SCIENCE IN “ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE”

One of the main secrets of literary master pieces is the possibility of having different lectures or interpretations. Capability of writers to implement such shells is considered as a sign of geniality. Quixote, Dr. Faustus, and even the Classical Greeks, are full of such genialities. One Hundred Years of Solitude has also different patterns which can be recognized by readers. A historically minded reader can follow a series of facts present in the history of Andean and Caribbean countries. In similar way a political, artistic or sociological minded reader can form his own version of the novel. But is uncommonly recognized a pattern around science and technology. This essay pretends to discover scientific facts in this novel.

It is not expected a rigorous explanation of scientific facts in a novel like One Hundred Years of Solitude; by the contrary, in the literary style known as “magical realism” it is pretended to show the reality in its no conventional aspects: Irrationality, fantasy and imagination. However a careful lecture of the novel permits to discover a rich world of intricate relations between science and the daily life, a close connection of the geographic isolation with the lack of scientific development, an impressive set of scientific facts present in the Macondian culture, and an evidence that the author had a very precise consciousness of the scientific aspects of culture in order to answer the questions:

Who the Colombians are? Why are as they are recognized around the world?

In his speech to the special commission about science, education and development, García Márquez said that a general interest in arts and science contributes to pipe the creative energies of the Colombians (otherwise employed during 500 years in violence, robbery and depredation). Looks like the problems originally posed in One Hundred Years of Solitude continue as problems to be solved.

I have interest in showing that the novel is much more that a collection of fantastic facts, that really give a deep insight into our society. I will attempt to present a “short catalog” with some episodes of the novel touching scientific aspects: They will be classified as follows: (1) Biology (genetics). (2) Mathematics (geography, astronomy) and physics. (3) Chemistry. (4) Automation, information. (6) General conclusions.

- Biology. There is no in the novel any personage who attempts to study or experiment biological problems. However, aspects related with heritage are present in different places, from the very beginning to the end of the novel.

“… every time that Ursula became exercised over her husband´s mad ideas, she would leap back over three hundred years of fate and curse the day that Sir Francis Drake had attacked Riohacha. It was simply a way of giving herself some relief, because actually they were joined till death by a bond that was more solid that love:; A common prick of conscience. They were cousins.”

“… Ursula’s mother… terrified her with… sinister predictions about their offspring, even to the extreme of advising her to refuse to consummate the marriage.”

Every time that came to life a member of the family, Úrsula verified that it had all of its features human: She always was expecting the new born had the tail of a pig, In fact,

“An aunt of Úrsula’s, married to an uncle of José Arcadio Buendía, had a son who had… A pig’s tail that was never allowed to be seen by any woman…”

And the last Buendía, the son of Aureriano Babilonia and Amaranta Úrsula

“… had something more than other men, and they learned over to examine him. It was the tail of a pig.”

But in the family other features were transmitted from generation to generation. For example, José Arcadio, the older son of José Arcadio and Úrsula, would pass on the Melquiades image to all of his descendants as a hereditary memory.

José Arcadio believed that was possible the existence, very far from Macondo, of a

“… prodigious world were all one had to do was sprinkle some magic liquid on the ground and the plants would bear fruit whenever a man wished, and were all manner of instruments against pain were sold at bargain prices.”

But the easiness of production was not only in the imagination: Thanks to the supernatural proliferation of his animals, Aureliano Segundo had accumulated one of the largest fortunes of the swamp.

“His mares would bear triplets, his hens laid twice a day, and his hogs fattened with such speed that no one could explain such disorderly fecundity except through the use of black magic…”

“… he was convinced that his lucky was not a matter of his conduct but an influence of Petra Cotes, his concubine,…”

“… he never kept Petra Cotes for away from his breeding grounds and even when he married and had children he continued living with her with the consent of Fernanda.”

Ursula said: “… the grandson of a saint and the son of a queen and a rustler.”

- Physics and mathematics. José Arcadio Buendía learned a lot of science of his friend and master, Melquíades, the gypsy.

“… he left him… some Portuguese maps and several instruments of navigation… to make use of the astrolabe, the compass, and the sextant… José Arcadio Buendía spent entire nights in the country yard watching the course of the stars and he almost contracted sunstroke from trying to establish an exact method to ascertain noon.”

“The children would remember for the rest of their lives the august solemnity with which their father, devastated by his prolonged vigil and the wrath of his imagination, revealed his discovery to them:

- The earth is round, like an orange.”

“… Melquíades… gave public praise to the intelligence of a man who from pure astronomical speculation had evolved a theory that had already been proved in practice, although unknown in Macondo until then, and a proof of his admiration he made him a gift that was to have a profound influence on the future of the village: The laboratory of an alchemist.”

José Arcadio Buendía also learned geographic orientation that used in his attempt to find a route to connect Macondo with the civilization:

“José Arcadio Buendía was completely ignorant of the geography of the region… According to José Arcadio Buendía´s calculations, the only possibility of contact with civilization lay along the northern route.”

José Arcadio Buendía became impressed with several of the inventions shown to him by Melquíades.

”First they brought the magnet… thought that it would be possible to make use of those useless inventions to extract gold…” “it won’t work for that” said him Melquíades, but “He explored every inch of the region, even the river, dragging the two iron ingots along and reciting Melquíades’ incantation aloud.”

Made experiments with a gigantic magnifying glass, and mirrors:

“… completely absorbed in his tactical experiments with the abnegation of a scientist and even at the risk of his own life… He would spend hours on end in his room, calculating the strategic possibilities of his novel weapon… He sent it to the government, accompanied by numerous descriptions of his experiments…”

And procured to teach all his new knowledge to his children:

“Those hallucinating sessions remained printed on the memories of the boys… Colonel Aureliano Buendía saw once more that warm March afternoon on which his father interrupted the lesson in physics and stood fascinated, with his hand in the air and his eyes motionless, listening to the distant pipes, drums, and jingles of the gypsies, who were coming to the village once more, announcing the latest and more startling discovery of the sages of Memphis.”

Úrsula was very reticent to follow her husband in his madness. However she had a practice intelligence which was evident in many situations:

“No one knew exactly when she had begun to lose her sight…”. “But that day she began to realize something that no one had noticed and it was that with the passage of the year the sun imperceptibly changed position and those who sat on the porch had to change their position little by little without being aware of it. From then on Úrsula had only to remember the date in order to know exactly were Amaranta was sitting.”

Along the entire novel there is an element which seems to be of decisive importance in the Macondo´s life: The ice. The first sentence of the novel is:

“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”

The relation of José Arcadio Buendía with gypsies came before the founding of Macondo; they thought him many artifacts and discoveries, but the visit when they told that Melquíades was dead deeply impressed José Arcadio Buendía: They brought an enormous, transparent block with internal needles in which light of the sunset was broken up into colored stars.

“Disoncentrated, knowing that the children were waiting for an immediate explanation, José Arcadio Buendía ventured a murmur:

- It’s the largest diamond in the world.

- No, the gypsy countered. It’s ice.”

“… as if giving testimony on the holly scriptures, he exclaimed:

- This is the greatest invention of our time.”

Several years before the discovery of ice, when the founding of Macondo, José Arcadio Buendía

“… dreamed that night that right there a noisy city with houses having mirror walls rose up…” he “did not succeed in deciphering the dream of houses with mirror walls until the day he discovered ice.”

“He thought that in the future they would be able to manufacture blocks of ice on a large scale from such a common material as water and with them build the new houses of the village. Macondo… would be changed into a wintry city.”

The ice is present also into the last sentence of the novel:

“… for it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from he memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on the earth.”

- Chemistry. Chemical and magnetic properties of matter always and in all places were considered as magical ones. Gypsies brought to Macondo these sciences in the same state they had at the end of the Middle Ages. Nothing useful to life remained to Macondo from alchemy and magnetism, except, perhaps the hobby of jewelry practiced by Colonel Aureliano Buendía and other members of the Buendia’s family. Surely they would have diseases derived from mercury, but this was not noticed by the author.

“Even Amaranta lying in a wicker basket, observed with curiosity the absorbing work of her father and her brother in the small room where the air was rarefied by mercury vapors.”

[Úrsula´s] “… terrible practical sense she could not understand the Colonel’s business as he exchanged little fishes for gold coins and converted the coins into little fishes, and so on, with the result that he had to work all the harder with the more he sold in order to satisfy an exasperating vicious circle. Actually, what interested him was not the business but the work.”

- Automation, information. José Arcadio Buendía became obsessed by a project directed to connect Macondo with civilization.

“Incredible things are happening in the world,” he said to Úrsula. “Right there across the river there are all kinds of magical instruments while we keep on living like donkeys.”

“But even those most convinced of his madness left work and family to follow him when he brought out his tools to clear the land and asked the assembled group to open a way that would put Macondo in contact with the great inventions.”

The project became a failure:

“We’ll never get anywhere,… we’re going to rot our lives away here without receiving the benefits of science.”

Some machines came to Macondo and impressed José Arcadio Buendía.

“… was as if struck by lightning, not because of the automatic working of the keys of the pianola, and he set up Melquíades’ camera with the hope of getting a daguerreotype of the invisible player.”

After the discovery of the automatic mechanisms behind different machines, José Arcadio Buendía initiated different projects to construct useful mechanisms.

“He asked him what had happened to the project he had explained to him [Melquíades] a few days before about the possibility of building a pendulum machine that would help man to fly and he answered that it was impossible because a pendulum could lift anything into the air but it could not lift itself.”

Melquíades explained the people of Macondo the possibility of having in the future a machine like the TV,

“Science has eliminated distance… In a short time, man will be able to see what is happening in any place in the world without leaving his own house.”

Several generations of Aurelianos were involved into the difficult task of deciphering a set of parchments written by Melquíades, It was Aureliano Babilonia who completed all the necessary clues for decryption of the Macondos’s history:

“It was the history of the family, written by Melquíades, down the most trivial details, one hundred years ahead of the time.” “Melquíades had not put events in the order of man’s conventional time, but had concentrated a century of daily episodes in such a way that they coexisted in one instant.”

The process of decryption of the parchments by Aureliano Babilonia was a “real time experiment”, because the last page of the manuscipt was the description of the facts that occurred when they were deciphered:

“… and he began to decipher the instant that he was living, deciphering it as he lived it, prophesying himself in the act of deciphering the last page of the parchments, as if he were looking into a speaking mirror.”

- Conclussions. There are several facts in One Hundred Years of Solitude which evidenced the author’s thoughts about scientific problems. It became clear that for the author the lack of scientific development is caused by isolation, and it induced Macondo to be under developed in many senses. Some of them are explicit, other, on the contrary, must be submitted to semiologic analysis. So, I will limit myself to propose some questions.

- Where the people with a scientific knowledge come from?

- How qualified and updated the science of Macondo was?

- Why science is completely useless for the Macondo´s ordinary life?

- Why science acts only as a hobby?

- Is the geographic isolation an important element for the lack of scientific development?

- Why science in Macondo behaves as an instrument to receive recognition and admiration? Why is an activity property of the rich persons, not of the common people?

- Why Macondian people have a great creativity around all things which can increase their personal political power and not around activities that increase the public welfare?

- Why foreign people had scientific elements and seem to have a predictive and global knowledge about Macondo? Why Macondians know themselves less than foreigners do?

- Why people from Macondo seem to have a partial knowledge of reality, is memoryless and is deprived of any predictive capacity?

- Why any important change in Macondo´s life is induced from abroad?

- Is the Melquíades’ capacity to synthesize and predict a symbol of the real power of science?

- Is the “city of the mirrors” a metaphor about the fact that the Macondian people has only capacity to see themselves and is deprived of capacity to have collective interests?

- Is the solitude an attribute of a race of individualistic people?

- It is true the sentence “where banana grows con not be present intelligence”?

- There are analogies between the Saramago’s “blindness”, describing civilized countries, and the capacity of Colombian rulers to washing from the collective memory the main violent facts of their history?

Jorge Mahecha Gómez. Medellín, Colombia, July 2002.