El vuelo y las metáforas religiosas en Alsino (1920), de Pedro Prado

Pedro Prado presents in his novel Alsino (1920) the story of an ordinary boy who suddenly grows wings. Unable to understand his peers or to adapt to his environment, after goiiig through the ordeal of seehig his wings cut he performs a final flight towards the atmosphere that leads to his disintegration, fading into tiny ash particles that fall to the ground. With this figure, Prado aims to transfonn the decadent fin de siècle human race to release it from its positivist burden and let it lift its flight to the liberating heights of transcendence where the hero sacrifices himself for the suffering humanity in anguish. Alsino is a metaphor of twentieth-centun man, an image of the always limited man iii permanent search, and symbol of his insatiable thirst for the infinite.