Blow-Up (short story)
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| "“Blow-Up” ("Las babas del diablo)"" | |
|---|---|
| Short story by Julio Cortázar | |
 | |
| Publication | |
| Publisher | Editorial Sudamericana |
| Publication date | 1958 |
“Blow-Up” (Spanish: "Las babas del diablo”) is a work of short fiction by Julio Cortázar first collected in Las Armas secretas (1958) by publisher Editorial Sudamericana[1]
The story was written during a highly prolific period in Cortázar’s literary career during which he wrote stories published in three volumes.[2]
The adaption to film of the story by director Michelangelo Antonioni in 1966 contributed to Cortázar’s international reputation as a writer.[3]
The original Spanish title for the story translates literally as "The Droolings of the Devil."
“No one can recount one of Cortázar’s plots; each text has a certain number of words and precise order. If we try to summarize it, something precious gets lost.”—Jorge Luis Borges, “Julio Cortázar: Cuentos, Biblioteca personal” (1984).[4]
“Blow-Up” ("Las babas del diablo”) is told from several points-of-view and tenses and shifting perspectives. The focal character is Roberto Michel, a French-Chilean translator and amateur photographer who lives in Paris. His activities and thoughts are related through both first-person and third-person narratives.
The story is set in Paris at the Île Saint-Louis, a popular urban island in early November. Michel is wandering about with his camera. He perches on a retaining wall and to observe what he at first thinks is “a kid and his mother.”[5] On a second glance he finds the couple intriguing and vaguely sinister: an attractive woman is speaking ardently to an adolescent boy. The nature of their relationship is unclear, but Michel imagines them making love in her apartment. The boy seems agitated at the woman’s controlling presence. On impulse, Michel raises the camera and takes a photo. The image encompasses the couple and the surrounding landscape, including a man sitting in an automobile across the street. The woman instantly reprimands Michel for his intrusion and demands he hand over the film; Michel protests and declines to do so. During the contretemps the boy quickly retreats and disappears. The man emerges from the car and silently approaches Michel, his face twisted into an enraged grimace.
Michel returns home and develops the film, enlarging the image to the size of a poster. Regarding the image of the trio, Michel feels gratified at having provided for the boy’s escape from an assignation with the man.[6][7]