Of course: because Bolivar is not only a prime exponent of the well-known Latin American machismo but a true child of the Romantic age. His political imagination was formed by the French Revolution; his heroes were Napoleon and Rousseau. Like Byron, he at his nakedness. He even heard the words of the song she was singing under her breath: ''Tell me it's never too late to die of love.'' . . . The General was so sure he had seen her that he looked for her everywhere

Gabriel José de la Concordia Garcí­a Márquez was a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist. Garcí­a Márquez, familiarly known as "Gabo" in his native country, was considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century. In 1982, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.He was shaken by the overwhelming revelation that the headlong race between his misfortunes and his dreams was at that moment reaching the finish line. The rest was darkness, 'Damn it,' he sighed. 'How will I ever get out of this labyrinth! Manuela Saenz, who once saved him from assassination. But there were also - according to his faithful valet, Jose Palacios, who plays Leporello to Bolivar's Don Juan - 35 other serious affairs, ''not counting the one-night

What they could not endure was the uncertainty he had inspired in them ever since his decision to renounce power, which became more and more unbearable the more he continued to slug his way through this endless journey to nowhere…”So with The General in His Labyrinth, Gabriel García Márquez contributes to the closing of another massive gap in my knowledge of world history. Through this sliver of story I have glimpsed the genesis of the countries of South America and the remarkable role Bolivar played in their founding. I’ve also enjoyed a slow and meditative look at the mind and last days of a man of many deeds and many contradictions. above all by his own reluctance to leave the scene of his former glories, he wanders from city to city, house to house, refuge to refuge, dragging his increasingly baffled and restless entourage in his wake. In some places he is treated A German adventurer came down to the continent to capture an oddity he’d heard described "a man with rooster claws," to put in a cage and display in European circuses. He told of his wish to the General when they met during the voyage along the river. The General had found another opportunity to direct his mordant sarcasm at himself. "I assure you you’ll earn more money showing me in a cage as the biggest damn fool in history.” Latin American cultural theorist Carlos J. Alonso, drawing on Freudian theory, argues that the novel is essentially a therapeutic device, designed to help move Latin America past its problematic experience of modernity. He compares this to the way the healing state of mourning replaces grief in the process of recovering from a death. Both activities are mechanisms for dealing with loss. Alonso believes that The General in his Labyrinth, by almost entirely centering the novel on the General's death, forces the reader to confront the horror of this process. [54] In Alonso's view, the reader is meant to pass from "a melancholy relationship vis-a-vis the figure of Bolívar to a relationship that has the therapeutic qualities of mourning instead". [55]

changed history, but not as much as he would have liked. There are statues of ''The Liberator'' all over Latin America, but in his own eyes he died defeated. The General in his Labyrinth is the compelling tale of Simon Bolivar, a hero who has been forgotten and whose power is fading, retracing his steps down the Magdalena River by the Nobel Laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez, author of One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera. This dark brooding novel is set in the last 7 months of the life of South American Liberator, Simon Bolivar. After working many years to both liberate South America from Spanish rule and occupation, and to establish a sort of United States of South America, a continent-wide nation, Bolivar is nearing his life’s end. urn:oclc:440757604 Scandate 20091205034843 Scanner scribe5.sfdowntown.archive.org Scanningcenter sfdowntown Source

Gertel, Zunilda (September 1992), "Five Hundred Years of Rethinking History", Pacific Coast Philology, Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association, 27 (1/2): 16–28, doi: 10.2307/1316708, JSTOR 1316708 . ( JSTOR subscription required.) Gabriel Garcia Marquez tells us that he isn’t as much interested in the objective details of Bolivar’s last days as he is in helping us understand the feeling tone Bolivar has about his major life work. This is an imaginative and very dark novel, filled with illness, pain, suffering both physical and mental. Another one of his novels, El amor en los tiempos del cólera (1985), or Love in the Time of Cholera, drew a large global audience as well. The work was partially based on his parents' courtship and was adapted into a 2007 film starring Javier Bardem. García Márquez wrote seven novels during his life, with additional titles that include El general en su laberinto (1989), or The General in His Labyrinth, and Del amor y otros demonios (1994), or Of Love and Other Demons. But he could not renounce his infinite capacity for illusion at the very moment he needed it most... he saw fireflies where there were none.

General Simon Bolívar, known in six Latin American countries as the Liberator, is one of the most revered heroes of the western hemisphere; in García Márquez’s brilliant reimagining, he is magnificently flawed as well. The novel follows Bolívar as he takes his final journey in 1830 down the Magdalena River toward the sea, revisiting the scenes of his former glory and lamenting his lost dream of an alliance of American nations. Forced from power, dogged by assassins, and prematurely aged and wasted by a fatal illness, the General is still a remarkably vital and mercurial man. He seems to remain alive by the sheer force of will that led him to so many victories in the battlefields and love affairs of his past. As he wanders in the labyrinth of his failing powers - and still-powerful memories - he defies his impending death until the last. in Latin American affairs: inviting the United States to the Congress of Panama is ''like inviting the cat to the mice's fiesta.'' The initial idea to write a book about Simón Bolívar came to García Márquez through his friend and fellow Colombian writer Álvaro Mutis, to whom the book is dedicated. [3] Mutis had started writing a book called El último rostro about Bolívar's final voyage along the Magdalena River, but never finished it. At the time, García Márquez was interested in writing about the Magdalena River because he knew the area intimately from his childhood. [4] Two years after reading El Último Rostro, García Márquez asked Mutis for his permission to write a book on Bolívar's last voyage. [5] He never makes it. Thwarted by the oppressive and calamitous weather, by the machinations of his enemies - in particular his fellow revolutionary and archrival, Francisco de Paula Santander - by the political ambitions of his friends, by his illness andPellón, Gustavo (2001), "The Caribbean's Contribution to the Boom", in A. James Arnold (ed.), A History of Literature in the Caribbean, Hispanic and Francophone Regions, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, pp.209–220, ISBN 90-272-3442-6 . The General never leaves South America. He finishes his journey in Santa Marta, too weak to continue and with only his doctor and his closest aides by his side. He dies in poverty, a shadow of the man who liberated much of the continent. It was the fourth time he had traveled along the Magdalena, and he could not escape the impression that he was retracing the steps of his life. . . . Of the countless memories he shared with Jose Palacios, one of the most moving was that first voyage, At the age of forty-six General Simon Bolivar, who drove the Spanish from his lands and became the Liberator of South America, takes himself into exile. He makes a final journey down the Magdalene River, revisiting the cities along its shores, reliving the triumphs, passions and betrayals of his youth. Consumed by the memories of what he has done and what he failed to do, Bolívar hopes to see a way out of the labyrinth in which he has lived all his life. . ..