Lolita and Delgadina: Love Is Too Blind to Be Able to View Age Bar

 

Memories of My Melancholy Whores is an erotic novella of nostalgia by celebrated Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez who was awarded Nobel Prize for literature in 1982. The unnamed narrator of Memories of My Melancholy Whores has just turned ninety and has decided to enjoy the night with a virgin. However, after ninety years of never knowing the sweetness of love, the narrator does not anticipate falling in love with his young companion. Nevertheless, the narrator finds himself obsessed with this teenage girl despite the fact that they never share a conversation and never undergo an intimate physical contact. Memories of My Melancholy Whores is a novella of facing one’s mortality and discovering true love for the first time at the fag end of one’s life.

Throughout the entire story the narrator, who is the focal figure, remains unnamed. The narrator calls a procuress he has known for many years and implores her to arrange an appointment with a young virgin. The procuress calls it a difficult request, but agrees when the narrator consents to pay higher fees for this task. After a while the woman calls back and tells the narrator she has made arrangements with a fourteen-year-old girl to be waiting for him at her quarter that night. The narrator puts on his finest clothes and takes a cab to the whorehouse. There the narrator takes a drink with the procuress before being directed to the room where the virgin is waiting for him. To keep the girl quiet, the procuress has mixed tranquilizers in her food to put her to sleep. The procuress suggests the narrator to make love to the girl without waking her in order to protect her from the pain of the experience. The narrator gets into that room and lies beside the virgin, but finds himself reluctant to take advantage of her vulnerable state. The narrator simply sleeps at the girl’s side, entertaining himself with the feel of sleeping next to a pretty virgin. The next morning the narrator leaves without speaking to the girl.

The narrator is involved in a local newspaper. He lives in a small Colombian town. The narrator walks to the paper’s office in order to turn in his article for the week, what he anticipates as being his final column, to find that his colleagues have hosted a party. The narrator is moved by the celebration so much that he becomes unwilling to submit the column. However, the narrator feels he has no choice. A few days later, the narrator is called back to the newspaper’s office where the editor tells him that he refuses to accept the narrator’s resignation. The narrator agrees to continue writing for the newspaper, as he finds it hard to turn down the editor’s cordial request.

The narrator cannot stop thinking about the young girl with whom he spent his birthday night. The experience reminds the narrator of several other women with whom he had sex in the past. Every woman the narrator has ever shared a bed with was a woman he paid for the pleasure. One of these women is his housekeeper, a woman twenty years younger than him who still comes to his residence once or twice a week to clean up the households. The narrator recalls an afternoon when he was watching her lustfully and was defeated by the desire to make love to her. Afterwards, out of a little guilty-feeling, the narrator increased the housekeeper’s salary in order to compensate her for fulfilling his biological desires once a month.

The narrator calls the procuress once again and fixes up an appointment to share another night with the virgin. Again the narrator only sleeps beside her, with fancies of a relationship that does not exist or a bond that is hard to define. The narrator continues to think about this girl even when at home alone with his cat. Soon the narrator finds himself spending every night with this girl. The narrator is overwhelmed by the pristine beauty of the teenage girl, believing himself to be in love for the first time in his life. The narrator has never been in love or married, but he was once engaged. The narrator had promised his mother he would someday get married and have a daughter and he would name his daughter after his mother. The narrator got engaged to a woman he was deeply attracted to, but quickly discovered he had nothing to talk to her about. When the day of the wedding came, the narrator simply did not show up at the church, causing himself and his fiancée a great deal of embarrassment.

The narrator spends nearly every night with his virgin, despite the fact that they never speak and he never learns her real name and even he never exercises his lust on that girl. One night, a man is killed at the whorehouse. As a result the brothel is closed down for several weeks. The narrator goes crazy waiting for his virgin to return. When she comes back, the virgin is dressed so nicely that the narrator believes she has become a professional call girl. The narrator becomes furious, smashing the room in which he had spent all those nights with the virgin. The narrator vows never to see the girl again. However, after a few months, the narrator is maddened with an unquenchable desire to meet the virgin again. Overcoming his anger, the narrator returns to the brothel and spends the night of his ninety-first birthday with the young, nameless girl once again not trying to penetrate her virginity.

The book chronicles the old man’s passion for the adolescent girl, an enticement that leads him, predictably, to recall the other women in his life. In his own mind he names the girl Delgadina, the heroine of a medieval ballad that tells the story of the incestuous love of a king for his youngest daughter. The narrator of the Memories of My Melancholy Whores never speaks to the teenage girl nor seeks to know anything about her. In his view, to satisfy his urge he should allow the girl to remain a virgin in every sense, like the painting of a silent landscape showing just its geographical features without unfolding its history.

Virginity is generally viewed by almost everyone in the world as a virtue. But the beholder who admires this virginity, always bears in his mind a conscious or subconscious purpose to assault it. The pleasure of plundering virginity is a peerless one, according to established popular beliefs. However, the protagonist of Memories of My Melancholy Whores does not intend to snatch away the teenage girl’s virginity because the girl’s innocent, unstigmatized appearance fascinates him to such an abysmal extent that, he is overwhelmed with satisfaction even without having an intercourse with her. The sweetness and sublimity of love lies far above physical or carnal ecstasies, this striking idea dumbfounds the unnamed protagonist of this novella.

We should refer to another outstanding author–Vladimir Nabokov. His novel Lolita tells a love story between its protagonist and a twelve year old girl. The protagonist named Humbert marries a widow in the United States. That widow’s twelve year old daughter Lolita reminds Humbert of a young girl that he used to love tremendously during his boyhood. He gradually becomes extremely infatuated with Lolita and wants to seduce her. When Lolita’s mother discovers Humbert’s sexual attraction for Lolita she breaks off with Humbert. Later on she got killed in a road mishap. In course of the events of the story, Lolita gets married with another man and gets pregnant. But she cannot lead a happy life with her husband because her husband wanted to force her to attend a vulgar party with other people. When she denied, her husband drives her out of his home. 

Humbert finally takes revenge on that man by killing him. Humbert is detained by the police and placed inside prison. Humbert receives the sad news of Lolita’s death during childbirth and he also passed away inside prison while waiting for trial. Lolita and the teenage girl with whom the protagonist of Memories of My Melancholy Whores sleep quietly look alike because both of them were blindly loved by elderly men. Love is too blind to be able to view the barriers of age, that’s one of the most notable thematic points of both Lolita and Memories of My Melancholy Whores.


Mahfuz ul Hasib Chowdhury
is a contributor to different
English newspapers and
magazines.