Clarice Lispector

just saw this! awesome

all i've read by clarice lispector is "near to the wild heart" but it made a strong impression on me and i am eager to delve into her later works. to me, NTTWH articulates the impasse of existentialism at least as well as Sartre's Nausea... that is, the protagonist experiences this profound semantic emptiness in her life that makes possible the recognition of freedom... but the work is far more lyrical and Romantic than anything i've read that has been explicitly tagged with the "existentialist" label. but yeah, lispector was a writer of this highly anti-social, highly punk rock vision of freedom, and she was able to be a sensualist and a spiritualist at the same time; indeed, reading her work, one can hardly imagine how these two categories came to be seen as opposed. so... CLASSIC, but i am afraid her sensibility is a bit outmoded now for the same reasons french existentialism is. i wrote an review of NTTWH but i will graciously refrain from linking to it.

also, i usually don't like to say this kind of thing about artists i admire, but i could look at photos of clarice lispector all day. something about her appearance is not only beautiful but otherworldly, which fits so perfectly with her authorial persona/legend.

you can prob find these online, I haven't tried to search, but I would highly rec elizabeth bishop's translations of a couple lispector short stories, they're in bishop's collected prose

always think this woman sounds like the heroine of a nordic detective novel

my posts here are obnoxious. lispector's project was more complex than my book report type description allows. the "nausea" of freedom is a large part of what she is interested in, but her work covers a wider range than just that. also my comments on her "otherworldly" appearance are basically sexist. she wasn't an otherworldly spiritualist, she was an artist of this world but a modernist who didn't shy away from the strangeness of experience.

“Who has not asked himself at some time or other: am I a monster or is this what it means to be a person?”

people should read clarice lispector though. clarice lispector and jean rhys are the authors i am thinking about today.

Rachel Kushner's tour of Lispectorvision (get your glasses on)
http://www.bookforum.com/inprint/019_04/10575 I gotta read all this and more!

always think this woman sounds like the heroine of a nordic detective novel

― the bitcoin comic (thomp), Saturday, May 25, 2013 10:15 AM (1 year ago)

Lispector Norse

I've read Agua Viva and am halfway through The Passion According to G.H. (foreword by Caetano Veloso). There is a deep inner alienation that could align her to Sartre but she doesn't have a straightforward philosophical standpoint she inputs into her books. Also iirc in Nausea Sartre tries to write a novel with characters and episodes and stuff and I think Lispector has certainly no time for such niceties.

She photographs like Elvis or some such - you just want to study those photographs. They have an aura that is transmitted through her works, making it very addictive - you never feel you can make heads or tails of it. There could be very profound secrets within and yet actually nothing at all there too, but by then you've read the book 111 times (that weird anecdote about a of famous Brazilian singer Cazuza who was one of her readers in that article). Empty charisma.

seriously every time i see these i still think it's like henning mankell or smth!! it's a problem!!!

near to the wild heart thematizes freedom and the way it can lead one to a sense of meaninglessness more explicitly than the later stuff i've read, and it's also basically a straightforward (strem of consciousness) novel, but you're right she is averse to coming to conclusions about the condition she describes

i'd push back against the reading that her books are void of content, more style than anything. at least in near to the wild heart, inner freedom, "wildness," a private barbarism seems to almost be proposed as a response to an oppressive world. that's where i saw the existentialism connection: freedom in the midst of unfreedom, affirming the void, etc.

Its not that she is "void of content" but I allow for the possbility she could be - although she makes a lot of that. I could list a lot of great European fiction all day that has a lot of those characteristics: Pavese, Musil, Bernhard...but it isn't wrapped up in this mysticism/spiritualism.

After Agua Viva I thought the way she addressed the reader and her obscurity reminded me of Rilke at times but I am still thinking this one through.

One book that I am coincidentally reading (finishing A Breath of Life too) that is the nearest thing to Lispector that I can think of is Paul Valery's Monsieur Trieste. Its a bare bones of a novel, written by people who have a profound issue with the novel as a thing but who nevertheless find it as another way to give expression to a philosophical reflection i.e. via the creation of a 'character'. Valery clearly views this as far more problematic as this looks barely 'finished' or even started.

Other analogues are Celan's prose. Not that there is much of it.

Lispector hasn't written any poetry (?) but perhaps that isn't as surprising. Unlike Valery or Celan she is trying to slot a circle into a square shaped box. There are many attempts at a novel, and she is really thinking more outside of herself, at times, i.e. her obsession with her maids.

A girl I really like in University was super into her, so I was extra motivated and always wanted to like her, but I never really did, to the extent that I wanted to

Massive 600+ page short story collection coming out later this year. Apparently it assembles 9 seperate collections.

xyzzzz__, Lispector's cronicas are also worth reading if you're interested in other texts by her that stand outside novelistic structures, although she never goes as far into abstraction there as she does in The Passion According to GH or the parts I've read of Agua Viva: the meditative passages jostle up against stray memories and details of everyday life (including the quirks of her maids, iirc).

James, I'm really excited to hear about the new collection--although a few of her books of stories have been translated (my favorite might be Family Ties), it sounds like there should be a lot of untranslated work in the Complete Stories.

I should say that the one extant filmed interview with Lispector (from 1977, near the end of her life) is undramatic but kind of mesmerizing. I love the prolonged silence after she claims that the role of the Brazilian writer should be to speak as little as possible:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1zwGLBpULs

(Its Monsieur Teste btw..)

Cronicas does sound amazing ows. I'll def try and get this! Similarly I am excited to get hold of her short stories sometime.

I'll look at that youtube later.

James, I'm really excited to hear about the new collection--although a few of her books of stories have been translated (my favorite might be Family Ties), it sounds like there should be a lot of untranslated work in the Complete Stories.

The only shorts of hers I've read are a couple translated by Elizabeth Bishop, but I really liked them. I've found the link to the book: http://ndbooks.com/book/the-complete-stories - it has _86_ stories! Not out until August, though.

Published on my bday! :-)

The Cronicas are getting published soon!!

As much as I admire Clarice Lispector’s fiction, the non-fiction crônicas are my favourite part of her writing. Great to see this massive edition on the way from Penguin. Last year, I wrote about Lispector and Brazil in crônica form for @GrantaMag https://t.co/9AgMqpLFtZ pic.twitter.com/I3MExzP8qk

— Sinéad Gleeson (offline) (@sineadgleeson) July 14, 2022

I heard a few of her short stories ("Remnants of Carnival," "The Obedient Ones" and "Happy Birthday") read on Selected Shorts, and I thought they were brilliant. On the strength of those works and Tommy Orange's citing her as an influence, I picked Near to the Wild Heart for book club a while back. Turnout for discussion was notably light. It is a challenging work, one that is made maybe a little more accessible if you familiarize yourself, at least on a superficial level, with Spinoza before you dive into it. A prodigiously gifted writer; I wish I read Portuguese well enough to read her in the original.

The cronicas have already been published by carcanet, I’ve got it (700 odd pages, I’ve only dipped into them). Penguin translation may be better but I can sort you xyz!

Thanks wins, but it's ok - happy to hang on till September (Had no idea there was a whole translation of it, only knew of a selected Cronicas)