GABRIEL Garcia Marquez has passed away, leaving his innumerable admirers all over the world in deep sorrow. The celebrated novelist, with his unique mode of expression known as magical realism, had taken the entire literary world by storm.

Marquez’s peculiar vision of reality charmed the literary world so immensely that his novels, particularly One Hundred Years of Solitude, were translated into almost all the major languages of the world. While searching for his translations in Urdu, I came across two of his works, Chronicle of a Death Foretold and No One Writes to the Colonel, translated by Afzal Ahmed Syed and Farooq Hasan, respectively. They form a part of a big volume, Muntakhib Tahrirain, compiled by Ajmal Kamal. The volume also includes the early chapters of One Hundred Years of Solitude which Zeenat Hassan had chosen to ambitiously translate. But to our great disappointment she stopped after translating three chapters for reasons best known to her. The volume also includes translations by Rashid Mufti and Farooq Hasan from two collections of short stories.

In addition, the volume includes a precious piece of writing titled The Fragrance of Guava. It is a dialogue between Marquez and a friend. In fact, it has helped me much in understanding his magical realism, or, to be more precise, his unique perception of reality. “The one person,” says Marquez, “who helped me the most in learning the art of writing was my maternal grandmother. She narrated harrowing tales to me in such a vivid way it seemed that she had been an eye-witness to all that had happened.” He adds, “my grandmother was a very superstitious woman endowed with a rich imagination.”

He then hastens to tell us about his socio-political commitment: “I am very clear about my political commitment. I wish to see the world turned socialist. And I believe that sooner or later this is going to happen.” But he pauses and says, “I have my own objections, very many objections on what in Latin America has come to be known as literature of commitment, or to be more precise, the novel of social protest. The reason for my objections is that in my opinion its limited conception about life and the world doesn’t help in achieving any purpose. Many of my extremist friends want to impose sanctions on writers [regarding] what to write and what not to write. Thus by imposing sanctions on their creative freedom they are unconsciously committing to a reactionary line. I believe that a novel written on the theme of love is as valid as one written on any other theme. What, in fact, is incumbent on a writer is to produce good writing. If you like, call it a revolutionary duty on his part.”

Then he talks about his own way of writing: “After getting rid of my commitment to immediate political reality I chose to depict reality the way I have depicted it in my novel One Hundred Years of Solitude. […] I took my cue from the tales my grand mother had narrated to me. And as I started writing keeping her in view, I felt that I was writing nothing new. I was just trying to capture a world steeped in superstitions, omens, prophecies, myths, legends, and beliefs. And this is our own world, the world Latin America breaths in. I wallowed in all this and succeeded in writing One Hundred Years of Solitude.”

Turning to readers who admire him for what they call magical realism, Marquez says: “My European readers are perhaps well aware of the magic in my fiction, but fail to perceive the reality hidden therein. The reason is that their rationalistic understanding does not allow them to see that reality is not confined to the sales and purchases of tomatoes and eggs alone.”

How wonderful that Marquez, while talking about his vision of reality, spoke so unreservedly for our benefit. That has helped us in understanding his vision of reality. He also reveals to us his two main sources, his maternal grandmother and Kafka. It was left to Kafka “to reveal to me that I am destined to be a fiction writer,” he says. They both, as he acknowledges, guided him to see the world in a different way, which eventually came to be known as magical realism.

However, Marquez insists that each and every sentence he has written is based on reality. “Much of what happens in One Hundred years of Solitude appears to be unrealistic. But it all is based on reality.”