(CNN Spanish) –– An original typescript of “Stories of cronopios and Fames,” Argentine writer Julio Cortázar’s iconic storybook containing seven unpublished stories, will be auctioned in Montevideo on Oct. 12, collectors and auctioneers associated with the auction told CNN.
Up to this point, this could be another story of never-published original texts by a famous author. And in a way it is. However, the location where they found the texts is not.
It was a hot and humid afternoon in early 2020, just before the Covid-19 pandemic broke out. The son of a veteran collector from Montevideo, who asked that his name not be revealed for privacy reasons, told CNN that he is trying to sort out the chaos left behind by his father, who died a few months earlier. Boxes and more boxes, dust, books and antiques scattered throughout the house.
In one corner there was a stack of banana crates, the kind used to import the fruit from Ecuador or Brazil, but also to store books. He began putting them away, taking out papers, lint, bags, old books, cheap novels and souvenirs. To empty them. Until he reached the bottom of one of the crates.
Suddenly, between the folds of a damp cardboard box, he found a yellowish piece of paper with some letters on it. He read one word: “cronopios.” His eyes widened and he remembered his hair standing on end. Trembling, he slowly began to take out the papers and read out a title, the name of a famous writer, the city where he is buried, and a year: “Stories of Cronopios and Deeds of Glory.” Julio Cortazar. Paris, 1952.”
There were 60 pages, with 46 stories typed by Cortázar, 35 of which were published “almost without variants” in the first edition of “Historias de cronopios y de Fames” (Editorial Minotauro, Buenos Aires) from 1962, and another four were published subsequently and seven are unpublished, according to the catalog by Zorrilla Subastas, one of the auction organizers. A literary treasure that remained hidden in a few banana boxes for more than 70 years.
He had hidden a treasure in these banana crates (Photo: courtesy)
The authentication of the material was carried out by two Cortázar experts: the academic Aldo Mazzucchelli – from a literary point of view – and the collector Lucio Aquilanti, from a technical point of view.
“I can confirm without a doubt that this is a typewritten original by the author of exceptional importance,” wrote Aquilanti in his report, in which he even concluded that the author used a Royal typewriter for these texts, the same one he used to write much of his work. “This is a period original, very similar to other pieces from a few years later that I’ve spent years working on,” Aquilanti added to CNN.
“From a literary point of view, taking into account above all the period and context of the composition, the style, the author’s idiolect and the themes, there is no valid reason to believe that these pages are not authentic,” concluded Aldo Mazzucchelli. .
This Thursday, October 12, this original version typed by the author will be offered for sale in a joint auction at the Zorrilla (Uruguay) and Hilario (Argentina) auction houses, with a base price of $12,000.
(Photo: with kind permission)
The auction catalog on the website states that the originals are “in very good condition” and in a box specially designed for conservation. And he adds: “The wonderful treasure of unpublished works by Julio Cortázar consists of the following titles: “Inventory”, “Letter from one Glory to Another”, “Automatic Butterflies”, “Travels and Dreams”, “Little Unicorn.” ” , “Mirror Rage” and “King of the Sea”. The sale of Cortazar’s typescripts does not include copyright in the work.
The creation of this work, Cortázar said in later interviews, dates back to 1951, when he arrived in Paris. A year later, during a concert at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, he experienced – as he later said in interviews – a revelation. At that moment he imagined some creatures floating before him and christened them “Cronopios”, the same name with which he himself later earned the nickname “The Great Cronopio”. On his white marble tombstone in Montparnasse Cemetery is a sculpture depicting several cronopios.