From the lookout of Son Marroig, Julio Cortázar came to see the green ray.
Yesterday, from Archduke Ludwig Salvator's viewpoint, I once more saw the sun sink into the sea. A friend mentioned the green ray, and I was sad in advance that the children present were waiting for it with the same anxiety with which I had wished for it on my absurd suburban skyline; now it would be worse, now the conditions were set and the would be no green ray, parents would justify the fiasco however they could to console their young; life - as they call it - would mark another stage on their path towards conformism. There remained one final, fragile, orange-tinged segment of sun. We saw it disappear behind the perfect edge of the sea, surrounded by the halo which would still last a few minutes. And then came the green ray, not a ray but a flash, an instantaneous spark in a single point as though from alchemy, a Heraclitean solution of elements. It was an intensely green spark, it was a green ray even though it was not a ray, it was the green ray, it was Jules Verne whispering in my ear: Did you finally see it, you big fool?
“El rayo verde”. Papeles inesperados, 2009
Translated by Richard Mansell. Performed by Henar Arribas.
(Brussel·les, 1914 – París, 1984). Julio Cortázar was born in Brussels in 1914, where his father was a civil servant at the Argentinean embassy, although the family moved to Buenos Aires when the 1st World War broke out. Having worked as a literature teacher at several different education centres, in 1954 Julio Cortázar became a translator for the UNESCO and moved to Paris. Among his work, special mention must be made of Rayuela (Hopscotch), published in 1963 to great popular and critical acclaim. With its innovative use of narrative, the novel stands out for its wit and originality. As well as writing novels, Cortázar also wrote short stories, essays, and literary reviews and he was a superb literary translator.
Cortázar discovered Mallorca thanks to Nicaraguan writer Claribel Alegría, and he first came to live in Deià in the 1960s. The story “El rayo verde” (“The Green Ray”) bears witness to this Mallorcan experience. In it, he recalls reading the novel of the same title by Jules Verne when he was young. One day, as he gazed at the setting sun from Son Marroig vantage point, Cortázar actually managed to see the green ray that had obsessed him for years. And so it is that, in Mallorca, one’s most coveted wishes can come true. The story is included in the collection Papeles Inesperados (Unexpected Writings), published posthumously by his first wife, Aurora Bernárdez.
In 2009, Cortázar's first wife, Aurora Bernárdez, edited a collection of previously unpublished texts, amongst which is El rayo verde. The texts in Papeles inesperados were written for various reasons and are a display of the many registers he could employ, his social commitment and his knowledge.
With El rayo verde, Cortázar invites us to connect with one of the most recurrent features on Majorca's western coast: the attraction of the sunset, which is especially beautiful from there, allowing us to see the sun make contact with the horizon. This is where the scientific phenomenon known as a green flash or green ray occurs, made popular by Verne and referred to by Cortázar.
