The Fantastic World of Julio Cortázar: A Reader’s Journey
Tales of Julio Cortázar
A New Perspective on Storytelling
Julio Cortázar developed a set of guidelines essential for any good story. He opened a new perspective on evaluating the genre, only slightly anticipated by Borges, which focuses on the act of reading and the reader’s role. Cortázar called this relationship the “kidnapping” of the reader and mentioned the need to create a “shock”: the same shock that led the storyteller to write.
Cortázar himself stated: “I have often wondered what the virtue of some memorable stories is. At the time, we read them along with many others, which could even be by the same authors. And behold, the years have passed, and we have lived and forgotten so much, but these small, seemingly insignificant stories, those grains of sand in the vast sea of literature, are still there, resonating within us.”
From Bestiary to Secret Weapons
“House Taken Over”
“House Taken Over” is a paradigmatic example. In a routine atmosphere, it tells of the monotonous life of two bachelor siblings who have lived in an old house for years. The sister works endlessly, weaving woolens; the brother occupies himself with his books and stamp collection. Suddenly, one day, they hear noises in the back of the house, the origin of which is unknown. “They’ve taken the back part,” says one of them. However, instead of investigating further, they gather their belongings and move to another part of the house, where they continue their routine as usual. Over the weeks, the sounds grow closer and move towards the front door. Finally, when the mysterious forces advance again, the siblings are expelled from their own home.
The absence of further explanation is one of the story’s most attractive elements for the reader. We can interpret the story in many ways: through the lens of fantasy (a ghost story), psychologically (an improbable parable about incest), or sociopolitically (as a potent allegory for the situation of the middle class in Argentina during the Peronist era).
The key to understanding lies in the description of the house and, more importantly, in the symbolism it represents. When analyzing this description, the house is divided into two zones: the deepest part, which the siblings barely occupied, and the outermost part, where they lived, separated by an inner gate. The noises come from the back of the house and gradually invade the front, until the characters are forced to leave. If we interpret the text within the parameters of the symbolist poetry advocated by the writer, the house would represent—as Gaston Bachelard observed—the inner self, and its various rooms would symbolize different states of mind. The front of the house represents conscious life, and the back represents the unconscious world of repressed impulses, desires, and undeclared compulsions. The siblings are trapped in their daily lives under a semblance of order, but these repressed elements seep darkly into their dreams, particularly Irene’s. Moreover, this “different” view of reality owes much to psychoanalysis and surrealism.
That “pain” is externalized in the form of unseen entities violating the order, “breaking the curtains, tearing the fabrics of the chairs.”
Children and imaginary play hold a privileged place in Cortázar’s work.
The Fantastic in Julio Cortázar
The fantasy genre has seen extraordinary development in the Río de la Plata region.
Cortázar diverged from Borges’s conception of unreality and aestheticized language. His fundamental ideas about fantasy revolve around expanding the limits of reality to encompass dreams, fantasies, and disturbances. Cortázar always starts with a real and immediate, everyday, normal setting (the house, subway, highway) so that the reader feels grounded in a familiar habitat, involved with what they read because it could happen to them at any time. In this context of normalcy, the unexpected occurs.
Cortázar masterfully represents the arrival of foreign forces into the everyday order, the usual reality: “The crack in the unshakeable reality that draws us all,” as another master of the fantastic, Adolfo Bioy Casares, put it.
These fissures in normalcy allow us to glimpse “the other side” and perceive hidden realities.
“The Condemned Door”
The protagonist is a businessman staying at a hotel in Montevideo. At night, he hears crying in the next room, followed by the murmur of a woman. The noise lasts for hours and prevents him from sleeping. The two rooms are connected by a locked interior door. Night after night, the sounds repeat until, tired of not being able to rest, the man presses against the door and begins to imitate the cries of children in a grotesque manner. Everything seems to be resolved. There is silence on the other side, and the next day, the woman leaves the hotel. But that night, the man wakes up and hears the child’s cry again. The ending is open.
After Hopscotch
Cronopios and Famas
Cronopios and Famas is one of the high points of Cortázar’s more ironic and playful side. The book is a collection of short stories featuring imaginary beings called “cronopios,” a kind of green microbe with a rebellious and imaginative nature. They are contrasted with the “famas,” who are much more conventional and sensible. Absurd humor is the keynote of these surprising stories. A memorable section of the book is entitled “Instructions.” Here, Cortázar mocks rationalist attitudes through a series of parodies of brochures for certain commercial products: “How to Climb a Ladder,” “How to Kill Ants in Rome,” “Instructions on How to Be Afraid”…
“The Southern Thruway”
“The Southern Thruway” is one of these stories. Thousands of motorists are trapped in a gigantic traffic jam on the Marseille-Paris highway. The situation gradually escalates to incredible proportions. For months, the handful of people who star in the story must survive through solidarity and the adoption of certain rules that protect them from other motorists. Some die, others fall in love, all fighting for survival. In the end, little by little, without knowing how, the traffic jam clears, and the cars can move again toward the capital. Each of the characters imperceptibly separates from the lives of their comrades, and all return to their daily routines in Paris.
Someone Walking Around and Untimely
In Someone Walking Around (part of Untimely, 1982), Cortázar, without abandoning the metaphysical concerns of his earlier books, projected himself strongly onto a broader horizon, engaging with the political and social traumas of the Latin American world. In the first of these books, he deals with the disappeared in Argentina.