Cronopio (literature)
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A cronopio is a type of fictional person appearing in works by
Argentine Argentines, Argentinians or Argentineans are people from Argentina. This connection may be residential, legal, historical, or cultural. For most Argentines, several (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their ...
writer
Julio Cortázar Julio Florencio Cortázar (26 August 1914 – 12 February 1984; ) was an Argentine and naturalised French novelist, short story writer, poet, essayist, and translator. Known as one of the founders of the Latin American Boom, Cortázar influenc ...
(August 26, 1914–February 12, 1984). Together with ''
famas The FAMAS ( French: ''Fusil d'Assaut de la Manufacture d'Armes de Saint-Étienne'', lit. 'Assault rifle from the Saint-Étienne Weapon Factory') is a bullpup assault rifle designed and manufactured in France by MAS in 1978. It is known by ...
'' (literally ''fames'') and ''esperanzas'' (''hopes''), cronopios are the subject of several
short stories A short story is a piece of prose fiction. It can typically be read in a single sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the old ...
in his 1962 book ''
Historias de cronopios y de famas ''Stories'' is the fifth studio album released on April 19, 1994, by Guatemalan singer-songwriter Ricardo Arjona. Reception The Allmusic review by Jason Birchmeier awarded the album 4.5 stars: "If you were to pick only one Arjona's album fo ...
'' and Cortazar continued to write about cronopios, famas, and esperanzas in other texts through the 1960s.


Characteristic

In general, cronopios are depicted as naive and
ideal Ideal may refer to: Philosophy * Ideal (ethics), values that one actively pursues as goals * Platonic ideal, a philosophical idea of trueness of form, associated with Plato Mathematics * Ideal (ring theory), special subsets of a ring considered ...
istic, disorganized, unconventional and sensitive creatures, who stand in contrast or opposition to famas (who are rigid, organized and judgmental if well-intentioned) and esperanzas (who are plain, indolent, unimaginative and dull). In his stories Cortázar describes few physical features of cronopios. He does refer to them (in one of the early stories ''Costumbres de los famas'') as "those greenish, frizzly, wet objects," but this description is just the initial author's vision of the invented character. In a letter to Paul Blackburn on 1959-03-27 Cortázar writes that human characteristics of cronopios appeared later, while writing other stories. These demonstrate aspects of cronopios' personalities, habits, and inclinations.


Uses of the term

Cortázar first used the word ''cronopio'' in a 1952 article published in '' Buenos Aires Literaria'' reviewing a
Louis Armstrong Louis Daniel Armstrong (August 4, 1901 – July 6, 1971), nicknamed "Satchmo", "Satch", and "Pops", was an American trumpeter and vocalist. He was among the most influential figures in jazz. His career spanned five decades and several era ...
concert given in November of that year in the
Théâtre des Champs-Élysées The Théâtre des Champs-Élysées () is an entertainment venue standing at 15 avenue Montaigne in Paris. It is situated near Avenue des Champs-Élysées, from which it takes its name. Its eponymous main hall may seat up to 1,905 people, while th ...
in
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. The article was entitled ''Louis, Enormísimo Cronopio'' ("Louis, Enormous Cronopio"). Cortázar would later describe in various interviews how the word ''cronopio'' first came to him in that same theater some time before this concert in the form of an imaginary vision of small green globes floating around the semi-deserted theater. References to cronopios in Cortázar's work occur in 20 short sketches that make up the last section of ''Historias de Cronopios y de Famas'' as well as in his "collage books," ''La vuelta al día en ochenta mundos'' and ''Ultimo Round,'' which were collected in a French edition he considered definitive. Some
literary critic A genre of arts criticism, literary criticism or literary studies is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical analysis of literature' ...
s consider Cortazar's cronopios stories as lesser works compared to other of the author's novels and short stories. Others have looked for hidden
metaphysical Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the basic structure of reality. It is traditionally seen as the study of mind-independent features of the world, but some theorists view it as an inquiry into the conceptual framework of h ...
meanings in these stories or for a universal
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of human beings. Cortázar himself described these stories as a sort of "game" and asserted that writing them gave him great joy. The term ''cronopio'' eventually became a kind of honorific, applied by Cortázar (and others) to friends, as in the dedication to the English-language edition of '' 62: A Model Kit'': "This novel and this translation are dedicated to Cronopio Paul Blackburn ..." (Blackburn translated several of Cortazar's early stories under the title ''The End of the Game.'') A fossil
dryolestoid Dryolestida is an extinct order of mammals, known from the Jurassic and Cretaceous. They are considered Basal (phylogenetics), basal members of the clade Cladotheria, close to the ancestry of therian mammals. It is also believed that they develop ...
mammal found in Argentina has been named '' Cronopio dentiacutus''.


Other references

* Cortázar has sometimes been called the Grandísimo Cronopio or the Cronopio Mayor by his admirers.


External links


''Historias de Cronopios y de Famas''
{{Julio Cortázar Argentine literature Julio Cortázar