The objective of this work is to analyse the short stories by the Argentine writer Julio Cortázar (1914-1984), as alternatives to literary creation in front of certains impasses placed by the modern world. Pressuposing the dificulty in delimitating experience in begginings and ends - that is, the representation of human action`s final purposes -, in a first moment Cortázar`s narratives appear as enclosured totalitys which provide the reach of a goal, in the territory of play, with a contusing, precise gesture: a knock-out, a thrust, a murder. These configurations, however, are incapable to satisfact the desire of unity they nourish; and so, in a second moment, the dissertation focuses stories which recognize the impossibility of ceasing desire, and then keep the the search of form as a dialogical space and attempt of contact. Inscribed on modernity`s unstable surfaces, these short stories work carefully the matter of language, so as to, in subtile, sometimes hesitating gestures - a look, a touch, a trace - they manifest the will of a gathering and an imminence of sense.