This paper deals with the Colombian author Jose Felix Fuenmayor's first novel COSME published in 1927.  Although Fuenmayor was not truly recognized as a master storyteller until the posthumous publication of a collection of stories  LA MUERTE EN LA CALLE (1967), his mastery and contributions to Colombian avant-garde literature occurred decades earlier, beginning with the publication of COSME.  This paper will show, against the viewpoint of many critics, that there was indeed an interest in avant-garde literary techniques and themes during the first decades of the 20th century in Colombia.

In COSME, Fuenmayor incorporates the latest psychological theories of Jung and Freud in an attempt to explore in depth the "other" side of man's reality.  His goal, like the surrealists', was to reconcile the interior and exterior worlds through the conscious and unconscious apprehension of reality, and to free the mind and the imagination from the chains of logic and reason by disclosing the inherent irrationality of man's reasoning process.  For Fuenmayor, man's rational approach has really failed to decipher the mysterious, primitive forces operating in the universe.  Throughout the novel, the reader witnesses the constant conflict between the bestial and the angelic, between the conscious and the unconscious psyche exhibited in dreams, hallucinations, pathological obsessions and repressed desires as the principal characters strive to understand the meaning of their existence.