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APPRECIATIONS of CLARICE
 Photo by Man Kwan on Unsplash
April 30, 2019, 8:04 PM Thank you so much for your note! …
Clarice Lispector is so little known here in the U.S. that I never heard of her until recently. But now I can say, The Hour of The Star (La Hora da Estrela) is magnificent. It astonishes me, it breaks new ground. I feel more people deserve to know and love Clarice.
What Brazilian writers and writers worldwide are most inspired by Clarice Lispector in creating their own stories and novels? Of all established writers, who reads her and then writes differently or with some new emphasis? Where does her influence shine?
In addition to colleges and universities, what groups, organizations, and centers are dedicated to educating people about Clarice Lispector?
How does Clarice Lispector inspire you? How do you respond to her in general? How do you respond to her in your own writing?
Not far from where I live is the address of Ms. Lispector’s house of the 1950s: 4421 Ridge Street, Chevy Chase, Maryland (near Washington, D.C.). Just a two minute walk from the house is The Writer’s Center (their website is www.writer.org) of 4508 Walsh Street. Is there some relationship between The Writer’s Center, founded in 1976, and Clarice Lispector?
I see some brief articles online about Lispector’s son Paolo Gurgel Valente. But what about Pedro, the son with schizophrenia? In a few words, is he still living? How is he doing?
In Why This World, Benjamin Moser writes that Clarice suffered an accident, after which she had chronic pain, cancer, and eventually died. What was the accident? He doesn’t say. Was it a car accident? …
Sincerely yours,
Thursday, May 16, 2019, 2:43 PM
Dear Peter,
… I don't have all the answers you want, but am gathering as much information as I can so that I can give you as many answers as possible. …
Clarice Lispector was my first literary obsession - the first author I have read from end to end. I was thirteen, fourteen, maybe fifteen when I was caught by her ability to describe feelings and mental states as if they were tangible, ordinary things. It took me years to get to University and learn that she was a "typical 20th century, selfish, anti-traditional writer" - and to be able to disagree with that. Lispector is not about any artistic vanguard, she is not driven by aesthetics. Words are her means, and if writing took hold of her whole life it was not for the sake of words as an end in themselves -- if you will excuse my bad English phrasing. I maintain that in Clarice the human aspect comes first. People and their substance. She was not a dilettante.
She is quite famous in Brazil, with all good and bad things it entails. She is continually published, but very poorly read. Her books have even been shattered to pieces and made into self-help volumes. Her sentences are read out of context, turned into calendary mantras, and things of the sort.
Right now we are critically short of able literature readers in Brazil.
As for my her influence in my own writing, it is difficult to measure. She had, first of all, a very strong influence on my personality and world view. I very early understood I was cut for dealing through words with things of the spirit -- and eventually discovered poetry as my personal battle field. … As for Clarice, right now she is for me like a distant lover. I have loved her very much in my early days, and will always cherish the many things she taught me. …
Thank you very much for this conversation,
May 27, 2019, 8:19 AM
Dear Peter,
I'm glad you decided to proceed with your efforts in regard to Clarice Lispector. …
I read your piece about Lispector at FlashPoint. You have probably gone farther than me in trying to solve her life puzzle. Some of the information you shared is inconsistent with what I’ve always known about her, but, to be honest, I’m not sure whether my information is more or less accurate.
I’ve always known she died of ovary cancer. She did suffer the consequences of an accident when she fell asleep and a lit cigarette put her room on fire. She was reportedly hospitalized for three days and almost died. She also almost lost her hand. But I have never heard of her death being a direct consequence of this event.
I … found this video where [her] son, Paulo, talks about his mother:
Depoimento de Paulo Gurgel Valente sobre Clarice Lispector. I haven’t watched it yet.…
[F]or the contemporary generation of Brazilian writers, the name of Clarice Lispector is that of a goddess or a priestess. But … it is difficult to measure how consistently is she being read and taken forward. As is the case with other “very modern” authors, those who follow after their “extreme modernity” fall into the void, in technique as in finding what to say. Contemporary writers are terribly afraid of saying anything that isn’t everything – they have lost touch with boundaries, limits, rules, shapes. What matters is the void. But the void is devoid of matter – and the wordplaying goes on nonstop.
I definitely hate that. As a poet, a stand for the substantive use of form. There has never been anything so stupid as art for art’s sake.
You can take a look at Hilda Hilst’s work. There you find, if not a typical lispectorian writer, a sister in spirit, maybe. Raduan Nassar’s Lavoura Arcaica is also worth reading.
In case you haven’t heard of him, Bruno Tolentino is another Brazilian monster, and a very big one. Dead in 2007, his poetry works are masterpieces that, for me personally, have had an impact only
comparable to that of Dostoyevsky. He lived in Europe for many years and wrote a great deal in English, what makes it easier for you to get to know his writing. He has a poem on Lispector (in Portuguese) ….
Many Thanks,
 Photo of avenue in Rio by Antonio Lapa on Unsplash
In the living room of an ordinary middle-class house, two boys play with toy wooden cars. They simulate wrecks, make horn sounds with their mouths, rub the little toy wheels on the beige carpet, which stretches from the three-seat sofa to the family console radio—at this time of the morning turned off. In their inflamed fantasy perhaps they are unaware of the sizzling in the kitchen, where the lunch beans are almost cooked, or of the other noise across the same room: a tune steady, rhythmic and sharp, of the typewriter on their mother’s lap. This beautiful woman, at the moment ignored, is working; she hears the treble of the pan on the fire, the howls of her children in an adventure day-dream, the attack of her own fingers, long and fine, against the metal keys in front of her, composing her felicidade clandestina [1] (clandestine bliss) or a column for the next day's paper. It is likely that, unlike Virginia, she rarely has a room of her own. But she's a writer. Her name is Clarice. However, make no mistake, reader: this scene envelops in normality a trajectory that, at closer look, very perto do coração selvagem [2] (close to the wild heart) of this woman who writes, is a species of epiphany, paradoxical because it happens in situations so common and, at the same time, strange to most of us. It's not that you and I can't see the children playing in the living room, or cook beans in the pressure cooker: what we may lack is the astonished wonder at what is “common”, a reverent look at the life around us, and that allows a work of Clarice Lispector to be a strange monument right in the center of what, to us, seems so familiar. Because one of the greatest Brazilian writers of the 20th century is personally marked by circumstances of strangeness. Birth in Ukraine in 1920, escape soon after, still small, with her family to Brazil. Childhood to adolescence very poor in the Northeast; her mom's death; her move to Rio de Janeiro, where she enrolled in law school, became a journalist, and married a diplomat. Nearly twenty years she spent in several countries, accompanying her husband, being a good wife, taking care of the children. And writing: in the Portuguese language, taken as her own, and like Fernando Pessoa made her homeland. It is no exaggeration to say that Clarice was a foreigner throughout life, and that this very condition—of a Ukrainian Jewish woman far from her native land—made possible a brand-new way of seeing things. To read Clarice Lispector's short stories, novels, and chronicles is to be faced with something unusual: many of her stories are not stories, as one can say of the classics with a beginning, middle, and end. They escape literary standards, disrespect the linearity to which readers are accustomed. This has an effect on those who are interested in her texts: it makes them alien before life, often to life itself of which, in principle, they know so much. It's like that with a chicken and her egg, the theme of an entire Clarice short story; or with family relationships and how their parts entangle, mothers and daughters, sons-in-law and fathers-in-law. In Clarice, the apparently ordinary serves for a plunge into mystery. Hence, her readers are divided between the fascinated and the distant. There are those who consider her a "witch", seductive, intriguing because, despite writing that is simple and straightforward, she touches everyday and personal realities with magic hands, able to unveil (or sneak?) hidden significances into what to people sounds predictable. And there are those who reject the writing for the same reasons: because it lacks the closeness, the familiarity, the normality of other authors. This is to say that no reader passes by her writings unscathed. My experience as her reader is also between enchantment and mistrust. Sometimes I reject what she indicates to me, disagree with her perceptions of human life—somewhat melancholy at most times. Other times, I am comforted by her poetry about the common, her unique way of saying, for example, “I'm seeking, I'm seeking. I'm trying to understand” [3]. As a writer, I cannot fail to recognize the beauty of her words as she makes them dazzle, in her own experimental grammar, extracting from language possibilities to represent what is hidden in triviality, in average characters, in unsuspected bridges between the human world and the divine heart, such as her mystical Judaism would suppose. Some of Clarice's “grammar of creation” is within reach of the English-speaking audience. Benjamin Moser, author of a biography (Why this world [4], 2009), is responsible for translations and dissemination of the work of this great Brazilian writer, so that a reader from Wisconsin or Connecticut can also have her own experience with the world of Clarice Lispector and, if fascinated, join her Legião Estrangeira [5] (Foreign Legion). On this side of the hemisphere, we Brazilians are happy with the reception of her books in other regions, her stories told in other languages. Perhaps this miraculous event helps in what some of us have tried, at great cost, to accomplish: something like a new epiphany of what we are, even though born under very different, even ruined circumstances. Yet perhaps it allows others to look at us and not just see a room, or children, or a typewriter.
[1] Felicidade Clandestina, title of a short story and one of her collections.
Na sala de estar de uma casa comum de classe média, dois meninos brincam com seus carrinhos de madeira. Eles simulam acidentes, fazem sons de buzina com a boca, esfregam as pequenas rodas dos brinquedos sobre o tapete bege, que se estende do sofá de três lugares até o móvel onde fica o rádio da família—a esta hora da manhã, desligado. Dentro da fantasia inflamada, talvez não se apercebam nem do chiado vindo da cozinha, onde os feijões estão quase cozidos para o almoço, nem do outro ruído que atravessa a mesma sala: uma toada constante, ritmada e forte, saída da máquina de escrever que sua mãe tem sobre o colo. Esta bela mulher, a quem ignoram momentaneamente, trabalha; ouve os agudos da panela posta sobre o fogo, os uivos dos filhos em devaneio de aventura, o ataque dos próprios dedos, longos e finos, contra as teclas de metal à sua frente, compondo a sua felicidade clandestina [1] ou uma crônica para o jornal do dia seguinte. É provável que, diferente de Virgínia, raramente tenha um teto todo seu, apenas seu. Mas é escritora, e seu nome é Clarice. Porém, não se engane o leitor: a cena acima descrita envolve de normalidade uma trajetória que, vista mais de perto, bem perto do coração selvagem [2] dessa mulher que escreve, é uma espécie de epifania, paradoxal por acontecer em situações tão vulgares e, ao mesmo tempo, estranhas à maioria de nós. Não que eu e você não possamos ver os filhos brincando na sala, ou cozinhar feijões na panela de pressão: o que talvez nos falte seja o espanto diante do que é “comum”, um olhar reverente para a vida que nos cerca, e que permite que a obra de Clarice Lispector seja um monumento estranho bem no centro do que nos parece tão familiar. Porque uma das maiores escritoras brasileiras do século XX é pessoalmente marcada pelas circunstâncias do estranhamento. O nascimento na Ucrânia, em 1920, a fuga ainda pequena com a família para o Brasil, logo em seguida. A infância e adolescência muito pobres no Nordeste; a morte da mãe; a mudança para o Rio de Janeiro, onde ingressou no curso de Direito, tornou-se jornalista, casou-se com um diplomata. Os vários países por onde passou, durante quase vinte anos, acompanhando o marido, sendo boa esposa, cuidando dos filhos. E escrevendo: em língua portuguesa, tomada como sua, feita, como Fernando Pessoa, a sua pátria. Não é exagero dizer que Clarice foi uma estrangeira ao longo da vida, e que esta mesma condição—de uma ucraniana judia longe de sua terra-natal—foi sua possibilidade para um olhar inaugural sobre as coisas. Ler os contos, romances e crônicas de Clarice Lispector é ser posto diante de algo incomum: muitas de suas histórias não são histórias, como se pode dizer dos clássicos com começo, meio e fim. Fogem aos padrões literários, desrespeitam a linearidade com a qual os leitores estão acostumados. Isto gera um efeito naquele que se interessa pelos seus textos: torna-o um estrangeiro diante da vida, muitas vezes da própria vida comezinha que, em princípio, conhece tanto. É assim com um ovo de galinha, tema de um conto inteiro de Clarice; ou com os laços de família e como eles enredam suas partes, mães e filhas, genros e sogros. Em Clarice, o aparentemente ordinário serve ao mergulho no mistério. Daí que seus leitores se dividam entre fascinados e distantes. Há os que a consideram uma “bruxa”, sedutora, intrigante porque, apesar da escrita simples e sem rodeios, tange as realidades cotidianas e pessoais com mãos de mágica, capaz de desvelar (ou impingir?) sentidos ocultos ao que soa previsível às gentes. E há os que a rechaçam pelos mesmos motivos: porque lhe falta proximidade, familiaridade, a normalidade de outros autores. Isto tudo é o mesmo que afirmar que, diante de seus escritos, nenhum leitor passa incólume. Minha experiência como seu leitor também fica entre o encanto e a desconfiança. Algumas vezes rejeito o que ela me aponta, não compactuo de suas percepções sobre a vida humana – um tanto melancólica no mais das vezes. Outras, me conforto da sua poesia sobre o comum, seu modo único de dizer, por exemplo, “estou procurando, estou procurando. Estou tentando entender” [3]. Como escritor, não posso deixar de reconhecer a beleza de suas palavras, tal como as encandeia, numa gramática própria, experimentada, arrancando da linguagem as possibilidades para representar o que se oculta na trivialidade, nos personagens medianos, nas insuspeitas pontes entre o mundo humano e o coração divino, tal como suporia seu judaísmo místico. Um pouco dessa “gramática da criação” de Clarice está ao alcance do público de língua inglesa. Muito pelo trabalho de Benjamin Moser, autor de uma biografia (Why this world [4], 2009), e responsável por traduções e divulgações da obra da grande escritora brasileira, um leitor de Wisconsin ou Connecticut pode também ter a sua própria experiência com o mundo de Clarice Lispector e, se for um fascinado, integrar a sua Legião Estrangeira. [5]. Deste lado do hemisfério, nós brasileiros ficamos felizes com a recepção dos seus livros em outros territórios, as suas histórias contadas em outras línguas. Talvez esse milagroso acontecimento auxilie naquilo que alguns de nós têm tentado, a muito custo, realizar: algo como uma nova epifania do que somos, mesmo que nascida sob os mais diferentes escombros. Talvez, ainda, isso permita que os outros olhem para nós e não vejam apenas uma sala, ou crianças, ou uma máquina de escrever. [1] Felicidade Clandestina, título de um conto e de uma de suas coletâneas.[2] Perto do coração selvagem, seu primeiro romance, publicado em 1943. [3] Frase inaugural do romance “A paixão segundo G.H”. [4] Why this world: a biography of Clarice Lispector, Oxford University Press. [5] “A legião estrangeira”, coletânea de contos publicada em 1964.
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