Julio Cortázar

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Jules Florencio Cortázar

Born August 26, 1914
Brussels, Belgium
Died February 12, 1984
Paris, France
Pen name Julio Denis
Occupation Writer
Genres fiction, prose, epic, poetry
Literary movement Latin American Boom
Notable work(s) Hopscotch
Influences
Influenced

Julio Cortázar (born Jules Florencio Cortázar) (August 26, 1914 – February 12, 1984) was a Belgian-born Argentine author of novels and short stories. He influenced an entire generation of Latin American writers from Mexico to Argentina. Cortázar was married three times: first to Aurora Bernárdez, then Ugnė Karvelis and finally the Canadian Carol Dunlop. Most of his best known work was written in France where he established himself in 1951.

Contents

[edit] Early life

Jules Florencio Cortázar was born in Ixelles-Brussels, Belgium on August 26, 1914 a few days after the invasion of Germany during the onset of WWI. Julio, as he would be known in his adult life, was the son of merchant Julio José Cortázar and María Herminia Descotte. His parents settled in Europe in 1913 representing the commercial interests of grandpa Descotte [1]. Many years later, Cortázar would recall "my birth was a product of tourism and diplomacy "[2] adding a veil of unfounded mystery to his biography.

Taking advantage of the fact that grandma Descotte (Victoria Gabel) was a German citizen, the family traveled to Zürich via Frankfurt to reunite with grandpa Descotte (Victoria Gabel's lover and father of María Herminia). Grandpa Descotte was a French citizen at a time when Frenchmen were not welcome in Belgium. Cortázar and his family spent a good two years in Switzerland until finally, towards the end of the war, they moved to Barcelona for a short while before returning to Argentina. By then Julio José Cortázar and María Herminia Descotte had already split-up.[3]

When Cortázar was four years old, his family returned to Argentina. He spent the rest of his childhood in Banfield, near Buenos Aires, together with his mother and his only sister, who was one year his junior. During his childhood, Cortázar's father abandoned the family; Cortázar would never see him again.[citation needed] In Banfield Cortázar lived in a house with a backyard from which he obtained inspiration for future stories.[citation needed] His time in Banfield, however, was not happy;[citation needed] he would later describe it, in a letter to Graciela M. de Solá (December 4, 1963) as "full of servitude, excessive touchiness, terrible and frequent sadness."

Cortázar was a sickly child and spent much of his childhood in bed reading.[citation needed] His mother selected the books for him to read, introducing her son most notably to the works of Jules Verne, whom Cortázar admired for the rest of his life. He was to say later, in the magazine Plural (issue 44, Mexico City, 5/1975) "I spent my childhood in a haze full of goblins and elfs, with a sense of space and time that was different from everybody else's".

[edit] Education and teaching career

Although he never completed his studies at the University of Buenos Aires where he studied Philosophy and Languages, he taught in several provincial secondary schools. In 1938 he published a volume of sonnets under the pseudonym Julio Denis.[citation needed] He would later disparage this volume.[citation needed] In 1944, he became professor of French literature at the National University of Cuyo. In 1949, he published a play, Los Reyes (The Kings), based on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur.

[edit] Paris and later years (33 years)

In 1951, in opposition to the government of Juan Domingo Perón[4], Cortázar emigrated to France where he lived and worked for the rest of his life. From 1952, he worked for UNESCO as a translator. His translation projects included Spanish renderings of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Marguerite Yourcenar's Mémoires d'Hadrien and the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Alfred Jarry and Comte de Lautréamont were other decisive influences. Julio Cortázar wrote most of his major works in Paris.

In later years he underwent a political transformation, becoming actively engaged with human rights causes in Latin America and openly supporting the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua. Cortázar died in Paris in 1984 and is interred in the Cimetière de Montparnasse next to his third wife Carol Dunlop.

Cortazar's grave in Montparnasse, Paris
Cortazar's grave in Montparnasse, Paris

[edit] Legacy

Julio Cortázar is widely regarded as a master of the short story form. Collections like Bestiario (1951), Final del juego (1956) and Las armas secretas (1959) contain many of the best examples of surrealist writing in postmodern literature. Selections from those volumes were published in 1967 in English translations by Paul Blackburn in a volume that was entitled Blow-Up and Other Stories in deference to the English title of Michelangelo Antonioni's celebrated film of 1966 (Blowup), which had been inspired by Cortázar's story Las Babas del Diablo (literally "the Devil's drools (or drivels)").

Cortázar also influenced Jean-Luc Godard to write Week End (1967) with La Autopista del Sur ("South Highway").[citation needed] One of his most notable short fictions is El Perseguidor (The Pursuer),[citation needed] based on the life of jazz musician Charlie Parker. He also published several novels, including 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). They were later translated by Gregory Rabassa.

Julio Cortázar's masterpiece,[citation needed] Hopscotch, has been praised by other Latin American writers including José Lezama Lima, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez, and Mario Vargas Llosa. The novel's open-ended structure, which invites the reader to choose between a linear and a non-linear mode of reading, inspired the work of Puerto Rican writer Giannina Braschi, who also named a chapter of her novel Yo-Yo Boing! after Cortázar's "Blow-Up". Cortázar's employment of interior monologue and stream of consciousness is reminiscent of modernists like James Joyce, but his main influences were Surrealism, the French Nouveau roman and the improvisatory aesthetic of jazz. He also mentions Lawrence Durrell's The Alexandria Quartet several times in the novel, and the two texts have remarkable similarities [5]; Cortázar's first wife, Aurora Bernárdez, was translating Durrell into Spanish while Cortázar was writing the novel.

He also published poetry, drama and various works of non-fiction. One of his last works was a collaboration with his third wife, Carol Dunlop, entitled The Autonauts of the Cosmoroute; it related, partly in mock-heroic style, the couple's extended expedition along the autoroute from Paris to Marseille in a Volkswagen camper nicknamed Fafner.

In 2007, Bertrand Delanoë baptized a small plaza in the Île Saint-Louis of Paris in the name of Julio Cortázar.[citation needed]

[edit] Notable works

Originally published as End of the Game and Other Stories in 1967
A compilation of stories translated into English from the books Final del juego and Las armas secretas

[edit] See also

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

[edit] Further Reading

English

  • Julio Cortázar (Modern Critical Views) / Bloom, Harold., 2005
  • Mothers, lovers, and others : the short stories of Julio Cortázar / Schmidt-Cruz, Cynthia., 2004
  • Julio Cortázar (Bloom's Major Short Story Writers) / Bloom, Harold., 2004
  • Understanding Julio Cortázar / Standish, Peter., 2001
  • Questions of the liminal in the fiction of Julio Cortázar / Moran, Dominic., 2000
  • Critical essays on Julio Cortázar / Alazraki, Jaime., 1999
  • Julio Cortázar : new readings / Alonso, Carlos J., 1998
  • Julio Cortázar : a study of the short fiction / Stavans, Ilan., 1996
  • The politics of style in the fiction of Balzac, Beckett, and Cortázar / Axelrod, Mark., 1992
  • The contemporary praxis of the fantastic : Borges and Cortázar / Rodríguez-Luis, Julio., 1991
  • Julio Cortázar's character mosaic : reading the longer fiction / Yovanovich, Gordana., 1991
  • Julio Cortázar (Twayne World Authors Series) / Peavler, Terry., 1990
  • Julio Cortázar : life, work and criticism / Carter, E. Dale., 1986
  • The novels of Julio Cortázar / Boldy, Steven., 1980

Spanish

  • Discurso del Oso / children's book illustrated by Emilio Urberuaga, Libros del Zorro Rojo, 2008
  • Imagen de Julio Cortázar / Claudio Eduardo Martyniuk., 2004
  • Julio Cortázar desde tres perspectivas / Luisa Valenzuela., 2002
  • Otra flor amarilla : antología : homenaje a Julio Cortázar / Universidad de Guadalajara., 2002
  • Julio Cortázar / Cristina Peri Rossi., 2001
  • Julio Cortázar / Alberto Cousté., 2001
  • La mirada recíproca : estudios sobre los últimos cuentos de Julio Cortázar / Peter Fröhlicher., 1995
  • Hacia Cortázar : aproximaciones a su obra / Jaime Alazraki., 1994
  • Julio Cortázar : mundos y modos / Saúl Yurkiévich., 1994
  • Tiempo sagrado y tiempo profano en Borges y Cortázar / Zheyla Henriksen., 1992
  • Cortázar : el romántico en su observatorio / Rosario Ferré., 1991
  • Lo neofantástico en Julio Cortázar / Julia G Cruz., 1988
  • Los Ochenta mundos de Cortázar : ensayos / Fernando Burgos., 1987
  • En busca del unicornio : los cuentos de Julio Cortázar / Jaime Alazraki., 1983
  • Teoría y práctica del cuento en los relatos de Cortázar / Carmen de Mora Valcárcel., 1982
  • Julio Cortázar / Pedro Lastra., 1981
  • Cortázar : metafísica y erotismo / Antonio Planells., 1979
  • Es Julio Cortázar un surrealista? / Evelyn Picon Garfield., 1975
  • Estudios sobre los cuentos de Julio Cortázar / David Lagmanovich., 1975
  • Cortázar y Carpentier / Mercedes Rein., 1974
  • Los mundos de Julio Cortázar / Malva E Filer., 1970


[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Cortázar sin barba, by Eduardo Montes-Bradley. Random House Mondadori, Editorial Debate, Madrid, 2004
  2. ^ Televisión Española, Serie A Fondo. Interview by: Joaquin Soler Serrano.
  3. ^ Cortázar sin barba, by Eduardo Montes-Bradley. Random House Mondadori, Editorial Debate, Madrid, 2004
  4. ^ Cortázar sin barba, by Eduardo Montes-Bradley. Random House Mondadori, Editorial Debate, Madrid, 2004
  5. ^ Sligh, Charles. "Reading the Divergent Weave A Note and Some Speculations on Durrell and Cortázar." [Deus Loci: The Lawrence Durrell Journal] NS 6 (1998): 118-132.

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julio_Cort%C3%A1zar"
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