Death, ghosts and madness in two narrations of Bernardo Couto Castillo

Abstract

In this article I propose to explore the narrations “Una obsession” (1901) and “Celos póstumos” (1898), by Bernardo Couto Castillo, published in Revista Moderna in its first time (1898-1903). The figure of the writer becomes relevant since it is not just about one of the iniciators of Modern Magazine, but also one of the most representative writers of the decadent vein in that publication until 1901, date of his death. I postulate in both stories, the configuration of the trippy hallucinated narrator (Colombi, 2013:232), women and death become a descriptive narrative device, open to the enquiry of other realities, such as death and madness. This device allows to delineate sensations and perceptions that are revealed against the reason and gives entrance to the domain of the irrational through the fantasy. These operations are performed by means of the appropriation (Chartier, 1996:52) and selective combination of some thematics and procedures of Edgar Allan Poe in conection with certain images of pre-Raphaelite painting in “An obsession”; while in “Posthumous jealousy” the author resorts to the baroque topical of vanitas to achieve such an effect. Couto Castillo’s searches clashed with the Mexican porfirista that postulated a modernization associated with mercantilism, where the art seemed like a useless and unproductive job, unless it is exercised in the interest of the state.