Julio Cortázar

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
"Cortázar" redirects here. For other uses, see Cortázar (disambiguation).

Julio Cortázar
Cortázar in 1967
Cortázar in 1967
Born26 August 1914 (1914-08-26)
Ixelles, Belgium
Died12 February 1984(1984-02-12) (aged 69)
Paris, France
Resting placeMontparnasse Cemetery, Paris
OccupationWriter, translator
NationalityArgentine, French
GenreShort story, poetry, novel
Literary movementLatin American Boom
Notable worksHopscotch
Blow-up and Other Stories
Notable awardsPrix Médicis (France, 1974), Rubén Darío Order of Cultural Independence (Nicaragua, 1983)
Signature
Julio Cortázar's voice
Recorded 1943

Julio Florencio Cortázar

translator. Known as one of the founders of the Latin American Boom
, Cortázar influenced an entire generation of Spanish-speaking readers and writers in America and Europe.

He is considered one of the most innovative and original authors of his time, a master of history,

Hispanic world by breaking the classical molds through narratives that escaped temporal linearity
.

He lived his childhood and adolescence and incipient maturity in Argentina and, after the 1950s, in Europe. He lived in Italy, Spain, and in Switzerland. In 1951, he settled in France for more than three decades and composed some of his works there.[2]

Early life

Julio Cortázar was born on 26 August 1914, in Ixelles,[3] 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.[4]

At the time of Cortázar's birth, Belgium was occupied by the German troops of

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.[5]

Cortázar's father left when Julio was six, and the family had no further contact with him.

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.[7] Despite this, in a letter to Graciela M. de Solá on 4 December 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

Bolivar. In 1938, using the pseudonym of Julio Denis, he self-published a volume of sonnets, Presencia,[9] 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.[10] In 1944, he became professor of French literature at the National University of Cuyo in Mendoza, but owing to political pressure from Peronists, he resigned the position in June 1946. He subsequently worked as a translator and as director of the Cámara Argentina del Libro, a trade organization.[11] 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.[12]

Years in France

In 1951, Cortázar immigrated to France, where he lived and worked for the rest of his life, though he traveled widely. From 1952 onwards, he worked intermittently for

Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua as well as Fidel Castro's Cuban revolution and Salvador Allende's socialist government in Chile.[13]

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[14] 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,[15] 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. In 1981 he married Canadian 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.[16][17]

Death

Cortázar died in Paris in 1984, and is interred in the cimetière du 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.[18][19]

Works

Cortázar photographed in Buenos Aires in December 1983, when he returned after 10 years of exile in France

Cortázar wrote numerous short stories, collected in such volumes as

Los premios, which was translated by Elaine Kerrigan, these novels have been translated into English by Gregory Rabassa
. Two other novels, El examen and Divertimento, 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

aesthetic of jazz.[22] 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.[23]

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 photographs, engravings, and other illustrations, in the manner of the almanaques del mensajero that had been widely circulated in rural Argentina during his childhood.

Mémoires d'Hadrien, and the complete prose works of Edgar Allan Poe.[25]

Influence and legacy

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

Week End (1967).[27] The filmmaker Manuel Antín has directed three films based on Cortázar stories, Cartas de mamá, Circe and Intimidad de los parques.[28]

Chilean novelist

Borges and Cortázar is obvious."[29]

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.[30] 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,[31] 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.

Bibliography

Recording from the Library of Congress

Filmography

  • La Cifra Impar, 1960. Feature film by Manuel Antín, based on "Letters from Mother".
  • Circe, 1963. Feature film by Manuel Antín, based on "Circe". Script by Manuel Antin and Julio Cortázar.
  • El Perseguidor, 1963. Feature film by Osias Wilenski, based on "El perseguidor".
  • Intimidad de los Parques, 1965. Feature film by Manuel Antín.
  • Blow Up, 1966. Feature film by Michelangelo Antonioni, based on "Las Babas del diablo".
  • Cortázar, 1994. Documentary directed by Tristán Bauer.
  • Cortázar, apuntes para un documental, documentary. Eduardo Montes-Bradley (Director), Soledad Liendo (Producer). Theatrical release 2002. DVD Release 2007.
  • Graffiti on
    YouTube
    , 2005. Short movie based on Julio Cortázar's short story "Graffiti". Directed by Pako González.
  • Graffiti, 2006. Short movie based on Julio Cortázar's short story "Graffiti". Directed by Vano Burduli [1][2]
  • "Mentiras Piadosas" (released in English as Made Up Memories), 2009. Feature film by Diego Sabanés, based on the short-story "The Health of the Sick" and other short stories by Julio Cortázar.
  • Hareau, Eliane; Sclavo, Lil (2018). El traductor, artífice reflexivo. Montevideo.
    ISBN 978-9974-93-195-4.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link
    )

See also

References

  1. ^ Montes-Bradley, Eduardo. "Cortázar sin barba". Editorial Debate. Random House Mondadori. p. 35, Madrid. 2005.
  2. ^ "Julio Cortazar – Pagina Oficial". 25 March 2009. Archived from the original on 25 March 2009. Retrieved 12 February 2020.
  3. ^ Cortázar sin barba, by Eduardo Montes-Bradley. Random House Mondadori, Editorial Debate, Madrid, 2004
  4. ISBN 9788415098034
    p. 25
  5. ^ Montes-Bradley, Eduardo. "Cortázar sin barba". Editorial Debate. Random House Mondadori, p. 110, Madrid, 2005.
  6. ISBN 9788415098034
    , pp. 38 & 45,
  7. Historias de cronopios y de famas
    .
  8. ISBN 9788415098034
    , p. 343.
  9. YouTube
    Omar Prego, Muchnik Editores, 1985 (p. 33).
  10. YouTube
    TVE 1977.
  11. ISBN 9788415098034
    , pp. 118–119.
  12. ^ Illingworth, Dustin. "The Subtle Radicalism of Julio Cortázar's Berkeley Lectures". The Atlantic. Retrieved 29 March 2017.
  13. ^ Liukkonen, Petri. "Julio Cortázar". Books and Writers (kirjasto.sci.fi). Finland: Kuusankoski Public Library. Archived from the original on 28 April 2009.
  14. ISBN 9788415098034
    pp. 245–252.
  15. ISBN 950-731-205-6
    .
  16. ^ «Las cartas de Cortázar», article in the newspaper El Mundo (Madrid), 15 July 2012.
  17. ISBN 9505115938
    .
  18. ^ Una nueva biografía sostiene que Cortázar habría muerto de sida clarin.com, 7 June 2001
  19. ABC
    from 25 January 2009.
  20. ^ Julio Cortázar y James Joyce
  21. ^ Picón Garfield, Evelyn. Es Julio Cortázar un surrealista?, 1975
  22. ^ "El jazz en la obra de Cortázar" Archived 24 November 2013 at the Wayback Machine, p. 41.
  23. ^ 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.
  24. ISBN 9788415098034
    , p. 242.
  25. ^ Biblioteca Julio Cortázar, Fundación Juan March.
  26. ^ "Fallece Sergio Larraín, el mítico fotógrafo chileno que renunció al mundo | Cultura". La Tercera. 24 January 2012. Archived from the original on 8 February 2012. Retrieved 9 February 2012.
  27. ^ 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.
  28. ^ “No hice otra cosa que plagiar a Cortázar”, Pagina 12, 21 March 2012.
  29. ^ Roberto Bolaño, Between Parentheses: Essays, Articles, and Speeches, 1998–2003, trans. Natasha Wimmer, New York: New Directions, 2011, 353.
  30. ^ Debra A. Castillo, editor, Redreaming America: Toward a Bilingual American Culture, "Language Games," by Ilan Stavans, pp. 172–186, SUNY, New York, 2005.
  31. ^ Deena Metzger, Doors: A Fiction for Jazz Horn, Red Hen Press, Pasadena CA, 2004
  32. ^ "La Puñalada/ El tango de la vuelta". EZR. Archived from the original on 22 July 2020. Retrieved 23 July 2020.

Further reading

English

Spanish

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to Julio Cortázar.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Julio Cortázar.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Julio_Cortázar&oldid=1219131748"