Julio Florencio Cortázar (Latin American Spanish: [ˈxuljo koɾˈtasaɾ]; August 26, 1914 – February 12, 1984) was an Argentine writer who later became a French citizen. He was a novelist, short story writer, poet, essayist, and translator. Cortázar is known as one of the founders of the Latin American Boom, a movement that greatly influenced Spanish-speaking readers and writers in America and Europe.
Cortázar spent his childhood, teenage years, and early adulthood in Argentina. In 1951, he moved to France, where he lived for over three decades. He also lived in Italy, Spain, and Switzerland during his lifetime.
Biography
Julio Cortázar was born on August 26, 1914, in Ixelles, a town in Brussels, Belgium. His parents, Julio José Cortázar and María Herminia Descotte, were both from Argentina. His father worked for the Argentine diplomatic service in Belgium.
At the time of Cortázar’s birth, Belgium was occupied by German soldiers under Kaiser Wilhelm II. After German forces arrived, Cortázar and his family moved to Zürich, Switzerland, where María Herminia’s parents, Victoria Gabel and Louis Descotte (a French citizen), were staying in a neutral area. The family lived in Switzerland for two years, first in Zürich and then in Geneva, before briefly moving to Barcelona. By the end of 1919, the family settled outside Buenos Aires, Argentina.
When Julio was six years old, his father left the family, and they had no further contact with him. Cortázar spent most of his childhood in Banfield, a suburb south of Buenos Aires, with his mother and younger sister. The home in Banfield, including its backyard, inspired some of his stories. However, in a letter written in 1963, he described this time as “full of servitude, excessive touchiness, terrible and frequent sadness.” He was often sick and spent much of his childhood in bed reading. His mother, who knew many languages and loved reading, introduced him to the works of Jules Verne, a writer he admired for the rest of his life. In a 1975 magazine article, Cortázar wrote that his childhood felt like a “haze full of goblins and elves,” with a unique sense of space and time.
At 18, Cortázar earned a qualification to teach elementary school. Later, he studied philosophy and languages at the University of Buenos Aires but left due to financial problems without completing his degree. He taught at two high schools in Buenos Aires Province, one in Chivilcoy and another in Bolivar. In 1938, he published a book of sonnets under the name Julio Denis, titled Presencia. He later said this was his only mistake, as he believed he should not publish anything until he was sure of its meaning.
In 1944, Cortázar became a professor of French literature at the National University of Cuyo in Mendoza, Argentina. However, he resigned in 1946 due to political pressure from Peronists. After that, he worked as a translator and as director of the Cámara Argentina del Libro, a trade organization.
In 1949, he published a play titled Los Reyes (The Kings), based on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. In 1980, he gave eight lectures at the University of California, Berkeley.
In 1951, Cortázar moved to France, where he lived and worked for the rest of his life, though he traveled widely. From 1952 onward, he worked for UNESCO as a translator. He wrote most of his major works in Paris or in Saignon, a town in southern France, where he also had a home. In later years, he spoke out against human rights abuses in Latin America and supported the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, Fidel Castro’s Cuban revolution, and Salvador Allende’s socialist government in Chile.
Cortázar had three long-term romantic relationships with women. His first wife was Aurora Bernárdez, an Argentine translator, whom he married in 1953. They separated in 1968 when he began a relationship with Ugnė Karvelis, a Lithuanian writer and filmmaker. Karvelis reportedly encouraged Cortázar’s interest in politics, though he had already become politically aware after visiting Cuba in 1963. In 1981, he married Canadian writer Carol Dunlop. After Dunlop died in 1982, Aurora Bernárdez cared for Cortázar during his final illness and inherited the rights to his works, as he had wished.
In August 1981, Cortázar suffered a serious stomach bleeding but survived. French President François Mitterrand gave him French citizenship. In 1983, after democracy returned to Argentina, Cortázar visited his homeland for the last time. He was greeted warmly by fans, but the government, led by President Raúl Alfonsín, refused to meet him.
Cortázar died in Paris in 1984 and is buried in the cimetière du Montparnasse. His death was reported to be caused by leukemia, though some sources say he died from AIDS due to a blood transfusion.
Works
Julio Cortázar began writing during his early school years. His first published book was a collection of sonnets inspired by Stéphane Mallarmé, titled Presencia ("Presence"), released in 1938 under the name Julio Denis. He also wrote several short stories using this pseudonym. His first major work published under his real name was Los Reyes (1949, "The Monarchs"), a poetic drama that received little attention. In the late 1940s, however, his short stories gained interest, especially after the story Casa Tomada ("House Taken Over") appeared in a literary magazine edited by Jorge Luis Borges.
Cortázar became well-known for his short stories, which were collected in books like Bestiario (1951), Final del Juego (1956), and Las armas secretas (1959). These works helped establish his reputation as a writer of short fiction. His stories often include magical or mythical elements, placing ordinary characters in strange or unsettling situations. In 1967, English translations of his stories by Paul Blackburn were published by Pantheon Books as End of the Game and Other Stories; the book was later renamed Blow-up and Other Stories. Cortázar wrote four novels during his lifetime: 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). Except for Los premios, which was translated by Elaine Kerrigan, these novels were translated into English by Gregory Rabassa. Two other novels, El examen and Divertimento, were written before 1960 but published after his death.
Hopscotch, his most important novel, helped Cortázar become one of the leading writers of the Latin American Boom in the 1960s. It has been called the greatest Latin American novel of the 20th century. Other notable works from this time include Historias de cronopios y famas (1962), a book of short, unusual prose passages, and an expanded version of Final del Juego (1964), which added ten new stories.
Cortázar was influenced by English, French, and Spanish-American literature, including writers like Jorge Luis Borges and Edgar Allan Poe. His use of inner thoughts and flowing narrative styles was inspired by James Joyce, but his main influences were Surrealism and the spontaneous style of jazz. This influence appears in Hopscotch and the story El perseguidor ("The Pursuer"), which Cortázar based on the life of jazz musician Charlie Parker.
Cortázar also wrote poetry, plays, and non-fiction, some of which were connected to visual art. In the 1960s, he worked with artist José Silva to create two books called La vuelta al día en ochenta mundos and Último Round, which combined his writings with photographs and illustrations, similar to traditional almanacs from rural Argentina. One of his final works was a collaboration with Carol Dunlop titled The Autonauts of the Cosmoroute, which described a journey from Paris to Marseille in a Volkswagen camper named Fafner, written in a humorous style. As a translator, he produced Spanish versions of Robinson Crusoe, Marguerite Yourcenar’s Mémoires d'Hadrien, and all of Edgar Allan Poe’s prose works.
Influence and legacy
Michelangelo Antonioni's film Blowup (1966) was inspired by Julio Cortázar's story "Las babas del diablo," which was based on a photo taken by Chilean photographer Sergio Larraín during a photo shoot outside Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Cortázar also appeared briefly in Antonioni's film, playing a homeless man whose photograph is taken by the main character, David Hemmings. Cortázar's story "La autopista del sur" ("The Southern Thruway") influenced Jean-Luc Godard's film Week End (1967). The filmmaker Manuel Antín directed three films based on Cortázar's stories: Cartas de mamá, Circe, and Intimidad de los parques.
Chilean novelist Roberto Bolaño said Cortázar was a major influence on his novel The Savage Detectives: "It is clear that I am permanently indebted to the work of Borges and Cortázar."
Puerto Rican novelist Giannina Braschi used Cortázar's story "Las babas del diablo" as the basis for the chapter titled "Blow-up" in her bilingual novel Yo-Yo Boing! (1998). This chapter includes scenes with Cortázar's characters La Maga and Rocamadour. Cortázar is mentioned and praised in Rabih Alameddine's 1998 novel Koolaids: The Art of War.
North American novelist Deena Metzger credits Cortázar as a co-author of her novel Doors: A Fiction for Jazz Horn, which was written 20 years after Cortázar's death.
In Buenos Aires, a school, a public library, and a square in the Palermo neighborhood are named after Cortázar.