Gabriel Garcia Marquez* has retired from public life due to
health reasons: cancer of the lymph nodes. It seems that it is
getting worse. He has sent this farewell letter to his friends,
which has been translated and posted on the Internet. Please
read and forward to any who might enjoy it. This is possibly,
sadly, one of the last gifts to humanity from a true master.
This short text, written by one of the most brilliant Latin
Americans in recent times, is truly moving.
_______________
If for an instant God were to forget that I am rag doll and gifted
me with a piece of life, possibly I wouldn't say all that I think,
but rather I would think of all that I say. I would value things, not
for their worth but for what they mean. I would sleep little,
dream more, understanding that for each minute we close our eyes we lose
sixty seconds of light.
I would walk when others hold back, I would wake when others
sleep. I would listen when others talk, and how I would enjoy a
good chocolate ice cream! If God were to give me a piece of life,
I would dress simply, throw myself face first into the sun, baring
not only my body but also my soul. My God, if I had a heart, I
would write my hate on ice, and wait for the sun to show. Over
the stars I would paint with a Van Gogh dream a Benedetti poem,
and a Serrat song would be the serenade I'd offer to the moon.
With my tears I would water roses, to feel the pain of their
thorns, and the red kiss of their petals...
My god, if I had a piece of life... I wouldn't let a single day
pass without telling the people I love that I love them. I would
convince each woman and each man that they are my favorites, and I would
live in love with love. I would show men how very wrong they are
to think that they cease to be in love when they grow old, not
knowing that they grow old when they cease to be in love! To a
child I shall give wings, but I shall let him learn to fly on his
own. I would teach the old that death does not come with old age, but
with forgetting. So much have I learned from you, oh men...
I have learned that everyone wants to live on the peak of the
mountain, without knowing that real happiness is in how it is
scaled. I have learned that when a newborn child squeezes for the
first time with his tiny fist his father's finger, he has him
trapped forever. I have learned that a man has the right to look down on
another only when he has to help the other get to his feet. From
you I have learned so many things, but in truth they won't be of
much use, for when I keep them within this suitcase, unhappily
shall I be dying.
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ
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A QUICK BIO ON THE MASTER:
Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez began his career as a
Journalist for a series of liberal South American newspapers in
the late 1940's. Although he toyed with fiction as a young man,
his first true efforts were incited by the negative reviews of
contemporary Latin-American writers. The result was the short
story The Third Resignation. The reviews of the story were
positive and the impact strong; the press heralded The Boom,
a second generation of Latin-American writers. Garcia Marquez
followed with a compilation of short stories (Big Mama's Funeral)
and three novellas (Leaf Storm, No One Writes to the Colonel,
and In Evil Hour). These dark, eerie, and sad works were
influenced heavily by Franz Kafka yet the reveal the voice of an
intelligent young writer preparing himself for larger things.
Larger things came to Garcia Marquez in 1967. While suffering
>From writer's block several years earlier, the author suddenly
had a vision of his next novel -- as he has said, the first
chapter was as clear as if it had already been written. The idea was to
tell the story of several generations of a Colombian family as his
grandmother might have told it: supernatural occurrences and
unbelievable events described with unblinking sincerity.
After eighteen months of seclusion, Garcia Marquez produced his
Masterpiece One Hundred Years of Solitude, which has been
called one of the greatest novels in history. Gabriel Garcia
Marquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1982.
