Why do we love it so much?
It will be because of his permanent consistency and his commitment to good causes;
for his excellent and vibrant literature that included us, that made us feel complicit in his thoughts, his surrealism, his views of love, politics, cinema, jazz, Paris and Buenos Aires.
Because it took us from the Güemes Gallery on Florida Street directly and non-stop to the Galerie Vivienne at 4 Rue des Petits Champs in Paris.
Because he guided us to find the elusive Maga on the Pont des Arts.
Julio Cortázar had arrived in that wonderful city, a refuge for talented men and women of the world, in 1951,
angry with those serious clumsinesses of Peronism
, like the one that had turned Jorge Luis Borges into a poultry inspector.
That boy who had studied at Mariano Acosta and
had been a teacher in Chivilcoy and Mendoza, was 37 years old and had his life ahead of him.
He stayed at the Maison Argentine de la Cité, in room 40 of that university residence.
Then he would wander through various departments with his partner, Aurora Bernárdez.
There, but especially in the Old Navy Café, still located today at 150 of the historic Boulevard de Saint Germán and in some corner of the Arsenal Library on rue Sully, none other than
Hopscotch
was born from his Olivetti on June 28, 1963,
a book destined to revolutionize universal literature
, a beautiful bridge between Paris and Buenos Aires, between love and heartbreak.
Julio Cortázar (1914-84).
AFP Photo
Cortazar's dreams
He made his living as a translator for UNESCO, and
shared evenings and dreams with Latin American friends
, touring the jazz bars and the magical nights of the Olympia, where he listened to his beloved Charlie Parker and Miles Davis, among others.
A year earlier he had published his wonderful
Historias de Cronopios y Famas
, a tribute to surrealism.
He never stopped talking about us
and inviting us to meet or find someone who is out there, in his stories.
There are the bus trips, childhood, hospitals, cemeteries, relationships, family homes, offices, boxing rings, impossible loves and others, the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, the teachers, the students. , the aunts, the bars, the utopias and everyday realities.
Would we find Julio? Where?
On that journey towards nothingness that begins in the London confectionery, on Avenida de Mayo and Florida?
In those collections of unusual things and denunciations of universal infamy that he compiled in
Último Round
and
Around the Day in 80 Worlds
?
One of the first editions of Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar.
Clarín Archive
In those wonderful stories of
Bestiario
,
End of the game
,
The secret weapons
,
All the fires the fire
,
Octahedron
,
Someone who walks around
,
We love Glenda
and
Deshoras
so much .
Or the happy and curious traveler with his beloved Carol Dunlop from
The Autonauts of the Cosmopista
?
He was able to return to his country in 1973. He came from Chile, to visit his friends, Pablo Neruda, Víctor Jara and Salvador Allende.
He arrived worried, palpitating the blow that was already underway.
During the dictatorship he was one of the most active voices of the resistance from exile
, he wrote unforgettable texts that would be collected in the book Argentina, years of cultural barbed wire.
His last trip was to his beloved Argentina shortly after the inauguration of Raúl Alfonsín.
He gave several interviews and
tried to meet with the new democratic president
.
The bureaucracy prevented it.
He returned to France to die in his beloved Paris on February 12, 1984.
His grave in the Montparnasse cemetery is one of the most visited
.
Her tombstone, always with red flowers and books, reassures us, he is not alone, he is accompanied on this trip by two of her loves, her last partner, Carol Dunlop, and her first Aurora Bernárdez.
It doesn't appear on the marble, but surely, there is no doubt,
La Maga, from time to time, walks around there.
EM
See also
See also
Alberto Olmedo, from Captain Piluso to unforgettable capocomic
See also
See also
Luis Alberto Spinetta, the Skinny with a good memory
See also
See also
Jorge Luis Borges and his relationship of love and heartbreak with Argentina