Imaginary Intimacy as a Death Metaphor in La Invención de Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares
Imaginary Intimacy as a Death Metaphor in La Invención de Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares

Summary/Abstract: This paper analyses how imaginary intimacy becomes both the equivalent of death in La Inventión de Morel and the key metaphor in Casares’ fiction. In combining two essential points of view (circular time and the transmigration of consciousness from the original to the replica), the novel insists on the ingenious way in which reality can be restructured and multiplied. Intending to avoid or postpone death, the mechanical temptation really brings it closer. The idea of virtual reality as ‘life inside an image’ reinforces the inversion of the relationship between image and its object and carries the metaphor to its ultimate consequences. The story is also at its best in creating a painfully ironic new metaphysics, an allegory of individuality in the modern world. It also relies on all the modern concepts related to image theory.

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