Faulkner is a writer who has had much to do with my soul, but

The words of Gabriel García Márquez carry the weight of both reverence and revelation: “Faulkner is a writer who has had much to do with my soul, but Hemingway is the one who had the most to do with my craft—not simply for his books, but for his astounding knowledge of the aspect of craftsmanship in the science of writing.” In this confession, Márquez, the great alchemist of magical realism, unveils the dual nature of artistic creation—the soul and the craft. He honors William Faulkner as the voice that stirred his depths, that taught him to feel and imagine; but he bows to Ernest Hemingway as the master of structure and control, the craftsman who shaped chaos into clarity. Thus, Márquez reminds us that genius is not born merely from inspiration, but from the sacred union of emotion and discipline, of vision and technique.

To understand the meaning of his words, we must step into the lineage of writers who, like prophets of language, shaped the world through words. Faulkner, with his tangled sentences and mythic South, wrote as though the spirit itself dictated his stories. He gave Márquez a model of boundless imagination—a way to see that every small town, every forgotten family, could hold the weight of eternity. In Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County, Márquez saw the seed of his own Macondo, the fictional village that would blossom into One Hundred Years of Solitude. Faulkner spoke to his soul, teaching him that fiction is not merely description—it is creation, the act of building universes from memory and myth. Through him, Márquez discovered the mystical pulse of storytelling, where the ordinary becomes divine.

But where Faulkner ignited the soul, Hemingway refined the hand. Márquez saw in him the architect of simplicity, the craftsman of the invisible art. Hemingway’s sentences were like the bones of a great cathedral—bare, strong, and filled with light. His philosophy of writing—what he called the iceberg theory—taught that what is left unsaid often carries more power than what is spoken. Márquez, who painted with lush color and wonder, found in Hemingway’s restraint the perfect counterbalance to his own abundance. Hemingway’s “science of writing” was, to Márquez, not cold calculation but the disciplined art of making language breathe naturally. To learn from Hemingway was to understand that precision is the path to beauty, and that mastery lies not in excess, but in control.

This harmony between soul and craft has always defined the great creators of history. Consider Michelangelo, who once said that the statue already existed within the marble, and he merely freed it. So it was with Márquez: Faulkner gave him the marble—the raw, emotional material of the human spirit—while Hemingway gave him the chisel, the technique to reveal what was hidden inside. Without the soul, the chisel strikes emptiness; without the craft, the marble remains mute. Every true artist, whether writer, painter, or musician, must learn this sacred balance: the fire of passion and the discipline of form. One without the other is chaos or lifeless perfection; together, they become art that endures beyond the grave.

Márquez’s quote also teaches that knowledge and humility are inseparable on the path of mastery. Though he himself became one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, he never ceased to bow before those who came before him. To study the craft of another is not to diminish one’s genius, but to enrich it. The ancients understood this truth well. The philosopher Plato learned at the feet of Socrates; Leonardo da Vinci apprenticed before he painted The Last Supper; and Márquez, though touched by divine imagination, learned from the precision of Hemingway’s mortal discipline. Greatness is not rebellion against tradition—it is the continuation of wisdom through transformation.

The story of Márquez himself is the living proof of his words. In his youth, he was a journalist—measuring each line, mastering concision, trimming words like a gardener prunes a tree. That discipline, inherited from Hemingway’s influence, became the foundation upon which he later built his lyrical, dreamlike worlds. When he wrote The Autumn of the Patriarch or Love in the Time of Cholera, he allowed his sentences to dance and sing, but they always moved with rhythm and balance. Beneath the magic, there was mathematics; beneath the passion, precision. In the hands of Márquez, art became both emotion and architecture, both soul and science.

The lesson for all who seek mastery is clear: do not despise craft in pursuit of passion, nor passion in pursuit of craft. The soul gives the work its heart, but the craft gives it form. The poet must know meter as well as emotion; the musician must know harmony as well as feeling; the writer must know language as well as longing. For creation is not born of chaos, but from harmony—a balance between inspiration and labor, between what one feels and what one shapes.

Thus, through his reverence for Faulkner and Hemingway, Márquez leaves us with a timeless truth: that the artist’s journey is both spiritual and scientific, mystical and methodical. The soul gives birth to vision, but the craft gives it immortality. To awaken the first without mastering the second is to dream without building; to master the second without the first is to build without meaning. Therefore, let every seeker of art remember: the soul must burn, but the hand must know what to do with the fire.