Surgical Chiromancy on a Story by Cortázar: “Estación de la mano”

Abstract

In this article we carry out an exhaustive study, (pseudo)edition
and detailed commentary on an early story by Cortázar that
develops the motif of the amputated hand with a life of its own.
The analysis includes the complete text of the short story (barely
three pages long) in an ad hoc presentation. Since it deals with
one of the few stories by Cortázar, if not the only one, that has
been published in two versions with numerous variations, I have
tried to make the appropriate incisions, sutures and grafts in order
to understand the meaning of the story in all its scope in and of
itself and inside the corpus of short stories of this Argentine
author.