In 1937, Julio Cortázar entered the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters and after completing the first year, he left to work as a teacher at the National College in the city of Bolívar, Buenos Aires. The boredom in that small provincial town where he would live until 1939 would not be wasted by the author who, in an exquisite interview conducted by Saúl Sosnowski, recalled:
«I was a teacher in schools in the interior of the province of Buenos Aires, that is, in conditions of solitude that were quite negative, quite painful, but that at the same time had their stimulating side because I was a teacher (in Bolívar and Chivilcoy) where intellectual life at that time – I hope and wish that it has changed – was absolutely comparable to zero, it did not exist, it was minimal. So that, which was a very negative factor because it condemned me to an obligatory solitude, also had its positive side because it was a time when I absorbed an enormous amount of reading, when I dedicated myself to studying a number of specific topics, absurd things like reading the complete works of Freud and I think the complete works of Menéndez y Pelayo. That is, that which is done when one has the whole day free and absolutely nothing to do […] and it also gave me time to start writing texts that were never published […]».
Despite the tenor of his memories, the truth is that, during this period Cortázar managed to publish Presencia, his first book of poems; perhaps more important then was the time he dedicated there to reading, writing and learning languages. Mercedes Arias, a colleague from the Colegio Nacional de Bolívar, was his comrade, his English instructor, his reader and his friend. There are reasons to suspect that perhaps this beautiful relationship had some other ingredient, who knows, but whatever it was, the truth is that between 1939 and 1945, Julio and “Mecha” maintained a lively correspondence through letters full of literary, cultural and personal references that were also accompanied by some of the author’s first literary pieces. The correspondence [and a few of those poems sent] are gathered in the book published in 1992 by Mignon Domínguez: “Unknown Letters of Julio Cortázar (1939-1945)”, but the main corpus of this collection, which we will present here, is completely unknown.
The descendants of Mercedes Arias have guarded this epistolary treasure that remained in Uruguay, together with a significant number of literary works, most of which remain unpublished to this day.
I have been fortunate that the family introduced me to this material and commissioned me to study and value these unknown writings. After having meticulously analyzed the collection and having found that of the 58 pieces that compose it, 36 remained unpublished, I turned to the greatest specialist in the poetry of Julio Cortázar, Professor Daniel Mesa Gancedo (University of Zaragoza), who generously not only helped me corroborate my discoveries, but also provided exquisite observations [here quoted in quotation marks] on the early literary work of one of the greatest Hispanic American authors.
For years, Mesa Gancedo and I have been immersed in the study of poetry and the work of Cortázar, working in the midst of a bibliographical desert. Today, with better tools, we find ourselves gathered before this new and extraordinary discovery that has filled us with joy and that we have been able to elucidate thanks to the generosity of the Arias family.
Thus, we have concluded that this magnificent lot that will be auctioned by the auction houses Zorrilla and Hilario in Montevideo is made up of a total of 58 literary pieces of which 36 are completely unknown. The set is composed as follows:
-50 poems, 32 of them unpublished.
-3 short stories, of which 2 remain unpublished.
-3 prose texts, 1 of them unpublished.
-1 unpublished translation from English of a poem by Walter Alden Dyer.
-1 essay.
Without a doubt, this is a homogeneous archive of enormous value, since it is the author's first writings, and because most of them are unpublished or, in other cases, originals of other works already published. It is worth noting that several of these works bear Cortázar's signatures or handwritten notes.
Among some of the most outstanding pieces is, for example, the unpublished story "Cumpleańos" (Birthday), on seven typewritten pages, dated in Bolívar in November 1937 and signed with the pseudonym "Julio Denis." It is worth mentioning that his first published story, "Llama el Teléfono, Delia" (The Phone Is Calling, Delia), appeared only four years later, in 1941, also signed as Julio Denis. The character in this unpublished story describes his twenty-third birthday in the solitude of a provincial hotel. The same age that the author had reached only three months before dating the story. The character's name, "Denny," also alludes to his own pseudonym, "Denis," and the autobiographical reference is obvious.
In another of the unpublished stories dated the same year as the previous one, entitled "Scene, by the lake. (A short short story)" and still signed with the same pseudonym, we begin to see some of the clues that will end up defining the author's style and, as Mesa Gancedo has pointed out, "it has a surprising, ironic-satirical ending, perhaps related to the section "Plagiarisms and translations" of The other shore (or some of the section "Prolegomena to astronomy")."
Detail of the story "Station of the hand," with its holographic dedication: "To Mecha, with affection. Julio Denis. XLIII."
The third story in this collection is fundamental to Cortazar's work: "Station of the hand." This typewritten manuscript has an autograph dedication, "To Mecha, with affection. Julio Denis, XLIII." It was originally published in the magazine Égloga: n°2 (Mendoza, 1945) and later, in a version with variants, it was included in La vuelta al día en ocho mundos, in 1967.
Without a doubt, it is one of the author's masterful stories that, having been published in a massive way only in 1967, is generally not studied by critics as one of the pieces in which the unmistakable Cortazarian style finally dawns. This being his second published story, one can guess why it was only after this that he began to sign as Julio Cortázar and abandon his pseudonym, practically forever.
The rest of the collection contains, in addition to some unpublished prose texts and others that are almost unknown, such as the beautiful essay “Soledad de la música” (The Solitude of Music) or the suggestive acrostic poem “Mercedes” dedicated to his friend, a large number of poems and sonnets, some of them separate and others collected in collections of poems entitled A bundle of my poetries, Poemas del regreso (Poems of Return), Sonetos a mí mismo (Sonnets to Myself), Fábula de la muerte (Fable of Death) and De este lado (On This Side). For example, this last collection, dated between 1938 and 1939, is one of those that bear the handwritten signature: “Julio Denis”, and is a typewritten and stapled notebook. It contains six poems, four of which remain unpublished. It is known that this collection of poems was unsuccessfully submitted to a competition, and it should be remembered that also in 1938, Cortázar published his first book of poetry, the aforementioned Presencia (Presence), under the pseudonym “Julio Denis”. The title of this 1939 collection of poems -De este lado- has an obvious link with the remembered titles of the chapters that, two decades later, would be included in Rayuela: «Del lado de acá», «Del lado de allá», «De otros lugares». This formidable poetic corpus, as Mesa Gancedo also points out, «significantly increases the knowledge of the first poetic stage of Cortázar-Denis, especially his work as a sonneteer, with new relevant clues about two projects: De este lado (with 5 new poems) and, especially, Fábula de la muerte (with 10)».
After the discovery of the seven unpublished Cronopios, another surprising milestone
In 2023 I had the opportunity to study another set of works discovered by chance in Montevideo (See) , among which we identified seven unpublished Cronopios. That Cortazarian treasure was auctioned in the capital city of Uruguay in the first catalogue of the alliance formed by Zorrilla Subastas and Hilario. Arts, Letters, Trades, and the figure reached sparked interest in journalistic media from a good part of the world (See)
And in this 2024, one hundred and ten years after the birth and four decades after the physical disappearance of its author, another unexpected discovery: thirty-six unpublished works in a set of fifty-eight original pieces. Without a doubt, another news item of international repercussion.
As always, building bridges between the possible and the implausible, between reality and the magical, and as if it were he himself who had to bring flowers to his grave, Julio Cortázar once again puts his work in front of us from "the other side", to look at its literary genesis almost a century after its writing. He shows us mysterious Mallarmean sonnets that are far from other pameos and meopas but reveal to us a very young author full of poetic and narrative resources, his first stories at 23 years of age, his first passions, his first loves, the first steps on a path that would go from earth to heaven, jumping on one foot, with a small stone in his hand.
* Special for Hilario. Arts Letters Trades