EN LAS MONTAÑAS DE LA LOCURA

Furthermore, the obsessive drive that propels characters in these connected works finds an unsettling echo in Lovecraft's scientific expedition. While the obsession in Nabokov's *Lolita* is disturbingly human and morally reprehensible, focused on a singular, destructive pursuit, the fascination that grips Lovecraft's protagonists with the ancient alien civilization and its secrets carries a similar intensity. Both authors, despite their vastly different prose styles and thematic concerns, illustrate how an all-consuming drive can warp perception and push the boundaries of sanity. The desire to uncover the unknown, whether it's the depravity of Humbert Humbert or the cyclopean ruins of Antarctica, becomes a lens through which reality itself is distorted, highlighting a shared psychological landscape of intense fixation. This tension between the allure of the forbidden and the resulting psychological unraveling is a powerful connective thread.

The pervasive sense of isolation, a cornerstone of Lovecraftian dread, also finds fertile ground in other connected texts. In *En las Montañas de la Locura*, the vast, desolate Antarctic landscape amplifies the feeling of human insignificance against the cosmic backdrop, creating an existential void. This profound isolation, albeit on a more personal and intimate scale, is also central to Gabriel García Márquez's *Memoria de mis putas tristes*. Both novellas explore the human condition within states of deep solitude, grappling with the desperate, often flawed, attempts to find solace or meaning. While Lovecraft's isolation is born from the terrifying realization of humanity's cosmic irrelevance, García Márquez's stems from a personal, bittersweet reckoning with life and loneliness. The shared contemplative space between these works, where cosmic dread meets personal reflection, acknowledges the fundamental human need to confront emptiness. Similarly, Yoshimoto Banana's *Tsumugi* delves into the profound isolation that arises from confronting the incomprehensible, mirroring the way Lovecraft's protagonists are forced to grapple with truths far beyond human comprehension. The quiet, internal landscapes of solitude in Banana's work find a subtle, existential resonance with the vast, indifferent cosmos depicted by Lovecraft, underscoring a shared human fascination with both external and internal voids. Together, these connections paint a richer portrait of *En las Montañas de la Locura*, demonstrating its enduring power to tap into universal human anxieties about the nature of reality, the limits of human perception, and the profound sense of solitude that can arise from encountering the unknown, whether it lies in the frozen wastes of Antarctica or the deepest recesses of the human psyche.