APOCALYPSE AS A POETIC MEANS OF SURVIVAL IN FERNANDO VALLEJO'S NOVEL OUR LADY OF THE ASSASSINS

Our Lady of the Assassins (1994), by Fernando Vallejo, features a conservative and traditional grammarian in search of his lost childhood memories and affections, which have shaped his idea of fatherland during his exile. Holding on to his memories of 1950s Colombia, Fernando has to face the harsh reality of 1990s drug wars in his return to Medellin, an apocalytic setting which sharply contrasts with the idealised recollection of his grandparents' farm and other lost places from his past. In order to overcome his anxiety, the narrator undertakes a literary meditation which leads him from intellectual discourse to sexual experience, as a means of coming to terms with the material contingence which surrounds him. Thus, poetry becomes a strategy that enables him to face and inhabit the world.