Instead of writing a review by jotting down my bleak understanding of the glorious book by Gabo I thought of weaving a little tale based on it and using the characters along with the principle symbolism in the book-'Disbelief is more resistant than faith because it is sustained by the senses' As always I,Father Delaura lost focus and stumbled on my way to the Bishop's room where I was invited to witness an eclipse. In the cloistered silence I found the bishop in a pensive mood holding a smoked glass in his hand for looking at the sun. I wanted to tell him I have fallen for the possessed girl I was supposed to exorcise. I wanted to shriek at him, implore him, beg at his feet to condone my misgivings on faith in spite of being an eminent priest and a renowned Father and a dutiful librarian. But I couldn't come to terms with my own imbecility and indecision. The sun has always been the sigil of a pristine presence, a God,an indomitable focus of energy. The Bishop could see the eclipse through the smoked glass and said that wherever he looked he could still the see the eclipse. His faith in God was undoubted and his arguments supporting his faith were insurmountable. He always came up with the most cleverest and undeterred of arguments favouring his position. He had faith, he had focus, he closed one of his eyes and through the smoked glass could relish the sight of the Eclipse. He requested me to look at the eclipse but with focus and using only one of eyes as the eclipse will go away in a few hours. In my state of perpetual distraction I looked at the eclipse with both my eyes without using the smoked glass and ended up nearly burning my retinas in the process. I covered my afflicted eye with a dark patch. I tried telling the Bishop of my doubts regarding the satanic possession of the girl and maybe rabies was the true reason behind the girl's instability and the girl should be left in the deft hands of doctors or physicians to come up with a cure. As we proceeded with the discussion,I tried to reason with him but he came up with an invincible ambiguity which left me more perplexed than defeated.'We cannot intervene in the rotation of the earth,'said Delaura.t'But we could be unaware of it so that it does not cause us grief,'said the Bishop.'More than faith, what Galileo lacked was a heart.'I left the Bishop's room unconvinced. I had always loved reading books ranging from the religious ones in Latin to the forbidden 'books of chivalry' until one day I was deprived of my decrepit copy of 'Amadis of Gaul' and was coerced to devote my absolute faith in God rather than immersing myself in frivolities of chivalry. Mustering my aspirations to save the girl, I went to the physician who was the first person outside the immediate noble family of the Marquis who was made aware of the Girl's instability ,which as his scientific capacity of a doctor would decree, said that the dog bite might be the the cause of the Girl's distress. The physician,a man of scholarly disposition with a chaotic and a dubious past invited me in devoid of any apprehension. He was not a bit disconcerted to allow a man of religion to enter his house. I was fascinated with the amount of books on his shelves. I was impressed by his Latin speaking skills and he showed me the forbidden book I was deprived of in my younger days-'the four volumes of Amadis of Gaul'. I gave a glance of awe over the precious edition and I could feel my other half of my being, my sunburnt eye plunging into the throes of ephemeral recuperation. t'He removed the patch and tossed it in the thrash bin.'The only thing wrong with that eye is that it sees more than it ought too,' he said.We discussed about books and scientific things which were deemed prohibited and leaned over the line of heresy. I shared my heartfelt concern of the affected Girl with the physician. I inadvertently confessed my love for her. I was ready to accept science as the only mechanism of curing the Girl.'It would be you and I against everyone else,'he(Delaura) said.t'Which is why I was surprised that you came,' said the physician.'I am no more than hunted prey in the game preserve of the Holy Office.'t'The truth is I am not really sure why I have come,'said Delaura.'Unless that child has been imposed on me by the Holy pirit to test the strength of my faith.' I thanked the physician for his medical help and for the eye wash and returned to my room. I was left alone with my chaotic conscience. I was enmeshed with an unconquerable quandary, an eternal paradox of religion and science; my pair of eyes which helped me visualize and drink in the beauty of the world in tandem yet I was made to choose between the two in order to save the girl I loved. I lacked focus in science, held a wavering devotion towards God. It was written in the destiny of the Girl and in our fate of wishful togetherness that she would be saved only by one of the two,as seen through one of my eyes. The Girl was everything to me, the love of my life, the burning sensation in my loins, the apple of my eye and the Indomitable Sun. My cravings drove me back and forth between the erudition of the Physician and the unflinching faith of the Bishop. I was lost in distraction in the whirlpool of the eternal question-Science or God? Rabies or Demonic possession? Maybe the demon really possessed her or maybe she really had rabies. Distraught and vexed I tried looking at the Sun, I tried to savour the beauty of the eclipse with both my eyes gifted by God and backed by science, then I heard the ululating chants of 'Vade Retro' beating mercilessly on my ear drums, I felt the whirlpool taking me along it's dreadful path as the sun seared my eyes with a betrayed pain of faith and the treacherous agony of science.
Marquez begins his story with a note. In this note, he describes arriving at a convent in the process of being emptied and turned into a luxury hotel. Laborers unearthed "three generations of bishops and abbesses and other eminent personages" until, at last, they came to a niche of the high altar where they found the tomb of a twelve-year old girl called Sierva Maria de Todos Los Angeles. She had hair the color of copper and it flowed out of her head twenty-two metres long. And so a story is born. Marquez imagines a life for a two hundred year old corpse. He replenishes her flesh and restores her bones and puts her through a time that can only be received with a heavy heart: Sierva Maria is born and neglected, then bitten by a dog, thought to have caught rabies, put through tumultuous medical examinations (which include drinking her own urine), then thought to be possessed, locked up in a convent presided over by a stern and irrational abbess, is then introduced to a priest, falls in love, and...well, this is the part when you read the story yourself. Love, here, is equated to illness...demonic possession to be exact. Marquez is an author of magic realism and the lines between the realms are effectively fogged. Is Sierva Maria possessed or she not? The complexities of this question is impressively elicited in readers. Church and science are reflected in two astute and interesting characters.But that is not truly the epitome of this story. For it is about love and the turmoil of it that surrounds these characters. Sierva Maria is a young girl born to the Marquis. She is dismissed as a baby and left to fend for herself. It is a slave, the housekeeper of slaves, named Dominga de Adviento who takes the child into her care. Waking, sleeping and everything in between, Sierva does with the slaves; she learns their languages, their dance, their songs and traditions, rituals and beliefs. She is a feral child who slits the throats of goats and eats their organs. And it is the cruelest of actions to take her away from it all, only to be abused, misunderstood, rejected, and perceived as a demonic being. But she is a child, with an altered imagination because she was not raised with her people. She does not conform to general etiquette, she does not act, think, or speak like her color. She is different because she was orphaned by her living parents. And when one of them decides to extend his heart, it is much too late. Sierva represents the abandoned in all of us; the part left alone for so long it's forgotten to wish. She has no concept of love or truth, and when she finally does receive it, it is from a source forbidden with no future. Perhaps, however, the storyline I found most gripping, with an almost all-consuming fear, was that of the Marquis. He grows up just as discarded as Sierva, with the exception that he had social, familial, and political obligations to fulfill. Having grown up in disappointment and inadequacy, he is turned numb by the sudden loss of his wife; numb just as he was learning to feel. He becomes a widower and this defines him for much too long of his life. He grows complacent, laxed and forgets to live. He lets life and its glory slip through his fingers without a single taste. Near the end, when he searches for his estranged second wife, if only "so they might at least each have someone to die with" -- the absolute desperation and loneliness of the image and the words and the intent and the deeply-rooted truth behind it was enough to make my heart constrict in sympathy, empathy, and panic. It made me hesitate in turning the page, made my eyes linger on the period, wanting but scared to read the coming passage. Would this bend my heart anymore than it already has? I was in a battle...afraid to consume the story that had me oppressively, yet tenderly, facing a mirror.
What do You think about Of Love And Other Demons (1995)?
This is perhaps the most disturbing love story that I've ever read. EVER. But that's what makes it so hauntingly great. I have slowly been working through Gabriel Garcia Marquez's books, and I've yet to be disappointed by his work. This is such a fascinating tragic tale of love that it completely supersedes Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet in my opinion. A tale that brings to question love, faith, parenthood and so much more. You have a young girl, thought to be demonic and possessed, who was bitten by a dog and said to have rabies, then the atheist doctor who believes there is nothing wrong with the girl, the neglectful parents and down on his luck father who decides to put his faith in the church, the conflicted priest who falls in love with the girl, the savage nuns, and the rebellious slaves all play a part in this tragedy.I don't want to go into it so much because it is a short story and the experience of reading it should not be altered by my retelling of it, but I do highly recommend this book. Gabriel Garcia Marquez shines in this book. "There has been no greater tale of woe than that of Sierva Maria and her Cayetano..."
—Suad Shamma
Gary wrote: "Gary wrote: "Will do,Kelly.Just need to finish a couple of books first.Did you read melancholy whores already?""LOL. melancholy wives. hehe. Yes, I've read Melancholy Whores. I thought you read it too??? Yes, lets finish up some stuff... How about either Autumn of the Patriarch or General and Labyrinth??? Also- we can't forget about Islands in the Stream.
—Gearóid
Yummy, captivating reading, from the very first sentence. There's a lot of blah about the book, just look around, plenty of reviews and opinions; everything is magic of course, and the story telling*, oh! the story telling is absolutely fantastic, so I'll just make a confession: I have a terrible, secret passion for priests who fall madly in love and run away with the object of their desire, go nuts or do something crazy. Here, not so secret any more.*mental debate on who's a better story teller: Marquez or Pamuk.
—Lavinia
