NOTES

1. Originally published as El amor en los tiempos del cólera (Bogotá: Oveja Negra, 1985).  

2. In my book El mundo satírico de Gabriel García Márquez (Madrid: Pliegos, 1991), I examine biblical parody in García Márquez’s works. Chapter 3 is devoted to this novel (119-195).

3. Two books contain chapters on this novel: Stephen Minta, Gabriel García Márquez, Writer of Colombia (New York: Harper and Row, 1988) 126-143, and Gene H. Bell Villada, García Márquez: The Man and His Work (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990) 176-202.

4. In an interview with Carlos Monsívais, García Márquez said: “The city is an imaginary city that has elements of three cities in the Colombia Caribbean: Cartagena de Indias, Santa Marta, and Barranquilla, located one next to the other.”  (“El amor en los tiempos del cólera: La novela extraordinaria de un Premio Nobel que no deja que esto lo sojuzgue,” Proceso, 477 (1986) 23 de diciembre,  44-47.  I quote from  44.  So far I have found no review or published article that deals with parody in this novel. Among the reviews, see Julio Ortega, Vuelta, 111 (septiembre 1986): 34-36; José Miguel Oviedo, Vuelta, 114 (mayo 1986): 33-38; Víctor Flores Olea, “El amor en los tiempos del cólera: Un libro de una educación sentimental,” in Dimensión Imaginaria,  202-208. See also “Pete Hamill Interviews Gabriel García Márquez: Love and Solitude,” Vanity Fair,  131 (March 1988): 124-132; Adolfo Castañón, Vuelta, no. 115, junio 1986,  46, 47; and Marlise Simons, “The Best Years of His Life: An Interview with García Márquez,” The New York Times Book Review (April 10, 1988): 1.

5. In Mikhail Bakhtin’s terms, discussed mainly in Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 1929, translated by R.W. Rotsel (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1973), and L’oeuvre de François Rabelais et la culture populaire au Moyen Age et sous la Renaissance, 1955.  See also Julia Kristeva, “Bakhtin, le mot, le dialogue et le roman,” in Semeiotike: Récherches pour un sémanalyse (Paris: Gallimard, 1969) 143-172, and Tzevetan Todorov, Mikhail Bakhtin, the Dialogical Principle (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984).

6. For a discussion of postmodernism and metafiction, see Linda Hutcheon, A Poetics of Postmodernism (New York and London: Routledge, 1988) and Isabel Alvarez Borland, “Interior Text in El amor en los tiempos del cólera,” Hispanic Review 50. 2 (Spring 1991): 175-186.

7. Here I follow Larry McCaffery’s discussion of postmodernism and metafiction in The Metafictional Muse (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1982).

8. For a definition of parody, see Hutcheon, op.cit., 37.  I follow her analysis on the different kinds of parody.

9. See Pete Hamill, op.cit.,  132.

10. The original text in Spanish reads: “Florentino Ariza escribía todas las noches sin piedad para consigo mismo, envenenándose letra por letra con el humo de las lámparas de aceite de corozo en la trastienda de la mercería y sus cartas iban haciéndose más extensas y lunáticas cuanto más se esforzaba por imitar a sus poetas preferidos de la Biblioteca Popular, que ya para esa época estaba llegando a los ochenta volúmenes” (99).  Edith Grossman’s translation does not reflect Florentino Ariza’s painful process of writing; he literally “writes without pity for himself, getting poisoned as he writes word by word.”

11. Several studies have suggested the importance of names in García Márquez.  See Carmen Arnau, El mundo mítico de Gabriel García Márquez (Barcelona: Península, 1971); Graciela Maturo, Claves simbólicas de Gabriel García Márquez, 2a ed., Buenos Aires, Fernando García Cambeiro, 1977; and Arnold Peñuel, “The Sleep of Vital Reason In García Márquez’s Crónica de una muerte anunciada,” Hispania, 68 (diciembre 1985): 753-766.  My book El mundo satírico de Gabriel García Márquez also studies this aspect.

12. In interview with Marlise Simons, “Gabriel García Márquez on Love, Plagues and Politics,” New York Times Book Review, 21 February 1988: 3, 23-25.

13. See Rubén Darío, “El salmo de la pluma” in Poesías Completas (Madrid: Aguilar, 1954):  1019-1026, and Francisco de Quevedo, “Lágrimas de Hieremías Castellanas,” eds. E. Wilson and J. M. Blecua (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1953).  See also the poem “Jeremías” in Obras Completas I (Barcelona: Planeta, 1963) 166, 167.

14. “Then the Lord said: Proclaim all these terms in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. . . .  I took pains to warn them: Obey me, I said. But they didn’t obey; they paid no attention to me, but each followed the promptings of his own stubborn and wicked heart.  So I brought on them all the penalties laid down in this covenant. . . . I now bring on them disaster from which they cannot escape (Jeremiah 11: 2-13).  I quote from The New English Bible (Oxford: The Bible Societies and Oxford University Press, 1972).

15. For further references on parody in Love in the Time of Cholera, and a detailed analysis of biblical references inthe novels published after One Hundred Years of Solitude, is found in my book El mundo satírico de Gabriel García Márquez.

16. Mario Vargas Llosa mentioned the relationship between One Hundred Years of Solitude and the Bible in Historia de un deicidio (Barcelona: Monte Avila, 1971).  See also Josefina Ludmer, Cien años de soledad: Una interpretación (Buenos Aires: Tiempo Contemporáneo, 1972), and Alfred MacAdam, Modern Latin American Narratives: The Dreams of Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977).