The magical r ealism of Márquez’s Cien años de soledad
William Lord
In this essay, I intend to explain and illustrate the literary genre of magical realism, analyse the masterful exemplification of the genre in Gabriel García Márquez’s 1967 Nobel prize -winning novel Cien años de soledad , and to demonstrate how it can inform our understanding of literature more widely, and of fiction itself. In the first instance, we must define what is meant by the term magical realism in the context of this essay. The term arose in the twentieth century, and was influenced by a German style of painting of the same name. As a literary genre, it is clear to see its parallel lineage with art, since it paints with words a realistic view of the world, while infusing it with magical and fantastical elements, blurring the boundaries between fantasy and reality. The term first appeared in the German form ‘magischer realismus’ in 1925, by German art critic Franz Roh. Since then, magical realism in its literary form has often been associated with Latin American authors such as Isabel Allende, Juan Rulfo, Jorge Luis Borges and, possibly most famous, Gabriel García Márquez. It has been argued that the term magical realism is more of a description than a clearly defined genre. If we break down the compound term into its component parts, we are left with realism; a term that is also most commonly associated with the artistic world, describing an attempt to depict subject matter truthfully, without speculation, fiction or the supernatural, and the seemingly antithetical adjective magical. However, it is in this fundamental disparity between its two constituent terms that magical realism is most fascinating, and it is a conflict central to all works of literary fiction. This idea is in fact central to all acts of creativity. When we are creating something, whether it is a painting or a novel, we are seeking to create something new and of value and interest, while working with the source material of the reality of our lived experience and the world around us. Thus, we often find less value or interest in absolute realism, especially in the information age, where technology is far superior in its ability to recreate or represent realistic works. Therefore, what we value most in the creative process is the complexity of the shared yet diverse experiences of humanity. It is fiction that allows us to engage with and depict this reality in a way that is almost more real than reality in its vivid colours and accessibility. The art of creating fiction is in finding the universal truth and beauty within humanity, and the specificity of reality can often be constraining. The power of magical realism as a literary genre is the way in which the integration of the magical and fantastical allows for a transcendence of reality, freeing the mind to become more flexible to new and multiple realities, and this allows magical realist writers to discuss the political and societal issues of South America in a way that places the humanity at the forefront, uniting its characters and its readership To understand the strong connection between South American writers and the magical realist genre, we must look to the geographical and political history of the continent. To get a sense of the turbulent volatility of Latin American politics, near the end of the 1970s, seventeen out of twenty Latin American nations were ruled by dictators. Twenty years later, eighteen of these nations had democracies in place. This struggle for political power can often be observed in the wake of colonialism, during the
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