“La Noche Boca Arriba-Night Face Up” by Julio Cortazar Posted on August 27, 2015 August 27, 2015 by justinjjlin Julio Cortazar engages the reader in an interplay between reality and fiction in his short story “Night Face Up”, bringing the reader into his fantastic dreamscape through the use of rich imagery and the presence of. La noche boca arriba (part 2) Saturday, May 10, 2008 at 23:25. The method of looking half the words up in a english/spanish dictionary just can't compare:D.
La NocheBoca Arriba
JulioCortazar
And in certain epochs they would go to hunt enemies;
It had to be late, he thought in the middle of the hotel’slong corridor, and hurried onto the street to the motorcycle in the cornerwhere the concierge next door had allowed him to park. In the corner jeweler’s he saw that it was8:50; he’d arrive where he was going in more than enough time. The sun filtered through the tall buildingsdowntown and, because he needed no name to think, he got on the machinesavoring the excursion. The bike purredbetween his legs and his pants succumbed to the whips of fresh wind.
The ministries in pink and white went by, then a series ofstores on Central street with brilliant shop windows. Now he entered the most pleasurable part ofthe commute, the true journey: a long street lined with trees with littletraffic and huge villas which let their gardens come up to the pavements,hardly marked by low hedges. Somewhat distracted by perhaps, but keeping to theright side as was proper, he let himself go to the smoothness, to the lighttension of that day hardly begun. Perhaps his involuntary relaxation prevented him from avoiding theaccident. When he saw that the womanstanding at the corner was rushing onto the road despite the green lights, itwas already too late for simple solutions. Straying to the left, he braked with his foot and hand; he heard thewoman’s shouts, and with the collision lost his vision. It was as if he had suddenly fallen asleep.
Having fainted, he woke violently. Four or five young men were pulling out himfrom beneath his cycle. He felt thetaste of salt, the taste of blood, his knee hurt, and he shouted once theylifted him out because the pressure on his right arm was unbearable. Voices that didn’t seem to belong to thefaces suspended above him tried to encourage him with jokes andassurances. His only consolation washearing someone confirm that he had had the right of way crossing thatcorner. Trying to control the nauseastirring in his throat, he asked about the woman. While they were taking him face up to anearby pharmacy, he learned that the reason for the accident didn’t haveanything more than scratches on her legs. “You hardly grazed her, but the collision made your bike jumpsideways.” Opinions, memories: lay himdown slowly; yes, like that; and someone in a workcoat gave him a drink whichrelieved him in the shade of a small neighborhood pharmacy.
The police ambulance arrived within five minutes. They put him onto a white stretcher where hecould lie comfortably. In all lucidity,but knowing that he was still under the effects of a terrible collision, hegave his address to the policeman accompanying him. His arm, he said, almost didn’t hurt him anymore. Blood was pouring out onto hiswhole face from a cut in his brow. Helicked his lips once or twice to drink some. He felt good: it was an accident; bad luck. A few weeks not moving and that’d bethat. The guard told him that hismotorcycle didn’t seem to be too damaged. “Naturally,” he said, “since the whole thing landed on top of me.” They both laughed. Then the guard shook his hand as they arrivedat the hospital and wished him good luck. His nausea was already coming backbit by bit. They took him by gurney tothe back building, passing under trees full of birds. He closed his eyes and wished he were asleepor chloroformed. But they kept him for along time in a room with that hospital smell filling out a form, taking off hisclothes and putting on a grayish, stiff shirt. They moved his arm carefully without causing him any pain. All the while, the nurses were telling jokes. And if it hadn’t been for the contractionsin his stomach, he would have felt very well indeed. Almost happy.
They took him to radiography. Twenty minutes later, with his wet sheetsstill clinging to his breast like a black gravestone, he went on to theoperation room. Someone tall, slim anddressed in white came up to him and began examining the charts. A woman’s hands made his head morecomfortable, and he felt that he was moving from one gurney to another. Smiling, the man in white approached himagain with something shiny in his right hand. He placed his hand on his cheek and signaled to someone standing behindhim.
La Noche Boca Arriba English Translation
A strange dream, this, because it was full of smells and hehad never dreamt of smells. First, therewas the smell of a swamp, there on the left side of the road where the marshesbegan, those moving bogs from which no one ever came back. But this smell ceased. It was exchanged for a fragrance bothcomposite and dark like the night in which he moved, fleeing the Aztecs. And all of this was so natural: he had toflee the Aztecs because they were hunting man, and his only chance was to hidein the thickest part of the jungle and to try not to budge from that narrowroad of which only they, the Motecas, knew.
But nothing tortured him more than the smell. It was as if, in absolute acceptance of thedream, something unusual had been revealed that contradicted that dream thatthen later had not been part of the game. “Smells like war,“ he thought, instinctively touching the stone daggeracross his sash of woven wool. Anunexpected sound made him duck and keep still, apart from a slight shiver. There was nothing odd about being afraid: hisnightscapes teemed with fear. He waited, covered by the branches of a shrub andthe night without stars. Very far off,probably on the other side of the great lake, there seemed to be campfires; aresplendent reddish tint filled that part of the sky. The sound did not occur again. Something like a snapped branch. Perhaps an animal who, like he, was escapingthe smell of war. Smelling the airaround him, he straightened slowly. Hedidn’t hear a thing. But fear persistedthere like a smell, that sickly sweet incense that belonged to the war offlowers. He had to keep on; he had toreach the heart of the jungle while evading the marshes. Feeling his way forward, crouching at everyopportunity to touch the hard ground of the road, he took some steps. He would have liked to take off running, butquivering sensations beat at his side. In the path in darkness, he found the course. And then he got a whiff of the smell hefeared most. And desperate, he leaptforward.
“He's going to fall off the bed,” said the patient in thenext bed. “Don’t hop about so much,buddy.”
He opened his eyes and it was evening. The sun was already low in the large windowsof the long hall. While he tried smilingat his neighbor, he almost physically peeled himself away from the nightmare’slast vision. His arm, in a plaster cast,was hanging from a device with weights and pulleys. He was thirsty, as if he had run for miles,but they didn’t want to give him much water, hardly enough to wet his lips andtake a mouthful. His fever was risingslowly and he could have fallen asleep again, but he savored the pleasure ofremaining awake, his eyes half−closed, listening to the conversation of theother patients, responding now and then to a question. He saw them bring in a small white trolleyand place it at the side of his bed. Ablonde nurse then wiped the front part of his thigh with alcohol and stuck himwith a thick needle connected to a tube that reached up to a bottle filled withan opaline liquid. Then a young doctorcame over with an apparatus made of metal and leather and adjusted it to hisgood arm to check on something. Nightfell, and his fever dragged him blandly into a state where things began toassume forms one might find on the other end of opera glasses: they were realand sweet and at the same time slightly repugnant, as if watching a boring filmand thinking that it was even worse outside, and then staying put in thetheater.
Then came a cup of gold filled with marvelous broth andscents of leeks, celery, and parsley. Alittle piece of bread, more beautiful than an entire banquet, was chewed bit bybit. His arm no longer hurt any more,and only on his brow, where they had sutured his wound, he felt at times a hotand rapid piercing. When the largewindows opposite swerved back to spots of dark blue he thought that it would berather easy to fall asleep. A littleuncomfortable there on his back, but when he passed his tongue over his dry,hot lips he felt the taste of the broth, and he took happy and carefreebreaths.
At first there was some confusion, an attraction for aninstant of all the dull and confounded sensations towards him. He understood that he was running in totaldarkness, although the sky above, crossed with treetops, was less black thanthe rest. “The road,” he thought. “I’vegone off the road.” His feet weresinking into a mattress of leaves and mud, and he couldn’t take another stepwithout getting his torso and legs whipped by the shrubbery’s branches. Panting, he realized that that he wascornered despite the darkness and silence, and he crouched down to listen. Perhaps the road was nearby; were thingsdifferent, he would have caught sight of it at daybreak. But now nothing could help him find it. The hand which had instinctively clung to thehilt of the dagger now rose like a swamp scorpion up to his neck where itseized his protective amulet. Hardlymoving his lips he mumbled the prayer of the corn which bore the happy moons,and the supplication to the Most High, the dispenser of Moteca goods. Yet at the same time he sensed that hisankles were sinking slowly into the mud, and the wait in the darkness in theunknown chaparral made it unbearable. The war of flowers had begun with the moon and had already lasted forthree days and three nights. If hecontinued to take refuge in the depths of the forest, abandoning the road morein the region of the swamps, perhaps the warriors would not be able to pick uphis trail. He thought about all thoseprisoners who could have done that. Butit was the sacred time, not quantity that mattered. The hunt would continue until the priestsgave the signal to return. Everythinghad its order and its end, and he was in the sacred time on the opposite sideof the hunters.
He heard the shouts and stood up straight, his dagger inhand. Just as if the sky were burning onthe horizon, he saw torches moving between the branches very close to him. The smell of war was unbearable, and when thefirst enemy leapt upon his neck he almost took pleasure in sinking the stoneblade into his chest. Now lights andhappy screams had already surrounded him. He managed to slice through the air once or twice before a rope caughthim from behind.
“It’s fever,” said the man from the bed beside him. “The same thing happened to me when theyoperated on my duodenum. Drink somewater and you’ll see that you’ll sleep well.
Compared to the night from which he returned, the lukewarmdarkness of the room seemed marvelous. Aviolet lamp kept vigil at the top of the wall in the back of a room like aprotective eye. He heard coughing, heavybreathing, at times a dialogue in low voices. Everything was pleasant and safe, without this harassment, but … Hedidn’t want to keep thinking about his nightmare. There were so many things to keep himselfoccupied. He began to look at theplaster on his arm, the pulleys which so comfortably held it in the air. At some point during the night they hadplaced a bottle of mineral water on the table next to him. He drank gluttonously from the neck of thebottle. Now he was able to discern theshapes in the room, the thirty beds, the glass display cabinets. His fever had to be lower now, and his facefelt so fresh. His brow hardly hurt atall, as if it were just a memory. Hepictured himself exiting the hotel and getting his motorbike. Who could have thought that things would turnout this way? He tried to concentrate onthe time of the accident, and it really annoyed him to notice that it was likea gap that he couldn’t manage to fill. Between the collision and the time they lifted him off the ground eitherhis fainting or whatever it was didn’t let him see anything. And at the same time he had the feeling thatthis gap, this nothing, had taken an eternity. And not even time, but more like he had passed through something andtraveled across great distances. The collision, the brutal hit against thepavement. In any case, getting out ofthat cesspool he had almost felt relief while the men got him off theground. Considering the pain of hisbroken arm, the blood from his brow that was split open, the contusion in hisknee, considering all of that, it was certainly a relief to return to daylightand feel taken care of and helped. Andit was strange. He would have asked anytime for the office doctor. Now sleepbegan to take him over again and slowly pull him down. The pillow was so soft, as was the freshnessof the mineral water in his feverish throat. Perhaps he really could have restedif it hadn’t been for those damned nightmares. The violet light of the lamp up high was starting to go out little bylittle.
Since he was sleeping on his back, the position in which hecame to didn’t surprise him. But insteadthe smell of humidity, of stone oozing with leaks, forced him to close histhroat and understand the matter. It wasuseless to open his eyes and look all over the place; he was enveloped in totaldarkness. He tried to stretch outstraight and felt the ropes on his wrists and ankles. He was tethered to a floor on a cold andhumid slab. The cold had taken over hisnaked back, his bare legs. His chinsearched awkwardly for contact with his amulet, and then he knew that they hadripped it off him. Now he was lost, no prayer could save him from the end. From a distance, as if oozing between thestones of the dungeon, he heard the kettle drums of the celebration. They had brought him to the teocalli. He was in the dungeons of the temple. And he was waiting his turn.
Cortazar La Noche Boca Arriba
He heard screaming. Ahoarse scream that reverberated within the walls. Another scream ending in a moan. He was the one screaming in the darkness, screamingbecause he was alive. His whole body wasdefending itself by screaming about what was about to come, the inevitableend. He thought about his companions whowould fill other dungeons, and about those who were already ascending the stepsof sacrifice. Suffocated, he screamedagain. He was almost unable to open hismouth. His jaws stiffened as if theywere made of rubber and opened slowly with incalculable effort. The squeaking of the bolts shook him like awhip. Convulsed and writhing, hestruggled to free himself from the cords which were sinking into hisflesh. His right arm, the stronger ofthe two, kept pulling until the pain became intolerable and had to stop. He saw the double doors open, and the smellof the torches reached him before the light. With the loincloth of the ceremony barely clinging to their bodies, theacolytes of the priests approached, gazing upon him with disdain. In their sweaty torsos and black hair full offeathers he saw the lights reflected. Hot hands, as hard as bronze, replaced the slackened ropes; he felt thathe was being lifted, his face still up, and pulled by the four acolytes whocarried him through the passage. Thetorchbearers were walking ahead, vaguely lighting the corridor of wet walls anda ceiling so low that the acolytes had to bend their heads. Now they were bringing him, bringing him, itwas the end. His face up, a meter fromthe ceiling of living rock which at moments was illuminated by thetorches. Once stars emerged instead ofthe ceiling and he was raised up the burning stairway of screaming and dancing,it would be the end. The passageway hadnot ended yet, but was about to end, and suddenly he would smell the free airfull of stars; but not yet, they walked carrying him endlessly in the reddarkness, pulling on him brutally, but he could not want for the center oflife, because they had ripped off the amulet which was his true heart.
He exited with a start into the night of the hospital, intothe sky, the high and sweet open air, the soft darkness which surroundedhim. He thought he might have screamed,but his neighbors were sleeping in silence. On his night table the bottle of water contained something bubbly, atranslucent image against the bluish darkness of the large windows. He panted seeking to relieve his lungs andforget those images which continued to stick to his eyelids. Each time he closed his eyes he saw them forminstantaneously, and terrified, he straightened himself while enjoying the factthat he was now awake, that being awake protected him, that it would soon bedawn, as well as the good deep sleep that one has at this hour, without images,without anything … Now it was hard to keep his eyes open, he was no match forhis sleepiness. He made one last effort: with his good hand he sketched agesture towards the bottle of water. Hecouldn't reach it, his fingers were trapped again into a black emptiness, andthe passageway continued endlessly, rock after rock, with sudden reddishflashes, and face up he moaned lifelessly because the roof was about toend. It rose, opening like a mouth ofdarkness, and the acolytes stood up, and at that altitude he was struck by thelight of a receding moon which his eyes did not want to see. He closed and opened them desperately tryingto pass to the other side, to rediscover the open protective sky of the room. And each time that they opened it was nightand there was the moon as they lifted him up the stairway. Now his head went downwards, and at thisheight there were bonfires, red columns of perfumed smoke, and suddenly he sawthe red rock, shining with dripping blood, and the swinging of the feet of thesacrificial victim whom they were dragging in order to hurl him down thestairways of the north. With one lasthope he squeezed his eyelids together, moaning in desperation. For a second he thought he’d done it becauseonce again he was in his bed, unmoving apart from the swaying of his headdownwards. But he smelled death, andwhen he opened them again he saw the bloodied figure of the sacrificer who wascoming towards him with a stone knife in his hand. Once more he closed his eyelids, but now heknew that he wouldn’t wake up, that he was awake, that his marvelous dream hadbeen his other state, absurd like all dreams, a dream in which he had riddenthrough the strange avenues of a darkened city with green and red lights whichburned without flame or smoke, on an enormous metal insect that hummed betweenhis legs. In this dream's infinite liethey had also raised him from the ground, someone had also approached him witha knife in his hand, and he had remained face up, his face up with his eyesshut between the bonfires.
Julio Cortazar engages the reader in an interplay between reality and fiction in his short story “Night Face Up”, bringing the reader into his fantastic dreamscape through the use of rich imagery and the presence of uncertainty in the plot events. The ambiguous nature with which he presents the events in the story illustrate the natural intermix of dreams and reality within the human mind, and the oftentimes difficult act of distinguishing between the two realms.
At the beginning, Cortazar frames his story in the modern era, creating a world in which the narrator is exposed to modern sensations such as the “cool wind [whipping] his pantlegs” as he rode on his motorcycle. The vivid imagery continues to engage the reader with synesthesia, drawing the reader into the story with descriptions of numerous senses and creating a subtle fantastic element to the story. The catalyst for the events later in the story happens when the narrator, still on his motorcycle, begins to disengage from the modern world as he is caught up in the euphoria he experiences from his motorcycle ride and “allowed himself to be carried away by the freshness, by the weightless contraction [and his own] involuntary relaxation”, which subsequently causes him to crash and sends him paralyzed to the hospital. This event can be interpreted as the first evidence for the narrator’s own distortion of the dreamscape and reality. In his act of momentary “involuntary relaxation”, he foreshadows his future struggle to discriminate between what is real and what merely exists in his imagination. Fantastic elements continue to come into play while the narrator is in the hospital, for through his firsthand account the audience begins to see a dreamy and vague ebb and flow between what is supposedly the real world, the hospital, and the fictitious dream world, in which the narrator finds himself transported through time to the time of the Aztecs, in the middle of a “war of the blossoms”.
As the ebb and flow between reality and dreams becomes increasingly ambiguous, the dream world begins to seem more realistic than the ‘reality’ of the modern world, as the narrator begins to describe the Aztec world with increasingly vivid and sensuous imagery. The narrator even acknowledges the uncanny nature of the dream, stating that it was “unusual as a dream because it was full of smells, and he never dreamt smells”. Cortazor continues to manipulate the audience through continuous shifts back to the modern world; descriptions of the lush Aztec marshes are interspersed, or interrupted, with momentary returns to the hospital as the narrator receives medical attention or nourishment, before soon drifting back into the dreamscape. The last clear acknowledgement of reality comes with the narrator’s fears of hopelessness, as fantastic elements come into play once again with the sensation of being “staked to the ground on a floor of dank, ice cold slabs”, the ground being the hospital floor. With the temple scenes and the ceremonial execution ritual taking place, the narrator comes to terms with his inevitable death at the hands of the Aztecs, while seemingly coming to terms with the true dreamscape, that of the modern world.
La Noche Boca Arriba English Analysis
Though the story is mostly driven by events which purportedly happen within the narrator’s head, the uncertain nature of reality versus the dreamscape highlights the fantastic qualities of the story. As the story progresses, the interplay within the narrator’s mind helps elucidate the events which are happening in the Aztec world versus the modern world, while leaving the question of true reality up to interpretation. Cortazar skillfully juxtaposes these two realms, and in doing so, creates a fantastic-marvelous story, as throughout the story there is uncertainty between the two worlds within the story. As the story progresses, the uncertainty only grows; numerous parallels are drawn between the two worlds. A central theme linking the story and the worlds lies within the title, in the concept of the night “face up”, where the narrator is “face up” in the hospital as well as in his procession through the temple pyramids in the Aztec world. Further parallels exist, such as in the lights and odors in the hospital are compared to the light of the Aztec fires and the “smell of war”, as well as the harnesses holding him in his bed versus the ropes binding him to his captors, and finally in the surgical procedure in the hospital and the sacrificial scene at the end of the story with the priest with “knife in hand”. In the end, the “infinite lie of the dream” leaves the reader with a clear resolution but no clear answer as to what realm the narrator and the story existed in.