Analysis of Death Constant Beyond Love

Death Constant Beyond Love 是1982年諾貝爾文學獎得主,哥倫比亞作家Gabriel Garcia Marquez寫於1970的一個短篇.有興趣的朋友在網上可以找到中英文版本(原文是西班牙文).我看的是收錄在The Norton Anthology World Literature, 由Gregory Rabassa翻譯的,只有六頁.這篇文章不錯,是期中到期末我們唸過的22篇裡,極為少數我喜歡的.
Marquez的寫作風格被歸類為Magic Realism.故事的結尾,競選期間的紙鳥和中間紙蝴蝶那幾段像噩夢般似的纏著我(不知道Marquez想傳達什麼)整整一個禮拜才下筆寫這篇期末essay.放在這作為噩夢結束的紀念.現在只剩下期末考了...

Analysis of Death Constant Beyond Love

        We all will die one day. What of ourselves will we leave behind after our death? Is it the end? Quevedo, a Spanish Golden Age poet, wrote the poem Love Constant Beyond Death. This piece resonates in so many people’s hearts, for it captures the endurance of love after we depart our earthly lives.

                My soul, whom a God made his prison of,

                My veins, which a liquid humour fed to fire,

                My marrows, which have gloriously flamed,

                Will leave their body, never their desire;

                They will be ash but ash in feeling framed;

                They will be dust but will be dust in love. (9-14) 

Quevedo asserts that love is lasting beyond death; however, Garcia Marquez offers a different perspective in his short story, Death Constant Beyond Love. Marquez portrays death as being an unforgiving overlord who dominates our lives with an irresistible force overcoming even the enduring power of love. The sad recipient of this fate is Senator Onesimo Sanchez, a corrupt politician whose whole life was an illusion before he met Laura Farina. This essay will demonstrate why death is beyond love to the protagonist, the senator, by examining how his illusionary life is turned upside down in one day. When illusion meets reality, the two tensions crash down on the senator who cannot conquer death; as a result, he died in total solitude and despair. For the senator, death is beyond the eternal existence of love.

        What contributes to the senator’s life as an illusion? Solitude is the main reason for the protagonist's life in an illusionary world, and solitude plays an important role throughout the story. Senator Sanchez should not have felt lonely, for he had a radiant German wife and five children (Marquez 988), but other than that one mention, we never read about his family in the story. The Senator knew he was going to die soon, but he did not resign and spend his remaining time with his family. He did not tell anyone about his illness, not even his wife. He decided to secretly bear it on his own and made no changes in life (988). This implies there was a great distance between him and his family, and this distance contributed to his illusionary life. With his illness hidden from his family and his family hidden from the readers, the Senator was not the man he appeared to be.

But why did he keep such secrets? Marquez concludes that it was "not because of pride but out of shame" (988). Why would news of dying cause him shame? I believe his entire existence was shameful, and the senator himself knew it well. When the beautiful woman, Laura, told him that people said he was "worse than the rest...", he did not feel upset (993). He was aware of his bad reputation. In fact, he was afraid to announce the news of dying because he had been accustomed to power and status. He knew that no one loved him (992), but he felt wanted, and at least people went to him to ask for favors (990). If anyone had learned that he would die in a few months, they would not elect him as a senator of Parliament. If he had become powerless with only a bad reputation, he would have only disgrace. He had to maintain his high status and dignity in the last seconds before his death so that he could avoid facing humiliation. What a poor lonely soul he was.

More evidence of the senator’s solitude is seen in the following passage: "Senator Onesimo Sanchez was placid and weatherless [sic] inside the air-conditioned car, but as soon as he opened the door he was shaken by a gust of fire and his shirt of pure silk was soaked in a kind of light-colored soup and he felt many years older and more alone than ever" (988). The senator was sitting in an air-conditioned car and was completely isolated with no sense of the hot climate outside, indicating a state of separation between parliamentarians and the masses. The senator had no real feelings about the abject poverty of the local people. When he opened the door, he was hit by a flaming heat wave. His silk shirt, which represents his wealth, was immediately wet with sweat. A person moving from the air- conditioned car out into the hot climate would feel very uncomfortable. However, the senator's discomfort surprisingly was spiritual, not physical. He did not feel the heat was unbearable, but he felt much older and more alone. This symbolizes that he did not fit in the real world with real people. There was a huge gap between him and the ordinary people. How could he not feel particularly lonely? The soup was a sign that the illusion was faltering, connecting to his secret knowledge of illness and death. Despite being surrounded by people, his emotions were completely in a state of solitude.

Another factor in the senator’s illusionary life is that his life was built on lies. The novel does not show us what kinds of enjoyment that luxury life or power can bring to the senator; instead, it describes his campaign in a small town, Rosal del Virrey, to reveal how corruption is the essence of his life and his inner feelings. All activities were conducted on a routine basis, which he had arranged in advance. A car loaded with promotional items arrived in the morning, followed by several trucks carrying the Indians who were rented to increase the number of listeners (988). He knew that he was not telling the truth in the speech which he mechanically repeated many times. He talked about how to transform nature, and described the bright future while his staff was creating the false facades in the background (989). The campaign was like a circus in which he promised life for the dead town, but that was a lie, much like his painkillers allowed him to create the illusion that there was life in him (988). He was also a hypocrite. He didn't want the town to be changed so that he could continue to benefit from rampant crime (991). His corrupt association with the smugglers while he was becoming rich (991), and unattainable promises to the town underscored his circus of a campaign. We see the senator’s illusionary life was composed with lies.

Death is the main theme in the story. As the senator spoke, " ... his aides threw clusters of paper birds into the air and the artificial creatures took on life, flew about the platform of planks, and went out to sea" (989). Marquez’s magical birds seem both real and impossible, and we are torn between illusion and reality. On the other hand, one thing we know for sure is that those birds will soon drop in the ocean, much like the Senator will soon die as well. Curiously, we do not see that his death sentence made him feel particularly sad or desperate before he met Laura. His mood seems to change very little, although he was not as sorry as he used to be for the barefoot Indians standing on the burning "saltpeter coals of the sterile little square" (989). Compared to his terminal illness, the Indians’ suffering was not worthy of sympathy to him. The second change is that when people rushed to shake hands with him for the good luck, he only felt disdain for those people (989). I assume that he was cynically thinking about how silly those people were for wanting a dying handshake from him. He showed no self pity. Of course, he had never displayed that he was optimistic with a chic attitude. He just simply continued his stylized life as if he had never tasted the joy of life and had no yearning for the past. Yet, his mood changed after he met Laura.

He saw Laura when he walked through the streets of the town, Rosal del Virrey, after a speech. From the beginning of the story, we are kept aware of a red rose the senator kept from withering during the election campaign in the desert, and it was the only rose in the area. This is ironic because the name of the town can be translated as "the Governor's Rose Garden." We might imagine that there used to be roses in the past, but not anymore in this barren land. Perhaps the senator wanted to give the townspeople a romantic, warm feeling by wearing the red rose, which often stands for love in poems, but it could also be an expression for the Senator’s subconscious desire for love, which was ignited the moment he saw Laura. The senator was left breathless. "I’ll be damned!" he breathed in surprise. "The Lord does the craziest things" (991)! His heart was under the stimulus of Laura’s beauty, and he realized that reality did exist in his illusionary world.

But sadly, we soon learn that Laura was not as free a spirit as she appeared. Her father, Nelson, knew how crooked the senator was, so he dared to send his only daughter as a deal to get a false identity card which could free him from his past crime of murdering his first wife (989, 991). It is clear that both the senator and Laura were not in control of their own lives, and that Laura also carried the burden of solitude. Marquez further cracks the illusionary world when he likens Laura to a force of nature with her hair like a mare’s mane and her body odor like that of animals in the forest (992-993), giving the impression that Laura was a girl full of vitality, capable of touching the senator’s deceitful heart.  

Did the senator have a heart? We wonder. Laura's extraordinary beauty was more intense than his pain (991). This shows that he had a strong desire for her, but he also considered that "death had made his decision for him" (991). This indicates that while he determined to enjoy her, he was unwilling to take responsibility for his decision that there would be widespread scandals. But, since he was dying, he did not care. "The senator sat down on an army cot, talking about roses as he unbuttoned his shirt. On the side where he imagined his heart to be inside his chest he had a corsair’s tattoo of a heart pierced by an arrow" (992). Marquez uses the term "imagination" to imply that a corrupt politician like the senator does not have a genuine heart, only a false heart, let alone let the cupid’s arrow hit! The tattoo design of a pirate suggests there is no difference between corrupt politicians and predatory pirates; yet, even a predator like a pirate may desire love.

At this point, the senator certainly hoped that he and Laura could have a sexual encounter. When the senator took off his shirt, he let Laura take his boots off. He seemed to feel pity for her by saying she was only a child (992). Laura told him that she would be nineteen in April. The senator replied that they were both Aries, which he believed it was a symbol of solitude. However, Laura did not pay attention to his words because she "didn’t know what to do with the boots" (992). We observe that the senator did not know how to treat Laura because he was not accustomed to a sudden love affair (992). This reveals the senator probably had never really been in love with a woman before. As he caressed Laura's body seeking her with his hand, he discovered that Laura was wearing an iron chastity belt with a padlock, and the key was in Laura's father, Nelson's hand. The senator could have the key only if he had a written promise to straighten out Nelson’s situation (993). He promised to help Nelson, but at the same time, he had no intention to open the lock anymore. He only wanted Laura to stay with him. He said: "sleep awhile with me. It’s good to be with someone when you’re so alone" (993). Subsequently, he buried his face in Laura’s armpit, "and gave in to terror" (993). Their relationship was like the tarnished rose amid illusion and reality, and the tensions started crashing down on the senator.

Marquez never described the senator’s fear of death, but stressed the sense of solitude that made the senator’s life an illusion in the first half of the story. Nevertheless, the senator started to fear death because he developed an attachment to Laura. It seemed that only then did he feel the terror of death. Marquez’s philosophy is that we are alone throughout life, and even love is an illusion. When the senator met Laura, he thought maybe he could live his real life. The woodsy smell from Laura was the power of nature. He was drawn to it because it was the only thing alive in that desert town. She was alive, and maybe she would allow him to enjoy life. But the padlock sealed his fate of death and solitude again.

Similarly, when the senator ripped a calendar page, which represented an event in time, to make a butterfly and threw it, a subconscious behavior that tried to alter his fate, which was his last attempt to deny his impending death and continue his illusion. For a while, the butterfly flitted about and moved around, as if events in the future could be changed. But at the end, it became affixed to the wall as a painting and immobile (991), signifying that the senator’s death was not changeable. If a person's love for others remains in the hearts of others after he dies, others will continue to exist with his love. Then for this person, his love is constant beyond death as Quevedo's poem illustrates. Marquez’s short story depicts a contrary scenario. At the end of the story, six months and eleven days later, the senator died in the same position in bed in Laura's "woods-animal armpit" (993) like an animal curled up in its cave while Laura's eyes fixed on the rose, which we know was dead by that time. Before he died, the senator wept with rage at the fact that Laura would not die with him (993). Thus, he had to go on death's journey by himself. This confirms that he died in total solitude and despair. For him, death is beyond the eternal existence of love.

Works Cited

Marquez, Gabriel Garcia. The Norton Anthology World Literature. Compiled by Mattin Puchner, 3rd ed., vol. F, New York, London, W.W. NORTON & COMPANY, 2012. 6 vols. Death Constant Beyond Love pp.988-pp.993

Quevedo, Francisco De. "Love Constant Beyond Death." Los Angeles Times, 11 Aug. 2002. Los Angeles Times, articles.latimes.com/2002/aug/11/books/bk-poem11. Accessed 7 Dec. 2016. Translated from the Spanish by Willis Barnstone.