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  GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ

  I’m Not Here to Give a Speech

  Gabriel García Márquez was born in Colombia in 1927. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982. He is the author of many works of fiction and nonfiction, including One Hundred Years of Solitude, Love in the Time of Cholera, The Autumn of the Patriarch, The General in His Labyrinth, and News of a Kidnapping. He died in 2014.

  ALSO BY GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ

  NOVELS

  One Hundred Years of Solitude

  The Autumn of the Patriarch

  In Evil Hour

  Chronicle of a Death Foretold

  The Fragrance of Guava

  Love in the Time of Cholera

  The General in His Labyrinth

  Of Love and Other Demons

  Memories of My Melancholy Whores

  COLLECTIONS

  No One Writes to the Colonel and Other Stories

  Leaf Storm and Other Stories

  Innocent Eréndira and Other Stories

  Collected Stories

  Collected Novellas

  Strange Pilgrims

  NONFICTION

  Clandestine in Chile: The Adventures of Miguel Littín

  The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor

  News of a Kidnapping

  A Country for Children

  Living to Tell the Tale

  FIRST VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL EDITION, JANUARY 2019

  Copyright © 2010 by Gabriel García Márquez

  Translation copyright © 2014 by Edith Grossman

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in Spanish as Yo no vengo a decir un discurso by Grijalbo Mondadori, Mexico, in 2010. This translation first published in hardcover in the United Kingdom by Viking, a division of Penguin Books Ltd, in 2014.

  Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage International and colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Cataloging-in-Publication data is available from the Library of Congress.

  Vintage International Trade Paperback ISBN 9781101911181

  Ebook ISBN 9781101911211

  Cover design by Megan Wilson

  Photographs by The Douglas Brothers

  www.vintagebooks.com

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  Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Also by Gabriel García Márquez

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Preface to the English Edition

  The Academy of Duty

  How I Began to Write

  Because of You

  Another, Different Homeland

  The Solitude of Latin America

  A Toast to Poetry

  Words for a New Millennium

  The Cataclysm of Damocles

  An Indestructible Idea

  Preface to a New Millennium

  I’m Not Here

  In Honour of Belisario Betancur on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday

  My Friend Mutis

  The Argentine Who Endeared Himself to Everybody

  Latin America Exists

  A Different Nature in a World Different from Ours

  Journalism: The Best Job in the World

  A Bottle in the Ocean for the God of Words

  Dreams for the Twenty-First Century

  The Beloved Though Distant Homeland

  A Soul Open to be Filled with Messages in Spanish

  Editor’s Note

  Notes on the Speeches

  PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION

  Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) was one of the most influential figures in twentieth-century literature. Winner of a Nobel Prize in 1982, he was a formidable storyteller, essayist, critic, screenwriter, and journalist, and one of the great thinkers of our time. As a novelist, García Márquez shaped the magical realism movement and paved the way for countless contemporaries and successors, creating narrative worlds rich with meaning and symbolism. His body of work includes such novels as One Hundred Years of Solitude, Love in the Time of Cholera, Memories of My Melancholy Whores, and Of Love and Other Demons, as well as non-fiction works such as News of a Kidnapping and the autobiographical Living to Tell the Tale.

  During his life, Márquez spoke publicly and passionately on the issues that interested him. I’m Not Here to Give a Speech is a collection of these speeches spanning the length of his career. It offers unique insight into the extraordinary mind that created some of the world’s most beloved novels and a final chance to hear the distinctive voice of Gabriel García Márquez. Most of these speeches are translated and published here for the first time in English. Notes on the background to each one are given on this page.

  THE ACADEMY OF DUTY

  Zipaquirá, Colombia, November 17, 1944

  Generally, at all social events like this one, a person is designated to give a speech. That person always looks for the most appropriate subject and then develops it for those in attendance. I’m not here to give a speech. For today I’ve chosen the noble subject of friendship. But what could I tell you about friendship? I might have filled a few pages with anecdotes and aphorisms that in the long run would not have led me to the desired goal. Each of you should analyse your own emotions, consider one by one the reasons why you feel an incomparable preference for the person in whom you have confided all your most private thoughts, and then you will know the reason behind this ceremony.

  The chain of ordinary events that has joined us with unbreakable bonds to this group of boys who today will begin to make their way in life, that is friendship. And that is what I would have talked to you about today. But, I repeat, I’m not here to give a speech, and I want only to appoint you the honest judges in this proceeding and invite you to share with the student body of this institution a sad moment of farewell.

  Here they are, ready to leave: Henry Sánchez, the appealing d’Artagnan of sports, with his three musketeers, Jorge Fajardo, Augusto Londoño, and Hernando Rodríguez. Here are Rafael Cuenca and Nicolás Reyes, one like the shadow of the other. Here are Ricardo González, the great knight of test tubes, and Alfredo García Romero, declared a dangerous individual in the field of every dispute: together, their lives exemplify true friendship. Here are Julio Villafañe and Rodrigo Restrepo, members of our parliament and our journalism. Here are Miguel Ángel Lozano and Guillermo Rubio, apostles of precision. And here, Humberto Jaimes and Manuel Arenas and Samuel Huertas and Ernesto Martínez, consuls of devotion and goodwill. Here is Álvaro Nivia with his good humour and intelligence. Here are Jaime Fonseca and Héctor Cuéllar and Alfredo Aguirre, three different people and only one true ideal: victory. Here, Carlos Aguirre and Carlos Alvarado, united by the same name and the same desire to be the pride of their nation. And here are Álvaro Baquero and Ramiro Cárdenas and Jaime Montoya, inseparable companions of books. And, finally, here are Julio César Morales and Guillermo Sánchez, like two living pillars who bear on their shoulders the responsibility for my words when I say that this group of boys is destined to endure in the best daguerreotypes in Colombia. All of them are going in search of the light, impelled by the same ideal.

  Now that you have heard the qualities of each, I’m going to offer the
verdict that you as honest judges must consider: in the name of the Liceo Nacional and of society, I declare this group of young men, in the words of Cicero, regular members of the academy of duty and citizens of intelligence.

  Honourable public, the proceeding has concluded.

  HOW I BEGAN TO WRITE

  Caracas, Venezuela, May 3, 1970

  First of all, forgive me for speaking to you seated, but the truth is that if I stand, I run the risk of collapsing with fear. Really. I always thought I was fated to spend the most terrible five minutes of my life on a plane, before twenty or thirty people, and not like this, before two hundred friends. Fortunately, what is happening to me right now allows me to begin to speak about my literature, since I was thinking that I began to be a writer in the same way I climbed up on this platform: I was coerced. I confess I did all I could not to attend this assembly: I tried to get sick, I attempted to catch pneumonia, I went to the barber, hoping he’d slit my throat, and, finally, it occurred to me to come here without a jacket and tie so they wouldn’t let me into a meeting as serious as this one, but I forgot I was in Venezuela, where you can go anywhere in shirtsleeves. The result: here I am, and I don’t know where to start. But I can tell you, for example, how I began to write.

  It had never occurred to me that I could be a writer, but in my student days Eduardo Zalamea Borda, editor of the literary supplement of El Espectador, in Bogotá, published a note in which he said that the younger generation of writers had nothing to offer, that a new short-story writer, a new novelist, could not be seen anywhere. And he concluded by declaring that he was often reproached because his paper published only the very well-known names of old writers and nothing by the young, whereas the truth, he said, was that no young people were writing.

  Then a feeling of solidarity with my generational companions arose in me, and I resolved to write a story simply to shut the mouth of Eduardo Zalamea Borda, who was my great friend or, at least, became my great friend later. I sat down, wrote the story, and sent it to El Espectador. I had my second shock the following Sunday when I opened the paper and there was my full-page story with a note in which Eduardo Zalamea Borda acknowledged that he had been wrong, because obviously with ‘that story the genius of Colombian literature had emerged’, or something along those lines.

  This time I really did get sick, and I said to myself: ‘What a mess I’ve got myself into! What do I do now so Eduardo Zalamea Borda won’t look bad?’ Keep on writing was the answer. I always had to face the problem of subjects: I was obliged to find the story before I could write it.

  And this allows me to tell you something that I can verify now, after having published five books: the job of writer is perhaps the only one that becomes more difficult the more you do it. The ease with which I sat down one afternoon to write that story can’t be compared to the work it costs me now to write a page. As for my method of working, it’s fairly consistent with what I’m telling you now. I never know how much I’ll be able to write or what I’m going to write about. I hope I’ll think of something, and when I do come up with an idea that I consider good enough to write down, I begin to go over it in my mind and let it keep maturing. When it’s finished (and sometimes many years go by, as in the case of One Hundred Years of Solitude, which I thought over for nineteen years) — I repeat, when it’s finished — then I sit down to write it, and that’s when the most difficult part begins, and the part that bores me most. Because the most delicious part of a story is thinking about it, rounding it out, turning it over and over, so that when the time comes to sit down and write it, it doesn’t interest you very much, or at least it doesn’t interest me very much, the idea that’s been turned over and over.

  I’m going to tell you, for example, about the idea that has been turning over and over in my mind for several years, and I suspect I have it pretty rounded out by now. I’ll tell it to you because there’s no doubt that when I write it, I don’t know when, you’ll find it completely changed and be able to observe how it evolved. Imagine a very small village where there’s an old woman who has two children, a boy seventeen and a girl not yet fourteen. She’s serving her children breakfast with a very worried look on her face. Her children ask what’s wrong and she replies: ‘I don’t know, but I woke up thinking that something very serious is going to happen in this village.’

  They laugh at her and say those are an old woman’s misgivings, just something that will pass. The boy goes out to play billiards, and as he’s about to shoot a very simple cannon, his opponent says: ‘I’ll bet you a peso you can’t make the shot.’ Everybody laughs, he laughs, takes his shot, and doesn’t make it. He gives a peso to his opponent, who asks: ‘But what happened? It was a really simple cannon.’ He says: ‘It was, but I’m worried about something my mother said this morning about something serious that’s going to happen in this village.’ Everybody laughs at him, and the one who won the peso goes home, where he finds his mother and a cousin or a niece, or some female relative. Happy about his peso, he says: ‘I won this peso from Dámaso in the simplest way because he’s a fool.’ ‘And why is he a fool?’ He says: ‘Oh man, he couldn’t make a really simple cannon shot because he was worried about his mother waking up today with the idea that something very serious is going to happen in this village.’

  Then his mother says: ‘Don’t make fun of old people’s misgivings, because sometimes they come true.’ The relative hears this and goes out to buy meat. She says to the butcher: ‘Give me a pound of meat,’ and just as he’s cutting it, she adds: ‘Better make it two, because people are saying that something serious is going to happen and it’s best to be prepared.’ The butcher hands her the meat and, when another woman comes in to buy a pound of meat, he says: ‘Take two, because people are coming in and saying that something very serious is going to happen and they’re preparing for it, buying things.’

  Then the old woman replies: ‘I have several children; look, better give me four pounds.’ She takes her four pounds and, to make a long story short, I’ll say that in half an hour the butcher sells all his meat, slaughters another cow, sells all of that, and the rumour spreads. The moment arrives when everybody in the village is waiting for something to happen. Activities grind to a halt and, suddenly, at two in the afternoon, it’s as hot as it always is. Someone says: ‘Have you noticed how hot it is?’ ‘But in this village it’s always hot.’ So hot that it’s a village where all the musicians had instruments repaired with tar and always played in the shade, because if they played in the sun the instruments fell apart. ‘Still,’ one person says, ‘it’s never been so hot at this time of day.’ ‘Yes, but not as hot as it is now.’ And, without warning, a little bird flies down into the deserted village, the deserted square, and the news spreads: ‘There’s a little bird in the square.’ Everybody goes to the square and is frightened when they see the little bird.

  ‘But, my friends, there have always been little birds that fly down.’ ‘Yes, but never at this time of day.’ It is a moment of such tension for the inhabitants of the village that they are all desperate to leave but lack the courage to go. ‘Well, I’m a real man,’ one of them shouts, ‘and I’m leaving.’ He gets his furniture, his children, his animals, puts them in a cart, and crosses the main street, where the poor villagers are watching him. Until the moment when they say: ‘If he has the courage to leave, well, we’re leaving too,’ and begin literally to dismantle the village. They take away things, animals, everything. And one of the last to abandon the village says: ‘Let no misfortune fall on what remains of our house,’ and then he burns his house and others burn other houses. They flee in a real and terrible panic, like an exodus in wartime, and among them is the woman who had the misgiving, crying out: ‘I said something very serious was going to happen, and you told me I was crazy.’

  BECAUSE OF YOU

  Caracas, Venezuela, August 2, 1972

  Now that we’re alone, among friends, I’d like to request the collaboratio
n of all of you in helping me endure the memory of this evening, the first in my life when I’ve come in person and with full use of my faculties to do two things at the same time that I’d promised myself I would never do: accept a prize and give a speech.

  I’ve always believed, contrary to other very respectable opinions, that we writers are not in the world to be crowned, and many of you know that each public tribute is the start of being embalmed. I’ve always believed, after all, that we’re writers not through our own merits but because of the misfortune that we can’t be anything else, and that our solitary work should not earn us more recompense or privileges than those the shoemaker deserves for making his shoes. However, don’t think I’ve come here to beg your pardon for having come here, or that I’m trying to belittle the distinction given me today under the propitious name of a great and unforgettable man of American letters [Rómulo Gallegos]. On the contrary, I’ve come to rejoice in the public performance, and for having encountered a reason for breaking my principles and muzzling my scruples: I’m here, friends, simply because of my old, stubborn affection for this land where I was once young, undocumented, and happy, as an act of affection and solidarity with my Venezuelan friends, friends who are generous, damn fine, and wise guys to the death. I’ve come because of them, that is, because of you.

  ANOTHER, DIFFERENT HOMELAND

  Mexico City, October 22, 1982