A cronopio is a type of fictional person appearing in works by
Argentine
Argentines (mistakenly translated Argentineans in the past; in Spanish (masculine) or (feminine)) are people identified with the country of Argentina. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Argentines, s ...
writer
Julio Cortázar
Julio Florencio Cortázar (26 August 1914 – 12 February 1984; ) was an Argentine, nationalized French novelist, short story writer, essayist, and translator. Known as one of the founders of the Latin American Boom, Cortázar influenced an ent ...
(August 26, 1914–February 12, 1984).
Together with ''
famas
The FAMAS (''Fusil d'Assaut de la Manufacture d'Armes de Saint-Étienne'', "Assault Rifle from the Saint-Étienne Weapon Factory") is a bullpup assault rifle designed and manufactured in France by MAS in 1978, a year after the Austrian Steyr ...
'' (literally ''fames'') and ''esperanzas'' (''hopes''), cronopios are the subject of several
short stories
A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one 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 oldest t ...
in his 1962 book ''
Historias de cronopios y de famas
''Historias'' 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 f ...
'' 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 considere ...
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
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
. 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
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 discussion of literature's goals and methods. Th ...
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 studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...
meanings in these stories or for a universal
taxonomy
Taxonomy is the practice and science of categorization or classification.
A taxonomy (or taxonomical classification) is a scheme of classification, especially a hierarchical classification, in which things are organized into groups or types. ...
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, primarily and possibly exclusively known from the Jurassic and Cretaceous. They are considered members of the clade Cladotheria, close to the ancestry of therian mammals. It is also believed that they d ...