Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time Cholera and Yasunari Kawabata’s Snow Country are two novels that redefined the contours of Latin American and Japanese literature. Kawabata’s writing style and magical realism went on to win him a Nobel Prize in Literature while Marquez became one of the best writers of the 20th century. In both texts by Kawabata and Marquez there is a constant struggle between tradition and modernity. Water is a significant recurring motif in Love in the Time of Cholera inasmuch as it reflects on the struggle of the main characters to balance the modern with the pastoral. In Snow Country, the journey motif helps in understanding the conflict between tradition and modernity in Kawabata’s work.
This paper seeks to explore the contrast between tradition and modernity as it relates to the motif of water in Love in the Time of Cholera and the journey Snow Country. The paper first explores the historical settings of the novels and how they contributed to the conflict between modernity and tradition. The constant contrast between the modern as represented by trains and the success of people like Dr. Urbano, and, tradition as represented by the characters who refuse to embrace all forms of modern lifestyle by sticking to either visiting snow country or courting one woman for more than five decades.
Love in the Time of Cholera is set in Colombia at the turn of the 20th century. It mirrors changes in Colombia as it modernizes. The constant political and economic revolution in Colombia did not erase the traditional Spanish culture. When Colombia became a colony of Spain, it adopted Spanish ways of life. Columbia became heavily Catholic and adopted Spanish architecture and design style. The Spanish culture and traditions became ingrained in Colombian culture ending up dominating all facets of life. The city of Cartagena which is the setting of Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera shows how traditions especially Spanish traditions still persist in Colombia despite modernization.
In order to understand Marquez’s work it is also important to have a better knowledge of the economic and political landscape he grew up in. Marquez was born and grew up in Aracataca, a small tropical town in Colombia that was bedevilled by poverty and disease. The setting and history of Cartagena is important to the exploration of tradition in Love in the Time of Cholera.
Florentino Ariza is a man whose life is tied to tradition but he has to contend with the changes that water brings. Water comes in the form of tears, puddles, rivers, rain and seas. There is a lot of rain in Love in the Time of Cholera and it sometimes leads to flooding. The floods do not just affect the roads and houses but they reveal the lack of progress in Florentino Ariza’s world. According to Raymond Williams, Florentino Ariza is “a man who never embraces anything associated with modernity” (64). Fiorentino is a conservative whose way of dressing symbolizes his ties to the past. He wears “a romantic, old mustache with waxed tips” and “a dark suit with a vest, a silk bow tie and a celluloid collar, a felt hat, and a shiny black umbrella that he also used as a walking stick” (Marquez 48). One aspect of tradition that is fascinating in Love in the Time of Cholera is how Ariza goes on waiting for the love of one woman for 51 years. He is given an opportunity to find a new love but he refuses because of Fermina Daza. Marquez’s depiction of Fiorentino as a man stuck in the past is also a mirror of Colombia’s desire not to part with its long held Spanish tradition. Because he wants to prove his moher wrong, Fiorentino torments himself for years all in the name of love. Fermina Daza is not prepared to stick with tradition. She marries Juvenal Urbino who is more successful as compared to Florentino. Juvenal is a doctor and is older. It is interesting that Florentino engages is all forms of relationships while waiting for Fermina. One is forced to question whether Florentino’s romantic fantasies are worth anything or if they are a celebration of love or a mockery of the type of love Florentino thinks he has for Fermina.
There is constant raining in the novel Love in the Time of Cholera and it is often associated with changes in the life of Florentino. When Dr. Urbano died, it rained heavily signifying the new changes that were about to happen in Florentino’s life. The rains bring back Fermina Darza into the life of the hopeless romantic, Florentino. Water is significant throughout the novel since brings forth life and sometimes destroys it. Florentino’s courtship of Fermina after Dr. Urbano’s cannot be seen as a success considering that it took him decades to win Fermina over. She agrees to be part of his life at a time when their light has been spent.
The celebration of tradition is also critical to Kawabata’s Snow Country and this celebration is illuminated by the motif of the journey. Like Marquez, Kawabata focuses on tradition. The celebration of tradition stems from the political transitions that were taking place in Japan. The fascist regime of Japan was persecuting writers and intellectuals during the formative years of World War II. Moore argues that Kawabata developed as a writer during the reign of Taisho. This was a time of “restrictive xenophobic orthodoxy geared towards the rejection of anything harmful to Japanese society” (292). Kawabata laments the encroachment of foreigners on Japanese society. This is signified the most by the train which is evidently a foreign invasion of Japan’s countryside. The train stands for ways that are not exclusively Japanese.
Kawabata’s writings are an appraisal of Japanese traditional culture. There is a heavy influence of Buddhist elements in Kawabata’s writings. Mori argues that in Snow Country, there is a strong buddhist influence that is seen in the nunnery and “a strong undertone of ephemerality innate to such as fleeting relationships, the fragility of life and changing seasons” (291).
Snow Country begins with Shimamura, the main character riding the train to a snow country. The description of the snow country uses modernist imagery and symbolism. It is a tale of a relationship between a man from the city and a geisha from the hot-spring. The relationship between Shimamura and Kamoko mirrors the relationship between modernity and tradition. Unlike Florentino in Love in the Time of Cholera, Shimamura thinks that his relationship with Kamoko is a wasted effort. He is not able to return her love and keeps himself on the periphery of society. Shimamura is a great observer but not a great lover. From the onset of his journey into snow country, his uncalled for judging of the girl on the train shows he is condescending and this makes it difficult for him to appreciate the love Kamoko showed. Unlike Florentino, Shimamura is not full of conviction and is less self assured.
Kawabata establishes the contrast between the traditional and the modern in the first sentence of the novel. Shimamura observed that “the train came out of the long tunnel into the snow country” (2). The main character is transported into a new world that provides him with an needed escape. Kawabata is a man who relies on symbols and imagery to relay a story in simple language. The image conveyed by the first line is striking. Tsuruta argues that “the shift to the snowbound spa is the dimming of lights in a theaterin Kawabata’s locations, the basic laws of nature remain in operation but to set the stage he reduces the glare and rawness of the real world by carefully selecting either a remote place like this snow district or a detached space with reality like the tea room” (252). The dimming of reality is critical in that it also reflects on deeming individual relationships.
Shimamura despite a great effort fails to get a better recollection of Komako. His memory is reduced to that of her cleanliness and supposed beauty. Shimamura is incapable of sticking to one form of reality. He is caught between the old world and the new. Thus he travels back and forth between Tokyo and Echigo, the same way he moves from Komako and Yoko. He is a man whose perception of reality has been severely distorted. Shimamura is caught between time and space and hence the endless trips to the mountain spa.
The separation from reality is best mirrored by his comparison of love for Komako to the chijimi. He observes that “this love would leave behind it nothing so definite as a piece of Chijimi. Though cloth to be worn is among the most short lived of craftworks, a good piece of Chijimi if it has been taken care of, can be worn quite unfaded a half-century and more after weaving” (Kawabata 126). Comparing love to a piece of cloth is just a way of trying to create more distance between his two conflicting worlds.
In conclusion, Marquez and Kawabata through water and the journey motif explores love and introduces the conflict between modernity and tradition in Colombia and Japan. As changes occur daily, the characters in the text are forced to find new ways of balancing the old and he new. Through rain, snow mountains and the train, the reader is transported to snow country and a changing Colombia. Both Love in the Time of Cholera and Snow Country shows that recurring themes can be identical to different geographies in world literature. The conflict between tradition and modernity is evident in Marquez and Kawabata’s work. The two novels also shows the diversity and richness of world literature through the experiences in the riverboats and snow mountains.
On a personal note, I find life in the country to be slow and uninteresting. It must be the slow pace where people in the country conducts themselves that makes me think they need to embrace changes happening around them. My visit to the countryside have often been complicated because I find myself disagreeing with the desire not to part with history and tradition that is prevalent in country contexts. On my last visit to the country, I found myself disagreeing with the conservative lifestyle.
Works Cited
Image.
Kawabata, Yasunari. Snow Country. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1984.
Marquez, Gabriel, G. Love in the Time of Cholera. Knopf Doubleday Publishing, 2014.
Tsuruta, Kinya. “Dynamics in Kawabata Yasunari’s Snow Country”. Monumenta Nipponica 26.3
(1971): 252-265.
Williams, Raymond Leslie. A Companion to Gabriel García Márquez. Rochester: Tamesis,
2010. Print.
