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Delvaux and Cortázar

2005; Routledge; Volume: 82; Issue: 3-4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/1475382052000342716

1478-3428

Peter Standish,

Historical and Literary Studies

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes On Rayuela there is an excellent study which reproduces several paintings by Mondrian and argues their close relevance to the novel. See Gareth A. Davies, ‘Mondrian, Abstract Art, and Theosophy in Julio Cortázar's Rayuela’, Proceedings of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society (Literary and Historical Section), XVI, Part VI (1976) 125–47. Other collaborations followed, with Silva, with Luis Tomasello, and with photographers such as Sara Facio. For a full account see Peter Standish, Understanding Julio Cortázar(Columbia: Univ. of South Carolina Press, 2001), chapter 7. Barbara Emerson, Delvaux (Antwerp: Fonds Mercator, 1985), 24. Antoine Terrasse, Paul Delvaux (Paris: Filipacchi, 1972), 27. Paul Aloïse De Bock, Paul Delvaux: l'homme, le peintre, psychologie d'un art(Brussels: Pauvert, 1967), 36. Minotauro was also the name of the publisher of the first edition of Historias de cronopios y famas (1962). See Emerson, Delvaux, 63. ‘Paul Delvaux reste embrigadé dans un surréalisme de commande qu'on accepte encore plus volontiers en littérature qu'en peinture’. This comment was made by Armand Eggermont in his art review ‘Les Arts plastiques’ for the magazine Le Thyrse (Brussels), XXXV (1938), 146. Quoted by José Vovelle, Le Surréalisme en Belgique (Brussels: André de Rache, 1972), 167. René Gaffé, Paul Delvaux ou les rêves éveillés(Brussels: éditions La Boétie, 1945), 13. Evelyn Picón Garfield, Es Julio Cortázar un surrealista?(Madrid: Gredos, 1975). Julio Cortázar, Obra crítica, I (Madrid: Alfaguara, 1994), 103–04 (Cortázar's italics). The words are Delvaux's, in his preface to Emerson, Delvaux. Emerson, Delvaux, 19. Jacques Sojcher, Paul Delvaux ou la passion puérile (Paris: éditions Cercle d'Art, 1991), 7. Delvaux became fascinated by skeletons he saw at the Natural History Museum. Once he had taken them out of the attic, he made them serve a variety of functions, sometimes making them the sole characters in his paintings (for example in Ecce Homo[1957] and Squelettes en conversation [1944]) and sometimes integrating them fully as ‘unfleshed’ beings alongside others who are not (as in L'Appel [1944], and Conversation [1944]). For the Hetzel edition published in Paris in 1867. Julio Cortázar, La vuelta al día en ochenta mundos (México DF: Siglo Veintiuno, 1967). This, I have been unable to locate. It occurs to me that it may even be a joke. Julio Cortázar, Último round, 8th ed. (México D.F.: Siglo XXI, 1983), 243. Emerson, Delvaux, 141. Earlier I referred to Delvaux's musical talents. He was by all accounts a melomaniac, like Cortázar. He has said that listening to Beethoven's late quartets provided the inspiration behind this painting. David Scott, Paul Delvaux: Surrealizing the Nude(London: Reaktion Books, 1992), 73. Marcel Paquet, Delvaux et l'essence de la peinture(Paris: éditions de la Différence, 1982), 39. Mira Jacob, Paul Delvaux: Graphic Work(New York: Rizzoli, 1975), 16. Sojcher, Paul Delvaux ou la passion puérile, 21. Jacques Meuris, L'Aube sur la ville(Paris: Brachot, 1990), 20–21. See Standish, Understanding Julio Cortázar, 45–47 and passim. Cynthia Schmidt-Cruz has recently published a book on the subject: Mothers, Lovers and Others (Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 2004). Also relevant is the first chapter of René Prieto, Body of Writing(Durham, NC: Duke U. P., 2000). In La vuelta … he also talks of his own early fascination with trains. See Emerson, Delvaux, 59. Maurice Nadeau, Les Dessins de Paul Delvaux (Paris: Denöel, 1967), 13. ‘Siestas’ seems to me to be a successful story, but Speratti-Piñero thinks that ‘con libertad literaria, aunque no con mano maestra, Cortázar ensambla en “Siestas” el intenso erotismo de Paul Delvaux’. She goes on to say that it is in 62, Modelo para armar that Delvaux is used to best effect. When she put the idea to Cortázar he denied any conscious application of his knowledge of Delvaux in writing that book, but he found some of her suggestions regarding an unconscious influence persuasive. See Emma Susana Speratti-Piñero, ‘Julio Cortázar y tres pintores belgas’, NRFH, XXIV (1975), 541–53 (pp. 546–49).