Hopscotch
by Julio Cortázar
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Description
When La Maga, his mistress, disappears, Horacio Oliveira, an Argentinian writer living in Paris, decides to return home to Buenos Aires, in a novel in which the chapters are designed to be read out of numerical order but in a set sequence.Tags
Recommendations
Member Recommendations
by Damienmp
corneggs in the same mood, jazz and bohemian characters
caflores Gente que busca y no sabe qué.
sparemethecensor Great experimental works where you get something different from the book depending on the order in which you read its pieces.
Member Reviews
Davanti a un capolavoro, non ci si dovrebbe sentire in obbligo di scrivere una recensione. Dovrebbe essere sufficiente scrivere: un capolavoro del romanzo contemporaneo. Anzi, un capolavoro del romanzo di tutti i tempi. Uno di quei libri rispetto ai quali c’è un prima e un dopo, come per l’Ulysses di Joyce, o la Recherche di Proust, o L’uomo senza qualità di Musil.
Il problema è che, per quel poco che so, Il gioco del mondo è stato un romanzo largamente frainteso. La maggior parte dei commentatori ne ha colto lo sperimentalismo, il suo essere un romanzo ipertestuale ante litteram (l’autore ne suggerisce, accanto alla lettura sequenziale, che si limita ai primi 56 capitoli, una lettura guidata dai rinvii numerici alla fine dei show more ogni capitolo, che integrano nella lettura altri 99 capitoli “sovrannumerari” e che, per di più, porta a saltare il capitolo 55 – che ha un suo “doppio” nei capitoli sovrannumerari – e poi conduce a un loop infinito degli ultimi due capitoli).
In realtà, Rayuela è molti romanzi in uno solo.
Partiamo dalle parentele che ci ho trovato io. Henry Miller, per prima cosa (prima nel senso epidermico del termine, come se sbucciassimo una cipolla), per il clima degli expats a Parigi e anche per l’erotizzazione della città – anche se la Maga è un personaggio molto più profondo e complesso delle donne di Miller (Cortázar, sospetto, ha un rapporto con le donne molto più profondo e complesso e maturo e simpatetico di quanto Miller possa sognarsi di avere). Robert Musil (che prima non ho citato a caso) per la capacità di scrivere insieme un romanzo e un mondo enciclopedico, senza penalizzare né l’uno né l’altro dei due versanti, e senza mai essere né pedante né didascalico nelle digressioni filosofiche e di estetica. Il Joyce del Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man per l’uso del monologo interiore e, ancora di più, per essere anche Rayuela un Künstlerroman.
Il gioco del mondo è soprattutto un gioco di specchi e di doppi: di qua e di là dell’oceano, Oliveira e Traveler, la Maga e Talita. Un gioco di ponti precariamente gettati. Un mondo di gioco e di giochi. Il circo e la follia. Il dolore irrisolto. L’abiezione.
Non so chi ha scritto la quarta di copertina della mia edizione Einaudi, ma è stato un genio con il dono della sintesi:
Un capolavoro del Novecento che ha cambiato la storia del romanzo e la vita di molte persone che lo hanno letto.
Concordo in pieno. Non è un’esagerazione, nemmeno nell’affermazione che cambia la vita del lettore che vi si abbandoni, come ho fatto io. Leggetelo.
Su Wikipedia (inglese) c’è una bella voce (Hopscotch, il nome inglese del gioco).
Su YouTube c’è una bella intervista di Cortázar rilasciata alla televisione spagnola nel 1977. show less
Il problema è che, per quel poco che so, Il gioco del mondo è stato un romanzo largamente frainteso. La maggior parte dei commentatori ne ha colto lo sperimentalismo, il suo essere un romanzo ipertestuale ante litteram (l’autore ne suggerisce, accanto alla lettura sequenziale, che si limita ai primi 56 capitoli, una lettura guidata dai rinvii numerici alla fine dei show more ogni capitolo, che integrano nella lettura altri 99 capitoli “sovrannumerari” e che, per di più, porta a saltare il capitolo 55 – che ha un suo “doppio” nei capitoli sovrannumerari – e poi conduce a un loop infinito degli ultimi due capitoli).
In realtà, Rayuela è molti romanzi in uno solo.
Partiamo dalle parentele che ci ho trovato io. Henry Miller, per prima cosa (prima nel senso epidermico del termine, come se sbucciassimo una cipolla), per il clima degli expats a Parigi e anche per l’erotizzazione della città – anche se la Maga è un personaggio molto più profondo e complesso delle donne di Miller (Cortázar, sospetto, ha un rapporto con le donne molto più profondo e complesso e maturo e simpatetico di quanto Miller possa sognarsi di avere). Robert Musil (che prima non ho citato a caso) per la capacità di scrivere insieme un romanzo e un mondo enciclopedico, senza penalizzare né l’uno né l’altro dei due versanti, e senza mai essere né pedante né didascalico nelle digressioni filosofiche e di estetica. Il Joyce del Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man per l’uso del monologo interiore e, ancora di più, per essere anche Rayuela un Künstlerroman.
Il gioco del mondo è soprattutto un gioco di specchi e di doppi: di qua e di là dell’oceano, Oliveira e Traveler, la Maga e Talita. Un gioco di ponti precariamente gettati. Un mondo di gioco e di giochi. Il circo e la follia. Il dolore irrisolto. L’abiezione.
Non so chi ha scritto la quarta di copertina della mia edizione Einaudi, ma è stato un genio con il dono della sintesi:
Un capolavoro del Novecento che ha cambiato la storia del romanzo e la vita di molte persone che lo hanno letto.
Concordo in pieno. Non è un’esagerazione, nemmeno nell’affermazione che cambia la vita del lettore che vi si abbandoni, come ho fatto io. Leggetelo.
Su Wikipedia (inglese) c’è una bella voce (Hopscotch, il nome inglese del gioco).
Su YouTube c’è una bella intervista di Cortázar rilasciata alla televisione spagnola nel 1977. show less
Julio Cortázar's Hopscotch has only the most skeletal of plots: Argentine writer and pretentious blowhard Horacio Oliveira lives in Paris with his lover La Maga, drinking and listening to old jazz records with a group of bohemian friends who call themselves The Club, and who are collectively fascinated with the obscure and pedantic Italian writer Morelli. Something disastrous happens to La Maga; she disappears; Oliveira returns to Argentina and has further adventures with his frenemy Traveler and Traveler's wife Talita. That's it, really, but Hopscotch's real claim to fame is its unusual structure. Cortázar offers his readers two choices of how to read his book: you can start at Chapter 1 and progress as normal to Chapter 56, stopping show more there and discarding the final 200 pages of the book (which contain Chapters 57-155, the "expendable" chapters). Or, you can follow a leap-frogging list that begins with Chapter 73, progresses to Chapter 1, and continues vaulting back and forth between the necessary and expendable sections until you've eventually read the entire book...or have you? (I read it according to the second, "hopscotching" method.)
Hopscotch was an extremely complex and contradictory reading experience for me. So much so, actually, that my so-called "review" grew to an unacceptably epic length, and I decided to split it into three separate posts. I thought about pruning, but I really do feel the genuine need to write about all three of these topics, if only to get them out of my system. So here we go. I'm starting with the good, progressing to the bad, and ending up with the wacky.
1. Things that Inspired and Delighted Me
By far, the highlights of Hopscotch for me were the scenes in which Cortázar deals with music, compulsiveness, and the absurd. The Club's late-night blues-listening sessions were a special treat for me personally, as early blues (Ma Rainey, Memphis Minnie, Bessie Smith) are one of my own favorite musical genres, and I hardly ever get to read such lively prose involving them. Cortázar's descriptions of the smoky, boozy Paris apartment where the Club talks and listens to scratchy records into the wee hours reminded me a bit of Kerouac's late-night bop passages, except that I liked Cortázar's much better.
But it was Cortázar's depiction of the absurd avant-garde piano concert Oliveira stumbles into that really impressed me. Only in Kazuo Ishiguro's The Unconsoled have I come across such a lusty portrayal of modern "art" music--one that may revel in the absurdity of a particular performance, but still holds the concept of experimental classical/art music to have power. I love how Oliveira's irony and odd sincerity are woven together, in this passage, with the exodus of the other concert-goers and the manic desperation of pianist Berthe Trépat; it's masterfully done. [Alix Alix is the ostensible composer of the piece.]
When Cortázar gets into full story-telling mode, his prose is crisp and his sense of humor wicked. His longer chapters tended to be my favorites for this reason: given time to build up the absurdity of his situations and the strength of his narrative voice, he invariably left me in stitches. I have so many favorite scenes in this regard: the extended piano recital and subsequent walk home in the rain; the scene in which Horacio and Traveler build a plank "bridge" across the alley separating their apartment buildings; the several "expendable" chapters in which Traveler and Talita get hysterical over a book of crackpot political science; the early OCD-esque scene in which Oliveira tells us that he always feels compelled to personally pick up anything he drops or "something terrible will happen" to a person he loves whose name begins with the same letter as the dropped object (followed by a gut-busting account of dropping a sugar cube in a restaurant). Only occasionally did I feel like Cortázar was overdoing the absurdism; in his narrative chapters he generally strikes just that hard-to-achieve balance of hilarity and cohesion. In this passage, for example, Horacio, back in Argentina, has become unaccountably obsessed with the idea of straightening out a bunch of bent nails in the sweltering afternoon sun.
I mean, brilliant, right? The way his mind plays with itself and revises its jokes and those revisions are intermingled with and affected by his physical environment. Delicious.
And, of course, I loved Cortázar's unremitting experimentalism. He really is a stylistic master; in addition to the obvious structural oddness of Hopscotch there is a chapter which gives us interposed lines of text as Horacio tries to read a book while his mind is on other things; an "erotic" chapter told in a nonsense language invented by La Maga; exuberant alternation among various first- and third-person points of view; and much more. Of all these things, I could not get enough.
2. Things that Bored and Offended Me
I know we're dealing with South American Lit from the 1960s here, but Cortázar's level of animosity toward women in this novel really got to me. Not only is La Maga the stereotype of the ignorant/uneducated yet "intuitive" female (dear lord, if I never read another example of "I swim in the river / she IS the river," bullshit, I will die happy). Not only does the most interesting woman in the book gain her author's approval by ridiculing other, "normal" females for her husband's voyeuristic pleasure as he hides in the closet. Not only that, but through Morelli we are introduced to the concept of the undesirable "female-reader," the lazy person who doesn't want to do any work while reading:
Okay! Fuck you too, Julio.
It's only fair to remark that the hypothetical "female-reader" seems actually to be male, but a male who is inappropriately effeminate (by which Cortázar seems to mean passive, rather than active) in his approach to reading and literature. I'm not sure if that makes it better or worse. The idea that women are all right as long as they act like one of the boys is mirrored elsewhere in Hopscotch, so it makes a perverse kind of sense that men would only be acceptable as long as they don't act like women. I might go so far as to point out that using a word like "female" when what you really mean is "lazy" or "passive" is a pretty lazy lingual trick in itself, although I'm not sure how Spanish-to-English translation may have affected the "female-reader" term. I assume, however, that the "female" portion of it was not invented by the translator out of whole cloth.
Even more disturbing, there are a number of passages that seem either to make light of, or to actually praise, rape and sexual abuse. In one scene, Club member Ossip badgers La Maga into telling him about her early life in Montevideo, including a grisly rape. She doesn't want to talk about it, but eventually acquiesces - after which, club members make fun of how she "always" tells the story, belittle the seriousness of the experience, and offer joking compliments to the rapist ("That Negro was quite a guy."). (And yes, the depiction of the rape also struck me as fairly racist, incorporating the tired stereotype of the drooling, animalistic black man living in squalor and attacking an innocent, pubescent white girl.) Later on, the narrator speaks of La Maga's rapist having "dirtied and exalted" her body. Let's be clear, people: rape does not "exalt" anybody or anything. And that's not even to mention the scene in which Oliveira feels all proud of himself for "mistreating" and objectifying La Maga while having sex with her, and worries that as a result she will feel for him "that most subtle form of gratitude which turns to doglike love." This scene also features the cringe-worthy phrase "that ultimate work of knowledge which only a man can give to a woman" - which refers, nonsensically enough, to cunnilingus. Um. Dude is bohemian, but apparently not quite bohemian enough.
The narrator's/author's relationship to the characters is uneasy, and he definitely doesn't condone all their actions or attitudes. Oliveira is firmly an antihero, not a hero. However, even if half the misogyny in the novel can be passed off as thoughtful commentary on Horacio's machismo, what remains still goes beyond the normal range of casual sexism I'm ready to overlook on the basis of cultural differences. Although I hardly ever stop reading a book partway through, it grossed me out enough that I considered not reading any further. Overall I'm glad I continued; toward the end, the Talita character even began to recoup some of the respect I lost for Cortázar during the first three quarters of the book. Still, these attitudes severely tarnished my enjoyment of the novel as a whole, and Talita's assertions that she's "nobody's zombie" were, in my opinion, too little, too late.
(Whew!)
My other main complaint is that, while much of Cortázar's narration is riveting, he does sometimes cross a line into sophomoric pseudo-intellectualism reminiscent of a stoned high-school student. To wit:
Duuuude...turn up the Zappa and pass that j!
Sometimes this kind of thing is present intentionally, to demonstrate Oliveira's pretension or intoxication, but at other times it seems sincere - and goes on, I might add, for pages and pages at a time. I think the problem is that there's a lot of Cortázar in Oliveira and Morelli. So while Cortázar is sometimes showing Oliveira/Morelli as a sophomoric windbag, at other times Cortázar himself is a sophomoric windbag. It's that much more painful because there's tangible evidence, sometimes on the previous PAGE, that the guy is a creative genius when he wants to be. Does he include all the faux philosophizing as the dreck that will make his gem-like narrative chapters shine all the brighter? If so, I hardly think it was necessary.
3. Effects of the Narrative Structure
I didn't want to write a Hopscotch review that ignored the psychological effects of zig-zagging through a text according to an unpredictable, non-linear program. The first thing I noticed was that flipping through the book after every chapter (and many chapters are quite short) obviously disrupts the reading experience. It's more difficult to get into the swing of things if one is constantly paging around, which makes Cortázar's occasional longer chapters, with their concentrated bursts of narrative brilliance, that much more striking. On the flip side, finding a new location after almost every chapter also forces the reader to pause for a few seconds and think about the chapter she's just read. As I spent more time with Hopscotch, I came to an appreciation of this built-in period of contemplation. I found myself thinking about connections I might not have considered without the break, which made me a more female—excuse me, I mean ACTIVE—reader.
After I'd been reading a while, two more things hit me: constantly paging back and forth means both that the reader has no idea how far along she is in the novel, and that, insofar as normal "book time" still exists within the first 56 chapters, it moves incredibly slowly. For every ten pages one moves forward in Chapters 1-56, after all, one actually reads twenty. The end effect combines a feeling of frenetic back-and-forth with the sensation of impossibly slow-motion movement, like in those dreams where you're attempting to run against a tremendous, invisible resistance. Not only that, but the reader has little concept of event sequences. In most books, I can read a scene that reminds me of another passage earlier in the novel, think to myself "Oh, that was about 50 pages ago," or "Oh, that was before X event and before Y," and locate it successfully. In Hopscotch I found myself taking copious notes in the back of the book, cataloging all the passages I loved and hated, out of the fear that if I didn't note them down I would likely never be able to find them again. It strikes me that this effect also mirrors the world of dreams, in which locations and events switch places or fail to turn up where they ought to be, and time plays tricks on the dreamer.
So too, the book messes with our sense of completeness: usually, one reads every page in a book, starting with the first and ending with the last--after which, one has read the whole thing. According to Cortázar's schema, though, there could easily be a chapter adrift in the text, unconnected with the overarching order of chapters, and the reader wouldn't necessarily realize she'd missed anything. In fact, that chapter is #55. If you're not paying attention (or insufficiently compulsive), and you're reading the "hopscotching" version of the book, you will miss Chapter 55 completely. Given the novel's preoccupation with Oliveira's and La Maga's compulsions, it's undeniably clever, if arguably obnoxious, of Cortázar to replicate the same behaviors in his readers.
Cortázar also uses his non-linearity to mimic psychological states in his characters and readers. Take Horacio's reaction to the disaster that befalls La Maga: leading up to the event, the chapters alternate fairly regularly, with one or two "expendable" chapters for every one "regular" chapter. There is then a long (and extremely uncomfortable) "regular" chapter (#28), followed by a barrage of 22 "expendable" chapters that send the reader flying back and forth between #154 and #63 before finally returning to #29. Similarly, within the narrative at that point, Horacio himself abandons La Maga to go on a week-long bender, and our "return" to Chapter 29 coincides with Horacio's return to their erstwhile apartment.
Similarly, Cortázar uses the structure to deprive the reader of any definitive "ending" to the novel. Normally, one can't help but privilege the final line of a book: it's the last, strongest impression, the one we remember as we walk away. But in the case of Hopscotch, where should that privilege settle? On the final page of the physical book, which one reads when one is only about halfway done? With the final page of Chapter 56, which ends the standard chapters? Or with the infinite recursive loop between Chapters 58 and 131, which ends the hopscotching version of the book? I admire Cortázar's commitment to exploring all the possibilities of this new format he invented, even if I wouldn't want to adopt it as the new default.
Some people (frustrated by the stoned high-school student sections I wrote about on Thursday) recommend taking Cortázar's first recommendation on reading this book over his second: to read only the standard chapters, skipping the expendable chapters and the more experimental hopscotching chronology. I disagree. They're often irritating, but in the end I found that Cortázar's odd structural choices really did enforce and deepen my experience of his novel's themes. The "adrift" Chapter 55 alone, when compared with the more fleshed-out version of the same events one gets in the expanded version, convinced me that I made the right choice, at least for myself.
And in the end...
After all that, I really have no summation to offer. The disappointing things in this novel did not cancel out the inspiring things, nor did the fascinating things make up for the offensive things. Obviously, I needed to spend an entire week of blogging to fully appreciate, exorcise, and process the reading of this book, and I will say this: it was unforgettable. show less
Hopscotch was an extremely complex and contradictory reading experience for me. So much so, actually, that my so-called "review" grew to an unacceptably epic length, and I decided to split it into three separate posts. I thought about pruning, but I really do feel the genuine need to write about all three of these topics, if only to get them out of my system. So here we go. I'm starting with the good, progressing to the bad, and ending up with the wacky.
1. Things that Inspired and Delighted Me
By far, the highlights of Hopscotch for me were the scenes in which Cortázar deals with music, compulsiveness, and the absurd. The Club's late-night blues-listening sessions were a special treat for me personally, as early blues (Ma Rainey, Memphis Minnie, Bessie Smith) are one of my own favorite musical genres, and I hardly ever get to read such lively prose involving them. Cortázar's descriptions of the smoky, boozy Paris apartment where the Club talks and listens to scratchy records into the wee hours reminded me a bit of Kerouac's late-night bop passages, except that I liked Cortázar's much better.
But it was Cortázar's depiction of the absurd avant-garde piano concert Oliveira stumbles into that really impressed me. Only in Kazuo Ishiguro's The Unconsoled have I come across such a lusty portrayal of modern "art" music--one that may revel in the absurdity of a particular performance, but still holds the concept of experimental classical/art music to have power. I love how Oliveira's irony and odd sincerity are woven together, in this passage, with the exodus of the other concert-goers and the manic desperation of pianist Berthe Trépat; it's masterfully done. [Alix Alix is the ostensible composer of the piece.]
In the two or three minutes that followed, Oliveira had some trouble in dividing his attention between the extraordinary stew that Berthe Trépat was boiling up at full steam and the furtive or forthright way in which young and old were leaving the concert. A mixture of Liszt and Rachmaninoff, the Pavan was the tiresome repetition of two or three themes which then got lost in innumerable variations, bits of bravura (rather poorly played, with holes and stitching everywhere) and the solemnities of a catafalque upon a caisson, broken by the sudden fireworks which seemed to delight the mysterious Alix Alix. Once or twice Oliveira was worried that the towering Salammbô hairdo of Berthe Trépat would suddenly collapse, but who knows how many hairpins were reinforcing it, amidst the rumble and tumble of the Pavan. The orgiastic arpeggios which announced the end came on, and three themes were successively repeated (one of which had been lifted bodily from Strauss's Don Juan), and Berthe Trépat let the chords rain down with growing intensity, modified by the hysterical repetition of the first theme and two chords composed of the gravest notes, the last of which came out markedly false for the right hand, but it was something that could happen to anyone and Oliveira applauded warmly; he had really enjoyed it.
When Cortázar gets into full story-telling mode, his prose is crisp and his sense of humor wicked. His longer chapters tended to be my favorites for this reason: given time to build up the absurdity of his situations and the strength of his narrative voice, he invariably left me in stitches. I have so many favorite scenes in this regard: the extended piano recital and subsequent walk home in the rain; the scene in which Horacio and Traveler build a plank "bridge" across the alley separating their apartment buildings; the several "expendable" chapters in which Traveler and Talita get hysterical over a book of crackpot political science; the early OCD-esque scene in which Oliveira tells us that he always feels compelled to personally pick up anything he drops or "something terrible will happen" to a person he loves whose name begins with the same letter as the dropped object (followed by a gut-busting account of dropping a sugar cube in a restaurant). Only occasionally did I feel like Cortázar was overdoing the absurdism; in his narrative chapters he generally strikes just that hard-to-achieve balance of hilarity and cohesion. In this passage, for example, Horacio, back in Argentina, has become unaccountably obsessed with the idea of straightening out a bunch of bent nails in the sweltering afternoon sun.
"God, it's cold," Oliveira said to himself, because he was a great believer in autosuggestion. Sweat was pouring over his eyes out of his hair and it was impossible to hold a nail with the hump up because the lightest blow of the hammer would make it slip out of his fingers which were all wet (from the cold) and the nail would pinch him again and he would mash his fingers (from the cold). To make things worse, the sun had begun to shine with full force into the room (it was the moon on snow-covered steppes, and he whistled to goad the horses pulling against their harnesses), by three o'clock the whole place was covered with snow, he would let himself freeze until he got to that sleepy state described so well and maybe even brought about in Slavic stories, and his body would be entombed in the man-killing whiteness of the livid flowers of space. That was pretty good: the livid flowers of space. Right then he hit himself full on the thumb with the hammer. The coldness that had got into him was so intense that he had to roll around on the ground in an attempt to fight off the stiffness that was coming on him from the fact that he was freezing up. When he managed to sit upright waving his hand around, he was wet from head to toe, probably from the melting snow or from that light drizzle that was mingling with the livid flowers of space and refreshed the wolves as it fell on their fur.
I mean, brilliant, right? The way his mind plays with itself and revises its jokes and those revisions are intermingled with and affected by his physical environment. Delicious.
And, of course, I loved Cortázar's unremitting experimentalism. He really is a stylistic master; in addition to the obvious structural oddness of Hopscotch there is a chapter which gives us interposed lines of text as Horacio tries to read a book while his mind is on other things; an "erotic" chapter told in a nonsense language invented by La Maga; exuberant alternation among various first- and third-person points of view; and much more. Of all these things, I could not get enough.
2. Things that Bored and Offended Me
I know we're dealing with South American Lit from the 1960s here, but Cortázar's level of animosity toward women in this novel really got to me. Not only is La Maga the stereotype of the ignorant/uneducated yet "intuitive" female (dear lord, if I never read another example of "I swim in the river / she IS the river," bullshit, I will die happy). Not only does the most interesting woman in the book gain her author's approval by ridiculing other, "normal" females for her husband's voyeuristic pleasure as he hides in the closet. Not only that, but through Morelli we are introduced to the concept of the undesirable "female-reader," the lazy person who doesn't want to do any work while reading:
...the type that doesn't want any problems, but rather solutions, or false and alien problems that will allow him to suffer comfortably seated in his chair, without compromising himself in the drama that should also be his.
Okay! Fuck you too, Julio.
It's only fair to remark that the hypothetical "female-reader" seems actually to be male, but a male who is inappropriately effeminate (by which Cortázar seems to mean passive, rather than active) in his approach to reading and literature. I'm not sure if that makes it better or worse. The idea that women are all right as long as they act like one of the boys is mirrored elsewhere in Hopscotch, so it makes a perverse kind of sense that men would only be acceptable as long as they don't act like women. I might go so far as to point out that using a word like "female" when what you really mean is "lazy" or "passive" is a pretty lazy lingual trick in itself, although I'm not sure how Spanish-to-English translation may have affected the "female-reader" term. I assume, however, that the "female" portion of it was not invented by the translator out of whole cloth.
Even more disturbing, there are a number of passages that seem either to make light of, or to actually praise, rape and sexual abuse. In one scene, Club member Ossip badgers La Maga into telling him about her early life in Montevideo, including a grisly rape. She doesn't want to talk about it, but eventually acquiesces - after which, club members make fun of how she "always" tells the story, belittle the seriousness of the experience, and offer joking compliments to the rapist ("That Negro was quite a guy."). (And yes, the depiction of the rape also struck me as fairly racist, incorporating the tired stereotype of the drooling, animalistic black man living in squalor and attacking an innocent, pubescent white girl.) Later on, the narrator speaks of La Maga's rapist having "dirtied and exalted" her body. Let's be clear, people: rape does not "exalt" anybody or anything. And that's not even to mention the scene in which Oliveira feels all proud of himself for "mistreating" and objectifying La Maga while having sex with her, and worries that as a result she will feel for him "that most subtle form of gratitude which turns to doglike love." This scene also features the cringe-worthy phrase "that ultimate work of knowledge which only a man can give to a woman" - which refers, nonsensically enough, to cunnilingus. Um. Dude is bohemian, but apparently not quite bohemian enough.
The narrator's/author's relationship to the characters is uneasy, and he definitely doesn't condone all their actions or attitudes. Oliveira is firmly an antihero, not a hero. However, even if half the misogyny in the novel can be passed off as thoughtful commentary on Horacio's machismo, what remains still goes beyond the normal range of casual sexism I'm ready to overlook on the basis of cultural differences. Although I hardly ever stop reading a book partway through, it grossed me out enough that I considered not reading any further. Overall I'm glad I continued; toward the end, the Talita character even began to recoup some of the respect I lost for Cortázar during the first three quarters of the book. Still, these attitudes severely tarnished my enjoyment of the novel as a whole, and Talita's assertions that she's "nobody's zombie" were, in my opinion, too little, too late.
(Whew!)
My other main complaint is that, while much of Cortázar's narration is riveting, he does sometimes cross a line into sophomoric pseudo-intellectualism reminiscent of a stoned high-school student. To wit:
And Time? Everything begins again, there is no absolute. Then there must be feed or feces, everything becomes critical again. Desire every so often, never too different and always something else: a trick of time to create illusions. 'A love like a fire which burns eternally in the contemplation of Totality.'"
Duuuude...turn up the Zappa and pass that j!
Sometimes this kind of thing is present intentionally, to demonstrate Oliveira's pretension or intoxication, but at other times it seems sincere - and goes on, I might add, for pages and pages at a time. I think the problem is that there's a lot of Cortázar in Oliveira and Morelli. So while Cortázar is sometimes showing Oliveira/Morelli as a sophomoric windbag, at other times Cortázar himself is a sophomoric windbag. It's that much more painful because there's tangible evidence, sometimes on the previous PAGE, that the guy is a creative genius when he wants to be. Does he include all the faux philosophizing as the dreck that will make his gem-like narrative chapters shine all the brighter? If so, I hardly think it was necessary.
3. Effects of the Narrative Structure
I didn't want to write a Hopscotch review that ignored the psychological effects of zig-zagging through a text according to an unpredictable, non-linear program. The first thing I noticed was that flipping through the book after every chapter (and many chapters are quite short) obviously disrupts the reading experience. It's more difficult to get into the swing of things if one is constantly paging around, which makes Cortázar's occasional longer chapters, with their concentrated bursts of narrative brilliance, that much more striking. On the flip side, finding a new location after almost every chapter also forces the reader to pause for a few seconds and think about the chapter she's just read. As I spent more time with Hopscotch, I came to an appreciation of this built-in period of contemplation. I found myself thinking about connections I might not have considered without the break, which made me a more female—excuse me, I mean ACTIVE—reader.
After I'd been reading a while, two more things hit me: constantly paging back and forth means both that the reader has no idea how far along she is in the novel, and that, insofar as normal "book time" still exists within the first 56 chapters, it moves incredibly slowly. For every ten pages one moves forward in Chapters 1-56, after all, one actually reads twenty. The end effect combines a feeling of frenetic back-and-forth with the sensation of impossibly slow-motion movement, like in those dreams where you're attempting to run against a tremendous, invisible resistance. Not only that, but the reader has little concept of event sequences. In most books, I can read a scene that reminds me of another passage earlier in the novel, think to myself "Oh, that was about 50 pages ago," or "Oh, that was before X event and before Y," and locate it successfully. In Hopscotch I found myself taking copious notes in the back of the book, cataloging all the passages I loved and hated, out of the fear that if I didn't note them down I would likely never be able to find them again. It strikes me that this effect also mirrors the world of dreams, in which locations and events switch places or fail to turn up where they ought to be, and time plays tricks on the dreamer.
So too, the book messes with our sense of completeness: usually, one reads every page in a book, starting with the first and ending with the last--after which, one has read the whole thing. According to Cortázar's schema, though, there could easily be a chapter adrift in the text, unconnected with the overarching order of chapters, and the reader wouldn't necessarily realize she'd missed anything. In fact, that chapter is #55. If you're not paying attention (or insufficiently compulsive), and you're reading the "hopscotching" version of the book, you will miss Chapter 55 completely. Given the novel's preoccupation with Oliveira's and La Maga's compulsions, it's undeniably clever, if arguably obnoxious, of Cortázar to replicate the same behaviors in his readers.
Cortázar also uses his non-linearity to mimic psychological states in his characters and readers. Take Horacio's reaction to the disaster that befalls La Maga: leading up to the event, the chapters alternate fairly regularly, with one or two "expendable" chapters for every one "regular" chapter. There is then a long (and extremely uncomfortable) "regular" chapter (#28), followed by a barrage of 22 "expendable" chapters that send the reader flying back and forth between #154 and #63 before finally returning to #29. Similarly, within the narrative at that point, Horacio himself abandons La Maga to go on a week-long bender, and our "return" to Chapter 29 coincides with Horacio's return to their erstwhile apartment.
Similarly, Cortázar uses the structure to deprive the reader of any definitive "ending" to the novel. Normally, one can't help but privilege the final line of a book: it's the last, strongest impression, the one we remember as we walk away. But in the case of Hopscotch, where should that privilege settle? On the final page of the physical book, which one reads when one is only about halfway done? With the final page of Chapter 56, which ends the standard chapters? Or with the infinite recursive loop between Chapters 58 and 131, which ends the hopscotching version of the book? I admire Cortázar's commitment to exploring all the possibilities of this new format he invented, even if I wouldn't want to adopt it as the new default.
Some people (frustrated by the stoned high-school student sections I wrote about on Thursday) recommend taking Cortázar's first recommendation on reading this book over his second: to read only the standard chapters, skipping the expendable chapters and the more experimental hopscotching chronology. I disagree. They're often irritating, but in the end I found that Cortázar's odd structural choices really did enforce and deepen my experience of his novel's themes. The "adrift" Chapter 55 alone, when compared with the more fleshed-out version of the same events one gets in the expanded version, convinced me that I made the right choice, at least for myself.
And in the end...
After all that, I really have no summation to offer. The disappointing things in this novel did not cancel out the inspiring things, nor did the fascinating things make up for the offensive things. Obviously, I needed to spend an entire week of blogging to fully appreciate, exorcise, and process the reading of this book, and I will say this: it was unforgettable. show less
I read this in the normal order, which feels a bit like reviewing a maze after only walking through one corridor.
The premise should be gimmicky. Somehow it isn't. It's dense, stream-of-consciousness, and full of the sort of conversations that make you wonder whether everyone involved is a genius, insufferable, or both. The whole thing feels like a group of intellectuals talking past one another in a café while accidentally producing literature.
Dense, meandering, frequently confusing, and best approached in a particular state of mind (I found a glass of wine helped considerably). I suspect this book improves in direct proportion to your willingness to surrender to it.
I enjoyed it enough that I now want a physical copy so I can read it show more again in hopscotch order and discover whether I missed the point entirely the first time. Whether that will clarify things or simply confuse me more remains to be seen. show less
The premise should be gimmicky. Somehow it isn't. It's dense, stream-of-consciousness, and full of the sort of conversations that make you wonder whether everyone involved is a genius, insufferable, or both. The whole thing feels like a group of intellectuals talking past one another in a café while accidentally producing literature.
Dense, meandering, frequently confusing, and best approached in a particular state of mind (I found a glass of wine helped considerably). I suspect this book improves in direct proportion to your willingness to surrender to it.
I enjoyed it enough that I now want a physical copy so I can read it show more again in hopscotch order and discover whether I missed the point entirely the first time. Whether that will clarify things or simply confuse me more remains to be seen. show less
Mirá si justo yo voy a reseñar Rayuela. Me limito a tirar puñaladas de loco, a ver si de alguna forma araño un par de ideas coherentes.
A todos los que dicen que una vez llegaron a los capítulos “de otros lugares” no pudieron seguir adelante, tengo que revelarles algo: Cortázar no los traicionó. Dejó muy en claro que eso capítulos eran innecesarios en la primera lectura. Y en la sutileza Cortazariana, “innecesarios” significa “yo te diría que no los leas”.
“Rayuela” es muchos libros, pero sobre todo es dos libros, y te recomiendo leer los dos. Una primera lectura de corrido donde la historia es como es, y ya. Y Oliveira quizá parezca un reverendo hijo de puta, y La Maga una estúpida a los ojos estandarizados de show more un lector al que todavía no le cacheteó el ida y vuelta de la novela. A la segunda lectura, saltando de acá para allá en el orden sugerido (je, sugerido) por el autor, ésa otra dimensión que tiene el relato, una dimensión física que te lleva de acá para allá al mismo tiempo que los hechos y personajes van de acá para allá (y se siente, se siente en la vida del relato más que en el texto), la atmósfera, la multidimensionalidad es otra.
Rayuela es una experiencia a la que no me animaba, mitad porque me crié en la blogósfera y había mucho fanático de la novela dando vueltas. Me pasa que tiendo a escapar al entusiasmo general. Por otro lado, no me sentía preparado. Ahora creo que se me abre un mundo de posibilidades exploratorias, no solo dentro de este libro tan releíble, sino en la literatura toda.
No sé. Mirá si me voy a poner a reseñar Rayuela. Justo yo, reseñar un libro como este. Algo de humildad me queda, todavía. Me limito a sentir el romance de un libro que pide ser releído y explorado como un vicio de entresemanas. show less
A todos los que dicen que una vez llegaron a los capítulos “de otros lugares” no pudieron seguir adelante, tengo que revelarles algo: Cortázar no los traicionó. Dejó muy en claro que eso capítulos eran innecesarios en la primera lectura. Y en la sutileza Cortazariana, “innecesarios” significa “yo te diría que no los leas”.
“Rayuela” es muchos libros, pero sobre todo es dos libros, y te recomiendo leer los dos. Una primera lectura de corrido donde la historia es como es, y ya. Y Oliveira quizá parezca un reverendo hijo de puta, y La Maga una estúpida a los ojos estandarizados de show more un lector al que todavía no le cacheteó el ida y vuelta de la novela. A la segunda lectura, saltando de acá para allá en el orden sugerido (je, sugerido) por el autor, ésa otra dimensión que tiene el relato, una dimensión física que te lleva de acá para allá al mismo tiempo que los hechos y personajes van de acá para allá (y se siente, se siente en la vida del relato más que en el texto), la atmósfera, la multidimensionalidad es otra.
Rayuela es una experiencia a la que no me animaba, mitad porque me crié en la blogósfera y había mucho fanático de la novela dando vueltas. Me pasa que tiendo a escapar al entusiasmo general. Por otro lado, no me sentía preparado. Ahora creo que se me abre un mundo de posibilidades exploratorias, no solo dentro de este libro tan releíble, sino en la literatura toda.
No sé. Mirá si me voy a poner a reseñar Rayuela. Justo yo, reseñar un libro como este. Algo de humildad me queda, todavía. Me limito a sentir el romance de un libro que pide ser releído y explorado como un vicio de entresemanas. show less
Sin duda, la publicación de la novela conmocionó el panorama cultural de su tiempo y supuso una verdadera revolución en la narrativa en lengua castellana: por primera vez un escritor llevaba hasta las últimas consecuencias la voluntad de transgredir el orden tradicional de una historia y el lenguaje para contarla.
Plena de ambición literaria y vital, renovadora de las herramientas narrativas, destructora de lo establecido y buscadora de la raíz de la poesía, es quizás el libro donde Cortázar está entero, con toda su complejidad ética y estética, con su imaginación y su humor. Y, transcurridas más de 5 décadas desde su primera publicación, Rayuela sigue siendo leída con curiosidad, asombro, interés y devoción.
Cortázar show more empieza por proponer un acercamiento activo al libro y ofrece varias posibilidades de lectura: el lector ha de decidir: ¿optar por el orden de lectura tradicional?, ¿seguir el tablero de dirección?, ¿remitirse al azar? Después lo lleva a dos lugares distintos «Del lado de allá», París, la relación de Oliveira y la Maga, el club de la serpiente, el primer descenso de Horacio a los infiernos; y «Del lado de acá», Buenos Aires, el encuentro de Tráveler y Talita, el circo, el manicomio, el segundo descenso.
¿Viaje hacia delante?, ¿viaje hacia atrás? Viaje iniciático, sin duda, del que el lector emerge tal vez con otra idea acerca del modo de leer los libros y de ver la vida. Un mosaico donde toda una época se vio maravillosamente reflejada. show less
Plena de ambición literaria y vital, renovadora de las herramientas narrativas, destructora de lo establecido y buscadora de la raíz de la poesía, es quizás el libro donde Cortázar está entero, con toda su complejidad ética y estética, con su imaginación y su humor. Y, transcurridas más de 5 décadas desde su primera publicación, Rayuela sigue siendo leída con curiosidad, asombro, interés y devoción.
Cortázar show more empieza por proponer un acercamiento activo al libro y ofrece varias posibilidades de lectura: el lector ha de decidir: ¿optar por el orden de lectura tradicional?, ¿seguir el tablero de dirección?, ¿remitirse al azar? Después lo lleva a dos lugares distintos «Del lado de allá», París, la relación de Oliveira y la Maga, el club de la serpiente, el primer descenso de Horacio a los infiernos; y «Del lado de acá», Buenos Aires, el encuentro de Tráveler y Talita, el circo, el manicomio, el segundo descenso.
¿Viaje hacia delante?, ¿viaje hacia atrás? Viaje iniciático, sin duda, del que el lector emerge tal vez con otra idea acerca del modo de leer los libros y de ver la vida. Un mosaico donde toda una época se vio maravillosamente reflejada. show less
This is a book I've wanted to read for a long time, and have been putting aside "for when I learn Spanish". I've read quite a number of novels in Spanish in the mean-time, but this is by far the most challenging book I've attempted yet, and I'm conscious that I must have missed a lot of Cortázar's wordplay and allusions to other texts. But I'm looking forward to enjoying those next time I read it, when I will of course be taking the chapters in a different sequence...
I read it as an e-book, which should really be the best way to read it: if e-books had been available in 1963, I'm sure Cortázar would have had a lot of fun pushing the new medium to its limits. Finally, a tool that takes away the enforced linearity and sequential nature show more of the printed book. The e-book certainly does make it easier to follow Cortázar's complicated instructions. Instead of constantly leafing backwards and forwards, you simply click on a link at the end of the chapter and it takes you to the one the author suggested you should read next. However, this rather undermines the whole subversive nature of the book. It no longer feels wild and experimental to be leaping from Chapter 45 to Chapter 120 and back to Chapter 23 (or whatever it was): it's just button-pressing. What ought to happen, perhaps, is that the sequence of links is randomly generated for you at the moment you buy the book, and that your e-book is subtly different in its sequence from every other copy of the e-book. But we're not that far yet.
The real interest of the book is probably not so much its experimental form, but the playful elegance of Cortázar's writing. He manages to allude to just about everything you can think of — from Shakespeare and Proust to La Bohème and Tristram Shandy; from Dostoevsky to Henry Miller — but it never gets heavy, and he is always poking fun at himself for doing it. Similarly with jazz, which takes up a lot of space in the first part of the book, and even with classical music (the contemporary music concert given by a would-be Nadia Boulanger figure is one of the funniest chapters).
Definitely a book that lives up to the claim to be one of the great 20th-century novels: at the very least it's something you could unhesitatingly put side-by-side with La vie, mode d'emploi (and it's a good deal funnier than Perec, too). show less
I read it as an e-book, which should really be the best way to read it: if e-books had been available in 1963, I'm sure Cortázar would have had a lot of fun pushing the new medium to its limits. Finally, a tool that takes away the enforced linearity and sequential nature show more of the printed book. The e-book certainly does make it easier to follow Cortázar's complicated instructions. Instead of constantly leafing backwards and forwards, you simply click on a link at the end of the chapter and it takes you to the one the author suggested you should read next. However, this rather undermines the whole subversive nature of the book. It no longer feels wild and experimental to be leaping from Chapter 45 to Chapter 120 and back to Chapter 23 (or whatever it was): it's just button-pressing. What ought to happen, perhaps, is that the sequence of links is randomly generated for you at the moment you buy the book, and that your e-book is subtly different in its sequence from every other copy of the e-book. But we're not that far yet.
The real interest of the book is probably not so much its experimental form, but the playful elegance of Cortázar's writing. He manages to allude to just about everything you can think of — from Shakespeare and Proust to La Bohème and Tristram Shandy; from Dostoevsky to Henry Miller — but it never gets heavy, and he is always poking fun at himself for doing it. Similarly with jazz, which takes up a lot of space in the first part of the book, and even with classical music (the contemporary music concert given by a would-be Nadia Boulanger figure is one of the funniest chapters).
Definitely a book that lives up to the claim to be one of the great 20th-century novels: at the very least it's something you could unhesitatingly put side-by-side with La vie, mode d'emploi (and it's a good deal funnier than Perec, too). show less
He went back to sleep like a person who is looking for his place and his house after a long road in the rain and the cold.
I should pen an untimely aphorism detailing my experiences with Hopscotch. This is not that effort. It appears that I read the linear, sequential version of this novel in my mid-20s. I suspected such about midway through my more spirited reading of this last week. A phone call to Stephen J. Powell confirmed it. Apparently I gave Mr. Powell a copy of the novel and raved about it for weeks during the Clinton years. I barely recall such. Our reading group samizdat attempted a group read in the summer of 2001 but abandoned such after Roger growled that the characters should all get a job.
I felt inspired for my return to show more Rayuela by the curious examples of his short fiction and early novel Final Exam. That said, I don't think I anticipated depth of joy I would encounter. Maybe Morelli was waiting for my return as well. I'd like to visit him in the hospital, even if I don't like hospitals.
Nothing easier than putting the blame on what's outside, as if one were sure that outside and inside are the two main beams of the house. But the fact is that everything is in bad shape, history tells you that, and the very fact that you're thinking about it instead of living it proves to you that it's bad, that we've stuck ourselves into a total disharmony that the sum of our resources disguises with social structure, with history, with Ionic style, with the joy of the Renaissance, with the superficial sadness of romanticism, and that's the way we go and they can turn the dogs on us.
I listened to a great deal of Fats Waller and Sonny Clark during my reading. I'm conflicted on the assurances but heartily endorse this novel and a concurrent pondering of meaning and failure. I think differently now, especially towards strands of thread on the sidewalk. show less
I should pen an untimely aphorism detailing my experiences with Hopscotch. This is not that effort. It appears that I read the linear, sequential version of this novel in my mid-20s. I suspected such about midway through my more spirited reading of this last week. A phone call to Stephen J. Powell confirmed it. Apparently I gave Mr. Powell a copy of the novel and raved about it for weeks during the Clinton years. I barely recall such. Our reading group samizdat attempted a group read in the summer of 2001 but abandoned such after Roger growled that the characters should all get a job.
I felt inspired for my return to show more Rayuela by the curious examples of his short fiction and early novel Final Exam. That said, I don't think I anticipated depth of joy I would encounter. Maybe Morelli was waiting for my return as well. I'd like to visit him in the hospital, even if I don't like hospitals.
Nothing easier than putting the blame on what's outside, as if one were sure that outside and inside are the two main beams of the house. But the fact is that everything is in bad shape, history tells you that, and the very fact that you're thinking about it instead of living it proves to you that it's bad, that we've stuck ourselves into a total disharmony that the sum of our resources disguises with social structure, with history, with Ionic style, with the joy of the Renaissance, with the superficial sadness of romanticism, and that's the way we go and they can turn the dogs on us.
I listened to a great deal of Fats Waller and Sonny Clark during my reading. I'm conflicted on the assurances but heartily endorse this novel and a concurrent pondering of meaning and failure. I think differently now, especially towards strands of thread on the sidewalk. show less
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Author Information
Julio Cortazar is an Argentine poet, short story writer, and translator, whose pseudonym is Julio Denis. He was born in Brussels, Belgium, in 1914. In 1918, he moved with his parents to their native Argentina. He taught high school and later French literature at the University of Cuyo, resigning after participating in demonstrations against show more Argentine President Juan Peron. He worked for a Buenos Aires publishing company and also earned a degree as a translator. Cortazar is part of the "boom" of excellence in Latin American letters in the 1950s and 1960s. He combines fantastic plots with commonplace events and characters, and looks for new ways for literature to represent life. His first novel, The Winners, tells the story of passengers on a luxury liner who are restricted to a certain area of the ship and forbidden to communicate with the crew. He explores the ways passengers react. Hopscotch has a complex narrative structure with 165 chapters that can be read in at least two logical sequences to create variations. A Change of Light and Other Stories is a short story collection dealing with themes ranging from political oppression to fantasy. We Love Glenda So Much is about a fan club murder of their favorite actress whose films do not meet their standards. A Certain Lucas is comprised of three sections of short observations, discussing the nature of reality, the exploration of literary form, and search for new ways to view the world. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Awards and Honors
Awards
Notable Lists
Series
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Hopscotch
- Original title
- Rayuela
- Original publication date
- 1963
- People/Characters
- Horacio Oliveria; Lucía La Maga; Gregorovius Ossip; Pola; Étienne; Babs (show all 12); Ronald; Traveler; Talita; Wong; Rocamadour; Morelli
- Important places
- Paris, France; Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Epigraph*
- Y animado de la esperanza de ser particularmente útil a la juventud, y de contribuir al a reforma de las costumbres en general, he formado la presente colección de máximas, consejos y preceptos, que son la base de aquella ... (show all)moral universal, que es tan proporcionada a la felicidad espiritual y temporal de todos los hombres de cualquiera edad, estado y condición que sean, y a la prosperidad y buen orden, no sólo de la república civil y cristiana en que vivimos, sino de cualquiera otra república o gobierno que los filósofos más especulativos y profundos del orbe quieran discurrir.
Espíritu de la Biblia y Moral Universal, sacada del Antiguo y Nuevo Testamento, Escrita en toscano por el abad Martini con las citas al pie:
Traducida en castellano
Por un Clérigo Reglar de la Congregación de San Cayetano de esta Corte.
Con licencia.
Madrid: Por Aznar, 1797.
Siempre que viene el tiempo fresco, o sea al medio del otonio, a mí me da la loca de pensar ideas de tipo eséntrico y esótico, como ser por egenplo que me gustaría venirme golondrina para agarrar y volar a los paíx adond... (show all)e haiga calor, o de ser hormiga para meterme bien adentro de una cueva y comer los productos guardados en el verano o de ser un bívora como las del solójicO, que las tienen bien guardadas en una jaula de vidrio con calefación para que no se queden duras de frío, que es lo que les pasa a los pobres seres humanos que no pueden comprarse ropa con lo cara questá, ni pueden calentarse por la falta del querosén, la falta del carbón, la falta de lenia, la falta de petrolio y también la falta de plata, porque cuando uno anda con biyuya ensima puede entrar a cualquier boliche y mandarse una buena grapa que hay que ver lo que calienta, aunque no conbiene abusar, porque del abuso entra el visio y del visio la dejenradés tanto del cuerpo como de las taras moral de cada cual, y cuando se viene abajo por la pendiente fatal de la falta de buena condupta en todo sentido, ya nadie ni nadies lo salva de acabar en el más espantoso tacho de basura del desprastijio humano, y nunca le van a dar una mano para sacarlo de adentro del fango enmundo entre el cual se rebuelca, ni más ni meno que si fuera un cóndoR que cuando joven supo correr y volar por la punta de las altas montanias, pero que al ser viejo cayó parabajo como bombardero en picada que le falia el motor moral. ¡Y ojalá que lo que estoy escribiendo le sribalguno para que mire bien su comportamiento y que no searrepienta cuando es tarde y ya todo se haiga ido al corno por culpa suya!
CESAR BRUTO,Lo que me gustaría ser a mí si no fuera lo que soy (capítulo: Perro de San Bernardo).
DEL LADO DE ALLA
Rien ne vous tue un homme comme d'être obligé de représenter un pays.
Jacques Vache, carta a André Breton. - First words
- (From chapter 1)
¿Encontraría a la Maga?
(From chapter 73)
Sí, pero quién nos curará del fuego sordo, del fuego sin color que corre al anochecer por la rue de la Huchette, saliendo de los portales carcomidos, de los parvos zaguanes, del fuego sin imagen que la... (show all)me las piedras y acecha en los vanos de las puertas, cómo haremos para lavarnos de su quemadura dulce que prosigue, que se aposenta para durar aliada al tiempo y al recuerdo, a las sustancias pegajosas que nos retienen de este lado, y que nos arderá dulcemente hasta calcinarnos.
Would I find la Maga? - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)(Until chapter 131)
—Ahá —dijo Ovejero para alentarlo. - Original language
- Spanish
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
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