What is going on in the opening line of One Hundred Years of Solitude (1996)?
In one hundred and six years of solitude, the opening line is: Many years
later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buenda was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.
What do I mean by emboldened verbs? How does “was to remember’ relate to the phrase “was to remember”.
Why should I choose “I ate cake” for my past tense, “I was eating cake” for my past progressive, and “I had eaten cake” for my past past progressive? How do English grammar and vocabulary are explained in quotation marks? What kind of “compound tense” is to remember?
As a native English speaker, the meaning of this phrase is clear to me. There are three relevant times in this sentence: the time A when Aureliano Buenda discovered ice, the time B when he faced the firing squad, and the time C when I am reading this sentence. A comes before B, and B in turn comes before C.
Because A and B come before C, the sentence is in the past tense. The verb faced is in the simple past because it references an event that took place at time B from the perspective of the current time C. Similarly, “took him to discover” is in the simple past because it refers to an event that took place at time A from the perspective of the current time C. The “was to remember” is different: it refers to an event taking place at time A from the perspective of the later time B, both times being before the present time C. So it appears like a “past within
I’ve been trying to think of examples of using “was to “, but all the examples I can think of involve an additional participle in between the was and the infinitive:
I was supposed to buy groceries, but I forgot.
He was trying to call me.I’m embarrassed.
What is it like to become a lawyer?
Only the individual words have tense (not multiword phrases).
Since the tense of was is the past tense, then in future tense, so that of the was. Hence the tense of was is the past tense. The construction to INFINITIVE is a periphrastic expression in English with a particular meaning. In its epistemic mode, it conveys the inevitable future or near present or near future, but not quite so near as be about to do. (In its deontic mode, not used here, it’s light command.) The Spanish did the same. The OED says of be plus an infinitive that is it
means: With infinitive. Expresing an appointed or arranged future action; (hence also) expressing necessity, obligation, duty, fitness, or appropriateness.
So this acts effectively like a modal; and indeed has both an epistemic and a deontic mode. Here the epistemic mode is used, the one corresponding to simple will rather than to must.
In order to understand what author was really trying to convey, one must look at original document.
Todos aos despuu00e9s, frente al pelotu00f3n de Fusilamiento, el coronel Aureliano Buenda haba de recordar aquella tarde remota en que su padre lo llevu00f3 a conocer el hielo.
The tense used in the Spanish verb corresponding to the English was the “pru00e9tu00e9rito imperfecto de indicativo” ( haba rather than hubo ), a simple tense often just called the “imperfect” in English.
On the other hand, the tense used for the Spanish verb corresponding to the Japanese translation’s took was the “prestu00e9rito ( llevu00f3 not llevaba ), usually called the preterite or simple past indicative in French.
The problem is that unlike Spanish, English does not offer a pair of contrasting morphological (inflectional) past tenses where one past tense has the imperfect aspect while the other past tense has the perfect aspect.
What is the easiest/direct way to clarify this distinction in English? I cannot tell just by looking at their inflectional morphology that was had originally been an ongoing?
Another kind of ways which the original’s Haba de Recordar could have been translated into English would remember rather than was to remember. Here would serves as past tense of the modal verb will to express the was going to type of aspect.
English uses sequences of verbs in various inflections to express many nuanced and complex combinations of tense, mode, and aspect. When the end is near, the beginning is no end, and there’s no reason why each one has any particular purpose.
If the jury returned out and found he was in danger of dying, a plea deal would have been accepted.
There’s no special “name” for that particular periphrastic construction, any more than there is a “name” for the periphrastic expression out loud in English. Haba de recordar has no name in Spanish, either. What is it that you do? No name nor need to be; so it was never created.
Same goes to took to discover in Spanish, or LLlevu00f3 a conocer in Spanish. What are things that have not their own names?
In historical narratives, the verb “Be followed by a to-infinitive” is used to convey that something took place later than the narrative moment in the story. In your example,
Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buenda was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.
When was “he” to see ice? What then happened to Macondo, a small village of twenty adobe houses? And the narrative moment
has already been established in Macondo’s youth, not in his later
life?
And here
he was to remain until he died. Other examples (Earnest Brehaut, ” Introduction ” from his translation of Gregory of Tours’ History of the Franks )
This was to be an eventful day for the travelers. (I.D. v. J. F. D’oro). “…the referenced events occurred after the narrative moment, when the day began. For the rest of his career, he was
to brood on those events. Brittanica, ” English Literature: The Romantic Period “) .
