Bags of Bones

Several scholars have discussed possible sources for Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Cien afos de soledad, focusing on European and North American writers he might have read; strong cases have been made for Faulkner, Virginia Woolf's Orlando, and Defoe's Diary of the Plague Year. I One source which has not been mentioned, however, is Chateaubriand's Atala. This brief novel, one of the most popular Romantic texts, has been available, in Spanish translation, in dozens of editions from 1801 to the present; the first translation was probably done by Fray Servando Teresa de Mier. Either printed by itself or together with two other brief works by Chateaubriand, Rene' and El ultimo Abencerraje (Les aventures du dernier Abencerage), both almost as popular in the Spanish-speaking world, Atala was certainly readily available in Colombia in the first decades of the twentieth century.2 Chateaubriand's short novel, moreover, has had a special importance in Colombia; in the greatest Colombian novel before Cien afios de soledad, Jorge Isaacs' 1867 Marta, Atala is the favorite book of Efrain and Maria, and is prominently mentioned in the text.3 One of the first critics to write about Maria, Jose Maria Vergara y Vergara, emphasized the influence of Chateaubriand's novel, an influence that is particularly evident in the Nay and Sinar episode, and many editions of Marta after 1878 included Vergara y Vergara's article as a preface.4 It is impossible to believe that Garcia Marquez did not read Maria, and it seems very possible that the references in the text and in Vergara y Vergara's preface might have led him to read Chateaubriand's original. In Cien aios de soledad, Rebeca arrives in Macondo carrying talego de lona que hacia un permanente ruido de cloc cloc cloc, donde llevaba los huesos de sus padres.5 The remains of her parents present a problem, since aquel tiempo no habia cementerio en Macondo, pues hasta entonces no habia muerto nadie, . The Buendias therefore conservaron

Art · Comparative Literary Analysis and Criticism · Literary and Cultural Studies · Literature, Culture, and Aesthetics

• Effects mobilizing affects

  Inês Faro•Journal of Romance Studies•2024

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