Most of them form part of the functional structure of the metropolis, like back alleys or markets. And thanks to the power of desire and of literature, he was transported to the legendary passages of Paris.Īll the world’s cities have passages and in some cases more specifically arcades. It was at the Güemes Arcade in Buenos Aires that he left behind his adolescence. In El otro cielo (The Other Sky), for example, Cortazar’s narrator admits that “passages and galleries have always been my secret homeland”. One need only trace them in the poetry of French surrealism, in Walter Benjamin’s essays or in the short stories of Julio Cortázar to confirm this magic of interdimensional lifts. In the modern city –a world in itself– passages have occupied this metaphorical space. Since ancient times, natural or man-made tunnels, bridges or rock-hewn stairs have been symbols of the passage between two worlds. To reach the sanctuary of Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine, it was necessary to cross a long gallery, the ceiling and walls of which were dripping wet: it was believed that the falling drops of sacred water cleansed the pilgrim’s spirit. The writer Jorge Carrión invites us to travel in some “time machines” of this type in the city he calls his home. The writer based the house on one located in the city of Chivilcoy in the Province of Buenos Aires, which can still be found in the streets Suipacha and Necochea.All the passages in the world share a certain magic: they elicit a conversation between two spaces, two worlds. The mystery that revolves around what those entities are is largely left up to interpretation, allowing the genre of the story to vary from fantasy to psychological fiction to magic realism, among others.Īmong the resources that are frequent in Cortázar's story, graphic signs (such as parenthesis) are used to reflect censorship. It starts in a realist manner and it slowly introduces a scene in which natural laws are distorted. It tells the story of a brother and sister living together in their ancestral home which is being 'taken over' by unknown entities.

It was originally published in Los anales de Buenos Aires, a literary magazine edited by Jorge Luis Borges, and later included in his volume of stories Bestiario. ' Casa Tomada' ( English: ' House Taken Over') is a 1946 short story by Argentine writer Julio Cortázar.

Casa tomada julio cortazar english