"Love in the Time of Cholera" - Death and Love (1)

The author Marquez turned his attention to love. Not one love, but all kinds of love.

The first sentence of the opening chapter "Inevitably, the smell of bitter almonds always reminds him of the fate of blocked love" - ??suicide.

Poor but not humble love.

The only thing worthy of praise for Remia de Saint-Amour, an old and poor man with disabled legs, may be his chess skills. He met Dr. Urbino because of his chess skills. With the help of Dr. Urbino, he opened a photography studio and became a children's photographer.

After he diligently paid off every sum of money, he committed suicide by burning cyanide gold when he was sixty years old. This is undoubtedly a case of suicide. Why does the author start his story with death?

De Saint-Amour, who had nothing, had a lover. Based on the eleven-page suicide note left to him by de Saint-Amour, Dr. Urbino visited the "noisy, fetid and muddy" slum.

She enjoyed a secret love affair with Mr. de Saint-Amour. In this Latin American city where secrets had nowhere to hide, the love affair was not exposed until the death of Mr. de Saint-Amour.

De Saint-Amour decided to die at the age of sixty. "I will never grow old."

The night before his suicide, de Saint-Amour and his lover went to the only open-air cinema in the city to watch "No Story on the Western Front". After returning, the lover keenly sensed de Saint-Amour's desire to die. She did not dissuade.

In this year, de Saint-Amour was exactly sixty years old and died on the day before Pentecost.

Afterwards, the lover will continue to live in this tomb where the poor are waiting to die as before, without any regrets, because here, she has experienced happiness.

"She once experienced happiness", just like the time I spent in Guangzhou's urban village.

I really like the image of the end of this relationship:

Put a rose on your temples and calmly accept this love that was interrupted by death.

This is the first love shown to us in "Love in the Time of Cholera".