Julio Cortázar

Julio Cortázar

Cortázar photographed by Sara Facio, 1967.
Born August 26, 1914
Ixelles, Belgium
Died 12 February 1984(1984-02-12) (aged 69)
Paris, France
Resting place Cimetière de Montparnasse, Paris
Pen name Julio Denis (in his first two books)
Occupation Writer, Translator
Nationality Argentine, French
Genre Short Story, Poetry, Novel.
Literary movement Latin American Boom
Notable works Hopscotch
Blow-up and Other Stories
Notable awards Prix Médicis (France, 1974), Rubén Darío Order of Cultural Independence (Nicaragua, 1983)
Signature

Julio Cortázar, born Jules Florencio Cortázar[1] (American Spanish: [ˈxuljo korˈtasar]; August 26, 1914 – February 12, 1984), was an Argentine novelist, short story writer, and essayist. Known as one of the founders of the Latin American Boom, Cortázar influenced an entire generation of Spanish-speaking readers and writers in the Americas and Europe.

Early life

Julio Cortázar was born on August 26, 1914, in Ixelles,[2] a municipality of Brussels, Belgium. According to biographer Miguel Herráez, his parents, Julio José Cortázar and María Herminia Descotte, were Argentine citizens, and his father was attached to the Argentine diplomatic service in Belgium.[3]

At the time of Cortázar's birth Belgium was occupied by the German troops of Kaiser Wilhelm II. After German troops arrived in Belgium, Cortázar and his family moved to Zürich where María Herminia's parents, Victoria Gabel and Louis Descotte (a French National), were waiting in neutral territory. The family group spent the next two years in Switzerland, first in Zürich, then Geneva, before moving for a short period to Barcelona. The Cortázars settled outside of Buenos Aires by the end of 1919.[4]

Cortázar's father left when Julio was six, and the family had no further contact with him.[5] Cortázar spent most of his childhood in Banfield, a suburb south of Buenos Aires, with his mother and younger sister. The home in Banfield, with its back yard, was a source of inspiration for some of his stories.[6] Despite this, in a letter to Graciela M. de Solá on December 4, 1963, he described this period of his life as "full of servitude, excessive touchiness, terrible and frequent sadness." He was a sickly child and spent much of his childhood in bed reading. His mother, who spoke several languages and was a great reader herself, introduced her son to the works of Jules Verne, whom Cortázar admired for the rest of his life. In the magazine Plural (issue 44, Mexico City, May 1975) he wrote: "I spent my childhood in a haze full of goblins and elves, with a sense of space and time that was different from everybody else's."

Education and teaching career

Cortázar in his youth

Cortázar obtained a qualification as an elementary school teacher at the age of 18. He would later pursue higher education in philosophy and languages at the University of Buenos Aires, but left for financial reasons without receiving a degree.[7] According to biographer Montes-Bradley, Cortázar taught in at least two high schools in Buenos Aires Province, one in the city of Chivilcoy, the other in Bolivar. In 1938, using the pseudonym of Julio Denis, he self-published a volume of sonnets, Presencia,[8] which he later repudiated, saying in a 1977 interview for Spanish television that publishing it was his only transgression to the principle of not publishing any books until he was convinced that what was written in them was what he meant to say.[9] In 1944 he became professor of French literature at the National University of Cuyo in Mendoza, but he resigned the position in June 1946 due to political pressure from Peronists. He subsequently worked as a translator and as director of the Cámara Argentina del Libro, a trade organization.[10] In 1949 he published a play, Los Reyes (The Kings), based on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. In 1980, Cortázar delivered eight lectures at the University of California, Berkeley.[11]

Years in France

In 1951, Cortázar emigrated to France, where he lived and worked for the rest of his life, though he traveled widely. From 1952 onwards, he worked intermittently for UNESCO as a translator. He wrote most of his major works in Paris or in Saignon in the south of France, where he also maintained a home. In later years he became actively engaged in opposing abuses of human rights in Latin America, and was a supporter of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua as well as Fidel Castro's Cuban revolution and Salvador Allende's socialist government in Chile.[12]

Cortázar had three long-term romantic relationships with women. The first was with Aurora Bernárdez, an Argentine translator, whom he married in 1953. They separated in 1968[13] when he became involved with the Lithuanian writer, editor, translator, and filmmaker Ugnė Karvelis, whom he never formally married, and who reportedly stimulated Cortázar's interest in politics,[14] although his political sensibilities had already been awakened by a visit to Cuba in 1963, the first of multiple trips that he would make to that country throughout the remainder of his life. He later married the American writer Carol Dunlop. After Dunlop's death in 1982, Aurora Bernárdez accompanied Cortázar during his final illness and, in accordance with his longstanding wishes, inherited the rights to all his works.[15][16]

He died in Paris in 1984 and is interred in the Cimetière de Montparnasse. The cause of his death was reported to be leukemia though some sources state that he died from AIDS as a result of receiving a blood transfusion.[17][18]

Marble grave stone with mementoes, flowers, notes and other small items placed on it.
Cortázar's grave in Montparnasse, Paris

Works

Cortázar wrote numerous short stories, collected in such volumes as Bestiario (1951), Final del juego (1956), and Las armas secretas (1959). In 1967, English translations by Paul Blackburn of stories selected from these volumes were published by Pantheon Books as End of the Game and Other Stories. Cortázar published four novels during his lifetime: Los premios (The Winners, 1960), Hopscotch (Rayuela, 1963), 62: A Model Kit (62 Modelo para Armar, 1968), and Libro de Manuel (A Manual for Manuel, 1973). Except for Los premios, which was translated by Elaine Kerrigan, these novels have been translated into English by Gregory Rabassa. Two other novels, El examen and Divertimiento, though written before 1960, only appeared posthumously.

The open-ended structure of Hopscotch, which invites the reader to choose between a linear and a non-linear mode of reading, has been praised by other Latin American writers, including José Lezama Lima, Giannina Braschi, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez, and Mario Vargas Llosa. Cortázar's use of interior monologue and stream of consciousness owes much to James Joyce[19] and other modernists, but his main influences were Surrealism,[20] the French Nouveau roman and the improvisatory aesthetic of jazz.[21] This last interest is reflected in the notable story "El perseguidor" ("The Pursuer"), which Cortázar based on the life of the bebop saxophonist Charlie Parker.[22]

Cortázar also published poetry, drama, and various works of non-fiction. In the 1960s, working with the artist José Silva, he created two almanac-books or libros-almanaque, La vuelta al día en ochenta mundos and Último Round, which combined various texts written by Cortázar with a photographs, engravings, and other illustrations, in the manner of the almanaques del mensajero that had been widely circulated in rural Argentina during his childhood.[23] One of his last works was a collaboration with Carol Dunlop, The Autonauts of the Cosmoroute, which relates, partly in mock-heroic style, the couple's extended expedition along the autoroute from Paris to Marseille in a Volkswagen camper nicknamed Fafner. As a translator, he completed Spanish-language renderings of Robinson Crusoe, Marguerite Yourcenar's novel Mémoires d'Hadrien, and the complete prose works of Edgar Allan Poe.[24]

Influence and legacy

Michelangelo Antonioni's film Blowup (1966) was inspired by Cortázar's story "Las babas del diablo," which in turn was based on a photograph taken by Chilean photographer Sergio Larraín during a shoot outside of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.[25] Cortázar's story "La autopista del sur" ("The Southern Thruway") influenced another film of the 1960s, Jean-Luc Godard's Week End (1967).[26] The filmmaker Manuel Antín has directed three films based on Cortázar stories, Cartas de mamá, Circe, and Intimidad de los parques.[27]

Chilean novelist Roberto Bolaño cited Cortázar as a key influence on his novel The Savage Detectives: "To say that I'm permanently indebted to the work of Borges and Cortázar is obvious."[28]

Puerto Rican novelist Giannina Braschi used Cortázar's story "Las babas del diablo" as a springboard for the chapter called "Blow-up" in her bilingual novel Yo-Yo Boing! (1998), which features scenes with Cortázar's characters La Maga and Rocamadour.[29] Cortázar is mentioned and spoken highly of in Rabih Alameddine's 1998 novel, Koolaids: The Art of War.

North American novelist Deena Metzger cites Cortázar as co-author of her novel Doors: A Fiction for Jazz Horn,[30] written twenty years after his death.

In Buenos Aires, a school, a public library, and a square in the Palermo neighborhood carry Cortázar's name.

Books

Novels

Short Story Collections

Poetry

Other Works

Graphic Novel

See also

References

  1. ↑ Montes-Bradley, Eduardo. "Cortázar sin barba". Editorial Debate. Random House Mondadori. p. 35, Madrid. 2005.
  2. ↑ Cortázar sin barba, by Eduardo Montes-Bradley. Random House Mondadori, Editorial Debate, Madrid, 2004
  3. ↑ Herráez, Miguel. Julio Cortázar, Una Biografía Revisada Alrevés, 2011 ISBN 9788415098034 p. 25
  4. ↑ Montes-Bradley, Eduardo. "Cortázar sin barba". Editorial Debate. Random House Mondadori, p. 110, Madrid, 2005.
  5. ↑ Herráez, Miguel. Julio Cortázar, Una Biografía Revisada Alrevés, 2011, ISBN 9788415098034, pp. 38 & 45,
  6. ↑ Banfield is mentioned in the short story "Conducta en los velorios" from Historias de cronopios y de famas.
  7. ↑ Herráez, Miguel. Julio Cortázar, Una Biografía Revisada. Alrevés, 2011, ISBN 9788415098034, p. 343.
  8. ↑ Conversaciones con Cortázar on YouTube Omar Prego, Muchnik Editores, 1985 (p. 33).
  9. ↑ Julio Cortázar - A fondo on YouTube TVE 1977.
  10. ↑ Herráez, Miguel. Julio Cortázar, Una Biografía Revisada. Alrevés, 2011, ISBN 9788415098034, pp. 118-119.
  11. ↑ Illingworth, Dustin. "The Subtle Radicalism of Julio Cortázar's Berkeley Lectures". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2017-03-29.
  12. ↑ Liukkonen, Petri. "Julio Cortázar". Books and Writers (kirjasto.sci.fi). Finland: Kuusankoski Public Library. Archived from the original on 28 April 2009.
  13. ↑ Herráez, Miguel. Julio Cortázar, Una Biografía Revisada Alrevés, 2011 ISBN 9788415098034 pp. 245-252.
  14. ↑ Mario Goloboff (1998). "Chap. 11: De otros lados". Julio Cortázar - La biografía. pp. 170–174. ISBN 950-731-205-6.
  15. ↑ «Las cartas de Cortázar», article in the newspaper El Mundo (Madrid), 15 July 2012.
  16. ↑ Julio Cortázar. Cartas, 3 (2000 edition, Alfaguara), p. 1785. ISBN 9505115938.
  17. ↑ Una nueva biografía sostiene que Cortázar habría muerto de sida clarin.com, 7.06.2001
  18. ↑ «Peri Rossi: “Cortázar murió de sida por una transfusión”», article in the newspaper ABC from 25 January 2009.
  19. ↑ Julio Cortázar y James Joyce
  20. ↑ Picón Garfield, Evelyn. Es Julio Cortázar un surrealista?, 1975
  21. ↑ "El jazz en la obra de Cortázar" Archived 2013-11-24 at the Wayback Machine., p. 41.
  22. ↑ Doris Sommer, "Grammar Trouble for Cortázar", in Proceed with Caution, When Engaged by Minority Writing in the Americas, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, p. 211.
  23. ↑ Herráez, Miguel. Julio Cortázar, Una Biografía Revisada Alrevés, 2011, ISBN 9788415098034, p. 242.
  24. ↑ Biblioteca Julio Cortázar, Fundación Juan March.
  25. ↑ "Fallece Sergio Larraín, el mítico fotógrafo chileno que renunció al mundo | Cultura". La Tercera. 2012-01-24. Retrieved 2012-02-09.
  26. ↑ Jean Franco, "Comic Stripping: Cortázar in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction", in Critical Passions: Selected Essays, eds. Mary Louise Pratt and Kathleen Newman, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999, p. 416.
  27. ↑ “No hice otra cosa que plagiar a Cortázar”, Pagina 12, 21 March 2012.
  28. ↑ Roberto Bolaño, Between Parentheses: Essays, Articles, and Speeches, 1998-2003, trans. Natasha Wimmer, New York: New Directions, 2011, 353.
  29. ↑ Debra A. Castillo, editor, Redreaming America: Toward a Bilingual American Culture, "Language Games," by Ilan Stavans, pp. 172-186, SUNY, New York, 2005.
  30. ↑ Deena Metzger, Doors: A Fiction for Jazz Horn, Red Hen Press, Pasadena CA, 2004

Further reading

English
Spanish

Filmography

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