Profane and Sacred love in Marquez's: Love in the Time of Cholera

Abstract

Love' for Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza is at once a profane desire and a scared transcendental power because it brings not only emotional and physical illness but also heals the suffering. In other words love gives them both sufferings and solace at the same time that is irony in their love. Florentino Ariza's long tortured love for the haughty, oppressed Fermina Daza is a stuff of masochism when the woman of his heart goes and marries another man. Florentino Ariza suffers from this just as he might suffer from any fatal disease and conflates his physical agony with amorous agony. He spends his whole file pining over her. Despite his searching solace in hundreds of sexual encounters, his heart remains true to her. Ultimately his suffering ends with the union with the lady of his heart, Fermina Daza. Therefore, it is an amalgam of two starkly contrasting elements of love: sacredness of love's embodiment of everyday experience.