Salomé. Novela-Poema by José María Vargas Vila: a new view of a fin de siècle’s myth in Spanish American literature

Abstract

This article will focus on the analysis of the review of Salome myth that the Colombian writer José María Vargas Vila developed in his novel of 1918 Salomé. Novela-Poema. First, we will study the combination of mythical motifs of Salome in Latin American Modernism, influenced by European readings like Oscar Wilde’s works. For this, our methodology will be comparative, in order to show the intertextuality which connects both writers and their sources. Ultimately, we will analyse each one variations of Salome’s myth in the novel of Colombian writer. The transformation of mythical discourse by Vargas Vila will be extreme, so characters and narrative structures are so modified that bring the work close to demystification. Thus, the orientalist Modernism Vargas Vila’s poetic amaze us. First, because of this ludic proposal is renewing not only a myth, but also a genre, and lastly, due to the characters’ portrayal, whose perversity disagree with the rules of fin de siècle society.