Julio Cortázar

Cortázar lived his childhood, adolescence, and incipient maturity in Argentina. In 1951, he settled in France for what would prove to be more than three decades. However, he also lived in Italy, Spain, and Switzerland.

Biography

Early life

Julio Cortázar was born on 26 August 1914, in Ixelles, a municipality of Brussels, Belgium. According to biographer Miguel Herráez, his parents, Julio José Cortázar and María Herminia Descotte, were Argentine citizens, and his father was attached to the Argentine diplomatic service in Belgium.

At the time of Cortázar's birth, Belgium was occupied by the German troops of Kaiser Wilhelm II. After German troops arrived in Belgium, Cortázar and his family moved to Zürich where María Herminia's parents, Victoria Gabel and Louis Descotte (a French national), were waiting in neutral territory. The family group spent the next two years in Switzerland, first in Zürich, then Geneva, before moving for a short period to Barcelona. The Cortázars settled outside of Buenos Aires by the end of 1919.

Cortázar's father left when Julio was six, and the family 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, with its backyard, was a source of inspiration for some of his stories. Despite this, in a letter to Graciela M. de Solá on 4 December 1963, he described this period of his life as "full of servitude, excessive touchiness, terrible and frequent sadness." He was a sickly child and spent much of his childhood in bed reading. His mother, who spoke several languages and was a great reader herself, introduced her son to the works of Jules Verne, whom Cortázar admired for the rest of his life. In the magazine Plural (issue 44, Mexico City, May 1975) he wrote: "I spent my childhood in a haze full of goblins and elves, with a sense of space and time that was different from everybody else's".

Education and teaching career

Cortázar obtained a qualification as an elementary school teacher at the age of 18. He would later pursue higher education in philosophy and languages at the University of Buenos Aires Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, but left for financial reasons without receiving a degree. According to biographer Montes-Bradley, Cortázar taught in at least two high schools in Buenos Aires Province, one in the city of Chivilcoy, the other in Bolivar. In 1938, using the pseudonym of Julio Denis, he self-published a volume of sonnets, Presencia. He later repudiated this work, saying in a 1977 interview for Spanish television that publishing it was his only transgression to the principle of not publishing any books until he was convinced that what was written in them was what he meant to say.

In 1944, he became professor of French literature at the National University of Cuyo in Mendoza, but owing to political pressure from Peronists, he resigned the position in June 1946. He subsequently worked as a translator and as director of the Cámara Argentina del Libro, a trade organization.

In 1949, he published a play, Los Reyes (The Kings), based on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur.

In 1980, Cortázar delivered eight lectures at the University of California, Berkeley.

Years in France

In 1951, Cortázar immigrated to France, where he lived and worked for the rest of his life, though he travelled widely. From 1952 onwards, he worked intermittently for UNESCO as a translator. He wrote most of his major works in Paris or in Saignon in the south of France, where he also maintained a home. In later years he became actively engaged in opposing abuses of human rights in Latin America, and was a supporter of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua as well as Fidel Castro's Cuban revolution and Salvador Allende's socialist government in Chile.

Cortázar had three long-term romantic relationships with women. The first was with Aurora Bernárdez, an Argentine translator, whom he married in 1953. They separated in 1968 when he became involved with the Lithuanian writer, editor, translator, and filmmaker Ugnė Karvelis, whom he never formally married, and who reportedly stimulated Cortázar's interest in politics, although his political sensibilities had already been awakened by a visit to Cuba in 1963, the first of multiple trips that he would make to that country throughout the remainder of his life. In 1981 he married Canadian writer Carol Dunlop. After Dunlop's death in 1982, Aurora Bernárdez accompanied Cortázar during his final illness and, in accordance with his longstanding wishes, inherited the rights to all his works.

Last years and death

In August 1981, he suffered a gastric hemorrhage; his life was miraculously saved, and he continued to write. President François Mitterrand granted him French nationality. In 1983, after the restoration of democracy in Argentina, Cortázar made one last trip to his homeland, where he was welcomed by his admirers, who would stop him in the street or ask for autographs, in contrast to the indifference of the authorities—President Raúl Alfonsín refused to see him.

Cortázar died in Paris in 1984, and is interred in the cimetière du Montparnasse. The cause of his death was reported to be leukemia, though some sources state that he died from AIDS as a result of receiving a blood transfusion.