"Bem longe de Marienbad": a reading of absence in a short story by Caio Fernando Abreu

Abstract

Caio Fernando Abreu's short story “Bem longe de Marienbad” addresses the impossibility of the love encounter, determined by the mismatch between two lovers whose contact is almost exclusively intellectual and minimally embodied. This article aims to analyze how the subject-inherent discontinuity, which Bataille thematizes in Eroticism, is underscored in the narrative. As a consequence of the erotic desire, the main character becomes aware of his incompleteness and solitude when he realizes that it is impossible to get close to the desired one.