Book excerpt: The power of Eros, the enduring beauty of art, a love-hate nostalgia for his Argentine homeland, the bonds of friendship and the tragic folly of politics are some of the themes of Save Twilight. Informed by his immersion in world literature, music, art, and history, and most of his own emotional geography, Cortazar's poetry traces his paradoxical evolution from provincial Argentinean sophisticate to cosmopolitan Parisian Romantic, always maintaining the sense of astonishment of an artist surprised by life.