Bestiary (Cortázar)
"Bestiarium" is the first volume with stories by the Argentine writer Julio Cortázar , published in Buenos Aires in 1951 ; the same year that Cortázar voluntarily went into exile in Paris . The volume contains eight short stories, including one with the title of the book - Bestiary . Animals play a role in three, depending on the interpretation maybe four of the stories; but less in the sense of a traditional animal poem, but, as for example in Kafka's story “ The Metamorphosis ”, embedded in situations of modern society .
meaning
Bestiarium marks the beginning of the narrative style typical of Cortázar , with which he “set the paradises and hells that open up on the border between day and dream, security and insecurity, against the one-dimensionality of so-called realism with often goblin-like wit and black humor . “Cortázar's book aroused much enthusiasm, such as B. with Gabriel García Márquez , who recognized a role model in Cortázar: “I had read Bestiarium, his first volume of short stories, […] and already after the first page I realized that I was dealing with a writer had how I wanted to be one when I grew up. "
The story "The occupied house"
The first story - “The Occupied House” - is the most famous in the volume and possibly the most frequently interpreted of all of Cortázar's stories. She begins with the sentence: “We liked the house, it was not only spacious and old (today, when more and more old houses are being demolished because of the good price that can be obtained for their building materials), it also harbored memories of our great-grandparents , to the grandfather on my father's side, to our parents and to our whole childhood. ”The first-person narrator lives in the house with his sister Irene and describes everyday life together. Both are at an advanced age and live a "humble and quiet sibling marriage". It is honestly honest, as it is ironically summed up at one point : "Irene was a girl who had the gift of never disturbing anyone." With the knitting of socks and scarves, the reading of French literature and the preparation time passes by mate . Until one evening, while walking into the kitchen to the mate kettle, something breaks into everyday life: a dull noise suddenly sounds in several places in the house. The brother quickly locked the door to the part of the house from which the noise came. What follows is not much: a short drop of the knitting needles, the statement that one can no longer enter the occupied part, and then the knitting continues and the mate is prepared with special care. On the other hand, honesty and the feeling of threat or dullness flow into one another. Insomnia spreads and thinking stops: “We were comfortable and slowly stopped thinking. You can live without thinking. "
Until it finally comes, as it has to, and the second part of the house is also occupied. Brother and sister flee into the street without having time to take anything with them. You walk down the street, not without first carefully locking the house and sunk the key in the next gully.
The story has been interpreted in many different ways, but most often in the sense that the expulsion from the house is to be read as a parable for the expulsion of Cortázar from Argentina through Peron's politics .
The rest of the stories
The other narratives are characterized by different narrative styles - sometimes first- person narration , sometimes narration from the perspective of a third person, in one case even a consistent we-narration - and usually lead the reader to places in or near Buenos Aires, even once in the streets of Budapest :
Someone is writing to a woman in Paris, whose apartment he currently lives in, in whom, through a miraculous process, more and more rabbits appear, which clog the apartment until even the special English glue no longer helps; a daughter of wealthy people in Buenos Aires deals with palindromes while falling asleep - relief pillars, sleep, etc. - until she realizes that "the experiences of a Budapest beggar weigh on her like a curse", then Clara, who is on the bus to her friend Ana is "to chat a little over nice, sweet tea, radio music and chocolate"; and is watched more and more intensely by the other passengers; the description of a situation in animal breeding, inspired by an article about homeopathy , in which diseases occur again and again, which are treated according to their symptoms with different homeopathic remedies and a lot of humor: "We have already thought whether this is not more the clinical picture for Phosphorus is because he is also frightened by the scent of the flowers ”.; the story of Mario, who falls in love with Delia, whose first two husbands perished, who is obsessed with making liqueurs and chocolates that Mario tastes until he becomes her fiancé; an evening in a milonga in Buenos Aires, not without distance from the monsters visiting the milonga; Finally, “Bestiary”, the story with the title of the book, in which a girl visits a family in the country, in whose house and garden a tiger lives, so that before entering the room it is always checked where the tiger is stops.
Quotes
"'If you don't mind, please bring El Hogar with you on the way back," said Señora Roberta, leaning back in the armchair to take a siesta. Clara arranged the medication on the small serving table and looked around the room once more. Nothing was missing, the young Matilde would continue to take care of Señora Roberta, and the maid knew what to do. She could go now, she had the whole Saturday afternoon to herself, at half past five her friend Ana was waiting for her to chat a little over nice, sweet tea, radio music and chocolate. "
“He shouldn't have cared about it, but this time the whispering, the submissive face of mother Celeste when she told Aunt Bebè about it, and the sullen disbelief in his father's expression pained him. At first it was the woman from above, her way of slowly turning her head like a cow and ruminating the words with the delight of a herbivorous cattle. But from the girl in the pharmacy - "Not that I believe it, but if it were true, how dreadful" - and even Don Emilio, always as discreet as his pencils and his account books wrapped in oilcloth. "
“I would like to add here that I went to this milonga because of the monsters, I don't know of any other milonga where so many come together. They appear at eleven o'clock at night, come from obscure areas of the city, calm and self-assured, alone or in pairs, the women almost dwarfs with a yellowish-red complexion, the guys like Javanese or Mocovies, in tight-fitting plaid or black suits, the thick hair with a lot Diligence tamed, droplets of brillantine that shimmer blue and pink in the light, the women with enormous high hairstyles that make them even more dwarfed, difficult, complicated hairstyles, and therefore their fatigue and their pride. "
expenditure
- Bestiario. Buenos Aires, 1951
- Bestiary. Stories. Translated by Rudolf Wittkopf. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1979, ISBN 3-518-37043-X
Individual evidence
- ^ Ute stamp: Julio Cortázar - Ruhelos , in: Die Zeit , February 17, 1984
- ↑ Gabriel García Márquez: The Argentine who managed that everyone loved him , in: Freibeuter , No. 20, Berlin 1984, ISSN 0171-9289
- ↑ a b Claudia Gatzmeier: Fantastics in the narrative work of Julio Cortázar (excerpt), autumn 1995, in: Quetzal. Politics and Literature in Latin America
- ↑ a b c Julio Cortázar: Bestiary. Stories. Translated by Rudolf Wittkopf. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1979, p. 7.
- ^ Julio Cortázar: Bestiary. Stories. Translated by Rudolf Wittkopf. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1979, p. 11
- ↑ Dagmar Ploetz : The uncertain me. Julio Cortázar's short stories "The Persecutor" , in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , July 10, 1979
- ↑ a b Julio Cortázar: Bestiary. Stories. Translated by Rudolf Wittkopf. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1979, p. 36 (story "Omnibus")
- ^ Julio Cortázar: Bestiary. Stories. Translated by Rudolf Wittkopf. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1979, p. 50
- ^ Julio Cortázar: Bestiary. Stories. Translated by Rudolf Wittkopf. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1979, p. 65 (story "Circe")
- ^ Julio Cortázar: Bestiary. Stories. Translated by Rudolf Wittkopf. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1979, p. 93 (story "Die Pforten des Himmels")