Medicine, Madness and Writing in La vorágine

Abstract

This essay explores the ways in which medical discourse regarding mental illness and racial degeneration shapes the portrayal of madness and the act of literary creation in Jose Eustasio Rivera's La voragine (1924). The medical lexicon of neur- asthenia and eugenic theory that is used to depict the protagonist Arturo Cova's mental unravelling also reveals Rivera's concern for his own health and, meta- phorically, for that of the Colombian nation. While insanity leads to Cova's demise in the depths of the jungle and raises doubts about the well-being of the Colombian body politic, it simultaneously serves as a catalyst for literary creation: the lyrical power of the untamed Latin American wilderness can only be evoked by the simi- larly unruly ramblings of a madman. This piece examines Rivera's personal famil- iarity with medical ailments at the turn of the twentieth century and the ways in which he appropriates medical discourse to forge a new way of writing about Latin America. Resumen