Variant reading from Reflections

The following text was removed by Burke for the third edition (16 November 1790) and replaced with the text between pp. 180 and 183 in the present edition (see fn 339).

Now take in the other point of view, and suppose their principle of representation according to contribution, that is, according to riches, to be well founded, and to be a necessary basis for the republic, how have they provided for the rich by giving to the district, that is to say, to the poor in the district of Canton and Commune, who are the majority, the power of making an additional number of members on account of the superior contribution of the wealthy? Suppose one man (it is an easy supposition) to contribute ten times more than ten of his neighbours. For this contribution he has one vote out of ten. The poor outvote him by nine voices in virtue of his superior contribution, for (say) ten members, instead of out-voting him for only one member. Why are the rich complimented with an aristocratic preference, which they can never feel either as a gratification to pride, or as a security to fortune? The rich indeed require an additional security from the dangers to which they are exposed when a popular power is prevalent; but it is impossible to divine, on this system of unequal masses, how they are protected; because the aristocratic mass is generated from democratic principles; and the prevalence in the general representation has no sort of connection with those on account of whose property this superiority is given. If the contrivers of this scheme meant any sort of favour to the rich in consequence of their contribution, they ought to have conferred the privilege either on the individual rich, or on some class formed of rich persons; because the contest between the rich and the poor is not a struggle between corporation and corporation, but a contest between men and men; a competition not between districts, but between descriptions. It would answer its purpose better if the scheme was inverted; that the votes of the masses were rendered equal; and that the votes within each mass were proportioned to property. In any other light, I see nothing but danger from the inequality of the masses.

Guillermo Martínez's anecdote, which prefaces this book, epitomises the current critical reception of Julio Cortázar, at least insofar as Argentina is concerned. As Roberto Ferro put it, it seems that the days of Cortázar as a ‘gran escritor’ ended with the publication of Libro de Manuel, and with the labelling of Cortázar as a ‘political writer’. The contradictions manifested within Cortázar's construction of his image are to an extent perpetuated in an episode at a book fair in Buenos Aires in 2009. There, the very same writers who were paying tribute to Cortázar in the round-table discussion were simultaneously declaring that his days as a ‘good’ or respected writer were not only numbered, but were actually over. Meanwhile, Papeles inesperados, a volume containing Cortázar's previously unknown manuscripts, was one of the best-sellers at the fair.

In the hope of modifying some of the prevailing preconceptions about Cortázar, this study has attempted to show that he did not ‘become’ a political writer as a result of his first trip to Cuba, and that the critical claim that divides Cortázar's fictional writings into the apolitical and the political is altogether misleading. Through tracing the evolution of the representation of political elements in his writings, from El examen to Libro de Manuel, it has been shown that politics had always been a point of reference in Cortázar's fiction.

This book analyses the evolution of the representation of distinct political elements through Julio Cortázar's writings, mainly with reference to the novels and the so-called collage books. I also allude to some short stories and refer to many of Cortázar's non-literary texts. Through this corpus, I trace a thematic thread showing that politics was present in Cortázar's fiction from his very first writings, and not – as the prevalent criticism and himself have tended to claim – only following his conversion to socialism after a life-changing trip to revolutionary Cuba. My analysis aims to show that in opposition to what many critics have argued, this crucial point in his life did not divide the writer into an irreconcilable before and after – the apolitical versus the political –, but rather, it simply shifted the emphasis of the representation of the political, which already existed in Cortázar's writings.

In order to trace this process, I carry out the analysis in chronological order, not of the publication of the works, but of the actual time when they were written. Therefore, in the first chapter, I look at some of the books written between 1948 and 1951, namely, Divertimento (1949), El examen (1950) and Diario de Andrés Fava (1951), focusing mainly on El examen; I then extend the analysis to Los premios (1960), written when Cortázar was already living in Paris. Chapter 2 focuses on Rayuela (1963) and the action/inaction dilemma as reflected in the novel's protagonist.

The Manichean view of Cortázar's oeuvre regarding the division between his apolitical versus political texts is largely reflected in the critical writing on his early works. For example, Graciela Maturo, in her analysis, Julio Cortázar y el hombre nuevo, provides a detailed description of Divertimento and El examen, yet she makes no tangible connection between these novels and politics or, more specifically, Peronism. Likewise, regarding the short stories in Bestiario, Mercedes Rein asserts that ‘no se justifica demasiado una interpretación metafísica, menos aún […] una interpretación ética o política de esos cuentos’. Continuing in this vein, Alfred Mac Adam states, in the introduction to his own English translation of El examen, that throughout the 1940s and 1950s Cortázar remained ‘apolitical’, and that El examen is ‘above all a novel about Buenos Aires’. In other words, it is apparent that the critical studies of the works written in this period follow and repeat the assertion that the political element in Cortázar became noticeable only after his conversion to socialism. However, this chapter will show that even the first steps that Cortázar took into the fictional realm were, in several respects, unequivocally political.

The motivation for this book arose from reading Julio Cortázar's Libro de Manuel and noticing a remarkable lack of criticism on that novel. It became clear that it was a book that critics remained reluctant to analyse in detail. In general, the novel is seen as exemplifying the ‘politicised’ Cortázar, the implication being that the politicisation process resulted in a deterioration of literary quality. This corresponds to the broader critical interpretative trend, whereby critics seem to accept unquestioningly Cortázar's own understanding that his first trip to revolutionary Cuba divided his personal life into a drastic before and after, into an apolitical Cortázar versus Cortázar the staunch socialist. Accordingly, the dominant critical tendency also sees that this event marked a watershed between the author's so-called ‘apolitical’ writings and those which express a given political conviction. In this sense, Libro de Manuel is categorised as

Cortázar's ‘political novel’, emerging as the logical result of his conversion to socialism and the politicisation of his literature. This is a view that is prevalent to this day, with writers such as Enrique Guinsberg recently affirming that:

Whereas in the case of El examen and Los premios, ideological criticism of a specific political hegemony, namely, Peronism, is undertaken through an allegorical representation, in the case of Rayuela, the political element is present within a very broad sense of the meaning of politics, as opposed to the specificity of a given political ideology. This political element is primarily located in the ethical dilemmas of the novel's protagonist, Horacio Oliveira. As he reflects upon ethical, ideological and political concerns, and as he sinks into an attitude of passive acquiescence towards life, the reader – who thanks to Cortázar's constant jibes at the lector hembra via Morelli's theories and through the novel's structure has already been prodded into a less passive state than the reader of El examen or Los premios – is simultaneously confronted by the same questions. This is part of a process that could be seen as Cortázar's attempt to contribute towards a change within the ideological consciousness of his readership. Although other political elements manifest themselves explicitly in the text, Oliveira's action versus inaction quandary, with regard to his individual social commitment as well as political involvement in general, is the most prominent political consideration within the novel.

In 1970, during a series of debates between Oscar Collazos, Mario Vargas Llosa and Cortázar on the function of literature and the writer within the socialist revolution, Cortázar wrote: ‘Uno de los más agudos problemas latinoamericanos es que estamos necesitando más que nunca los Che Guevara del lenguaje, los revolucionarios de la literatura, más que los literatos de la revolución.’ With hindsight, and through extensive study of Cortázar's letters and other paratexts, this assertion seems to have been more concerned with rejection of the so-called ‘coleópteros’ and their rigid, inflexible kind of literature, than with working towards a way of writing fiction that would somehow directly contribute to the socialist revolution. Yet, with characteristic ambivalence, Cortázar carefully avoids elucidating precisely what he meant, or how he might have intended to be that Che Guevara of language through his writings. His Papeles inesperados provides a partial explanation, since in one of his ‘Entrevistas ante el espejo’, he claims:

The publication of Rayuela gave Cortázar extraordinary prominence on the Latin American and also international cultural scene. This largely coincided with Cortázar's ‘conversion’ to socialism, catalysed by his first encounter with Castro's Cuba. Based largely on his political adherence, critics and fellow writers constructed the image of the ‘politicised Cortázar’, marking a turning point in the understanding of him as a public figure but also of his fictional writings. The analysis thus far has tried to show that the so-called politicisation of Cortázar, and seemingly also of his literature, has been somewhat mythologised, and not just by critics, but also by Cortázar himself. Even the wave of articles that appeared in the Argentinian and Spanish press during 2009, commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of Cortázar's death, still refers to his first trip to Cuba as a precise point that defines Cortázar's ‘before and after’ politics, generally claiming that his ‘good’ literature ended when he became committed to socialism and to the Cuban Revolution: the Mexican critic Emmanuel Carballo stated, for instance, that ‘su paso por la política nos robó libros que pudieron ser importantes’.

This is a selection of texts from the ancient world commenting directly on Thucydides’ life and work. There exist two extended treatments – by Dionysius (mainly on his style) and ‘Marcellinus’ (mainly on his life) – but it is perhaps surprising how few other direct sources of this kind there are, given Thucydides’ great celebrity and influence.

1. Cicero (106–43 BC). Roman orator, statesman and philosopher. He played an active part in Roman politics before the death of Caesar, delivered many important political speeches and wrote major treatises on rhetoric and philosophy.

2. Brutus. A study of the history of oratory, cast in the form of a dialogue.

Cicero is describing the origins of the art of oratory in Greece, and in particular in Athens:

(1) It was in that city that the orator first came into prominence and where oratory began to be committed to written records. But before Pericles, who is credited with some writings, and Thucydides – who belong not to the infancy of Athens but to her maturity – there is not a single example of the written word that shows any degree of elaboration at all or looks like the work of a real orator. [He then mentions various earlier figures famous for their eloquence] … And after them came Pericles, who excelled in every way but was especially renowned for this ability. We also know that in the same period Cleon, for all the trouble he caused as a citizen, was a man of eloquence. Among his near contemporaries were Alcibiades, Critias and Theramenes, and it is from the writings of Thucydides that one can best understand the style of speaking that flourished at that time: these were impressive in their choice of words, full of wise sayings, and so concise through their compression of material as to be sometimes obscure. (Brutus 26–29)

Summer [V 40–50]

Right at the beginning of spring in the next summer season, the Argives noted with mounting concern that the envoys the Boeotians had promised to send did not arrive, that Panactum was being destroyed and that the Boeotians had made a private alliance with the Spartans. They therefore became afraid that they would be isolated and that the whole alliance would go over to the Spartans. They supposed that the Boeotians had been persuaded by the Spartans to destroy Panactum and to enter into a treaty with the Athenians; and they imagined that the Athenians knew all this, with the result that it was no longer possible for them to make an alliance with the Athenians, though they had previously hoped that while Athens and Sparta remained at odds with each other, even if their treaty with the Spartans did not survive, they could at least become allies of the Athenians. The Argives were therefore at a loss what to do in this situation. They were afraid that they might find themselves at war simultaneously with the Spartans, Tegeans, Boeotians and Athenians, having previously declined to accept a treaty with the Spartans, indeed having even entertained the proud fancy that they might become the leading power in the Peloponnese. They therefore now sent envoys as quickly as possible to Sparta – in the persons of Eustrophus and Aeson, who they thought would be the ones most congenial to the Spartans – taking the view that in the present circumstances it would be best to make an agreement with the Spartans on whatever terms possible and then be at peace.