Julio Cortázar

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Julio Cortázar’s literary career, which lasted almost forty years, includes—besides his short stories—novels, plays, poetry, translations, and essays of literary criticism. In his essay on short fiction entitled “Algunos aspectos del cuento” (“Some Aspects of the Short Story”), Cortázar studies the varying role of the reader with regard to different literary forms. Cortázar’s first book, Presencia (1938), was a collection of poetry that he published under the pseudonym Julio Denís. He translated authors as diverse as Louisa May Alcott and Edgar Allan Poe into Spanish and considered French Symbolist poetry to be of enormous influence on his prose writing. He experimented with a form of collage in his later works of short fiction.

Achievements

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An antirealist, Cortázar is often grouped with Gabriel García Márquez as one of the foremost proponents of the Magical Realism movement and, during his lifetime, one of the most articulate spokespersons on the subject of Latin American fiction.

Although Cortázar is most admired for his short stories (his short story “Las babas del diablo” was made into a classic film in 1966 called Blow-Up by director Michelangelo Antonioni), it was the publication of the novel Rayuela (1963; Hopscotch, 1966) that placed the author among the twentieth century’s greatest writers. The Times Literary Supplement called Hopscotch the “first great novel of Spanish America.”

Other literary forms

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Early in his career, Julio Cortázar (cohr-TAH-sahr) published two volumes of poetry—Presencia (1938; presence), under the pseudonym Julio Denís, and Los reyes (1949; the kings), using his own name—both still generally unnoticed by the critics. His short fiction, however, is considered among the best in Hispanic literature. His best-known short story is perhaps “Las babas del diablo” (the devil’s slobbers), the basis of the internationally acclaimed film Blow-Up (1966), directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. Cortázar’s collection of short fiction Bestiario (1951; bestiary) contains fantastic and somewhat surrealistic tales dealing mainly with extraordinary circumstances in the everyday lives of ordinary characters. Their common denominator is the unexpected turn of events at each story’s end; such surprise endings are a well-known trait of Cortázar’s short fiction. His second collection of stories, Final del juego (1956; end of the game), was followed by Las armas secretas (1959; secret weapons), Historias de cronopios y de famas (1962; Cronopios and Famas, 1969), Todos los fuegos el fuego (1966; All Fires the Fire, and Other Stories, 1973), Alguien que anda por ahí, y otros relatos (1977; included in A Change of Light, and Other Stories, 1980), Queremos tanto a Glenda, y otros relatos (1980; We Love Glenda So Much, and Other Stories, 1983), and Deshoras (1982; bad timing).

Two collage books, La vuelta al día en ochenta mundos (1967; Around the Day in Eighty Worlds, 1986) and Último round (1969; the last round), reflect the author’s life through the use of anecdotes, photographs, newspaper clippings, drawings, and other personal items. They are not, however, as engagé as are Cortázar’s political essays in the collections Viaje alrededor de una mesa (1970; voyage around a table), which contains discussions of Marxism and capitalism; Fantomas contra los vampiros multinacionales: Una utopía realizable (1975; Fantomas battles the multinational vampires), a tirade in comic-strip form attacking capitalism; and Nicaragua tan violentamente dulce (1983; Nicaraguan Sketches, 1989), a collection of articles on Nicaragua and the Marxist revolution. Un tal Lucas (1979; A Certain Lucas, 1984) is a series of interlocking fictions, somewhat autobiographical in nature, that reveal the essence of a particular man’s life. One of Cortázar’s last works, a travelogue of sorts titled Los autonautas de la cosmopista: O, Un...

(This entire section contains 569 words.)

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viaje atemporal Paris-Marsella (1983; Autonauts of the Cosmoroute: A Timeless Voyage from Paris to Marseille, 2007), is both a never-ending trip and a love song, detailing a trip with his last wife, Carol Dunlop, who predeceased him by several months. It contains descriptions, reflections, cultural parody, sometimes nostalgia, a potpourri of feelings and perceptions à la Cortázar.

In addition to the several volumes mentioned above, Cortázar published the nonfiction works Buenos Aires Buenos Aires (1968; English translation, 1968) and Prosa del observatorio (1972; with Antonio Galvez). As a professional translator, he rendered into Spanish such works as Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719), G. K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Knew Too Much (1922), and André Gide’s L’Immoraliste (1902; The Immoralist, 1930). He translated many volumes of criticism, including Lord Houghton’s Life and Letters of John Keats (1867) and two erudite essays by Alfred Stern, Sartre, His Philosophy and Psychoanalysis (1953) and Philosophie du rire et des pleurs (1949; philosophy of laughter and tears). Himself a critic of English, French, and Spanish literature, Cortázar also published many articles, reviews, and literary essays on a variety of topics ranging from Arthur Rimbaud, John Keats, Antonin Artaud, Graham Greene, and Charles Baudelaire to contemporary Latin American writers such as Octavio Paz, Leopoldo Marechal, and Victoria Ocampo.

Achievements

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At a moment when fiction in Spanish enjoyed little international esteem, Julio Cortázar’s multinational and multicultural orientation brought recognition of a sophistication and cosmopolitan awareness previously assumed to be lacking among Spanish-language writers. His unusual success in translation was an important ingredient in the “boom” in Latin American fiction, bringing the Spanish American novelists of his generation to unprecedented prestige and popularity in Europe and North America. His most celebrated novel, Hopscotch, unquestionably had an impact on experimental and vanguard writing in Spain and Latin America, and the notion of a variable structure and reassembled plot had a number of imitators among younger writers. In addition to influencing the literature of his “native” Argentina, Cortázar has had a significant impact on the younger generation of novelists throughout the Spanish-speaking world.

Discussion Topics

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Did Julio Cortázar’s works, which he wrote mostly after moving to Europe, depend more on his earlier experiences in Argentina or on his capacity for contemplating his Argentinian background from abroad?

What does the variety of the writers whose works Cortázar translated reveal about the man?

Discuss Cortázar’s determination to enrich Spanish literature by taking advantage of his mastery of French and English.

How did the myth of the Minotaur help Cortázar develop one of his important themes?

What is the likely reason for Cortázar’s use of Hopscotch as a title, and how does the work undermine the traditional structure of the novel?

To what extent can a mixture of fact and fiction, as in A Manual for Manuel, succeed in enhancing his reader’s concept of political reality?

Is an intention to “create disorder” truly a “necessity” for a man with Cortázar’s literary ambitions?

Bibliography

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Alazraki, Jaime, and Ivan Ivask, eds. The Final Island. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1978. A collection of essays, including two by Cortázar himself, about the role of magic or the marvelous as it works alongside what appears to be realism in Cortázar’s fiction. Contains a chronology and an extensive bibliography that offers data on Cortázar’s publications in several languages.

Alonso, Carlos J., ed. Julio Cortázar: New Readings. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Part of the Cambridge Studies in Latin American and Iberian Literature series. Includes bibliographical references and an index.

Boldy, Steven. The Novels of Julio Cortázar. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1980. The introduction provides a helpful biographical sketch linked to the major developments in Cortázar’s writing. Boldy concentrates on four Cortázar novels: The Winners, Hopscotch, 62: A Model Kit, and A Manual for Manuel. Includes notes, bibliography, and index.

Garfield, Evelyn Picon. Julio Cortázar. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1975. Garfield begins and ends her study with personal interviews that she obtained with Cortázar at his home in Provence, France. She studies the neurotic obsession of the characters in Cortázar’s fiction and offers firsthand commentary by Cortázar on his methods of writing and his own experiences that helped create his work. Cortázar’s philosophies, his preferences, and even his own personal nightmares are expounded upon, illuminating much of the symbolism found in his work. Chronology, analysis, complete bibliography, and index.

Guibert, Rita. Seven Voices: Seven Latin American Writers Talk to Rita Guibert. New York: Knopf, 1973. Includes an important interview with Cortázar, who discusses both his politics (his strenuous objection to U.S. interference in Latin America) and many of his fictional works.

Harss, Luis, and Barbara Dohmann. Into the Mainstream: Conversations with Latin-American Writers. New York: Harper and Row, 1967. Includes an English translation of an important interview in Spanish with Cortázar.

Hernandez del Castillo, Ana. Keats, Poe, and the Shaping of Cortázar’s Mythopoesis. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1981. Studies the influence of John Keats and Edgar Allan Poe on the work of Cortázar. The author states that of these two poets, whose works Cortázar translated, Poe had the greater influence on Cortázar. Studies the role of the archetypes in mythology and psychology and how they have been used in the works of all three writers. Contains an excellent index, which includes references that have had an enormous impact on trends in the twentieth century.

Peavler, Terry J. Julio Cortázar. Boston: Twayne, 1990. Peavler divides Cortázar’s short fiction into four categories—the fantastic, the mysterious, the psychological, and the realistic—in order to show how Cortázar used these genres as games to study discourse. Includes a chronology and a through bibliography.

Stavans, Ilan. Julio Cortázar: A Study of the Short Fiction. New York: Twayne, 1996. See especially the chapters on the influence of Jorge Luis Borges on Cortázar’s fiction, his use of the fantastic, and his reliance on popular culture. Stavans also has a section on Cortázar’s role as writer and his interpretation of developments in Latin American literature. Includes chronology and bibliography.

Sugano, Marian Zwerling. “Beyond What Meets the Eye: The Photographic Analogy in Cortázar’s Short Stories.” Style 27 (Fall, 1993): 332-351. Summarizes and critiques Cortazar’s analogy between the short story and photography in his essays, “Some Aspects of the Short Story” and “On the Short Story and Its Environs”; explains how Cortázar dramatizes the analogy in “Blow-Up” and “Apocalypse at Solentiname.”

Yovanovich, Gordana. Julio Cortázar’s Character Mosaic: Reading the Longer Fiction. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991. Three chapters focus on Cortázar’s four major novels and his fluctuating presentations of character as narrators, symbols, and other figures of language. Includes notes and bibliography.

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