Sublime Elements in Of Love and Other Demons

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Recommended: Theory about magical realism

Sublime Elements in Of Love and Other Demons

The book Of Love and Other Demons (1994), written by the Columbian Gabriel Garcia Marquez, has more characteristics of sublime literature than of magical realist literature. Magical Realism and the sublime are so closely related that distinguishing between the two is hard. They are more closely related than magical realism and the fantastic.

Of Love and Other Demons has elements of magical realism. Of all the magical elements, the most important and the most obvious is the dream that is shared by both Sierva and Delaura before they meet. The long red hair of Sierva is an example of a magic realist element that is hidden. The death of Father Aquino and other mysterious events are also important in this story.

Most likely, the dream that is shared by both Sierva and Delaura is the most important of all the magical elements However, this element may also be indentified as sublime. In the sublime, there is a "frightening breakdown of identity, a breakdown that leads to another world of dreams and imagination, and of spirit" (qtd. in Sandner 54). This one event, called transcendence, has a huge effect on the characters and the outcome of the rest of the story. Through this dream, Delaura realizes he is in love with Sierva whom he has not even met. The first of Tolkien's gifts, related to the sublime, Recovery, is used here. "It is the placing of ordinary objects from our everyday world that compels us to perceive them in a new way" (qtd. in Sandner 56). As in magical realism, "reality is 'reconstructed' through 'spiritual' phenomena" (Guenther 35).

Textualization, another magical realist characteristic (Theim 235), is used in this story. The charac...

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...anish American Literature."Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community. Ed. Lois Parkinson Zamora and Wendy B. Faris. Durham; N.C.: Duke UP, 1995. 119-124.

Marquez, Gabriel Garcia. Of Love and Other Demons. N.Y.: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1995. 1-147.

Sandner, David. "Romanticism and Transcendence in Nineteenth-Century Children's Fantasy Literature." The Fantastic Sublime. Westport, C.T.: Greenwood Press. 45-65,142-147.

Simpkins, Scott. "Sources of Magical Realism/ Supplements to Realism in Contemporary Latin American Literature." Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community. Ed. Lois Parkinson Zamora and Wendy B. Faris. Durham; N.C.: Duke UP, 1995.

Theim, Jon. "The Textualization of the Reader in Magical Realist Fiction." Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community. Ed. Lois Parkinson Zamora and Wendy B. Faris. Durham; N.C.: Duke UP, 1995. 235-247.

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