Julio Cortázar's The Idol of the Cyclades has fascinated readers and critics ever since the 1950s when the great Argentine author's tale was first published. Once read, never forgotten.
THE IDOL OF THE CYCLADES
Morand meets with Somoza in his studio, located in a suburb of Paris. Morand suspects Somoza might be losing his grip on reality, especially when Somoza tells him there are no words to explain what he is doing with the ancient statue they unearthed two years ago on a Greek island. “That’s right, there are no words for it. At least, not in our words.” Reading a Julio Cortázar tale is like being immediately plunged beneath the surface of things—not so much into a stream of consciousness as into a stream of magic, where we enter a universe of continually shifting, multilayered realities.
Morand reflects on that golden afternoon on the Greek island when he and Somoza, while digging, discovered a buried statuette (about 10 inches tall, as shown in the accompanying picture) at the bottom of their pit. Somoza called out, and Teresa came running, forgetting she was holding the top half of her bikini in her hand. Angry and laughing, Morand yelled at his wife to cover herself. This scene vividly illustrates a recurring tension in Cortázar's work: the pull between the raw vitality of the ancient world and the self-conscious restraint of the modern era.
Somoza confides in Morand that he harbors a senseless hope: “that someday he would be able to approach the statue by ways other than the hands and the eyes of science.” Ah, the tension between the ancient and the modern, the chaos of emotions and the control of reason, is forcefully underscored in Somoza's wish to be free from the fetters of our current age, where scientific knowledge reigns supreme.
Morand and Teresa decide to end their island expedition and return to Paris when Morand notices, in Somoza's glance at Teresa, that his friend is beginning to fall in love with his wife. Are we dealing with an old-fashioned love triangle here? Perhaps, but Somoza's increasing infatuation with the statue over the past two years, since the trio left the island, has blurred any potential relationship between the archaeologist-turned-sculptor and Teresa. One thing is certain, though: by including a love triangle, Julio Cortázar has heightened the emotional intensity of his tale.
Morand is given a clear indication of just how far Somoza has crossed into the realm of the Dionysian and the world of the shaman when he witnesses his friend communing with the statue: “the repeated caressing of the beautiful and expressionless statue's little body, repeating the spells in a monotone until it became tiresome, the same formulas of passage.” Additionally, Morand is not entirely comfortable with his own preoccupation with reason and analysis, silently “damning this mania for systems, which made him reconstitute life as though he were restoring a Greek vase for the museum, gluing the tiniest articles with minute care.”
It will surely not surprise any reader that this uncanny tale concludes with a blood sacrifice. Whose blood, and what the act truly signifies, are questions that linger long after the final page. Is it an ultimate surrender to the primal and the mystical? A desperate bid to transcend the limits of reason and modernity? In The Idol of the Cyclades, Cortázar masterfully probes the intersections of obsession, inspiration, and madness, reminding us that the pursuit of creativity often demands a step into the unknown. This tension between chaos and control finds explosive expression in this classic work, cementing it as one of the author’s most enigmatic and haunting tales.
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