“La imagen es la forma lírica del ansia de ser siempre más”: Cortázar y la imagen como forma de expresión

Abstract

This paper provides an overview of various theories related to Cortázar’s ideas about the metaphor. I look into Plato, Herder, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Jakobson, Gadamer, Ricoeur, Derrida, and deMan to explore and demonstrate the way in which Cortázar revaluated and reworked the meaning of visual images to create his distinctive poetics. Postmodern literature, like Cortazar’s, questions the referentiality of language and shows that it is only visual images that determine meaning. In the work of Cortázar there is always a hidden story that informs us about a different reality. A reality that is form by the logic of metaphorical structures.