Love in the time of Cholera

Just got done reading ‘Love in the time of Cholera’. I can’t remember when the last time was, that I read a book so immediately relevant to my circumstances. No wonder I suppose, I sympathize so much with its heroine- if that’s what she is. There’s not so much of a hero or heroine – in the sense of people performing heroic actions – more of entirely human characters – occasionally – rising above their own natures to become – momentarily – better than they are.

Having said that, it is almost terrifying, how much I see of myself in Fermina Daza; how much her thoughts seem to parallel mine; how much her story could be my future. I feel myself being drawn to her decision - of choosing a man with no valid reason for preferring one over any other – acquiescing to a suit not undertaken in the name of love- only worldly goods, security, order, happiness, that might resemble love, but are not (to quote the authors own words). Like Fermina Daza, I am likely to choose, as I sense a deadline I set for myself approaching. And like her I may find myself in a gilded cage of domesticity, that if I grow not to love, may at least become used to- which might be the same thing in the end. The ability to persuade myself that what I am is the best of what I could be- to immediately throw any blame on to the other- to despise and pity at once – to be a little repulsed by a person who lives in the shadow of love, never living, save in the thought of another – to live a life wholly virtuously – without reproof in the eyes of the world- to take pleasure in the activity of everyday, for activity keeps thought at bay.

As for Florentino Ariza- I despise him – for all the sympathy with which the author writes of him – his rationalization of his actions – his unending love (obsession), his achieving of his goal far beyond his just deserts- like Fermina I see him as a shadow of a man, lost in the darkness of his love. It is not his philandering with a hundred women that disgusts me (and what does that say of my own morality?), but that he does all that in the name of one woman; the fact is even without the philandering I would be disgusted by his weakness (as I see it) his inability to get over the one love of his life. And yet who am I to judge him? In the end his persistence pays off, he gets his Fermina at the ripe age of 76, having waited a lifetime for her.

I do love the tenderness with which the author talks about old age. His descriptions of the physical ailments, the lessening of mental acuity, have nothing of pity or scorn; he treats it as entirely natural, even a happy stage as life goes on. I love the idea of people finding love even in old age, after all of life has gone by still they have love. I love the honesty of the author, his insightfulness into the hearts of men and women alike- having found so much of myself in Fermina Daza, I assume that his portrait of Florentino Ariza would read as accurately to a man.

And through it all cholera is never far from the mids or fates of the players, pushing each of them through paths that may have not opened to them otherwise.