Bestiary

This little collection of eight strange and subtle short stories marked the start of Cortázar's "official" literary career. At least two of the stories had previously been published by Borges in his review Los Anales de Buenos Aires, and there's obviously some overlap with the Borgesian way of seeing the world, but the emphasis is different - Cortázar is clearly particularly interested in the point at which the strange collides with the everyday, and in what the close examination of that could tell us about the way the human mind works. The fantastic elements in his stories are often quite subtle, and never quite take over from the realistic ones. We are never quite permitted to decide whether the logic of the story requires us to show more take the fantastic element literally, or if it is pushing us to step back and see it as a delusion of the narrator.

In "Casa tomada" a brother and sister gradually abandon parts of their house to a something that they experience only as vague sounds coming from the rooms they have given up, whilst in "Bestiario" parts of the house where two children play are out of bounds because of the movements of a tiger we never get to see; in "Ómnibus" two passengers are inexplicably frightened because everyone else on the bus has a bunch of flowers and they don't.

Some are nearer to ghost-stories: in "Lejana" a woman has a dream-like encounter on a bridge in Budapest with the woman she's been dreaming about, whilst in "Las puertas del cielo" the narrator takes a recently-widowed friend to a dance hall and they both see his dead wife dancing a tango (thus undermining Borges's famous idea that what distinguishes Argentinian literature is that it is not recognisably Argentinian...). Interestingly, the story that worked least well for me was the most recognisably Borgesian one, "Cefalea", about some ranchers who are attempting to breed an imaginary and very sensitive creature, the mancuspia. show less

I´m happy that I have finally read this book, because Julio Cortázar´s Rayuela (Hopscotch) is one of my favorite books and I have read three other books of his short stories, all of which have satisfied me greatly. It took me a while to find a sufficiently low-priced version of Bestiario, and I was also slightly put off by the fact that the first story, Casa Tomada, is more or less a staple in middle-level Spanish literature classes, and I´ve read it multiple times without ever really enjoying it, in part because I didn´t yet understand the importance of Cortázar when I took my first classes in Spanish lit, and later because I didn´t particularly admire it compared to so many other stories (and one novel) of his that I love. I show more think it´s chosen for college students because it´s relatively short and is an acceptable example of Cortázar´s species of fantastic literature. A house is inhabited by a brother and sister, who live boring, isolated lives devoted to their hobbies (reading for him, sewing for her). Slowly, parts of their home are taken until they find themselves locking the front door and leaving. No explanation is given for why the house is being taken, or who is slowly advancing from room to room, forcing them out. It is told matter-of-factly, with certainty, and with the conviction that there is no going back to the taken rooms. Actually, as I think about it, it isn't a bad story, and I enjoyed it more today than in the past. The description of the siblings´ detachment from the world and the small satisfactions that they find in the division of chores and the pursuit of their hobbies, are related in a manner that is touching and human, while also hinting at the feelings of melancholy and sadness that they may feel as they pass their days alone. It is a fantastic story, but it is also a human one, and it shows how good Cortázar is at conveying simple and moving human emotions as his stories completely unhinge from reality.

In the stories that follow Casa Tomada, a lot of strange things happen. A man births baby bunnies through his mouth every month or so, and despairs when he moves to the city to take care of a friend´s apartment and the pace of his bunny regurgitations quickens, making it hard for him to keep his secret and maintain the cleanliness of the apartment. The story of Circe is retold in the relationship between a young man and a woman whose two previous fiancés died strange deaths. A child is sent to spend the summer at a house in the country where a tiger lives amongst the human inhabitants, and must be avoided. A woman feels that she must travel to a bridge in Hungary, where she will meet another woman who she knows is suffering. A man takes his grieving friend out dancing in Palermo (the Buenos Aires Palermo) where they see his recently deceased wife. Each story contains something strange and unexplainable, and what makes this detachment from reality work so well for Cortázar here, and in later books, is that his human beings are so grounded in reality that certain elements of their world can be altered fundamentally, while they still retain their humanity. His stories, when sad, are very sad. When his young men meet and court young women, their desperation to find love and their melancholy acceptance of failure resonated with me when I was 19 and still do. I almost feel as if Cortázar is something of the yang to Borges´ ying, both exploring opposite ends of the fantastic in their short fiction. Borges´ stories explore the intellectual side of the fantastic, while Cortázar delves into the emotional side, vividly depicting human emotions as he alters reality.

One other aspect of Cortázar´s short fiction that I like is his use of children and the child´s perspective. In the story Bestiario, the story focuses on a child, who is spent to live in a house where a tiger also lives. This fantastic scenario, when seen through the eyes of a child, becomes less fantastic and more matter-of-fact. It’s harder for the child to understand the adults that surround her in the country house than it is for her to understand the presence of the tiger. I think that using children here (and in a few stories in Final del Juego) is an interesting way to contrast things that are unbelievable with things that are normal. The world of adults is often a strange, difficult to understand place for children, and I like how Cortázar depicts children struggling to understand the emotions that they feel in the adults that surround them, and how this is often a greater challenge for the kids than understanding, for example, how one must keep their eye out for a tiger and make sure everyone knows what rooms can´t be used at a certain time because the tiger is in there.

I think Bestiario is a good introduction to Cortázar, and I´d recommend it to my friends. It´s pretty short and I got into it, reading it in one sitting. His later stories are more developed, more political, and more in touch with the real world and real people (I´m thinking of El Perseguidor, a story about a jazz musician, perhaps based on Charlie Parker, and his story about the Cuban revolution), and delve into the strange and fantastic less regularly. They´re all good, and whether read chronologically or otherwise, I appreciate the short fiction of Julio Cortázar and always try to get my friends to read him when I have the chance. show less

Las historias que me gustaron (que fueron solo dos) me gustaron bastante, pero no me satisfacen los finales. Las demás historias no me gustaron, que fueron la mayoría, y por ende las dos estrellas.

Tras terminar mi segundo libro -Bestiario- de Juio Cortázar, me queda la duda de cual será la clase de mariguana que consumía para diatribar sus cuenticos. Dos... y basta!

Sublime

Cortázar es el verdadero maestro del neofantástico.

Excelente libro