Gabriel García Márquez was
intuitive
and respectful of legends, rituals and superstitions.
Not in vain, after the monumental fame acquired in Buenos Aires for his masterpiece
One Hundred Years of Solitude
, he never returned due to the most widespread superstition of losing the reading love so well earned.
In good tango lunfardo,
García Márquez was a “cabulero”
.
Once a cabal worked for him, he didn't abandon it.
His son Gonzalo García Barcha, who participated from Spain in a virtual press conference on both sides of the ocean with his brother Rodrigo from the United States, said that
when Gabo was no longer able to remember his dreams (given the progression of his dementia senile) made the decision to stop writing.
Many of the stories with which he filled our lives were revealed to him in dreams, his son said when answering a question from
Clarín Cultura.
García Márquez had instinct and let himself be guided by that intuitive magic that many times, from dreams
,
helped him overcome the obstacles of writing.
Both
El Espectador
and
El Tiempo
, both leading Colombian newspapers, tell the story behind the title of García Marque's posthumous novel: “In August See You,” presented to the entire Spanish-speaking world.
Gonazalo García Barcha, son of Gabriel Márquez during novel presentation.
Photo: Cézaro de Luca
El Tiempo
says
that the first time Gabo shared the plot of this novel in public was in
September 1997
, on the occasion of a tribute given to him at
Georgetown University
.
In the article by Orlando Oliveros (Gabo Foundation) it is said that it was incredible that “that man, superstitious to the core, decided to offer a preview of the book.”
García Márquez
had created a distraction technique
when asked what he was writing.
It had a plot, but in reality, the plot went the other way.
Garcia Marquez.
In 2014. Photo: AP
However, the curious thing about this August story was that, over the years, it remained
unchanged
.
She is the same protagonist living the same story in successive rewrites.
García Márquez had read a version of
In August See You
at the
Casa de América in Madrid,
during a forum to which he had been invited.
August was so present
as an amulet in Gabo's life
(as much as the flowers and yellow butterflies) that there were many milestones in his life that occurred in August.
For example,
in August 1947
a friend lent him
Franz Kafka
's
The Metamorphosis
and also in
August 1950
, he began reading
Borges
.
On a trip to Aracataca with his mother, Luisa Santiaga Márquez, he chose to read
August Light,
by William Faulkner.
And in
August 1954
she won the
first important literary prize
and also in
August 1959 his son Rodrigo
García Barcha was born.
Oliveros says that of all Gabo's Augusts, perhaps the most decisive was that of
1966
when, together with Mercedes Barcha, his wife, he entered the Mexican post office to send to Buenos Aires the typed original of
One hundred years of solitude
.
And in several of his novels, August appears as the talisman of action.
Ana Magdalena Bach, its protagonist, continues to return to the Caribbean island to leave flowers on her mother's grave
every August 16.
In an initial reading of the novel - which we have had the opportunity to do - it can be agreed that it contains
the most relevant marks of García Marquean's work
: his prodigious
imagination
, the
poetry
of the language and his
captivating
narrative .
Also,
a tribute to Faulkner and Johann Sebastian Bach
.
Precisely Ana Magdalena Bach pays tribute to the second wife of the German composer.
J.S.