La errancia y la muerte de Claudio de Alas (1886–1918)

Abstract: The life and work of Claudio de Alas, pseudonym of the Colombian author Jorge Escobar Uribe, is marked by wandering. This essay follows displacement in the poet's life and the repose of death as a pervasive image in his writing. An exploration of the experience of exile in this minor literary figure functions as a counterpoint and comparison with displacement as a central mark of other Spanish American writers in the second half of the nineteenth century. The essay develops a discussion of Alas's form of exile in which coming back to the origin is not a central feature, thus contravening an interpretation of exile as linked to nostos, the mythical theme of the Western classical tradition in which the wanderer strives to arrive favorably, and his story is distilled into a heroic narrative.