Love, Wish and Death Ties

Abstract

The author tries to show the relationship between love, desire and death through the analysis of «Jose Matias», a short tale by Eça de Queiroz. In it the main character «suff ers» a strange passion for Elisa that is corresponded by her, yet never goes any further than glances and some brief encounters that scarcely reach the form of a greeting. In the two occasions in which the loved one becomes a widow –therefore without impediment for a full relationship− Jose Matias runs away scared. His love is depicted in religious terms; the loved one is deifi ed, something sublime but not sublimated, lacking sensuality. Th us Jose Matias falls in a progressive degradation, holding to an enraptured contemplation of his goddess, until finally death catches up with him.
¿Was it love or was it a fatal attraction what forces Jose Matias to keep his beloved one under strict surveillance, always at a distance, always out of reach? What was hiding behind the goddess was the terrible image of a «caged lioness». Jose Matias's attraction expresses the strong desire towards Elisa but, in fact, it was an issue about deadly attraction not for this or that object, neither desire in its purity, the desire of anything, but the desire of nothing, death desire, straining desire beyond pleasure in order
to get access to the joy of the encounter with the Thing.