Biography of Julio Cortázar

Experiments with words

August 26, 1914
February 12, 1984
Julio Cortázar was born on August 26, 1914 in Brussels, Argentine parents (his father, a diplomat, is located there on a mission at that time). Esteemed by Borges, often compared to Chekhov or Edgar Allan Poe, Cortázar was a great Argentine writer in kinds of fantasy, mystery and metaphysics. His stories have the special feature of not always follow a temporal linearity; her characters also often express a deep psychological analysis. He wrote his first novel at the age of nine. The young Cortázar hidden law the works of Edgar Allan Poe and starts playing the piano; will add later studying the trumpet and sax, enjoying jazz music over time. In 1932 he obtained his Licentiate's degree at the "Escuela Normal Mariano Acosta," then he enrolled at the Faculty of philosophy and letters, University of Buenos Aires.
When he was offered to teach in a city in the province, given the precarious economic situation of the family, accept abandoning their studies. In 1938 he published "Presencia", his first collection of poems, under the pseudonym Julio Denis. In the early ' 40 publishes critical articles and essays on various writers such as Rimbaud or Keats. After some experience as a translator, from 1952 he worked as an independent translator for Unesco. Aurora wedding Bernandez in 1953; She then translate all the tales and most of the essays by Edgar Allan Poe. Her past lives between France and Argentina find mature fruits in his masterpiece "Rayuela, play in the world," antinovel (the title would originally have been "Mandala") in which the Parisian experience and argentina joined in a puzzle in which appear the a the exact complement each other. The book consists of more than 300 paragraphs which should be read in the order specified by the author at the beginning of the novel, or in order of appearance. This subjective choice leaving the reader marks the greatest originality of the novel. Beyond this feature the opera tells of everyday moments intertwined with a philosophical analysis of life.
Article contributed by the team of collaborators.