Axel Munthe and La historia de San Michele: an almost forgotten relation of intertextuality in El amor en los tiempos del cólera by Gabriel García Márquez

Abstract

The primary objective of this article is to prove that the rereading of Axel Munthe’s La historia de San Michele (1929) made by Gabriel García Márquez at the beginning of the eighties as a preparation for the writing of El amor en los tiempos del cólera (1985) had a great importance in the final result of this last one, producing what Claudio Guillén would call a “significant influence”. In this way, it will be proved that Munhte’s work provided the Colombian writer with some key ideas about the relation between love and disease that he would later develop in his own novel with his particular style and wit. But, above all, it will be proved that the characterization of one of the protagonists of El amor en los tiempos del cólera, doctor Juvenal Urbino, arises from a fusion of the characteristics of two other doctors who are present in La historia de San Michele: doctor Jean-Martin Charcot and Axel Munthe himself.