Sometimes, humans dream around life and imagine the fantastic since it’s difficult to pin-down existence. It makes some things taste sweeter and can weigh less on the soul than our iron-cold trials. For me, I love the beautiful, the ugly, the forgotten, the improbable, and the reverie of the too-good-to-be-true. This makes the bland, numbed-down, and the sometimes backward society seem savory, or at least, easier to digest. This is also the reason why I enjoy literature. Reading gives the chance for one to escape, and it’s even better when its purpose is to create the fantastic and leave the reader in one’s own world.
To me, Julio Cortázar is a deadpan pioneer in this type of literature. He seems like a very serious man, a man who gives people a confounding interest, but what I believe the most, though, is that he is a man who dreams, a man who believes in the fantastic qualities of our puzzling life, and will stretch and contort his writing in order to show it. From his stories, I’ve gained a deep admiration of his style of writing, of him, and his profound ideas and thoughts. He’s the reader’s guide, a manipulator, the one who’s weaving the text, and the one who will open you up in order to find his hidden message. He is a man who seeks the subtleties of truth and isn’t afraid in illuminating it, and if you’ve missed it, maybe you weren’t meant to see it - I believe he would say something like that! Luckily, and no-doubt, purposely, I’ve found my experiences, myself, and others in his writing.
Cortázar’s writing stirs something very dark inside me, though. They all have an intention to explore issues, morals, and reasoning that have been buried, covered, and suspiciously forgotten in society - I feel that this is very true! In “Our Demeanor at Wakes,” he talks of hypocrisy and how people attend funerals for the oddest reasons:
“…if it is genuine, if the weeping is genuine because to weep is the only thing left to men and women
to do…then we stay at home and escort them from afar…But if my cousin’s leisurely investigation
discloses the merest suspicion that they’ve set up the machinery of hypocrisy…then the family gets
into its best duds, waits until the wake is already under way, and goes to present itself, a few at a
time…” (Cortázar 928)
This reminds me of how my dispersed family comes together only when we celebrate, or in this case, play mournful. We put on our clothes that we’ve packed away only for these types of events and pretend like we’ve kept in-touch. We are too stubborn to accept that the only fact that we attend these events is that we’re considered family. This sounds horrible, and I understand this, but we have friends whom live across the world that we keep in-touch with and happen to care more for, and if they happen to leave us, we simply don’t travel since they are considered “friends” - we practice a strange amount of hypocrisies and illogical mourning if our second-cousin-twice-removed-from-our-half-family dies, though!
With being a logical person, this doesn’t seem right to me. I’m old enough to understand that this is just a tradition and is pathetically expected. It’s even so encouraged and deemed correct that if you don’t show, then you’re kicked-off the family tree – I think I’m adopted since I can’t follow this train of thought! Cortázar points out how illogical and how paradoxed human’s thinking can absolve to when death occurs. I find this to be a very serious and taboo issue, and I even find it hard to accept his argument and not go-along with everyone else’s flawed thinking. In “Our Demeanor at Wakes,” Cortázar’s writing shows that he can be a very serious man, but I believe he’s more than just that.
Like his stories, Cortázar can take many shapes, and I found that I can, too. He proved that I’m carrying dark thoughts and that I can be too logical at times, but in his story “Axolotl,” I found that he can be intriguingly deep, and from it, I found that I’m more of a fantasist than him: “No transition and no surprise, I saw my face against the glass, I saw it on the other side of the glass. Then my face drew back and I understood” (Cortázar 1804). These are his words, but I swear I’ve spoken them before. I’ve also looked into others and have found myself, too. I can’t describe these situations or the feelings that I felt at those times, but it could be compared to waking-up from a coma.
My story isn’t special, and I don’t remember anything while I was underneath, but I do remember gaining consciousness for the first time after two days. It happened after I hit my head on a piece of wood that was waiting to be built upon a tree-house. I fell two stories and only remember waking-up around the hospital bed. Rather than waking-up to the hospital room, the room opened-up inside me like a conscious dream, and at the same time, I saw myself waking-up and struggling to move. These two images became one, and from there, I grew what others perceive as consciousness. I essentially didn’t feel anything and was aware of everything at one moment. In Cortázar’s story “Axolotl,” he gave me this impression – everything was said and done. I understand that it’s nearly impossible for others to perceive this type of event if it hasn’t happened to them, but it’s also hard to explain it, too. This is why I immensely enjoy his writing – he writes about the improbable!
Cortázar’s stories are about the fantastic, the different, the beautiful, and the sometimes dark, but all at the same time, he develops important themes underneath. Yes, he can be too serious at times, but if he wasn’t, I don’t think people would take his literature serious. He has a technique that has captured my interest and will keep me reading his stories for some time.
Great connections! I really like how, as you comment on Cortazar, you use his style of writing.
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