Clemente Palma, Carlos Toro y el paso del cometa Halley en 1910: catástrofe, palingenesia y alegoría

Abstract

This article compares two Latin American science fiction stories written around the year 1910: “El día trágico” by Clemente Palma and “El dieciocho de mayo” by Carlos Toro. Both use the real event of the passage of Halley’s Comet near the Earth in May 1910 to produce urban apocalyptic fictions that predict deleterious consequences for humanity. After contextualizing the stories historically, I highlight how they contribute to a transnational literary tradition of cosmic disasters, rely on discursive strategies typical of the narratives of extinction and “last survivor” stories, and incorporate a palingenetic perspective where some of the features of a future society are envisioned. The combination of these traits with a reading of the comet as a metaphor for social change results in hybrid works that can be interpreted as allegorical commentaries of the modern process of secularization. The stories offer us a glimpse into the individual anxieties of the authors facing modernization and ultimately show their inability to imagine the future.