Based on the hypothesis that the most extreme point of the denial of love in Machado de Assis's fiction is to be found in the short story "A desejada das gentes", this article confronts the aloofness of Quintília, the main character, with the narrator's voice, suffused with the poetry of erotic emotion. In the same key, the article also comments on the complex relations between Machado and Romanticism and the aesthetic trends that at the time fought against the magnetic force of the romantic legacy.
"A desejada das gentes"; denial of love; erotic emotion; Romanticism