An extraordinary occurrence - Cortázar: a reading of Rayuela starting at the review “Leopoldo Marechal: Adán Buenosayres

Abstract

This article suggests a reading of the novel Rayuela (1963) by Julio Cortázar, starting at his review “Leopoldo Marechal: Adán Buenosayres” (1949). Taking into account the critic-writers’ tendency to recognize themselves in their peers, Rayuela shows how Cortázar had read Adán Buenosayres (1948). The aim of this paper is to detach those evidences, raising the common points between the novels, addressing the aspects that Cortázar praises, and the mistakes and misunderstandings that he sees in Marechal's novel and does not commits in Rayuela. The aspects: the rescue of the ‘diverse excess’, the autobiographical character and the anguish, the critique of unity according to external principles to 'the novel', the structure, divergent conception of love, and the literary works mobilized by the writers, concentrating the research on the dialogue with the bucolic tradition, especially the Italo-Iberian, the most emphasized by Cortázar in the review.