昨晚我们津津有味地解读着1982年诺贝尔文学奖得主马尔克斯的《百年孤独》；今天另一位拉美作家马里奥·巴尔加斯·略萨登上了2010年诺贝尔的领奖台。
Vargas Llosa is the first South American winner of the $1.5 million Nobel Prize in literature since Colombia's Garcia Marquez in 1982, and the first Spanish-language writer to win since Mexico's Octavio Paz in 1990.
下面摘录获奖讲演的其中两段：Literature is a false representation of life that nevertheless helps us to understand life better, to orient ourselves in the labyrinth where we are born, pass by, and die. It compensates for the reverses and frustrations real life inflicts on us, and because of it we can decipher, at least partially, the hieroglyphic that existence tends to be for the great majority of human beings, principally those of us who generate more doubts than certainties and confess our perplexity before subjects like transcendence, individual and collective destiny, the soul, the sense or senselessness of history, the to and fro of rational knowledge.
Fiction is more than an entertainment, more than an intellectual exercise that sharpens one’s sensibility and awakens a critical spirit. It is an absolute necessity so that civilization continues to exist, renewing and preserving in us the best of what is human.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Friday, December 3, 2010
online questions about Solitude posted for Xiaoying
See how many you can get right. Break a leg!
One Hundred Years of Solitude Quiz: Pages 1–195
When it comes to recalling what happened to all the Buendías, are you more like José Arcadio Buendía looking at the bigger picture or do you know a little something about everyone like Pilar Ternera? Take this quiz and find out!
1. Who is the first to realize that the insomnia plague has infected the Buendía household?
Visitación
Cataure
Melquíades
2. What detains Aureliano Buendía from marrying Remedios Mascote?
Their fathers are bitter enemies.
Father Nicanor Reyna has to build a church first.
Remedios hasn't reached puberty.
3. At first, what drives Rebeca to start eating dirt again?
Amaranta dares her to.
She is deliriously in love with Pietro Crespi.
She does it to punish herself for marrying her adopted brother José Arcadio.
4. When José Arcadio comes back to Macondo, how does he make a living?
Arm wrestling.
Plowing fields.
Auctioning himself to women.
5. Whose ghost takes care of José Arcadio Buendía in his final days?
Remedios Mascote
Prudencio Aguilar
Melquíades
6. Why doesn't Pilar Ternera sleep with Arcadio?
He is a Conservative and she is a Liberal.
She is married to someone else.
She is his mother.
7. Whose advances does Amaranta reject?
Pietro Crespi, Aureliano José and Gerineldo Márquez
Pietro Crespi, Arcadio and Father Nicanor Reyna
Catarino, General Moncada and Aureliano Segundo
8. Why does Aureliano José desert the army?
He hears his father, Colonel Aureliano Buendía, has been murdered.
A soldier tells him he can marry his aunt.
He is tired of war.
9. Before Colonel Aureliano Buendía tries to commit suicide, who prevents him from destroying Remedios' daguerreotype?
Santa Sofía de la Piedad
Pilar Ternera
Úrsula
10. Which Buendía actually dies in front of a firing squad?
Aureliano José
Arcadio
José Arcadio Segundo
One Hundred Years of Solitude Quiz: Pages 1–195
When it comes to recalling what happened to all the Buendías, are you more like José Arcadio Buendía looking at the bigger picture or do you know a little something about everyone like Pilar Ternera? Take this quiz and find out!
1. Who is the first to realize that the insomnia plague has infected the Buendía household?
Visitación
Cataure
Melquíades
2. What detains Aureliano Buendía from marrying Remedios Mascote?
Their fathers are bitter enemies.
Father Nicanor Reyna has to build a church first.
Remedios hasn't reached puberty.
3. At first, what drives Rebeca to start eating dirt again?
Amaranta dares her to.
She is deliriously in love with Pietro Crespi.
She does it to punish herself for marrying her adopted brother José Arcadio.
4. When José Arcadio comes back to Macondo, how does he make a living?
Arm wrestling.
Plowing fields.
Auctioning himself to women.
5. Whose ghost takes care of José Arcadio Buendía in his final days?
Remedios Mascote
Prudencio Aguilar
Melquíades
6. Why doesn't Pilar Ternera sleep with Arcadio?
He is a Conservative and she is a Liberal.
She is married to someone else.
She is his mother.
7. Whose advances does Amaranta reject?
Pietro Crespi, Aureliano José and Gerineldo Márquez
Pietro Crespi, Arcadio and Father Nicanor Reyna
Catarino, General Moncada and Aureliano Segundo
8. Why does Aureliano José desert the army?
He hears his father, Colonel Aureliano Buendía, has been murdered.
A soldier tells him he can marry his aunt.
He is tired of war.
9. Before Colonel Aureliano Buendía tries to commit suicide, who prevents him from destroying Remedios' daguerreotype?
Santa Sofía de la Piedad
Pilar Ternera
Úrsula
10. Which Buendía actually dies in front of a firing squad?
Aureliano José
Arcadio
José Arcadio Segundo
New Faces of Solitude Characters
Take no offense, but our leader has poked us with her imagination and assigment.
Melquíades (mehl-KEE- ah-dehs), a wise and honest Gypsy. He makes annual visits to Macondo, a remote, mythical village in Latin America. Having made innumerable trips around the world, he possesses immense knowledge that he reveals to the people of Macondo. He introduces them to inventions such as magnets, astrolabes, telescopes, magnifying glasses, and false teeth. The curiosity of the men is stimulated by their hope of finding a panacea for life, but the women are not impressed. In spite of his wisdom, Melquíades cannot transcend the problems of daily life. First reported as dead but actually living through death, he reappears in Macondo. There, he is the first to die and be buried. Periodically, he comes back ethereally, seen by some and lost to others. He has left a precious parchment manuscript, the history of both the past and the future of Macondo, to those who can read its Sanskrit and decipher its meaning.
(姥姥)José Arcadio Buendía (hoh- SEH ahr-KAH-dee-oh bwehn-DEE-ah), the family patriarch, the founder and colonizer of Macondo. He is the leader and most enterprising of its settlers. He becomes enthralled with the knowledge and inventions of Melquíades, but his spirit of initiative disappears. He becomes careless and lazy in his dress. He tries to find gold with the magnets, turn base metals into precious ones with the alchemist’s laboratory, use a magnifying glass as an instrument of war, demonstrate that the world is round with an astrolabe, and prove the existence or nonexistence of God with a daguerreotype. Preoccupied with the larger issues of life, he searches for universal wealth, remedies, and answers to the questions of existence. When he goes berserk, ten men are necessary to tie him to a tree in the backyard of the family home. There, he speaks in Latin with the village priest and is attended to by his family. Finally, he dies, and a rain of yellow flowers blankets the village.
（雪）Úrsula Iguarán (EWR-suh-lah ee-gwahr-RAHN), the wife of José Arcadio and the matriarch of the Buendías. With more common sense than her husband, she solves the ordinary problems of daily living for her family. She is kind and generous. She always has food and a place in the family for anyone who appears. She is the stable and guiding force in the lives of her three children and adopted daughter, although none of them turns out the way she would have preferred. She also takes a hand in the rearing of future generations of Buendías, trying to correct her past mistakes, but they too are found wanting. Each generation reflects the patterns of its historical setting. Earlier generations of males have great physical or intellectual powers, whereas later generations tend to be weaker in spirit and stamina. The females increasingly approach the model of the modern liberated woman as the novel moves through several generations of women.
（潇竹）José Arcadio, their gigantic older son, who marries Rebeca. Born on the journey to found Macondo, he does not share his father’s interest in inventions. Initiated into the mysteries of sex by the family’s servant, Pilar Ternera, he quickly leaves town when she becomes pregnant. He joins the circus and goes around the world. Lost to the family for several years, he returns fully grown and awesomely developed. Because he is stronger than anyone else and has an enormous sex organ, women pay to sleep with him. The chemistry between him and his adoptive sister Rebeca is such that they have to be married in three days. Ordered out of the family, they set up a separate household. He expands his estate, knocking down fences and incorporating the lands of others into his holdings. When he is shot, it is not clear if it is an accident, a suicide, someone’s revenge, or an act by Rebeca.
（大雁）Rebeca (rreh-BEH-kah), the adoptive daughter of José Arcadio and Úrsula. She arrives on the Buendías’ doorstep, with her parents’ bones in a sack, when she is eleven years old. They take her in and rear her as their own. She suffers from the vice of secretively eating dirt and whitewash. She is more affectionate toward Úrsula than are her own children. She is the first to appear with the symptoms of the plague of insomnia that has spread through Macondo with the selling of Úrsula’s candy animals. Rebeca is courted by and becomes engaged to Pietro Crespi, but then the manly presence of José Arcadio overwhelms her. Her subsequent marriage and banishment and the death of José Arcadio leave her a recluse and forgotten woman.
（萤火虫）Colonel Aureliano Buendía (ow-reh- lee-AH-noh), the younger son of José Arcadio and Úrsula. He, too, is introduced to the wonders of sex by Pilar Ternera. He falls in love with Remedios Moscote, the prepubescent daughter of a Conservative. They marry when they reach the age of conception, and she later dies in childbirth. In contrast to the macho physical presence of his brother, he is cerebral. He has unusual powers of insight and premonition. He is outraged over the growing restrictions placed on the inhabitants of Macondo by the Conservatives. He leads the Liberals in revolt and launches thirty-two unsuccessful rebellions against the central government. He becomes supreme commander of the revolutionary movement throughout the country and a legend in his own time. Women offer up their daughters and themselves, and he fathers seventeen Aurelianos. The government, fearful of his fame as a rallying point for renewed revolution, assassinates his seventeen sons and tries to coopt him with honor, glory, and wealth, but he spurns all offers. As supreme leader, he has a rare opportunity to explore the meaning of political power and finds principle, prestige, duty, and personal gain as part of the complex motivations that propel people into positions of political power. At one point, he succumbs to the temptation of dictatorial rule. He eventually sees the emptiness of power and retires to his workshop, where he fashions gold fishes. He discovers the simple pleasures in the routine of daily work. New government indignities, such as corruption and cooperation with foreigners, periodically provoke his desire to lead his veterans in another Liberal rebellion.
（老牛）Amaranta (ahm-mahr-AHN-tah), their daughter. In love with her sister Rebeca’s fiancé, Pietro Crespi, she does everything in her power to prevent the wedding. It is postponed many times. When Rebeca suddenly marries José Arcadio instead, Pietro Crespi is free to court Amaranta, which she encourages. Amaranta’s enveloping tenderness leads Pietro Crespi to propose, but she scornfully rejects his offer, and he commits suicide. In remorse, she plunges her hand into a stove of hot coals. She wears a bandage of black gauze on her burned hand until her death as a sign of her virginity. Other suitors come, including her cousin, with whom she engages in deep petting, but nothing is ever consummated. She rejects all offers of marriage. Even though she is capable of love, she is never able to overcome her cowardice and commit herself totally. Determined to outlive Rebeca, she spends the rest of her life weaving and unweaving her funeral shroud, whose completion will mark her own death. She finally accepts the inevitable and the frustration of not surviving Rebeca.
Pietro Crespi (pee-EH-troh KREHS-pee), an Italian music master. As Macondo modernizes and the Buendías acquire material objects and social graces, he is contracted to assemble a pianola and to teach dancing. He is first engaged to Rebeca, then becomes Amaranta’s suitor, but he commits suicide when she rejects his proposal of marriage.
（水竹）Pilar Ternera (pee-LAHR tehr- NEHR-ah), a part-time servant of the Buendías and a generous woman of easy virtue. Her lovemaking skills and ability to read the fortunes of others in the cards are sought by the inhabitants of Macondo.
Remedios Moscote was the youngest daughter of the town's Conservative administrator, Don Apolinar Moscote. Her most striking physical features are her beautiful skin and her emerald-green eyes. The future Colonel Aureliano falls in love with her, despite her extreme youth. She dies shortly after the marriage from a blood poisoning illness during her pregnancy.
（潇竹）Arcadio, her illegitimate son by José Arcadio, reared by the Buendías. Placed in charge of Macondo by Colonel Aureliano Buendía, his arbitrary rule of Liberal decrees, anticlericalism, and executions is the cruelest to date. When Liberal fortunes dim and Macondo falls, he is shot by a firing squad.
（Alice）Santa Sofía de la Piedad (soh- FEE-ah deh lah pee-eh-DAHD), the common-law wife of Arcadio. Silent and condescending, she moves into the Buendía home after his execution and rears their daughter and twin boys and tends to the cares and needs of the other Buendías.
（紫罗兰）Remedios the Beauty (rreh-MEH- dee-ohs), their daughter. Oblivious to her disturbing and man- killing beauty, she wanders about Macondo as a modern-day Virgin Mary. She ascends into heaven folding sheets in the garden.
（潇竹）José Arcadio Segundo (seh- GEWN-doh), their twin son. He gives up his position as foreman in the banana company to organize the striking workers. Martial law brings a confrontation between the workers and the army at the train station. Army machine guns kill three thousand people, but everyone denies there was a massacre. A supposed agreement between the company and the workers is to be announced when it stops raining. Because it rains for four years, eleven months, and two days, the agreement is forgotten and the company abandons Macondo. An outcast and traumatized by the experience, José Arcadio Segundo spends the rest of his life in Melquíades’ room.
（萤火虫）Aureliano Segundo, his twin brother. His fortunes parallel the boom and bust period of Macondo. His wealth grows without effort, and he spends without restraint in an orgy of carousing and fiestas that becomes legendary. He even wallpapers the Buendía home with money. As Macondo declines, however, his ruin is complete. He is reduced to selling lottery tickets.
（水竹）Petra Cotes (PEH-trah KOH-tehs), the mulatto concubine of Aureliano Segundo. Generous of heart and devoted, she is his companion to the end.
（Alice）Fernanda del Carpio (KAHR-pee- oh), the wife of Aureliano Segundo. The descendant of an old highland family, she has aristocratic pretensions. She is a nag, a prude, and a snob, and she is narrow-minded in the extreme. Under the weight of mistaken ideas, religious and medical beliefs, and secretive practices, she complicates the routine of life and poisons the ordinary joys of existence.
（紫罗兰）Renata “Meme” Remedios (rreh- NAH-tah), their older daughter. Diligent, studious, and industrious—so as not to annoy her mother—she falls madly in love with Mauricio Babilonia, an apprentice mechanic in the banana company garage. When their relationship is discovered, her mother confines her to home. There, the relationship continues with secret visits. When Fernanda finds out, she has a guard stationed outside the home; the guard shoots Mauricio Babilonia. He remains a bedridden invalid the rest of his life. Meme never speaks another word and is sequestered far away from Macondo, never to return. Her illegitimate child, Aureliano, is delivered to Fernanda in a basket by the nuns a year later.
（潇竹）José Arcadio, their son, a pederast. Sent away to Rome, where he lives for many years, he never studies, as intended by his mother, for the priesthood. He returns to Macondo to find only Aureliano and his dead mother among the ruins of the family home. His discovery of gold, buried long ago by the matriarch Úrsula, allows him to redecorate the house and stock it with food and wines. After he expels four boys from his home following a wild party, they return and drown him for the gold.
（姚晨）Amaranta Úrsula, their younger daughter. Sent off to study in Brussels at great sacrifice by her father and his mistress, who are now in the twilight of their lives, she returns to a home whose only occupant is Aureliano. A thoroughly modern and liberated woman with the latest fashions and dances, she restores the house and settles down with her husband, Gaston, but then falls madly in love with Aureliano. She dies in childbirth.
Gaston (GAHS-tohn), her Flemish husband. Led by Amaranta Úrsula on a silk leash, he marries her with the promise that he will return with her to Macondo. Determined to wait out his wife’s nostalgic fascination with the place, he busies himself setting up an airmail service to Macondo. After many delays, he finally leaves to track down the airplane that has been mistakenly shipped to the African tribe of the Makondos.
（萤火虫）Aureliano, Meme’s illegitimate son. Locked up and ignored as a child, he pores over the manuscripts and books in Melquíades’ room. He has encyclopedic knowledge of the past but little of the present. Infatuated with Amaranta Úrsula, he becomes her lover, and they abandon themselves to each other in a Macondo on the verge of extinction. When she dies in childbirth, he wanders unconsoled. He returns to find the baby eaten by ants. At this moment, Melquíades’ final keys to the manuscript are revealed, and he finally understands the meaning of the parchments perfectly. As he reads them, he is able to live out the unrepeatable one- hundred-year history of Macondo.
（真正爱情的结晶，猪尾巴孩儿）Aureliano, Aureliano and Amaranta Úrsula’s son. Born with a pig’s tail—reminiscent of an ancestor who also was the product of a union of close relatives—he dies when eaten by ants and fulfills the prophecy of the manuscript.
Melquíades (mehl-KEE- ah-dehs), a wise and honest Gypsy. He makes annual visits to Macondo, a remote, mythical village in Latin America. Having made innumerable trips around the world, he possesses immense knowledge that he reveals to the people of Macondo. He introduces them to inventions such as magnets, astrolabes, telescopes, magnifying glasses, and false teeth. The curiosity of the men is stimulated by their hope of finding a panacea for life, but the women are not impressed. In spite of his wisdom, Melquíades cannot transcend the problems of daily life. First reported as dead but actually living through death, he reappears in Macondo. There, he is the first to die and be buried. Periodically, he comes back ethereally, seen by some and lost to others. He has left a precious parchment manuscript, the history of both the past and the future of Macondo, to those who can read its Sanskrit and decipher its meaning.
(姥姥)José Arcadio Buendía (hoh- SEH ahr-KAH-dee-oh bwehn-DEE-ah), the family patriarch, the founder and colonizer of Macondo. He is the leader and most enterprising of its settlers. He becomes enthralled with the knowledge and inventions of Melquíades, but his spirit of initiative disappears. He becomes careless and lazy in his dress. He tries to find gold with the magnets, turn base metals into precious ones with the alchemist’s laboratory, use a magnifying glass as an instrument of war, demonstrate that the world is round with an astrolabe, and prove the existence or nonexistence of God with a daguerreotype. Preoccupied with the larger issues of life, he searches for universal wealth, remedies, and answers to the questions of existence. When he goes berserk, ten men are necessary to tie him to a tree in the backyard of the family home. There, he speaks in Latin with the village priest and is attended to by his family. Finally, he dies, and a rain of yellow flowers blankets the village.
（雪）Úrsula Iguarán (EWR-suh-lah ee-gwahr-RAHN), the wife of José Arcadio and the matriarch of the Buendías. With more common sense than her husband, she solves the ordinary problems of daily living for her family. She is kind and generous. She always has food and a place in the family for anyone who appears. She is the stable and guiding force in the lives of her three children and adopted daughter, although none of them turns out the way she would have preferred. She also takes a hand in the rearing of future generations of Buendías, trying to correct her past mistakes, but they too are found wanting. Each generation reflects the patterns of its historical setting. Earlier generations of males have great physical or intellectual powers, whereas later generations tend to be weaker in spirit and stamina. The females increasingly approach the model of the modern liberated woman as the novel moves through several generations of women.
（潇竹）José Arcadio, their gigantic older son, who marries Rebeca. Born on the journey to found Macondo, he does not share his father’s interest in inventions. Initiated into the mysteries of sex by the family’s servant, Pilar Ternera, he quickly leaves town when she becomes pregnant. He joins the circus and goes around the world. Lost to the family for several years, he returns fully grown and awesomely developed. Because he is stronger than anyone else and has an enormous sex organ, women pay to sleep with him. The chemistry between him and his adoptive sister Rebeca is such that they have to be married in three days. Ordered out of the family, they set up a separate household. He expands his estate, knocking down fences and incorporating the lands of others into his holdings. When he is shot, it is not clear if it is an accident, a suicide, someone’s revenge, or an act by Rebeca.
（大雁）Rebeca (rreh-BEH-kah), the adoptive daughter of José Arcadio and Úrsula. She arrives on the Buendías’ doorstep, with her parents’ bones in a sack, when she is eleven years old. They take her in and rear her as their own. She suffers from the vice of secretively eating dirt and whitewash. She is more affectionate toward Úrsula than are her own children. She is the first to appear with the symptoms of the plague of insomnia that has spread through Macondo with the selling of Úrsula’s candy animals. Rebeca is courted by and becomes engaged to Pietro Crespi, but then the manly presence of José Arcadio overwhelms her. Her subsequent marriage and banishment and the death of José Arcadio leave her a recluse and forgotten woman.
（萤火虫）Colonel Aureliano Buendía (ow-reh- lee-AH-noh), the younger son of José Arcadio and Úrsula. He, too, is introduced to the wonders of sex by Pilar Ternera. He falls in love with Remedios Moscote, the prepubescent daughter of a Conservative. They marry when they reach the age of conception, and she later dies in childbirth. In contrast to the macho physical presence of his brother, he is cerebral. He has unusual powers of insight and premonition. He is outraged over the growing restrictions placed on the inhabitants of Macondo by the Conservatives. He leads the Liberals in revolt and launches thirty-two unsuccessful rebellions against the central government. He becomes supreme commander of the revolutionary movement throughout the country and a legend in his own time. Women offer up their daughters and themselves, and he fathers seventeen Aurelianos. The government, fearful of his fame as a rallying point for renewed revolution, assassinates his seventeen sons and tries to coopt him with honor, glory, and wealth, but he spurns all offers. As supreme leader, he has a rare opportunity to explore the meaning of political power and finds principle, prestige, duty, and personal gain as part of the complex motivations that propel people into positions of political power. At one point, he succumbs to the temptation of dictatorial rule. He eventually sees the emptiness of power and retires to his workshop, where he fashions gold fishes. He discovers the simple pleasures in the routine of daily work. New government indignities, such as corruption and cooperation with foreigners, periodically provoke his desire to lead his veterans in another Liberal rebellion.
（老牛）Amaranta (ahm-mahr-AHN-tah), their daughter. In love with her sister Rebeca’s fiancé, Pietro Crespi, she does everything in her power to prevent the wedding. It is postponed many times. When Rebeca suddenly marries José Arcadio instead, Pietro Crespi is free to court Amaranta, which she encourages. Amaranta’s enveloping tenderness leads Pietro Crespi to propose, but she scornfully rejects his offer, and he commits suicide. In remorse, she plunges her hand into a stove of hot coals. She wears a bandage of black gauze on her burned hand until her death as a sign of her virginity. Other suitors come, including her cousin, with whom she engages in deep petting, but nothing is ever consummated. She rejects all offers of marriage. Even though she is capable of love, she is never able to overcome her cowardice and commit herself totally. Determined to outlive Rebeca, she spends the rest of her life weaving and unweaving her funeral shroud, whose completion will mark her own death. She finally accepts the inevitable and the frustration of not surviving Rebeca.
Pietro Crespi (pee-EH-troh KREHS-pee), an Italian music master. As Macondo modernizes and the Buendías acquire material objects and social graces, he is contracted to assemble a pianola and to teach dancing. He is first engaged to Rebeca, then becomes Amaranta’s suitor, but he commits suicide when she rejects his proposal of marriage.
（水竹）Pilar Ternera (pee-LAHR tehr- NEHR-ah), a part-time servant of the Buendías and a generous woman of easy virtue. Her lovemaking skills and ability to read the fortunes of others in the cards are sought by the inhabitants of Macondo.
Remedios Moscote was the youngest daughter of the town's Conservative administrator, Don Apolinar Moscote. Her most striking physical features are her beautiful skin and her emerald-green eyes. The future Colonel Aureliano falls in love with her, despite her extreme youth. She dies shortly after the marriage from a blood poisoning illness during her pregnancy.
（潇竹）Arcadio, her illegitimate son by José Arcadio, reared by the Buendías. Placed in charge of Macondo by Colonel Aureliano Buendía, his arbitrary rule of Liberal decrees, anticlericalism, and executions is the cruelest to date. When Liberal fortunes dim and Macondo falls, he is shot by a firing squad.
（Alice）Santa Sofía de la Piedad (soh- FEE-ah deh lah pee-eh-DAHD), the common-law wife of Arcadio. Silent and condescending, she moves into the Buendía home after his execution and rears their daughter and twin boys and tends to the cares and needs of the other Buendías.
（紫罗兰）Remedios the Beauty (rreh-MEH- dee-ohs), their daughter. Oblivious to her disturbing and man- killing beauty, she wanders about Macondo as a modern-day Virgin Mary. She ascends into heaven folding sheets in the garden.
（潇竹）José Arcadio Segundo (seh- GEWN-doh), their twin son. He gives up his position as foreman in the banana company to organize the striking workers. Martial law brings a confrontation between the workers and the army at the train station. Army machine guns kill three thousand people, but everyone denies there was a massacre. A supposed agreement between the company and the workers is to be announced when it stops raining. Because it rains for four years, eleven months, and two days, the agreement is forgotten and the company abandons Macondo. An outcast and traumatized by the experience, José Arcadio Segundo spends the rest of his life in Melquíades’ room.
（萤火虫）Aureliano Segundo, his twin brother. His fortunes parallel the boom and bust period of Macondo. His wealth grows without effort, and he spends without restraint in an orgy of carousing and fiestas that becomes legendary. He even wallpapers the Buendía home with money. As Macondo declines, however, his ruin is complete. He is reduced to selling lottery tickets.
（水竹）Petra Cotes (PEH-trah KOH-tehs), the mulatto concubine of Aureliano Segundo. Generous of heart and devoted, she is his companion to the end.
（Alice）Fernanda del Carpio (KAHR-pee- oh), the wife of Aureliano Segundo. The descendant of an old highland family, she has aristocratic pretensions. She is a nag, a prude, and a snob, and she is narrow-minded in the extreme. Under the weight of mistaken ideas, religious and medical beliefs, and secretive practices, she complicates the routine of life and poisons the ordinary joys of existence.
（紫罗兰）Renata “Meme” Remedios (rreh- NAH-tah), their older daughter. Diligent, studious, and industrious—so as not to annoy her mother—she falls madly in love with Mauricio Babilonia, an apprentice mechanic in the banana company garage. When their relationship is discovered, her mother confines her to home. There, the relationship continues with secret visits. When Fernanda finds out, she has a guard stationed outside the home; the guard shoots Mauricio Babilonia. He remains a bedridden invalid the rest of his life. Meme never speaks another word and is sequestered far away from Macondo, never to return. Her illegitimate child, Aureliano, is delivered to Fernanda in a basket by the nuns a year later.
（潇竹）José Arcadio, their son, a pederast. Sent away to Rome, where he lives for many years, he never studies, as intended by his mother, for the priesthood. He returns to Macondo to find only Aureliano and his dead mother among the ruins of the family home. His discovery of gold, buried long ago by the matriarch Úrsula, allows him to redecorate the house and stock it with food and wines. After he expels four boys from his home following a wild party, they return and drown him for the gold.
（姚晨）Amaranta Úrsula, their younger daughter. Sent off to study in Brussels at great sacrifice by her father and his mistress, who are now in the twilight of their lives, she returns to a home whose only occupant is Aureliano. A thoroughly modern and liberated woman with the latest fashions and dances, she restores the house and settles down with her husband, Gaston, but then falls madly in love with Aureliano. She dies in childbirth.
Gaston (GAHS-tohn), her Flemish husband. Led by Amaranta Úrsula on a silk leash, he marries her with the promise that he will return with her to Macondo. Determined to wait out his wife’s nostalgic fascination with the place, he busies himself setting up an airmail service to Macondo. After many delays, he finally leaves to track down the airplane that has been mistakenly shipped to the African tribe of the Makondos.
（萤火虫）Aureliano, Meme’s illegitimate son. Locked up and ignored as a child, he pores over the manuscripts and books in Melquíades’ room. He has encyclopedic knowledge of the past but little of the present. Infatuated with Amaranta Úrsula, he becomes her lover, and they abandon themselves to each other in a Macondo on the verge of extinction. When she dies in childbirth, he wanders unconsoled. He returns to find the baby eaten by ants. At this moment, Melquíades’ final keys to the manuscript are revealed, and he finally understands the meaning of the parchments perfectly. As he reads them, he is able to live out the unrepeatable one- hundred-year history of Macondo.
（真正爱情的结晶，猪尾巴孩儿）Aureliano, Aureliano and Amaranta Úrsula’s son. Born with a pig’s tail—reminiscent of an ancestor who also was the product of a union of close relatives—he dies when eaten by ants and fulfills the prophecy of the manuscript.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
who is who
1. 姥姥 – 霍家老爷子
2. 雪 – 霍家老奶奶
3. 老牛 – 霍家第二代小女
4. 水竹—霍家二弟情妇
5. 紫罗兰 – 霍二代二儿媳
6. 大雁 – 养女 （霍二代大儿媳-Rebecca）
7. 萤火虫 - 霍二代老二，etc。
8. 潇竹 – 霍二代老大， etc.
2. 雪 – 霍家老奶奶
3. 老牛 – 霍家第二代小女
4. 水竹—霍家二弟情妇
5. 紫罗兰 – 霍二代二儿媳
6. 大雁 – 养女 （霍二代大儿媳-Rebecca）
7. 萤火虫 - 霍二代老二，etc。
8. 潇竹 – 霍二代老大， etc.
Monday, November 29, 2010
More questions for Solitude
Question 7:
How did the book describe solitude for some of the characters?
How do you define solitude?
Does the Chinese translations and the English word have any subtle differences?
How does the expression of solitude differ between women and men in this novel?
Question 8:
Who are your favorite characters?
What are your favorite expressions, humors, ironies, stories, events?
How did the book describe solitude for some of the characters?
How do you define solitude?
Does the Chinese translations and the English word have any subtle differences?
How does the expression of solitude differ between women and men in this novel?
Question 8:
Who are your favorite characters?
What are your favorite expressions, humors, ironies, stories, events?
Monday, November 22, 2010
Question no. 5
The triangular relationship between, 雷蓓卡, 阿玛兰塔, 皮埃特罗 克雷斯庇 (p. 47). How to describe the love affaris and what happened to each of the three in the end?
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