Chronicle of an Incest Foretold

In this paper the author discusses the situation of children handed over to grandparents or to other relatives of the natural parents to be brought up. She notes that such children are faced with the riddle of their own filiation and postulates that this scenario often conceals an oedipal fantasy to the effect that the child concerned is the fruit of an incestuous relationship between a grandparent and the relevant parent. Following the example of Freud, the author adduces literary models for illustration. As with the Oedipus of Sophocles, the author shows how efforts to thwart the workings of fate actually bring about the consummation of the tragedy in the form of incest, which is favoured by the confused oedipal configuration in the families of handed-over children. The main argument is based on the characters and situations of two novels by Gabriel García Márquez, written at different times in his life. With reference to the psychoanalytic literature on artistic creativity, the author shows the importance of the mid-life crisis in determining how García Márquez came to terms with the fact of having himself been entrusted to grandparents as a child and how this situation is reflected in the works concerned.