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==Education and teaching career==
==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 school]]s. In 1938 he published a volume of [[sonnet]]s under the pseudonym '''Julio Denis.''' He would later disparage this volume. 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]].
Although he never completed his studies at the [[University of Buenos Aires]] where he studied [[Philosophy]] and [[Languages]], he taught in several provincial [[secondary school]]s. In 1938 he published a volume of [[sonnet]]s under the pseudonym '''Julio Denis.''' He would later disparage this volume. 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]].siempre fue un cara de nalga y una lacra para sus madrianosjeps porque francia es de maricones!! CAMPIONI DEL MONDO ITALIA!!!


==Paris and later years (33 years)==
==Paris and later years (33 years)==

Revision as of 17:33, 23 November 2007

Julio Cortázar
BornAugust 26 1914
Brussels, Belgium
DiedFebruary 12 1984
Paris, France
Pen nameJulio Denis
Occupationnovelist, poet and translator
Genrefiction, prose, epic
Literary movementpostmodern

Julio Cortázar (August 26, 1914 – February 12, 1984) was a Belgian-born Argentine intellectual and author of experimental novels and short stories. He was born the same year as William Burroughs and married three times, to Aurora Bernárdez, Ugné Karvelis and Carol Dunlop. Most of his work was written in Paris, France from 1951 until his demise. Hopscotch is Julio's magnum opus.

Early life

Brussels, Belgium

Julio Cortázar was born to Argentine parents on August 26, 1914, in Brussels, Belgium, where his father was involved in a commercial venture as part of Argentina's diplomatic presence. Many years later, Cortázar would say "my birth was a product of tourism and diplomacy."

Because the Cortázar family were nationals of a neutral country not involved in World War I, they were able to pass through Switzerland and later reach Barcelona, where they lived for a year and a half. Cortázar regularly played at the Park Güell and its colourful ceramics would remain vivid in his memory for many years.

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 a year his junior. During his childhood, Cortázar's father abandoned the family; Cortázar would never see him again. In Banfield Cortázar lived in a house with a yard out back from which he obtained inspiration for future stories. His time in Banfield, however, was not happy; 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. 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 to everybody else's".

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. He would later disparage this volume. 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.siempre fue un cara de nalga y una lacra para sus madrianosjeps porque francia es de maricones!! CAMPIONI DEL MONDO ITALIA!!!

Paris and later years (33 years)

In 1951, in opposition to the government of Juan Domingo Perón, Cortázar emigrated to France, where he lived and worked until his demise. 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 government in Nicaragua. He died reportedly of leukemia in Paris in 1984 and was interred there in the Cimetière de Montparnasse with Carol Dunlop. Some people have stated that he died from AIDS contracted via a blood transfusion; sources close to Cortázar have denied this. He did suffer from melomania.

Montparnasse, Paris

Legacy

Julio Cortázar is highly regarded as a master of short story narrations. 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 under the title Blow-Up and Other Stories in deference to the English title of Michelangelo Antonioni's celebrated film noir of 1966 (Blowup) inspired by Julio Cortázar's story Las Babas del Diablo.

Cortázar also influenced Jean-Luc Godard to write Week End with La Autopista del Sur. One of his most notable short fictions is El Perseguidor (The Pursuer) 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, Hopscotch, has been praised by other Latin American writers including José Lezama Lima, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. The novel has an open-ended structure that invites the reader to choose between a linear and a non-linear mode of reading. 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 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, baptizes a small plaza in the Île Saint-Louis of Paris in the name of Julio Cortázar.

Notable works

Originally published as End of the Game and Other Stories in 1963
A compilation of stories translated into English from the books Final del juego and Las armas secretas
File:JoanMiro-DeuxPersonnagesFantastiques.jpg
Magical Surrealism
Wikiquote has quotations related to Julio Cortázar.

Bibliography

Center of the Mandala
  • Julio Cortazar (Modern Critical Views) / Bloom, Harold., 2005
  • Mothers, lovers, and others : the short stories of Julio Cortázar / Schmidt-Cruz, Cynthia., 2004
  • Julio Cortazar (Bloom's Major Short Story Writers) / Bloom, Harold., 2004
  • Understanding Julio Cortazar / 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
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