His greatest passion was to write a compelling story: Who is Gabriel Garcia Marquez?

Gabriel was born on March 6, 1927, in Aracataca, Colombia, as the first child of Luisa Santiaga and Gabriel Eligo Garcia Marquez. His family named him "Gabriel José de la Conciliación García". Nicknamed “Gabo” or “Gabito” in rural Colombia years later, Gabriel was born out of an unapproved love. His father, Gabriel Eligo, made and sold natural remedies. He fell in love with the daughter of Colonel Nicolás Márquez Mejía, who was far above his class. Luisa Santiaga was also a telegrapher. The colonel and his family were against this marriage due to the difference in status. However, the young couple was so in love that they did not give up on each other; Their love continued in secret. And they finally got married in 1926. Gabito joined them a year later and they became a nuclear family.

The Marquez couple had decided to move to Barranquilla, a port city at the mouth of the Rio Magdela; They were going to open a pharmacy there. Gabito was only a few months old at this time. The young couple left their son with his grandparents and left town. Gabito, an introverted, shy child who always winks when he's nervous, felt the first tone of loneliness and isolation while growing up in this town that makes a living from growing bananas. The first vibration of the sound he will hear clearly years later…

Despite everything, Gabito was a child loved by his grandparents. The first seeds of many things he would one day write were undoubtedly planted at this time. Although the Colonel did not approve of this marriage at the beginning, his anger subsided with the birth of Gabito; His grandson was the apple of his eye. They had a very good relationship. “He used to take me to the circus, to the movies,” Gabriel would recall years later when speaking of his grandfather.

Grandmother Tranquilina Iguarán Cotes was most notable for being a stubborn and strong woman. He was telling Gabito stories that would affect his whole life. His childhood passed between his grandmother's stories and his grandfather's war memories. To him, Tranquilina was a "supernatural look at reality." Gabriel would say of him:

“He always told me stories, legends about our family. We used to plan our lives around the messages he received in his dreams.”

Tranquilina was indeed a woman who clings to life differently, living it differently. They always had interesting things with her. For example, she lost her sight as she got older. But her memory was so strong and she was so omniscient that during the examination she had described every single object in the room down to the last detail and convinced the doctors that she had seen it.

Gabito was ten years old when they lost his grandfather. The bells began to ring when it was time to return to his family. In all his time here, he had only seen his family on visits a few times a year. Moreover, his family's childhood adventure never ended. Life became more difficult in every sense as his mother continued to give birth. The Marquez Family had a total of sixteen children.

Life in Barranquilla has never been easy. Gabito, who lived a simpler life in his three-person world with his grandparents, was lost from time to time in the crowded life here. The family moved to the town of Sucre after a while. However, Gabito stayed here to study at a well-known and good secondary school. He was a successful student and was going to draw his life exactly in this direction…

Education Life

Gabito's school life began in a kindergarten that adopted the Montessori education model. He was quite successful during his continuing studentship at Barranquilla. He was a timid boy who wore his father's old suits, recited long poems, wrote humorous poems and liked humorous comics. In this sense, it can be said that he was famous at school. Conversely, his friends called him "El Viejo", "the old man," because he had no interest in athletic activities.

Gabito experienced deep confusion during his adolescence. He was thirteen years old when he had his first relationship with a prostitute. Two years later, he fell in love with an older married woman. This love overshadowed all his success. He was now at the distinction between taking a dead end and making a way for himself. Shaken, he regained consciousness and made a decision; returned to his successful student days.

He completed his high school education at Colegio Jesuita San José in 1940. During this period, he published his first poems in the school magazine in Juventud. Gabito graduated with honors from school and then won a scholarship from a renowned school near Bogotá. Maybe he was lucky to fit his early youth mistakes into his early years.

At the age of 19, Gabito was a law student enrolled at Columbia University. However, he did not graduate. He thought there were more important things in life than studying law; like writing. Writing had become a passion that ignited his heart, and Gabito couldn't help but follow it. He wanted to leave everything behind for his writing career. But it was his father who was the first to discourage him. It was at this time that the first sharp trace of the hundred years of loneliness that was sealed in his heart was etched. He did not give up on his passion and decided to sail the waters close to him; consciously or unconsciously. He took his first step into journalism for El Heraldo. All his life he would work selflessly enough to say that his main vocation was journalism.

How did he start writing?

In order to understand Marquez, perhaps it is necessary to always go back to the beginning…

Gabito said that he took his first step into writing by drawing cartoons. Because when he first met the pen, he was a small child who could not read and write, and he was constantly drawing something at home or at school. However, over time, Gabito became a writer in everyone's perception. For example, in high school, whenever he needed a text for a brochure or a petition, he wrote it. In college, he realized that he had a much better literary background than his peers. Somewhere, the writing had fallen into Gabriel's soul before his heart, but he couldn't tell when or how.

He met many people at the university, and then with their fellow writers… Again, one of those evenings, a friend gave him a book containing Franz Kafka's short stories, and his heart found the north. When he returned home that night, he began reading The Transmutation. The first sentence was: “Gregor Samsa, who opened his eyes in the morning after an unfortunate sleep, found himself transformed into a huge insect on the bed…” Gabito described his feelings in an interview:

“Even the first sentence of the book was enough to nearly knock me out of my bed. I was stunned… As soon as I read the first sentence, I realized that no writer I know would allow them to write such things. If I had known Kafka, I would have started writing much earlier.”

After this feeling, the first thing Gabito did was start writing short stories. He was almost out of breath. He described his stories as follows:

“These stories were highly intellectual, because at that time I had not found the connection between literature and life, and what I wrote came from my literary experiences.”

These short stories of Gabito began to be published in the literary supplement of El Espectador. During this period, everyone was writing about social life and life outside the city, and Gabriel's was quite intellectual next to theirs. They've been very successful. The comments made were that there was a Joyce effect in the stories. Whereas Gabriel had yet to read any James Joyce. He began to read the first Ulysses he found; had only reached its Spanish translation. When he reread it from the English original and a quality French translation, he was upset about his first experience. It was here, however, that he learned a technique that would be useful for his writing career; the interior monologue technique. He later saw this technique in Virginia Woolf, even thinking it was better than Joyce's. Much later, he realized that the first person to apply this technique was an anonymous writer, Lazarillo de Tormes.

Journalism era

This first step coincided with the days of the civil war La Violencia, intent on tearing apart Colombia. As a journalist, the news he wrote about difficult agendas such as murder, rape, destruction, and the government's press censorship that overshadowed them made him ask questions not only about life but also about his profession. Gabito was earning three pesos per news and was starving most days. It was the world order he questioned.

Life was flowing somehow, yes, but there was another world in which Gabito was searching for himself. His father had lost his enthusiasm, but this wish could not be knocked down by such a flick. Gabito, who has always followed the magic of words, or yes, the truth, throughout his life, could not give up, even though he felt as if the stories he had scribbled while he was a student were overshadowed. He met journalism in 1948, and his career, which began in Cartagena, took him to Bogota in the mid-1950s. He prepared dossiers on politicians and wrote film reviews, and sports and sailor stories. Regardless, journalism was not a step to be taken for him, but a profession that was as valuable as literature. Gabito spent every spare time writing during this period. After working for the newspaper all day, he wrote his stories, even his novel, at night after everyone had left. On the other hand, he was a very picky and voracious reader. It was during this period that he met William Faulkner and was immediately struck by it.

It was during this period that he completed the draft of Leaf Storm. It took him maybe seven years to find a publisher to print this story, but he never gave up. In fact, this was not Gabito's first success. He wrote the memoirs of a sailor who survived a sinking ship and spent ten days alone on the ocean on a small wooden raft, serialized for his newspaper in 1955. However, a Lost Sailor - Relato de un Naufrage, no one knew that this story belonged to Gabito until it was published by Marquez in 1970, as he narrated this work from the seafarer's mouth.

He would be just as successful in journalism as he was in his writing. Journalism, which covered a large part of his life and which he emphasized as his main profession in the interviews he gave, brought Gabito's political identity to the fore. He became one of the pioneers of left political journalism, known as "periodismo militante" in Latin America, and even played an important role in the development of journalism in Latin America. Even if this whole process could not show how much he valued his profession, the fact that he used the money he earned from the Nobel to buy a newspaper would reveal how fond he was of journalism. Because his profession has always fed him. He knew that besides giving him a working discipline, he also had an impact on his fiction.

First book: Leaf Storm

Gabito decided to write his first novel, Leaf Storm, apparently after this trip to his village, in reality to his childhood. Everything that had happened in his childhood, and literature showed him clearly after this journey. Nothing was just as it seemed, it had depth, and now Gabito could see the incredible truths his childhood had whispered to him. Its literary value could not be matched by anything.

“From the moment I wrote Leafstorm I knew I wanted to be a writer and nothing could have stopped me from being the best writer in the world,” Gabriel said.

Yes, indeed, nothing was going to stop him from being the best writer in the world. Because he never gave up. The year was 1953 when all this happened. Marquez wrote eight books by 1967, but only three were copyrighted.

Married

Mercedes Barcha Pardo was Gabriel's teen love. He was eighteen and Mercedes was just thirteen when he proposed to her for the first time. After more than a decade of correspondence, Mercedes finally agreed to marry. This marriage, which they realized in 1958, brought them two children, Rodrigo Garcia and Gonzalo. They packed a long-term, huge love into a lifetime with Mercedes.

Gabriel continued his journalism career, this time in Havana during the Cuban Revolution, and then in New York. When he completed his mission, he went to Mexico with his wife and baby. Literature was the greatest part of all this time. One of the names that influenced him the most was William Faulkner. During his travels, he also stopped by Faulkner's hometown. This journey gave him the inspiration he needed to write his greatest work of all time, One Hundred Years of Solitude…

How One Hundred Years of Solitude became a classic

In the 60s, for a novel written in Latin America to become an international success, it would sell at least 8 hundred thousand copies in the region and reach one of the best publishers in Spain with this figure, thus attracting the attention of publishers with publications in English, French, and German, to be published there as well. had to. Of course, it wasn't enough. It should also have received the "Biblioteca Breve, Rómulo Gallegos, Casa de las Américas, and Formentor Awards".

When Gabriel wrote something, he wondered if I could make my friends like this book. “All the books are written for your friends,” he finally said, questioning who likes which chapter and what the other thinks of this paragraph. The problem after writing One Hundred Years of Solitude was that he knew it would please his friends more than any of his other books. However, he was unaware of how many millions of people he wrote to. “It was like a million eyes were on me and I didn't know what they were feeling,” he would say. He was very surprised when the Spanish publisher said he was going to print eight hundred thousand copies of the book. Because so far none of his other books have sold more than seven hundred thousand copies. Although he told him to start slow, his publisher thought this book was really good and was confident that they would all sell out between May and December. Something even more surprising and beautiful happened; all copies of the books were sold out in a week in Buenos Aires.

Marquez was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982 for One Hundred Years of Solitude. The first thing Gabo felt was fear. When he received the phone announcing that he had won the Nobel on October 20, he was shaken down to his fingertips. He couldn't fit into the house; In order not to be alone, he went to the house of his friend Alvaro Mutis. When Mutis saw Gabo like this, he thought he was arguing with Mercedes. Because there was no trace of good news on Gabriel's face. When asked, Gabo replied to his friend as follows:

"Worse! They gave me the Nobel Prize.”

Political stance and moments of dislike

Gabo was not well-liked by Colombians until he received the Nobel Prize for Literature. The first reason could be: Although Gabo often included Colombia in his novels, he preferred Mexico to live. Adopting leftist thinking, which has never been in Colombia's political past, Gabo's ideology was never embraced by Colombians. As a journalist, he stood close to Marxist movements. He moved to Mexico in 1981 when he was accused by the Colombian government of supporting the separatist M-19 organization. Maybe going was a necessity rather than a choice for Gabo.

Another reason for their dislike could be that one of his close friends was Fidel Castro. In fact, rather than being friends, the reason was that Gabo did not speak out against the injustices Castro did to the Cuban people after the Cuban Revolution. For this reason, not only Colombians but also many leading figures in world literature criticized him harshly. For example, the anger of one of his close friends, Mario Vargas Llosa, was so great that it turned into violence.

Gabriel was one of eight Latin American writers to win the Nobel; Peruvian writer Llosa was too. Although they were once very close friends, Llosa, whose anger grew, came to him in a movie theater in Mexico and punched Gabo in the face. It was political reasons that magnified his anger. Another piece of information was given by photographer Rodrigo Moya, who took a photo of Marquez's black eye; The cause of the argument was Llosa's wife.

Llosa was against Gabo not only with his fist but also with his words; accusing him of being Castro's court jester. He was saying:

“Márquez is the court jester of Fidel Castro and a supporter of the dictatorship he established, making excuses in the intellectual community. By saying that some political prisoners were secretly released, Márquez has so far well justified all the human rights violations and abuses committed by the Cuban dictatorship.”

However, when Gabo passed away, it was also Llosa who then said:

“With his works, he added a great wealth to the world of literature. Marquez was a great writer.”

Undoubtedly, the first and most important work that comes to mind when Marquez is mentioned was One Hundred Years of Solitude. However, he also signed another very popular work. One of them was The Autumn of Our President Father (El Otono del Patriarca).

Gabo had created a character in his mind but was looking for symbols that would transform him into a physical being. And he described his discovery as follows:

“One day I was wandering the streets of Rome in despair. As I was going through the photo album I found in the bookstore I entered, I suddenly saw that face.”

That face belonged to a cruel old man, weary of life, sitting alone in the hall of a mansion that was too luxurious for Gabo. He immediately returned to his desk and began to write about the death of this dictator who lived on one of the Caribbean Islands. A masterpiece, this work was published in 1975.

Marquez was right; “Each novel character is a collage of people you personally know, hear about, read.”

Another special work was Red Monday (Cronica de Una Muerte Anunciada), published in 1981. In this work, adapted for the big screen by the famous Italian director Francesco Rosi, Gabo described a murder that took place in the town where he spent his childhood. The murder, which was known to almost everyone in the town, could not be prevented by anyone and the death of the hero of the novel, Santiago Nasar, was almost allowed.

Inspired by his mother and father's love, or rather, his troubled relationship, another work that would achieve Hollywood success was Love in the Days of Cholera (El Amor en Los Tiempos del Colera) published in 1985. It might seem like an ordinary love story on first impression. However, Marquez said, "You have to be careful not to fall into the trap I've set!" He couldn't have warned in vain. The novel told the story of Fermina, who gave up on chasing Florentino and lived a life in the safe arms of Doctor Juvenal. Youth love, passion, jealousy, romance, anger, lust, and a life journey where you will always feel safe; If you read carefully and especially faithful to Marquez's narrative, it was impossible not to notice each and every stage of love step by step.

Adapting the novel into a movie was not easy. Gabo disliked having his works adapted for the screen, however, his condition was that his novels be made into films in Spanish, the original language. Producer Scott Steindorff pursued Gabo for three years, so to speak, to persuade him. Finally, Gabo was convinced, and Love in the Time of Cholera was adapted for the big screen in 2007.

Gabo was first diagnosed with lung cancer in the 90s and had an operation. Although his condition improved, in June 1999 rumors of Marquez's impending death began to snowball. Someone shared the sentimental poem of a dying person and pointed to Marquez as the poet. This asparagus made the headlines when the poem turned into an e-mail in a very short time and spread to the world.

Yes, Marquez was not dead, but he did draw attention to this unspoken issue that was on everyone's mind. Marquez was getting older and his writing production was slowing day by day. His readers were waiting for the second part of his memoirs, which he published in 2002. In 2004, Marquez published his novel, My Sad Bitches. Again, he had a very big head. However, it is not known whether the panic caused by the end is not known, this book was not enough for the reader. They expected more, they were obviously afraid of losing Marquez. On the other hand, he was in conflict. This upset his fans. He was also banned from attending the International Congress of the Spanish Language in 2004. Gerald Martin, who wrote the biographer of Marquez, also announced that the author had begun to lose his memory. However, Gabo always described himself as a “professional rememberer”. Gabo told the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia in 2006, “I stopped writing. Last year was the first year in my life that I did not write a single line,” he said. Martin had said he would never write a book again, but in 2009, Marquez told Colombian newspaper El Tiempo about rumors of his retirement:

"This is not true. All I do now is write. I know when the cakes I put in the oven will bake.”

The permanent keeper of loneliness, Marquez passed away on April 17, 2014 due to pneumonia. He was 87 years old. A passage from One Hundred Years of Solitude seems to have ascended to the universe:

“Then they went into his room, shook him with all their might, shouted in his ear, held a mirror up to his nostrils, but could not wake him up. Before long, as the carpenter was measuring for the coffin, they looked out the window and saw tiny yellow flowers falling like rain.”