„MultiplicItatea existenței” ca aspirație erotică masculină. O analiză a romanului „Cele 20 000 de femei din viața unui bărbat” de Gabriel Osmonde din perspectiva lui Georges Bataille asupra sexualității/ ‘The multiplicity of existence’ as male erotic asp

Abstract

There are three sub-themes that depict the larger subject of male existential crisis
in the novel ‘The 20000 Women in a Man’s Life’ by Gabriel Osmonde, namely: sexuality, death and
literature. This paper aims at illustrating how the concept of ‘multiplicity of existence’ as put forward
by the novel’s author can be correlated with George Bataille’s standpoint on eroticism. The latter is
seen as a desire to escape one’s fragmented existence so as to gain access to the sense of union one
can attain in death only. Following a series of failed erotic attempts, the main character identifies a possible suicide as a means to experience the feeling of continuity so craved by his soul. He delays his suicide plan
several times, the last one being justified by the need to create a fiction which would compensate, at
least partially, for the failures in his real life. Thus, the novel in question is a metafiction which brings
together, subtly unifying them, the individual destiny of a man undergoing a crisis and the separate
destinies of his alter-egos.