Does the pleasure of hearing Cortazar read overcome the distaste of having his poetry turned into advertising copy? And what have they done with his text? Here is the complete text (as translated by Paul Blackburn). I highlighted the excerpts used in the ad:
Think of this: When they present you with a watch they are gifting you with a tiny flowering hell, a wreath of roses, a dungeon of air. They aren't simply wishing a watch on you, and many more, and we hope it will last you, it's a good brand, Swiss, seventeen rubies; they aren't just giving you this minute stonecutter which will bind you by the wrist and walk along with you. They are giving you--they don't know it--they are gifting you with a fragile and precarious piece of yourself, something that's not a part of your body, that you have to strap to your body like your belt, like a tiny furious bit of something hanging onto your wrist. They give you the job of having to wind it every day, an obligation to wind it, so that it goes on being a watch; they gift you with the obsession of looking into jewelry-shop windows to check the exact time, check the radio announcer, check the telephone service. They gift you the fear, someone will steal it from you, it'll fall on the street and get broken. They give you the gift of your trademark and the assurance that it's a trademark better than others, they gift you with the impulse to compare your watch with other watches. They aren't giving you a watch, you are the gift, they're giving you yourself for the watch's birthday.
Maybe the real pleasure(?) is in contemplating just how poorly they have misunderstood the poem and the relationship of people to things it investigates. Or maybe it's just ironic? Come to think of it, the Seat Ironia is not a bad name for a car.
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