Abstract
In a study of Machado’s metaphors, Dirce Côrtes Riedel (1979) identifies, in chapter LXXXIII of Esau and Jacob, the presence of nine great paradoxes structuring the way that Flora’s situation is narrated, during a sleepless night, while she suffers the anguish of the inner split of her oscillating desire between the brothers Paulo and Pedro. This paper starts from the premise that the character corresponds to the personification of desire and that paradox operates, in literature and poetry, as an efficient resource to represent this human impulse. We intend to show how the dilemma of the “inexplicable” Flora concerns her own way of being and the dynamics of desire. To achieve this aim, we will use Rene Girard's theory of mimetic desire, as developed in his main books, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure and Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World.
Keywords:
mimetic desire; Esau and Jacob; Rene Girard