Gabriel Garcia Marquez, at the age of 85, is losing perhaps
his most beloved faculty: his memory.
Although Garcia Marquez has reportedly suffered from years of Alzheimer’s,
It has now come to a point where he can no longer recognize voices over the
telephone, and must see people in order to recognize them. In addition, he has
forgotten the names of things in his immediate environment This reminds me of a passage from his seminal
book, “Cien Años de Soledad’ during the founding of the city of Macondo:
“El
mundo era tan reciente, que muchas cosas carecían de nombre, y para
mencionarlas había que señalarlas con el dedo”
“The world was so recent that many things lacked names, and
to refer to them you had to point to them with a finger.” (Translation mine)
Gabriel
García Márquez, a la edad de 85 años, está perdiendo tal vez su facultad más
preciada: su memoria. Aunque García Márquez ha padecido durante años de la
enfermedad de Alzheimer, ahora se ha llegado a un punto donde ya no puede
reconocer las voces por teléfono, y tiene que ver a sus amigos para reconocerlos.
Además, se ha olvidado los nombres de las cosas a su alrededor. Esto me acuerda
de un pasaje de su libro seminal, Cien Años de Soledad durante la
fundación de la ciudad de Macondo:
García Marquez has always created his writing based on a
combination of memory and magic. In
fact, the creation of the fictional town of Macondo is based in his childhood
experiences growing up in Aracataca, Colombia. Now, his memory has begun to
fade. The work that he has written, and the footprint that it has left on
countless lives, however, will remain forever as an artifact of the great
memory of a great man, the General of Literature in Spanish.
García
Márquez siempre ha creado sus obras basado en una combinación de la memoria y
la magia. De hecho, la creación de la ciudad ficticia de Macondo se basa en sus
experiencias infantiles en Aracataca, Colombia. Ahora, su memoria ha comenzado
a desvanecerse. Su obra, y la huella que ha dejado en incontables vidas, sin
embargo, quedarán para siempre como un artefacto de las grandes memorias de un
gran hombre, El General de las letras hispanas.
