Vacíos fascinantes : Alexander von Humboldt y el mito del Chimborazo

Abstract

Alexander von Humboldt’s ascent of Chimborazo (1802) has become one of the foundational myths of independent Latin America. The traveller himself, however, designed his accounts to be anti-heroic, self-ironic, and open to interpretation. The manner in which he dealt with his most legendary achievement is representative of his self-reflective attitude toward the colonial Other, his multidisciplinary conceptualization of knowledge, and his fragmentary, experimental poetics. The voids that he left have been filled by painters and writers with artistic fantasies exaggerating or demystifying the event.