Adolfo Couve: el descabezado

Abstract

This article focuses on the last two novels by Adolfo Couve, La comedia del arte (1996) and Cuando pienso en mi falta de cabeza (La segunda comedia), posthumously published in 2000. The article proposes an allegorical reading of the transformation of the painter Camondo into a wax statue, the protagonist of both novels who later loses his mind. The article argues that the loss of the mind allegorizes a quotidian time, in tune with Couve’s world, which spins and repeats itself, closed, without a horizon, a “beheaded” time (lacking future). This allows the possibility to build a coherent sense of a series of narrative forms (which include language, space, time, characters) and that, taken as a whole, show the particular way in which Couve’s narrative is built and developed.