I SELL MY DREAMS - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

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Prof. T. Ajith, Head, Department of English, Velammal Institute of Technology

1. I SELL MY DREAMS

- Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Summary

Marquez, one of the famous Latin American novelists in the contemporary English Literature has exquisitely woven the portrait of the ‘magical’ lady Frau Frieda. Many writers have taken the magic realism as the context in their creations but no writer was more touted as an exponent of ‘magic realism’ than Marquez. The author presents this piece as a blend of ‘magic realism and stream-of-consciousness technique’.

Author witnesses a catastrophe of giant waves lashing in the shores of Havana Riviera Hotel. Because of the incident all the cars were tossed and littered everywhere and one was secured besides the hotel. The news was reported in the newspaper and the author identified the mangled body of the woman after routing his reminiscences when he saw the serpent ring with emerald eyes. He takes the reader some thirty four years back where he met that woman in the Austrian capital Vienna. She helped the author and other Latin American students who dwelled there. She was known by the name ‘Frau Frieda’. The author was startled when she told that she earned her living by selling her dreams. She started her livelihood through a job in a financier’s house and later because of her clairvoyance she got a share of that house. Marquez was personally touched when she told him to leave Vienna immediately in order to escape from the fore coming disaster.

After that meeting Marquez met her inadvertently in Barcelona when he was with the famous Spanish poet and Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda and his wife Matilde. When the author introduced her to the poet about her and her profession, Neruda hinders the argument and says he’s not in the side with soothsayers. Through the conversation with Frieda, the readers melt to the point of she left Vienna and went to Oporto, Portugal. Along with these characters Marquez lays a string about the livelihood of the Chilean born Neruda. As a person he is good at making poems and in the contrast a glutton, a lover of sea mollusks. He enjoys his leisure time in getting books from the second hand stores during his voyage. Neruda who had a contrary opinion about the soothsayers finally obliged to the statement as a truth when he dreamt about Frieda in his nap. This is retaliated when Frieda told the reciprocation of her dream to the poet.

This is the last moment when Marquez met her before twenty one years and now at present he is seeing his compatriot in the form of illustration in a country newspaper. By reading the same he got the information that Frieda was working in the Portuguese Ambassador’s house as a house keeper. So his eagerness made him to meet the Ambassador and asked about her designation. The Diplomat said, “Nothing, but she dreamed”.

Glossary

touted – publicize

reminiscences – past events

clairvoyance – ability to predict the future

inadvertently – accidentally

hinders – stops

soothsayers – fortune-tellers

string – thread

glutton – foodie

mollusks – sea shells

retaliated – reacted

reciprocation – mutual interaction

compatriot – same country people

designation – occupation