DEATH AND DESIRE: MEMORIES OF MILENA JESENSKA IN JORGE SEMPRUN AND ANTONIO MUNOZ MOLINA

Jorge Semprun's L'Ecriture ou la vie (1994) and Antonio Munoz Molina's Sefarad (2001) include an identical quotation from Kafka's letters to Milena Jesenska that puts her at the centre of the reader's attention. This article examines how the fictionalization of Milena enables both writers to connect their work to a wider European framework of cultural and literary memory by depicting death and desire as intertwined. The representation of Milena relates to a particular way of seeing, linked to photography and the railway, the uncanny and the spectral, which serves as a tool for interweaving literature, memory, and time.