<3 in the Time of Cholera

Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, brilliantly analyzes different facets and aspects of love that exists in our world. I believe that during our class discussions of the novel, we have overlooked the importance of the relationship between Florentino and Sara Noriega. I believe that the relationship between the two subtlety but solidly symbolizes the love that Marquez wants us to understand throughout the novel, the love that is conceptually divided.
“In the plentitude of their relationship, Florentino Ariza had asked himself which of the two was love: the turbulent bed or the peaceful Sunday afternoons, and Sara Noriega calmed him with the simple argument that love was everything they did naked. She said: “Spiritual love from the waist up and physical love from the waist down.” Sara Noriega thought this definition would be good for a poem about divided love, which they wrote together and which she submitted to the Fifth Poetic Festival, convinced that no participant had ever presented such an original poem. But she lost again (199)”. I am convinced that she lost again because this idea was not original: Love in the Time of Cholera is a piece of Marquez’s literature that exemplifies this exact idea. Through Noriega’s concept and poem of divided love, I have come to believe that true love is both physical and spiritual. This true love is what Florentino constantly seeks, and what the novel continually presents.
Florentino is constantly faced with the problem of divided love, his lack of true love. Spiritually, Florentino remains true to Fermina. Florentino is true to Fermina in his head, after his virginity is stolen. It is not his desire to lose fidelity to his robber, therefore Florentino remains true to Fermina because he does not voluntarily lose his virginity to someone other than his Fermina. Florention searches for the other half of true love, the physical love, through his six hundred and twenty two other relationships. Florentino tries to emulate through love by keeping Fermina in his mind while he is keeping other women from the waist down. The women who are involved with Florentino physically never really come to connect with him spiritually, because Florentino must remain true to his Fermina in his mind. The spiritual and physical loves, which are divided between Fermina and his other women, show Florentino’s inability to find true love.
Another example of how Noriega’s poem symbolizes divided love is the relationship between Florentino and Leona. Florentino and Leona are extremely spiritually connected, with hearts that seem to match. But, a physical relationship can not exist between the two, for if Florentino succumbed to both physical and spiritual love with a woman he would not remain true to Fermina. In this case, the divided love could have been unified into one, but Florention, ever true to Fermina, decides not to embrace both physical and spiritual love. (481)