Decadence as a Progressive Force in Select Prose of Julián del Casal and Amado Nervo

Based on a reading of select prose by Julián del Casal and Amado Nervo, this article reveals a tendency in modernista fiction to invert notions of unhealthy modernista decadence and salubrious bourgeois morality. Literary texts include Casal’s “La cámara doble” (The Dual Chamber), “La última illusion” (The Last Hope), and selections from Cuentos amargos (Bitter Tales) and Historias amargas (Bitter Stories), all from 1890. We will also examine a selection of short prose by Nervo published in the Revista de América (Journal of America) before 1915. The narratives in question suggest that creativity depends on the pleasure and catharsis of decadence. Importantly, these writers posit that national discourses aimed at redirecting citizens away from their own instincts and toward a narrowly and externally defined heteronormative lifestyle, and that this project debilitated the individual, thereby affecting national progress. An examination of historical and literary discourses that sought to define the ideal citizen in opposition to modernista decadence roots the texts in a Latin American context. The thought of Friedrich Nietzsche, on the cleansing function of decadence, and Carl Jung, on health and wholeness, allow us to see the confluence between Casal’s and Nervo’s narratives and the international intellectual milieu that informed Latin American modernismo.