解的現實,關于拉丁美洲的現實世界,而文學對這個現實世界的詮釋必須體現政治觀點。我在創作過程中對現實的詮釋不可能繞過我自己的思想信仰,兩者是密不可分的。
加夫列爾·加西亞·馬爾克斯1982年在諾貝爾獎頒獎禮上的獲獎致辭標題為《拉丁美洲的孤獨》。
馬爾克斯:(通過翻譯)我們是故事的創造者,我們可以相信任何東西,我們認為我們有資格相信,現在投身于創造一個全新的烏托邦還為時不晚。
阿列爾·多夫曼(智利作家):加西亞·馬爾克斯的創作圍繞所有生活在歷史邊緣的人們,那些無法發出聲音的人們。他讓那些已經故去的人發出聲音,他讓所有還未出生的人發出聲音,他是拉丁美洲的喉舌。