What do you think?
Rate this book
Un soplo de vida
Poco antes de morir, Clarice Lispector escribió un texto en el que recogía gran parte de sus reflexiones sobre la literatura y sobre la vida. Podríamos decir que Un soplo de vida es la última indagación literaria de la escritora brasileña, y posiblemente su meditación más exhaustiva sobre el acto de escribir y sus ramificaciones. Escrita en forma de diálogo casi místico entre un autor (trasunto de la propia Lispector) y su creación, una mujer llamada Ángela Pralini, la obra refleja la fascinación que supone crear personajes y mundos. Cuando Clarice Lispector falleció, su secretaria y gran amiga Olga Borelli dotó de estructura a los fragmentos que conforman este texto metaliterario, una obra póstuma que arroja luz sobre la trayectoria de Lispector.
152 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1978
About the author
Clarice Lispector
216 books6,040 followersClarice Lispector was a Brazilian writer. Acclaimed internationally for her innovative novels and short stories, she was also a journalist. Born to a Jewish family in Podolia in Western Ukraine, she was brought to Brazil as an infant, amidst the disasters engulfing her native land following the First World War.
She grew up in northeastern Brazil, where her mother died when she was nine. The family moved to Rio de Janeiro when she was in her teens. While in law school in Rio she began publishing her first journalistic work and short stories, catapulting to fame at age 23 with the publication of her first novel, 'Near to the Wild Heart' (Perto do Coração Selvagem), written as an interior monologue in a style and language that was considered revolutionary in Brazil.
She left Brazil in 1944, following her marriage to a Brazilian diplomat, and spent the next decade and a half in Europe and the United States. Upon return to Rio de Janeiro in 1959, she began producing her most famous works, including the stories of Family Ties (Laços de Família), the great mystic novel The Passion According to G.H. (A Paixão Segundo G.H.), and the novel many consider to be her masterpiece, Água Viva. Injured in an accident in 1966, she spent the last decade of her life in frequent pain, steadily writing and publishing novels and stories until her premature death in 1977.
She has been the subject of numerous books and references to her, and her works are common in Brazilian literature and music. Several of her works have been turned into films, one being 'Hour of the Star' and she was the subject of a recent biography, Why This World, by Benjamin Moser.
She grew up in northeastern Brazil, where her mother died when she was nine. The family moved to Rio de Janeiro when she was in her teens. While in law school in Rio she began publishing her first journalistic work and short stories, catapulting to fame at age 23 with the publication of her first novel, 'Near to the Wild Heart' (Perto do Coração Selvagem), written as an interior monologue in a style and language that was considered revolutionary in Brazil.
She left Brazil in 1944, following her marriage to a Brazilian diplomat, and spent the next decade and a half in Europe and the United States. Upon return to Rio de Janeiro in 1959, she began producing her most famous works, including the stories of Family Ties (Laços de Família), the great mystic novel The Passion According to G.H. (A Paixão Segundo G.H.), and the novel many consider to be her masterpiece, Água Viva. Injured in an accident in 1966, she spent the last decade of her life in frequent pain, steadily writing and publishing novels and stories until her premature death in 1977.
She has been the subject of numerous books and references to her, and her works are common in Brazilian literature and music. Several of her works have been turned into films, one being 'Hour of the Star' and she was the subject of a recent biography, Why This World, by Benjamin Moser.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 646 reviews
July 4, 2016
The warning label on the cover should read; only a few paragraphs, at most two pages at a time. This is the breathless language of a woman dying-both the narrator and the author herself-who is, in my reading, searching to locate and exist in the true present moment of unadulterated experience. Lispector writes in a way that creates for the reader this experience. How this is done is not explainable. I'm not sure I want it explained willing to leave some things to magic. This feat does make, A Breath of Life, a significant literary achievement of our time. The existential battle, life's battle itself, unfolds in a book she is writing and her frustrations and arguments with her main character, Angela. Angela, in the book within the book, is at times the projections of the novelist, and at times the fictional character grown into herself. Angela feels the weight of time fleeing as unfortunately does the real life author of , A Breath Of Life. Clarice Lispector died before being able to arrange this material and write a final draft. all of this is noted on the cover and/or introduction. In reading this book i am now myself who has read, A Breath Of Life. I am deeply grateful for this and note this as a work which underlines the importance of books and reading.
i am adding to my review above because i believe this book is of such importance that it deserves whatever further precision i can add. if, our reading of literature is a pursuit of a clearer sight of reality, allowing its full impact upon us, then who better to express this than someone who is dying and knows she is dying. From her deathbed lispector writes, not for survival for survival is never a goal sought here; not one that is available to her. she wants to reconcile or reach what she has sought through life through her writing and thinking, that clearer impact with reality, unfettered by culture, family, inner conflicts, religions, philosophies, external beliefs grasped tight in the frailties of existence. what better way to proceed than to write a book. which she does within this book. however her main character throws all her failings in her face and will not be limited by what lispector, or lispector's narrator wants her to do. her character battles , revolts, and insists on doing things her own way. in another work this might be an interesting stylistic exercise. lispector uses it successfully to enhance the almost unbearable sense of desperation.
this is a book more relevant for me than any i have read because she is vehement in her quest and if her quest is what literature in the end seeks then she seeks it from a much closer distance than simile, metaphor, allegory or any other of our tools.
i am adding to my review above because i believe this book is of such importance that it deserves whatever further precision i can add. if, our reading of literature is a pursuit of a clearer sight of reality, allowing its full impact upon us, then who better to express this than someone who is dying and knows she is dying. From her deathbed lispector writes, not for survival for survival is never a goal sought here; not one that is available to her. she wants to reconcile or reach what she has sought through life through her writing and thinking, that clearer impact with reality, unfettered by culture, family, inner conflicts, religions, philosophies, external beliefs grasped tight in the frailties of existence. what better way to proceed than to write a book. which she does within this book. however her main character throws all her failings in her face and will not be limited by what lispector, or lispector's narrator wants her to do. her character battles , revolts, and insists on doing things her own way. in another work this might be an interesting stylistic exercise. lispector uses it successfully to enhance the almost unbearable sense of desperation.
this is a book more relevant for me than any i have read because she is vehement in her quest and if her quest is what literature in the end seeks then she seeks it from a much closer distance than simile, metaphor, allegory or any other of our tools.
July 24, 2024
The author imagines a dialogue between a male writer and his character, Angela, who also writes. This writing is an effective abyssing, but it makes entry into the text difficult. I almost gave up, even though this book responds to the anxieties of existence and questions about artistic creation.
October 3, 2013
“This is not a lament, it’s the cry of a bird of prey. An iridescent and restless bird. The kiss upon the dead face.
I write as if to save somebody’s life. Probably my own. Life is a kind of madness that death makes. Long live the dead because we live in them.”
I loved the above section from this author’s book.
Clarice Lispector began this book in 1974 and finished it in 1977, on the eve of her death. She was slowly dying from ovarian cancer. This author was a tremendous loss to Latin American literature and to those individuals in the rest of the world who had read her translated works. So I was delighted when I came across this translation from the Portuguese by Johnny Lorenz.
For Clarice Lispector, my friend, "A Breath of Life" would be her definitive book;” so stated Olga Borelli who “for eight years lived with Clarice Lispector, participating in her creative process. I wrote down her thoughts, typed her manuscripts and most of all shared in her moments of inspiration. As a result, she and her son Paulo entrusted me with the organization of the pages of a “Breath of Life”. And so it was done.”
I had never read the works of this author before but the title happened to inspire me for some obscure, perhaps a spiritual reason for, after all, breathing is the most important part of our existence. Where would we be without it?
I began this book and first of all I was confused with the author’s ideas, illogical musings and writing style, and then I gradually fell into the way that her thought processes worked. I must confess that I have never, in my life, been so entranced with the metaphysical thoughts of an individual such as Clarice. I’m calling her by her Christian name which is unusual for me as I don’t know this woman at all but she, in all fairness, touched my heart strings. She actually made me weep as she relentlessly raced towards her own destiny. Was she frightened of death? Well I believe she was. We all, as we know, have an appointment with death at some stage in our lives. Some have a quick ending (which is merciful – I think that it’s best, personally, to be shot – quick and to the point if the right place is shot, of course) and others linger, which is sad for the individual involved but even sadder for the loved ones who have to cope and live with this ever increasing nightmare.
Now as for Clarice, did she cope? When Clarice began this book, she took the pragmatic approach and invented a kind of alter ego, an unnamed man. She had no idea what direction it would take. It was all a question of wait and see. All she knew was that she had to create an unnamed male “protagonist” and soon this individual (or Clarice) decided that another individual had to be invented.
“Creating a being who stands in opposition to me is within the silence. A spiraling clarinet. A dark cello. But I manage to see, however, dimly, Angela standing beside me.”
The skill of Clarice’s writing is remarkable because as soon as Angela Pralini appears Clarice finds fault with the former’s writing skills and her diaries are soon running in parallel with our unnamed narrator. The skillful artifice of the author is soon apparent because we have Angela initially subordinate to the unnamed author and then her competitive streak enters into the equation and she gradually “devours” her “leader”’ the man and then? Well what do you think, as a reader, could possibly have happened? It is for you to find out in this remarkable mental and thought-provoking odyssey of survival, life and death.
Mixed into the fabric are thoughts of belief in God but there are also contradictory beliefs that cause one to truly reflect; as I did myself. In fact the moment I finished this book I began to wonder about life generally. It was all a question of wait and see and I began to compare the May fly, as I always do, to the brevity of life and also the nonsense of our life as humans. What is the point of all of this, I ask myself? Do I want purely to survive or what? What am I possibly achieving? It all strikes me as so futile but then tomorrow is a different day and, DV, I may feel differently? I really don’t know, quite frankly.
And was Angela killed off?
If you are into numbers, colours, suspense with thought and ideas about this universe of yours, you will be surprised with this magnificent book. I cannot recommend it highly enough. I loved it.
I write as if to save somebody’s life. Probably my own. Life is a kind of madness that death makes. Long live the dead because we live in them.”
I loved the above section from this author’s book.
Clarice Lispector began this book in 1974 and finished it in 1977, on the eve of her death. She was slowly dying from ovarian cancer. This author was a tremendous loss to Latin American literature and to those individuals in the rest of the world who had read her translated works. So I was delighted when I came across this translation from the Portuguese by Johnny Lorenz.
For Clarice Lispector, my friend, "A Breath of Life" would be her definitive book;” so stated Olga Borelli who “for eight years lived with Clarice Lispector, participating in her creative process. I wrote down her thoughts, typed her manuscripts and most of all shared in her moments of inspiration. As a result, she and her son Paulo entrusted me with the organization of the pages of a “Breath of Life”. And so it was done.”
I had never read the works of this author before but the title happened to inspire me for some obscure, perhaps a spiritual reason for, after all, breathing is the most important part of our existence. Where would we be without it?
I began this book and first of all I was confused with the author’s ideas, illogical musings and writing style, and then I gradually fell into the way that her thought processes worked. I must confess that I have never, in my life, been so entranced with the metaphysical thoughts of an individual such as Clarice. I’m calling her by her Christian name which is unusual for me as I don’t know this woman at all but she, in all fairness, touched my heart strings. She actually made me weep as she relentlessly raced towards her own destiny. Was she frightened of death? Well I believe she was. We all, as we know, have an appointment with death at some stage in our lives. Some have a quick ending (which is merciful – I think that it’s best, personally, to be shot – quick and to the point if the right place is shot, of course) and others linger, which is sad for the individual involved but even sadder for the loved ones who have to cope and live with this ever increasing nightmare.
Now as for Clarice, did she cope? When Clarice began this book, she took the pragmatic approach and invented a kind of alter ego, an unnamed man. She had no idea what direction it would take. It was all a question of wait and see. All she knew was that she had to create an unnamed male “protagonist” and soon this individual (or Clarice) decided that another individual had to be invented.
“Creating a being who stands in opposition to me is within the silence. A spiraling clarinet. A dark cello. But I manage to see, however, dimly, Angela standing beside me.”
The skill of Clarice’s writing is remarkable because as soon as Angela Pralini appears Clarice finds fault with the former’s writing skills and her diaries are soon running in parallel with our unnamed narrator. The skillful artifice of the author is soon apparent because we have Angela initially subordinate to the unnamed author and then her competitive streak enters into the equation and she gradually “devours” her “leader”’ the man and then? Well what do you think, as a reader, could possibly have happened? It is for you to find out in this remarkable mental and thought-provoking odyssey of survival, life and death.
Mixed into the fabric are thoughts of belief in God but there are also contradictory beliefs that cause one to truly reflect; as I did myself. In fact the moment I finished this book I began to wonder about life generally. It was all a question of wait and see and I began to compare the May fly, as I always do, to the brevity of life and also the nonsense of our life as humans. What is the point of all of this, I ask myself? Do I want purely to survive or what? What am I possibly achieving? It all strikes me as so futile but then tomorrow is a different day and, DV, I may feel differently? I really don’t know, quite frankly.
And was Angela killed off?
If you are into numbers, colours, suspense with thought and ideas about this universe of yours, you will be surprised with this magnificent book. I cannot recommend it highly enough. I loved it.
February 11, 2024
i adore clarice lispector.
she makes language and literature malleable; she stretches and folds sentences into a beautiful melody of words that nobody else can emulate. while this book is less than 200 pages, it took me a bit to get through because it is so jam packed with poetic imagery and introspection. this is definitely a book i will return to, mark pages, and study. i'm sure i'll have a different interpretation when i read it again.
she makes language and literature malleable; she stretches and folds sentences into a beautiful melody of words that nobody else can emulate. while this book is less than 200 pages, it took me a bit to get through because it is so jam packed with poetic imagery and introspection. this is definitely a book i will return to, mark pages, and study. i'm sure i'll have a different interpretation when i read it again.
February 7, 2022
Σε ένα στόρι, επιλέξατε το επόμενο βιβλίο μου ανάμεσα στην Κλαρίσε Λισπέκτορ και τη Λουσία Μπερλίν, δύο υπέροχες μα πολύ διαφορετικές συγγραφείς. Η Λισπέκτορ ήταν πρώτη με διαφορά και μου έκανε μεγάλη εντύπωση, γιατί είναι μια συγγραφέας "δύσκολη" και ήμουν σίγουρη ότι -όπως και με τα προηγούμενά της- θα με στριφογύριζε για αρκετές μέρες στο μαγικό της καζάνι. Γιατί η ενέργειά της είναι μαγεία θεϊκής προέλευσης,
Τι εννοώ όμως δύσκολη. Εννοώ ότι το γραπτό της απαιτεί την προσοχή σου. 200 σελίδες της Λισπέκτορ ισοδυναμούν με 800 της πολυλογού Ταρτ. Γιατί το γράψιμό της είναι φιλοσοφικό, θεολογικό, υπαρξιακό, λυρικό, ποιητικό, θεατρικό, σκοτεινό, αφαιρετικό, σκόρπιο, μαγικό. Το συγκεκριμένο της βιβλίο είναι ακόμα πιο ιδιαίτερο, μιας και είναι το τελευταίο, γράφτηκε παράλληλα με την Ώρα του Αστεριού, εκδόθηκε μετά το�� θάνατό της και ολοκληρώθηκε από τη βοηθό της που συγκέντρωσε σκόρπιες σημειώσεις της για τη συγγραφή.
Ένας συγγραφέας (μεταμφιεσμένη Λισπέκτορ) πλάθει την ηρωίδα του, σαν άλλος Θεός της δίνει πνοή και εκείνη αυτονομείται και γίνεται ο καθρέφτης του. Την παρατηρεί, τη σχολιάζει, την ειρωνεύεται, την υποτιμά, τη θαυμάζει, την ερωτεύεται. Όλα τα στάδια δηλαδή από τα οποία περνάει ένας συγγραφέας, ένας δημιουργός με το έργο του.
Η Λισπέκτορ έζησε τα τελευταία δέκα χρόνια της ζωής της μέσα σε φριχτούς πόνους. Μια φωτιά από τσιγάρο στο κρεβάτι της κατέστρεψε σχεδόν το δεξί της χέρι, ενώ πέθανε μια μέρα πριν τα 57α γενέθλιά της από καρκίνο. Γνωρίζοντας ότι το τέλος πλησιάζει, γράφει σκοτεινά." Όταν θα έχετε τελειώσει αυτό το βιβλίο θρηνήστε ένα αλληλούια και για μένα". Αναρωτιέται για τον θάνατο. "Άραγε, αφού πεθάνουμε, ξυπνάμε καμιά φορά σαστισμένοι;". Γράφει γιατί δεν ξέρει τι να κάνει με τον εαυτό της. Σε κάθε λέξη της πάλλεται μια καρδιά κι ανάμεσά τους πλάθει σιωπή. Και το τέλος έρχεται με αμφιβολία και γίνεται ξανά αρχή.
Δεν είναι το ιδανικό βιβλίο για πρώτη γνωριμία με τη Λισπέκτορ, είναι για αυτούς που ήδη την έχουμε γνωρίσει και αγαπήσει. "Γράφω επίτηδες ένα πολύ κακό βιβλίο, για να κρατήσω μακριά τους βέβηλους που θέλουν να τους "αρέσει" ". Δεν κατάφερε να γράψει ένα κακό βιβλίο, έγραψε ένα Λισπέκτορ βιβλίο, εντελώς δικό της και αυτό δεν είναι ούτε καλό, ούτε κακό. Είναι εκείνη.
Τι εννοώ όμως δύσκολη. Εννοώ ότι το γραπτό της απαιτεί την προσοχή σου. 200 σελίδες της Λισπέκτορ ισοδυναμούν με 800 της πολυλογού Ταρτ. Γιατί το γράψιμό της είναι φιλοσοφικό, θεολογικό, υπαρξιακό, λυρικό, ποιητικό, θεατρικό, σκοτεινό, αφαιρετικό, σκόρπιο, μαγικό. Το συγκεκριμένο της βιβλίο είναι ακόμα πιο ιδιαίτερο, μιας και είναι το τελευταίο, γράφτηκε παράλληλα με την Ώρα του Αστεριού, εκδόθηκε μετά το�� θάνατό της και ολοκληρώθηκε από τη βοηθό της που συγκέντρωσε σκόρπιες σημειώσεις της για τη συγγραφή.
Ένας συγγραφέας (μεταμφιεσμένη Λισπέκτορ) πλάθει την ηρωίδα του, σαν άλλος Θεός της δίνει πνοή και εκείνη αυτονομείται και γίνεται ο καθρέφτης του. Την παρατηρεί, τη σχολιάζει, την ειρωνεύεται, την υποτιμά, τη θαυμάζει, την ερωτεύεται. Όλα τα στάδια δηλαδή από τα οποία περνάει ένας συγγραφέας, ένας δημιουργός με το έργο του.
Η Λισπέκτορ έζησε τα τελευταία δέκα χρόνια της ζωής της μέσα σε φριχτούς πόνους. Μια φωτιά από τσιγάρο στο κρεβάτι της κατέστρεψε σχεδόν το δεξί της χέρι, ενώ πέθανε μια μέρα πριν τα 57α γενέθλιά της από καρκίνο. Γνωρίζοντας ότι το τέλος πλησιάζει, γράφει σκοτεινά." Όταν θα έχετε τελειώσει αυτό το βιβλίο θρηνήστε ένα αλληλούια και για μένα". Αναρωτιέται για τον θάνατο. "Άραγε, αφού πεθάνουμε, ξυπνάμε καμιά φορά σαστισμένοι;". Γράφει γιατί δεν ξέρει τι να κάνει με τον εαυτό της. Σε κάθε λέξη της πάλλεται μια καρδιά κι ανάμεσά τους πλάθει σιωπή. Και το τέλος έρχεται με αμφιβολία και γίνεται ξανά αρχή.
Δεν είναι το ιδανικό βιβλίο για πρώτη γνωριμία με τη Λισπέκτορ, είναι για αυτούς που ήδη την έχουμε γνωρίσει και αγαπήσει. "Γράφω επίτηδες ένα πολύ κακό βιβλίο, για να κρατήσω μακριά τους βέβηλους που θέλουν να τους "αρέσει" ". Δεν κατάφερε να γράψει ένα κακό βιβλίο, έγραψε ένα Λισπέκτορ βιβλίο, εντελώς δικό της και αυτό δεν είναι ούτε καλό, ούτε κακό. Είναι εκείνη.
August 18, 2017
4.5/5
The problem with Frankenstein's creature was the reality of each knowing the other and acting in accordance with their respective certainty. Angela extrapolates like any in this world towards the knowing Author in the one solid hierarchy allotted to them, leaving sinusoidal peace intact. However, if the Author is God, he doesn't know it. If Lispector writing a man writing a woman and blocking off the personality along the proper gender lines is God, she doesn't know it either. She does know, however, that she is dying.
I am drawn to faith by worrying at it and unfailingly unravel it anew. There are as many access points in my day as there were in Lispector's, maybe more with the Internet birthing God in the Machine ad infinitum, but with open communication comes increasing revelation of the lie. I love choir music, cathedrals, stained glass windows drawing as pleasurable a shiver as the soar of a boy soprano, but my Catholic Bible is as intriguing conglomeration of transliteration and historical influence as the Iliad. Nothing more, nothing less, in these days where I need not fear the burning.
And so the name of the game is, as always, writing. What all those souls in their MFA programs and their academic theories should realize is how they are fleeing from the awe of it all. Who cares if you never go to church or don't buy into a spawn of the Eurocentric frame of things or aren't "sensitive" in the sense that makes a cult out of mental illness. The Author writes a character named Angela Pralini and they break upon each other as so much shining grace and a mouth full of blood. Do you really need to be told that a text is holy? Do you really need to be told that this holy text is for you? Do you believe?
I like this more than The Hour of the Star because the self-wracked stakes are so much higher. Melodrama, narcissism, and those who hold by such entitled belittlement should try waking up at eleven years old and knowing it is time to die. Some of us have to find a structure of life affirmation before puberty is through, scrabbling in the limited childhood space where the people and places and religious bents all have holes. So many holes.
Coming out of it affords wonders of self from all that practice proving its right to exist, of course. But only for those who can.
Will you be the one to tell me how to treat with my heretical self? You could try, but know one thing: I read and write with the knowing that the next word will save my life. If you can't do that, do not waste my time.
There will be a year in which there will be a month, in which there will be a week in which there will be a day in which there will be an hour in which there will be a minute in which there will be a second and in that second will be the sacred not-time of death transfigured.Everyone has a ritual, yes? I'd say religion if the world were really as simple as Christianity/Judaism/Islam, a Big Three, would have us think. Even restricting the scope to those leaves the fringe dwellers of Raised This and Believe That, Taught This and Question All, Grown With These and Have Faith In None. One white philosopher proclaimed God a Watchmaker, another a Super Turnip (always implicated male for whatever reason), giving those atheists like me a choice between insanity and radiation when it comes to the Inquisition and co.
I read what I'd written and thought once again: from what violent chasms is my most intimate intimacy nourished, why does it deny itself so much and flee to the domain of ideas?
The problem with Frankenstein's creature was the reality of each knowing the other and acting in accordance with their respective certainty. Angela extrapolates like any in this world towards the knowing Author in the one solid hierarchy allotted to them, leaving sinusoidal peace intact. However, if the Author is God, he doesn't know it. If Lispector writing a man writing a woman and blocking off the personality along the proper gender lines is God, she doesn't know it either. She does know, however, that she is dying.
I am drawn to faith by worrying at it and unfailingly unravel it anew. There are as many access points in my day as there were in Lispector's, maybe more with the Internet birthing God in the Machine ad infinitum, but with open communication comes increasing revelation of the lie. I love choir music, cathedrals, stained glass windows drawing as pleasurable a shiver as the soar of a boy soprano, but my Catholic Bible is as intriguing conglomeration of transliteration and historical influence as the Iliad. Nothing more, nothing less, in these days where I need not fear the burning.
And so the name of the game is, as always, writing. What all those souls in their MFA programs and their academic theories should realize is how they are fleeing from the awe of it all. Who cares if you never go to church or don't buy into a spawn of the Eurocentric frame of things or aren't "sensitive" in the sense that makes a cult out of mental illness. The Author writes a character named Angela Pralini and they break upon each other as so much shining grace and a mouth full of blood. Do you really need to be told that a text is holy? Do you really need to be told that this holy text is for you? Do you believe?
I like this more than The Hour of the Star because the self-wracked stakes are so much higher. Melodrama, narcissism, and those who hold by such entitled belittlement should try waking up at eleven years old and knowing it is time to die. Some of us have to find a structure of life affirmation before puberty is through, scrabbling in the limited childhood space where the people and places and religious bents all have holes. So many holes.
Coming out of it affords wonders of self from all that practice proving its right to exist, of course. But only for those who can.
Will you be the one to tell me how to treat with my heretical self? You could try, but know one thing: I read and write with the knowing that the next word will save my life. If you can't do that, do not waste my time.
I wanted to write luxuriously. To use words that would shine wet and glistening and were pilgrims. Sometimes solemn in purple, sometimes abysmal emeralds, sometimes so light in the finest soft embroidered silk. I wanted to write random phrases, phrases that would go beyond speaking back to me: “the morning moon,” “gardens and gardens in shade,” “astringent sweetness of honey,” “crystals that break with a musical disastrous crash,” Or to use words that come to me from my unknown: trapilíssima avante sine qua non masioty—poor us and you. You are my lit candle. I am the Night.
And, yes, the murderous soul is rich.
October 29, 2023
‘This is the most important project of translation into English of a Latin American author since the complete works of Jorge Luis Borges were published a decade ago—I get excited when I talk about her.’ — Benjamin Moser (to Pedro Almodóvar)
‘—I found a paragraph that defines transgenesis in an exquisite and precise way. “I want the colourful, confused and mysterious mixture of nature. All the plants and algae, bacteria, invertebrates, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals concluding man with his secrets.” I can’t think of a more beautiful definition of transgenesis, though Lispector was thinking of something quite different. We are already publishing the screenplay of The Skin I Live In, and I’m going to suggest placing that quote at the beginning of the book. —This book has a similar effect on me as the first novels I read by J. M. Coetzee. Each phrase accumulates such a quantity of meanings; it is so dense, rotund, and rich that I halt before it as before a wall. I like it very much but am not qualified to accompany a text of such magnitude—Many thanks for thinking of me. I hope we meet someday.’ — Pedro Almodóvar (to Benjamin Moser)
Like Almodóvar, I don’t know how to talk/write about this fucking masterpiece properly. I even started to immediately re-read this book the moment I finished it. I thought I was only looking for some highlights/excerpts (which was a difficult thing to do because every line is worthy of attention, and so full of life (excuse the cringe)), but then I realised, no, I am actually fully immersed, and committed to this literary experience completely. I am re-reading it without even realising that I am re-reading it.
‘Could I be betraying myself? Could I be altering the course of a river? I must trust that abundant river. Or maybe I’m damming a river? —I write for nothing and for no one. Anyone who reads me does so at his own risk. I don’t make literature: I simply live in the passing of time. The act of writing is the inevitable result of my being alive. I lost sight of myself so long ago that I’m hesitant to try to find myself—Existing sometimes gives me heart palpitations—They gave me a name and alienated me from myself.’
‘I live in the living flesh, that’s why I make such an effort to give thick skin to my characters. But I can’t stand it and make them cry for no reason—It is not autobiographical, you all know nothing of me. I never have told you and never shall tell you who I am. I am all of yourselves. I took from this book only what I wanted — I left out my story and (hers). What matters to me are the snapshots of sensations — sensations that are thought and not the immobile pose of those waiting for me to say, “say cheese!” Because I’m no street photographer.’
‘To create her I must plow the land. Is there some breakdown in the computer system of my ship while it crosses spaces in search of a woman? a computer made of pure silicon, with the equivalent of thousands of microscopic transistors fixed to its polished and gleaming surface with the noonday sun beating down in a mirror, (she) is a mirror. I want her to be the means by which the highest axioms of mathematics are solved within a fraction of a second. I want to calculate through her the answer to seven times the square root of 15 to the third power. (The exact figure is 406.663325.)’
‘—a yolk, but with a small black droplet in its yellow sun. That means: problem—She thinks that to stop writing is to stop living. I control her as much as I can, deleting her merely foolish comments. For example: she’s dying to write about menstruation just to get it off her chest, and I won’t let her.’
‘I’ve always wanted to find someday a person who would live for me because life is so full of useless things that I can only bear it through extreme muscular asthenia, I suffer from moral indolence in living. I tried to make (her) live in my place — but she too wants only the climax of life.’
‘I really like things I don’t understand: when I read a thing I don’t understand I feel a sweet and abysmal vertigo.’
‘Between the word and the thought my being exists. My thought is pure impalpable insaisissable air. My word is made of earth. My heart is life. My electronic energy is magic of divine origin. My symbol is love. My hatred is atomic energy. Everything I just said is worthless, no more than foam.—an enigma intangible in its most intimate nucleus.—I feel within me a subterranean violence—.’
‘The most beautiful music in the world is the interstellar silence.’
‘Happy silence—And because I know how to hold my tongue. To hold your tongue is to be born again.’
‘When I am strong enough to be alone and mute — then I will free forever the butterfly from its cocoon. And even if it lives for only a day, that butterfly, it is already useful to me: may it flutter its bright colours above the green brightness of the plants in a garden on a summer’s morning. When the morning is still early, it looks just like a light butterfly. Whatever is even lighter than a butterfly. A butterfly is a petal that flies.’
‘Grapes, a bunch of grapes round and fleshy and liquid and falsely transparent because they give the impression of being transparent, but you can’t see the other side you are entirely opaque though you give the impression of transparency what the hell do I have to do with the opacity of things—It’s said like this kissed by the cliché breeze I prefer to say that the breeze blesses me between slightly ochre and at the same time lightly astringent it’s also lightly sweet on lips that are polluted by the pollen brought by the veil of perfume that is the breeze.’
‘Music deeply teaches me a boldness in the world to feel itself. I seek disorder, I seek the primitive state of chaos. That is where I feel myself living. I need the darkness that implores, the receptivity of the most primary forms of wanting—.’
‘An attempt to sensitise the language so that it shivers and shakes and my earthquake opens frightening fissures in this free language — but I captive and in the process of not being I become aware and it goes on without me—The word is the defecation of the thought. It glistens. Every book is blood, it’s pus, it’s excrement, it’s heart torn to shreds, it’s nerves cut to pieces, it’s electric shock, it’s coagulated blood running like boiling lava down the mountain.’
‘I’m a beggar with a beard full of lice seated on the sidewalk crying. I’m no more than that. I’m neither happy nor sad. I’m exempt and unscathed and gratuitous.’
‘Numbers . . . are they what’s hidden behind your mysteries, secret effluvia and succulent secretions or, maybe, sibilant and pointed questions without any answers? What do they hide, clouds?—But the bottomlessness of the sea blossoms inside me with the scare of a scarecrow.’
‘In luxury we become an object that in turn possesses other objects—The spirit can live on bread and water—Men kill for a yellow brick. A woman sells herself for a diamond.’
‘Living is a hobby for her. She thinks it has nothing to do with her and lives tossed to the side, without past or future; just today forever—I fear myself because I’m always ready to be able to suffer—I must want myself in order to give something to myself. Must I be worth something?—I’m worth something in relation to others — but in relation to myself, I am nothing.’
Whether or not my views/response to the text(s) are as Lispector would have ‘intended’ (probably not), I like how I am able to ‘relate’ some of her ‘poetry’ (or what I think of as the poetic building blocks of her writing) to what she has written about in her 'cronicas', Too Much of Life. Like that unforgettable bit about setting herself aflame. Evidently, even though this is her ‘last’ book that she never even lived long enough to personally ‘publish’, I think it’s endearing that she even managed to squeeze in her love for ‘football’, and her undying dark as fuck humour in it (and I think she would be ‘happy’ to know that the editors kept all that in the book. Only ‘one’ line was taken out of the original manuscript/text because the editor felt it might be too ‘sensitive’/triggering; I think Lispector would have preferred otherwise). I think she truly is my top, top favourite writer ever. Reading this has made certain of that. Of course, time will/might change that, but for now, she’s the one for me, without any breath of doubt.
With a book like this, even if/when filled to the brim with all the stars in the world and beyond; any kind of of 5* rating, any form of ‘praises’ and/or ‘compliments’ will all come across as being thoroughly rude, inaccurate and ‘lacking’, never enough. I shall write no more of it, I simply can’t. It’s simply one of the best things ever written. Excuse me, for I've just realised that all my 'reviews' and/or thoughts on everything by Clarice Lispector are unapologetically unhinged...
‘Sometimes I hurry to finish some intimate episode of life, in order to capture it in memories, and, more than having lived, to live. A living that already was. Swallowed by me and now part of my blood—But what I really like is a soccer tournament. Will I be alive during the next world cup? I hope not, my God—.”
‘This future of mine that shall be for you the past of someone dead. When you have finished this book, cry a hallelujah for me. When you close the last page of this frustrated and dauntless and playful book of life then forget me—Am I falling into discourse?—I write and that way rid myself of me and then at last I can rest.’
May 18, 2018
Um Sopro de Vida (Pulsações)
de
Clarice Lispector
"Isto não é um lamento, é um grito de ave de rapina."
"Se este livro vier jamais a sair, que dele se afastem os profanos. Pois escrever é coisa sagrada onde os infiéis não têm entrada. Estou fazendo de propósito um livro bem ruim para afastar os profanos que querem «gostar». Mas um pequeno grupo verá que esse «gostar» é superficial e entrarão adentro do que verdadeiramente escrevo, e que não é «ruim» nem é «bom»."
"Quando acabardes este livro chorai por mim uma aleluia. Quando fechardes as últimas páginas deste malogrado e afoito e brincalhão livro de vida então esquecei-me. Que Deus vos abençoe então e este livro acaba bem. Para enfim eu ter repouso. Que a paz esteja entre nós, entre vós e entre mim."
(Um Sopro de Vida é o último livro de Clarice Lispector e foi publicado postumamente.)
de
Clarice Lispector
"Isto não é um lamento, é um grito de ave de rapina."
"Se este livro vier jamais a sair, que dele se afastem os profanos. Pois escrever é coisa sagrada onde os infiéis não têm entrada. Estou fazendo de propósito um livro bem ruim para afastar os profanos que querem «gostar». Mas um pequeno grupo verá que esse «gostar» é superficial e entrarão adentro do que verdadeiramente escrevo, e que não é «ruim» nem é «bom»."
"Quando acabardes este livro chorai por mim uma aleluia. Quando fechardes as últimas páginas deste malogrado e afoito e brincalhão livro de vida então esquecei-me. Que Deus vos abençoe então e este livro acaba bem. Para enfim eu ter repouso. Que a paz esteja entre nós, entre vós e entre mim."
"Ela é tão livre que um dia será presa. «Presa porquê?» «Por excesso de liberdade.» «Mas essa liberdade é inocente?» «É.» «Até mesmo ingénua.» «Então porque a prisão?» «Porque a liberdade ofende.»"
"O que me mata é o cotidiano. Eu queria só exceções. Estou perdida: eu não tenho hábitos."
"Fui trêmula ao encontro de mim — e achei uma tola mulher que se debate dentro das paredes de existir. Rompo as comportas e me crio nova."
"Nunca se esquecer, quando se tem uma dor, que a dor passará: nunca se esquecer que, quando se morre, a morte passará. Não se morre eternamente. É só uma vez, e dura um instante."
(Um Sopro de Vida é o último livro de Clarice Lispector e foi publicado postumamente.)
December 27, 2021
Το τελευταίο φιλοσοφικό ξέσπασμα της πιο ιδιαίτερης φωνής της πορτογαλικής γλώσσας. Ένα βιβλίο με τόση ομορφιά, τόση ενσυναίσθηση απέναντι σε ό,τι ανθρώπινο, τόση ευαισθησία απέναντι στα πράγματα, στα οποία εμφυσά ζωή. Υπάρχουν αυτοί που λατρεύουν τη Λισπέκτορ κι αυτοί που βαριούνται να την καταλάβουν. Και πραγματικά δεν θέλει και τόσο κόπο, μόνο μάτια διάπλατα ανοιχτά.
August 26, 2021
El que quiera leer a Clarice tiene que saber que va a perder el total control de sí mismo. Para entrar en su universo hay que dejarse llevar, no hay otra forma. Hermosa novela, reflexiva, filosófica.
October 7, 2017
In order to write I must place myself in the void. In this void is where I exist intuitively. But it’s a terribly dangerous void: it’s where I wring out blood. I’m a writer who fears the snares of words: the words I say hide others — which? maybe I’ll say them. Writing is a stone cast down a deep well.
*
I write very simple and very naked. That’s why it wounds. I’m a gray and blue landscape. I rise in a dry fountain and in the cold light.
*
Could I be betraying myself? Could I be altering the course of a river? I must trust that abundant river. Or maybe I’m damming a river? I try to open the flood-gates,I want to watch the water gushing out. I want every sentence of this book to be a climax.
*
In every word a heart beats. Writing is that search for the intimate truth of life. Life that disturbs me and leaves my own trembling heart suffering the incalculable pain that seems necessary for my maturity — maturity? I’ve lived this long without it!
*
And is there another way to be saved? besides creating one’s own realities?
*
I write very simple and very naked. That’s why it wounds. I’m a gray and blue landscape. I rise in a dry fountain and in the cold light.
*
Could I be betraying myself? Could I be altering the course of a river? I must trust that abundant river. Or maybe I’m damming a river? I try to open the flood-gates,I want to watch the water gushing out. I want every sentence of this book to be a climax.
*
In every word a heart beats. Writing is that search for the intimate truth of life. Life that disturbs me and leaves my own trembling heart suffering the incalculable pain that seems necessary for my maturity — maturity? I’ve lived this long without it!
*
And is there another way to be saved? besides creating one’s own realities?
March 10, 2023
One thing I have learnt over the past few years is that it's far more difficult to write a review about a book you love than a book you hate. The books I give five stars all seem to have this impenetrable quality about them, a sense of completeness which makes it difficult to untangle the roots of their greatness and pinpoint why I love them so much. Every comment I have on their writing, form and style all appears trivial and frivolous to me in the shadow of a great work. I wrestled with this complexity as soon as I read the first page of Clarice Lispector’s novel; ‘A Breath of Life’. I first learnt of Lispector through one of my favourite writers, Hélène Cixous, who praised her work ardently and feverishly. I read my first work of Lispector’s, The Chandelier, last year and fell completely in love with her writing, and despite the idiosyncratic challenges I faced reading the novel, I was desperate to read more of her work. A Breath of Life did not disappoint me. Lispector’s voice is poetic yet clear with her distinctive tone of prosaic intimacy, whose address fluctuates between the reader, the author and the author’s creation in a uniquely reflexive triangle of subject positions. The book gallops along with a stream-of-consciousness style reminiscent of Virginia Woolf, a technique which functions sublimely in catalysing the frenzied urgency underpinning fragmented phrases. Metaphors gleam and soar, expanding out into universal musings on existence and death before shrinking back to personal recollections of Lispector’s life in all its small beauties - such as a charming passage on how her dog Ulysses laying next to her teaches her how to exist. The repeated juxtaposition between the universal and particular does not create a stilted structure, as Lispector manages to intermingle the themes of her novel so seamlessly it is almost as if the text itself is breathing. There’s something about her monologue that possesses this intense vulnerability, exposing the soft parts of herself as an author, her creation personified as ‘Angela Pralini’ and her reader, and through this tender sensitivity of her writing she has managed to get closer and closer to reaching the nebulous core of life.
A Breath of Life is dense and can be demanding to read at times simply due to how vastly passion features in her narrative voice, but it’s also just so utterly human. The beauty of A Breath of Life’s intimacy is that when you read it, it’s almost as if she’s writing just for you, like you can almost hear her voice as you read. It’s a beautiful and rare occurrence when language touches your soul completely (my apologies for being a little sentimental here - but good literature will do that to you) with the ineffable and indescribable sensation of overpowering connection. This resonance, which lies on the verge of being overwhelming, experienced when I encounter beautiful writing, is difficult to adequately encapsulate in the shortness of a book review, so difficult that often I do not even attempt it - I fear I will simply have nothing worth saying. To read a great work is to encounter a stranger, fully formed and distinctively individual. Herein lies the impossibility of summarising the beauty of these works, in that it’s the same impossibility of sufficiently encapsulating the entirety of a stranger in a single meeting. You can distil a person down to their habits, lifestyle, idiosyncrasies and specific character traits, but there will inevitably be something missing, a lack of energy or some utterly human essence in this generalisation. The confrontation between person and other is the ultimate confrontation of great literature. However, the question still remains, how can I even begin to describe this confrontation when I know I will fall hopelessly short, that my praises are so inadequate to describe a work of multitudes? Maybe to begin penetrating the dense forest of literary relation and recognition is to begin to attempt to describe my difficulty in definition. Through presenting the sheer human-ness of each great novel, additionally acknowledging the shortcomings of summarisation, perhaps I will finally make progress in articulating my appreciation.
This impossibility and contradiction are what’s so beautiful to me about A Breath of Life, with its enigmatic and fleeting prose, that its genius and artistry lies in the impossibility of definition, of rejecting the imposition of arbitrary limits. It continually blurs the distinctions between fiction and non-fiction, self and other, human and God. It provokes the reader to turn inwards to self-examination while managing to be extraordinarily artfully constructed and yet so profoundly, tenderly human in its passions and wanderings. In my opinion, the best way to read any work of Lispector is simply to follow the literary journey she takes you on, to stop and look on as you experience the power and beauty of the language and images which she presents, to relish in her delicate touch and passionate outbursts, and to realise that maybe to be human is to contain endless contradiction.
A Breath of Life is dense and can be demanding to read at times simply due to how vastly passion features in her narrative voice, but it’s also just so utterly human. The beauty of A Breath of Life’s intimacy is that when you read it, it’s almost as if she’s writing just for you, like you can almost hear her voice as you read. It’s a beautiful and rare occurrence when language touches your soul completely (my apologies for being a little sentimental here - but good literature will do that to you) with the ineffable and indescribable sensation of overpowering connection. This resonance, which lies on the verge of being overwhelming, experienced when I encounter beautiful writing, is difficult to adequately encapsulate in the shortness of a book review, so difficult that often I do not even attempt it - I fear I will simply have nothing worth saying. To read a great work is to encounter a stranger, fully formed and distinctively individual. Herein lies the impossibility of summarising the beauty of these works, in that it’s the same impossibility of sufficiently encapsulating the entirety of a stranger in a single meeting. You can distil a person down to their habits, lifestyle, idiosyncrasies and specific character traits, but there will inevitably be something missing, a lack of energy or some utterly human essence in this generalisation. The confrontation between person and other is the ultimate confrontation of great literature. However, the question still remains, how can I even begin to describe this confrontation when I know I will fall hopelessly short, that my praises are so inadequate to describe a work of multitudes? Maybe to begin penetrating the dense forest of literary relation and recognition is to begin to attempt to describe my difficulty in definition. Through presenting the sheer human-ness of each great novel, additionally acknowledging the shortcomings of summarisation, perhaps I will finally make progress in articulating my appreciation.
This impossibility and contradiction are what’s so beautiful to me about A Breath of Life, with its enigmatic and fleeting prose, that its genius and artistry lies in the impossibility of definition, of rejecting the imposition of arbitrary limits. It continually blurs the distinctions between fiction and non-fiction, self and other, human and God. It provokes the reader to turn inwards to self-examination while managing to be extraordinarily artfully constructed and yet so profoundly, tenderly human in its passions and wanderings. In my opinion, the best way to read any work of Lispector is simply to follow the literary journey she takes you on, to stop and look on as you experience the power and beauty of the language and images which she presents, to relish in her delicate touch and passionate outbursts, and to realise that maybe to be human is to contain endless contradiction.
June 5, 2024
A Breath of Life, Clarice Lispector's final novel, is a hauntingly beautiful exploration of creation, identity, and mortality. The novel takes the form of a dialogue between a male author and his female creation, Angela Pralini. The author infuses Angela with life, but their connection is complex and fraught. As Angela grapples with her newfound existence, the author becomes increasingly obsessed with controlling her.
The novel is written in a fragmentary style, reflecting the chaotic nature of consciousness. Lispector's prose is rich and evocative, full of startling metaphors and philosophical insights. A Breath of Life is a challenging but rewarding read that will stay with you long after you finish the last page. Often long winded and aimlessly drawn out the book has a unique narrative which leaves the reader feeling unsettled at the growing love of the author for his creation. Each chapter increasingly more haphazard shows the deteriorating state of the author who is having conversation with his character, Angela. He dictates her ambition, her thoughts, every reasoning of her is overstated by the Author. He stifles any freedom of her as she is bound by his mind.
As usual Clarice Lispector conveys her story without any organised structure. The conversation style along with her (or the Author of the story) ramblings carry her signature metaphysical questions, there is wisdom but it doesn't add up with what she begins with. One can lose interest quickly but if you're used to it, you can find yourself contemplating. Maybe a joint in life will have amplified my reading experience but I don't do that. The novel delves into the question of what it means to be alive and how we come to understand ourselves. The author's relationship with Angela reflects the complex relationship between any creator and their creation. The degree of control over the character v/s the creative freedom. Leaving any reader unsettled especially since there is no real defined ending to the book. The stream of consciousness ends with the last gasp of the God-like author that stands in for Clarice.
Living is an act I did not premeditate. I blossomed from the dark. I am only valid for myself. I must live little by little, it’s no good living everything at once. In someone’s arms I die completely. I am transformed into energy that has within it the nuclear atomic. I’m the result of having heard a warm voice long ago and having stepped off the train almost before it stopped — haste is the enemy of perfection and that’s how I ran toward the city missing immediately the station and the train’s next departure and its exceptional moment that awakens such a painful fright which is the whistle of the train, which is farewell.
The novel is written in a fragmentary style, reflecting the chaotic nature of consciousness. Lispector's prose is rich and evocative, full of startling metaphors and philosophical insights. A Breath of Life is a challenging but rewarding read that will stay with you long after you finish the last page. Often long winded and aimlessly drawn out the book has a unique narrative which leaves the reader feeling unsettled at the growing love of the author for his creation. Each chapter increasingly more haphazard shows the deteriorating state of the author who is having conversation with his character, Angela. He dictates her ambition, her thoughts, every reasoning of her is overstated by the Author. He stifles any freedom of her as she is bound by his mind.
As usual Clarice Lispector conveys her story without any organised structure. The conversation style along with her (or the Author of the story) ramblings carry her signature metaphysical questions, there is wisdom but it doesn't add up with what she begins with. One can lose interest quickly but if you're used to it, you can find yourself contemplating. Maybe a joint in life will have amplified my reading experience but I don't do that. The novel delves into the question of what it means to be alive and how we come to understand ourselves. The author's relationship with Angela reflects the complex relationship between any creator and their creation. The degree of control over the character v/s the creative freedom. Leaving any reader unsettled especially since there is no real defined ending to the book. The stream of consciousness ends with the last gasp of the God-like author that stands in for Clarice.
Living is an act I did not premeditate. I blossomed from the dark. I am only valid for myself. I must live little by little, it’s no good living everything at once. In someone’s arms I die completely. I am transformed into energy that has within it the nuclear atomic. I’m the result of having heard a warm voice long ago and having stepped off the train almost before it stopped — haste is the enemy of perfection and that’s how I ran toward the city missing immediately the station and the train’s next departure and its exceptional moment that awakens such a painful fright which is the whistle of the train, which is farewell.
Read
November 7, 2015Clarice Lispector may well have been a genius – indeed I think it likely given both her reputation in Latin America and the reactions of readers I respect here on Goodreads – but so far, over four books, my experience has been one of, mostly, not feeling up to the task of reading her, I suspect because I lack the necessary trust to follow her on her seemingly mapless flights. The Passion of G.H. I liked, because, being wedded to a described external reality, it seemed less mapless, and its lurches into cosmic depths more resonant for having as their foil that reality. But A Breath of Life, to me, is all lurch, all cosmic; in it the quotidian is long-forgotten. And for this reader (who reads each sentence with care, who tries not to progress to the next sentence until I have understood the last) its invitation to dive into those depths is frankly not inviting. I try: I surrender to flow, give up on “meaning”, try even not to consider or assess the significance of what unfolds. But pages later I’m none the wiser. And things bother me: this whole AUTHOR/ANGELA dichotemy, for eg. At one point the “AUTHOR” says he doesn’t write like Angela, yet to me they sound virtually (if not entirely) the same. And why is the author “he” anyway? This device (used, to me bafflingly, in The Hour of the Star too) felt artificial and arbitrary. A simple way of differentiating Lispector and her fictional author? If so, I can’t help thinking, isn’t it too simple? And this technical decision of Lispector’s, which impacts (it seems) little on the text, bugs me for precisely that reason: it seems pointless, and undermines my trust.
As I say, great and instinctive readers have fallen head over heels for Clarice Lispector, and I’m sure they’re onto something. But for now, I’m tired. Possibly never has an author so eluded me. Usually if I don’t like something I at least know why. In Lispector’s case I don’t even know if I like her. I just know her words don’t stick to me; too often, they float over/around/through me, seeds that never take root. Or do they? If the point is to evade my rational mind, perhaps to reach the centre by less (or more) direct means, then who’s to say? If the point is her prose aspires to music, maybe it does. Maybe I just don’t know how to hear it, how to let go. Maybe. But for now, I’m putting her aside.
February 28, 2020
2nd reading: A dream within a dream about: a dream.
Awestruck and no words ~ can't begin to think capture is possible ~ of relating what can only be experienced by reading (and certainly not just once) these slim but packed gemstones (read 5 of her novels (so far)) between two covers of an author who writes as dreamily as she herself appears. These ethereal meditations, ostensibly stories with narrators and characters are voyeur scenes designed to draw the reader into intimacy of group experience oneness like séance gatherings where spontaneous outpourings litter a darkened smoked room while the candle gutters. These all go directly to my reread shelf and there they will stay most likely forever (to be continuously like breath brought in held and released).
Awestruck and no words ~ can't begin to think capture is possible ~ of relating what can only be experienced by reading (and certainly not just once) these slim but packed gemstones (read 5 of her novels (so far)) between two covers of an author who writes as dreamily as she herself appears. These ethereal meditations, ostensibly stories with narrators and characters are voyeur scenes designed to draw the reader into intimacy of group experience oneness like séance gatherings where spontaneous outpourings litter a darkened smoked room while the candle gutters. These all go directly to my reread shelf and there they will stay most likely forever (to be continuously like breath brought in held and released).
April 14, 2021
"When you have finished this book cry a Hallelujah for me"
Hallelujah Clarice! but I can't forget you.
This is probably her most existentialist book from all her existentialists books, she still struggles to make a good novel or a good writing so she tells us constantly, I wonder if she know's in the afterlife of all of us from the future who love her and find her a complete genius.
She talks a lot of freedom and death and nothingness, and it makes it more sad to know that she wrote this in her last years of life "I'm free of destiny".
"I write for nothing and for no one. Anyone who reads me does so at his own risk."
I knew since the first book I read from her that she would become the most influential writer for me, what she does to me every time I read her is unexplainable, she's just so visceral. This one is my first time reading her in English, and though I much rather reading her in Spanish, her essence was well preserved.
For all of us who are Clarice's fans, this book is definitely a sad one.
Hallelujah Clarice! but I can't forget you.
This is probably her most existentialist book from all her existentialists books, she still struggles to make a good novel or a good writing so she tells us constantly, I wonder if she know's in the afterlife of all of us from the future who love her and find her a complete genius.
She talks a lot of freedom and death and nothingness, and it makes it more sad to know that she wrote this in her last years of life "I'm free of destiny".
"I write for nothing and for no one. Anyone who reads me does so at his own risk."
I knew since the first book I read from her that she would become the most influential writer for me, what she does to me every time I read her is unexplainable, she's just so visceral. This one is my first time reading her in English, and though I much rather reading her in Spanish, her essence was well preserved.
For all of us who are Clarice's fans, this book is definitely a sad one.
October 3, 2021
Mais uma experiência de leitura soberba e difícil de colocar em palavras.
ÂNGELA. —Viver me deixa trêmula.
AUTOR. — A mim também a vida me faz estremecer.
Abrimos o livro e é esta a estrutura que vemos, como num texto de teatro... um diálogo entre duas personagens, entre "Autor" e "Ângela".
Contudo, cedo na leitura descobrimos que não se trata propriamente de um diálogo, pelo menos não no sentido em que estamos habituados a entendê-lo.
Cedo também o primeiro vínculo proposto entre autor e Ângela é posto em causa. São-nos inicialmente apresentados enquanto autor e personagem por ele criada (Ângela Pralini), mas esta relação e sua natureza vai sendo desafiada ao longo de todo o livro.
Criador e/ou criado, complemento e/ou oposição, simbiose e/ou antagonismo, real e/ou imaginado, feminino e/ou masculino, amor e/ou ódio, duas pessoas e/ou uma única ... poderia continuar aqui a listar as propostas e dificilmente esgotaria as possibilidades apresentadas no texto. Mescladas nestas concepções e diferentes perspectivas que em si mesmas já são temas, surgem outras ideias, inesgotáveis também, das mais banais às mais inusitadas, mas sempre abordadas de forma insólita.
É uma obra complexa e desconcertante. Não encontramos propriamente uma história. É um livro de momentos, de ideias... de "pulsações".
Em comum com o outro livro que li de Clarice Lispector (A Maçã no Escuro) reconheci a sua extrema sensibilidade, o seu "olhar" diferente, a sua percepção sensorial incomum. Diria até sinestésica: "Um dos modos de viver mais é o de usar os sentidos num campo que não é propriamente o deles". Reconheci também a ausência de limites: "Ela atingiu um êxtase ao perder a multiplicidade ilusória das coisas do mundo e ao passar a sentir tudo como uno"
Sabendo que este foi o último livro que escreveu, foi particularmente poderosa para mim a última parte do livro intitulada "O Livro de Ângela" em que a nossa verdadeira autora se parece assumir e revelar abertamente na personagem Ângela e o tema da morte é recorrentemente abordado.
ÂNGELA. —Morre-se.
AUTOR. — No fundo ela não acredita que se morre.
ÂNGELA. —Viver me deixa trêmula.
AUTOR. — A mim também a vida me faz estremecer.
Abrimos o livro e é esta a estrutura que vemos, como num texto de teatro... um diálogo entre duas personagens, entre "Autor" e "Ângela".
Contudo, cedo na leitura descobrimos que não se trata propriamente de um diálogo, pelo menos não no sentido em que estamos habituados a entendê-lo.
Cedo também o primeiro vínculo proposto entre autor e Ângela é posto em causa. São-nos inicialmente apresentados enquanto autor e personagem por ele criada (Ângela Pralini), mas esta relação e sua natureza vai sendo desafiada ao longo de todo o livro.
Criador e/ou criado, complemento e/ou oposição, simbiose e/ou antagonismo, real e/ou imaginado, feminino e/ou masculino, amor e/ou ódio, duas pessoas e/ou uma única ... poderia continuar aqui a listar as propostas e dificilmente esgotaria as possibilidades apresentadas no texto. Mescladas nestas concepções e diferentes perspectivas que em si mesmas já são temas, surgem outras ideias, inesgotáveis também, das mais banais às mais inusitadas, mas sempre abordadas de forma insólita.
É uma obra complexa e desconcertante. Não encontramos propriamente uma história. É um livro de momentos, de ideias... de "pulsações".
Em comum com o outro livro que li de Clarice Lispector (A Maçã no Escuro) reconheci a sua extrema sensibilidade, o seu "olhar" diferente, a sua percepção sensorial incomum. Diria até sinestésica: "Um dos modos de viver mais é o de usar os sentidos num campo que não é propriamente o deles". Reconheci também a ausência de limites: "Ela atingiu um êxtase ao perder a multiplicidade ilusória das coisas do mundo e ao passar a sentir tudo como uno"
Sabendo que este foi o último livro que escreveu, foi particularmente poderosa para mim a última parte do livro intitulada "O Livro de Ângela" em que a nossa verdadeira autora se parece assumir e revelar abertamente na personagem Ângela e o tema da morte é recorrentemente abordado.
ÂNGELA. —Morre-se.
AUTOR. — No fundo ela não acredita que se morre.
January 8, 2023
my bible
September 11, 2023
I see death smiling in your beautiful face like the fatal stain of the face of Christ on Veronica’s veil.
April 28, 2020
A Breath of Life is a raw, brutal tragedy enveloped in the philosophical stench of death and madness; a dying woman drafting a metaphysical dialogue between an unnamed author and a character named Angela Pralini whom he writes and dreams into existence, and is therefore condemned to kill. While Lispector died of ovarian cancer in 1977 with the book yet unfinished, it was assembled and published posthumously by her friend Olga Borelli from hundreds of fragments "written in agony." Its imperfections are, therefore, also products of an imperfect but precise dash of death.
The existential 'dialogue' in A Breath of Life is, in fact, meditations on creation — both divine and literary; on the anguish of unfreedom and not-knowing; on the struggle of one against life and oneself; and on the process, the ruin-making, of writing. Lispector's writing here is pure impulse — and a troubling one at that — bursting forth in profound observations and confessions that even the most puritanical reader can not help underline and encircle and read over and over again.
Lispector was Brazil's most celebrated literary voice, and it is no wonder that her writing on writing has movement of its own. In her final book, she expresses with words the difficulty of words themselves and explores the conflicting relationship the maker has with their art — a feeling of release, a moment of love, a hateful denouement. Hers is a dark art that requires emptying before it can fill:
A Breath of Life also contemplates the idea of God — Angela's self-doubt is a lack the author, too feels, yet he detests her frequent and passive recourse to prayer. The author's recognition of his own godliness, too, perhaps hints at Lispector's own position as the creative force. Interestingly, both the unnamed author and the god Angela prays to are male, thus leaving even more room for conjectures to be drawn — is Lispector submitting or commanding as she lays on her deathbed?
Overall, this is a book which both fulfills deeply and leaves a lot to be desired. It is a book full of pregnant pauses and reflection; full of the urgency and abandon with which one may philosophise before the breath of life escapes the throat, the pen.
I would be reading this again.
The existential 'dialogue' in A Breath of Life is, in fact, meditations on creation — both divine and literary; on the anguish of unfreedom and not-knowing; on the struggle of one against life and oneself; and on the process, the ruin-making, of writing. Lispector's writing here is pure impulse — and a troubling one at that — bursting forth in profound observations and confessions that even the most puritanical reader can not help underline and encircle and read over and over again.
Lispector was Brazil's most celebrated literary voice, and it is no wonder that her writing on writing has movement of its own. In her final book, she expresses with words the difficulty of words themselves and explores the conflicting relationship the maker has with their art — a feeling of release, a moment of love, a hateful denouement. Hers is a dark art that requires emptying before it can fill:
"In order to write I must place myself in the void. In this void is where I exist intuitively. But it's a terribly dangerous void: it's where I wring out blood. I'm a writer why fears the snare of words: the words I say hide others — which? Maybe I'll say them. Writing is a stone cast down a deep well"
A Breath of Life also contemplates the idea of God — Angela's self-doubt is a lack the author, too feels, yet he detests her frequent and passive recourse to prayer. The author's recognition of his own godliness, too, perhaps hints at Lispector's own position as the creative force. Interestingly, both the unnamed author and the god Angela prays to are male, thus leaving even more room for conjectures to be drawn — is Lispector submitting or commanding as she lays on her deathbed?
Overall, this is a book which both fulfills deeply and leaves a lot to be desired. It is a book full of pregnant pauses and reflection; full of the urgency and abandon with which one may philosophise before the breath of life escapes the throat, the pen.
I would be reading this again.
March 13, 2023
READING VLOG
A conversation without connection between the creator and its creation.
In the final days of Lispector, you see grief and, still, this urgency to find profundity and wonder in the banalities of life, even amongst so much end. To look at objects and gloss them over like a slow-moving camera from Russian Ark or Journey into the Night. Like a Terrance Malick film that doesn’t look at wonder, but finds wonder in common objects. A trash can. An elevator. Butterfly.
Man becomes mother, and a mother’s worry is forever. Worried to be too close to subject. Worried to be too far from subject.
But Angela Pralini, an undead non-existing figment of female imagination, an object of desire, is but the subject of these pages that breed beginnings and ends, of the very reason why art exists and why we exist for art.
Best read in companionship with The Hour of the Star, to see man becoming in the form of Lispector, her brute masculinity, her force majeure.
A conversation without connection between the creator and its creation.
In the final days of Lispector, you see grief and, still, this urgency to find profundity and wonder in the banalities of life, even amongst so much end. To look at objects and gloss them over like a slow-moving camera from Russian Ark or Journey into the Night. Like a Terrance Malick film that doesn’t look at wonder, but finds wonder in common objects. A trash can. An elevator. Butterfly.
Man becomes mother, and a mother’s worry is forever. Worried to be too close to subject. Worried to be too far from subject.
But Angela Pralini, an undead non-existing figment of female imagination, an object of desire, is but the subject of these pages that breed beginnings and ends, of the very reason why art exists and why we exist for art.
Best read in companionship with The Hour of the Star, to see man becoming in the form of Lispector, her brute masculinity, her force majeure.
April 3, 2022
Δεν ξερω καποιον πιο dada και beautiful nonesence συγγραφεα απο την Κλαρίσε Λισπέκτορ. Η γραφή της εχει κατι αρχεγονο και εσωτερικό, ειναι μια υποσυνείδητή της ανάγκη, κι ειναι μικρες συμπαντικές εκρηξεις, χωρις νόημα, αλλά γεμάτη ομορφιά.
Γραφει για την ηδονη της γραφής. κανει τέχνη για την τέχνη. Δεν βγαζει πουθενά αυτο που διαβαζεις, αλλά η διαδρομή ειναι πανέμορφη.
Οπότε δεν πειράζει.
λατρεία.
Εκοψα ενα αστερι γιατι θα ηταν αριστουργημα εαν υπηρχε και πλοκή. Το συγκεκριμένο αλλωστε ηταν ενα προσωπικό της εργο, ενα σημειωματάριο που δεν συναρμολογήθ��κε ποτέ απο την ιδια και δημοσιευτηκε μετά θάνατον χωρις την αδεια της προφανως.
Υπαρχουν και πιο συγκροτημένα της για τους αρχαριους της Κλαρίσε.
Η ωρα του αστεριού για παραδειγμα, ειναι ενα απο τα πιο αγαπημενα μου βιβλια στον κόσμο.
Οχι οτι εκεινο εβγαζε και πολύ νοημα η αλήθεια ειναι.
________________
"Γραφω πολύ απλά και πολύ γυμνά. Γι αυτό πονάει."
Γραφει για την ηδονη της γραφής. κανει τέχνη για την τέχνη. Δεν βγαζει πουθενά αυτο που διαβαζεις, αλλά η διαδρομή ειναι πανέμορφη.
Οπότε δεν πειράζει.
λατρεία.
Εκοψα ενα αστερι γιατι θα ηταν αριστουργημα εαν υπηρχε και πλοκή. Το συγκεκριμένο αλλωστε ηταν ενα προσωπικό της εργο, ενα σημειωματάριο που δεν συναρμολογήθ��κε ποτέ απο την ιδια και δημοσιευτηκε μετά θάνατον χωρις την αδεια της προφανως.
Υπαρχουν και πιο συγκροτημένα της για τους αρχαριους της Κλαρίσε.
Η ωρα του αστεριού για παραδειγμα, ειναι ενα απο τα πιο αγαπημενα μου βιβλια στον κόσμο.
Οχι οτι εκεινο εβγαζε και πολύ νοημα η αλήθεια ειναι.
________________
"Γραφω πολύ απλά και πολύ γυμνά. Γι αυτό πονάει."
February 10, 2019
https://leiturasdelaura.blogspot.com/...
Preciso começar dizendo que eu adoro Clarice Lispector. A Hora da Estrela é um livro maravilhoso e inesquecível. Além disso, a brasileira nascida na Ucrânia está no rol dos autores clássicos e mais importantes do século XX por mérito, porque ela é mesmo fantástica.
Dito isso, é também preciso apontar que Um Sopro de Vida (Pulsações) é um livro póstumo, organizado para publicação por outra pessoa que não Clarice. Apesar de Clarice estar doente na época que escreveu esse livro, sua doença, um câncer de ovário, só foi descoberto mais tarde e quando já era inoperável. E ele tem cara de exatamente isso.
O livro é uma espécie de literatura experimental, onde temos uma não-conversa entre um autor e uma personagem criada por ele. Parece uma grande busca interna psicológica do porquê os autores precisam de personagens e o que elas significam. Aqui o autor não tem nome, mas a personagem tem, Angela.
É estranho porque o livro não possui uma linha narrativa, e não tem exatamente nem início e nem fim, é só uma grande catarse. Eu não conseguiria dar spoiler nem se quisesse.
Foi um dos livros mais difíceis e chatos que já li na minha vida. Pronto falei.
Tem belíssimas citações, é verdade, mas também me pareceu um exercício muito sem sentido sobre o sentido da escrita. Pura masturbação mental que não me levou a lugar nenhum. Espero em breve ler algo da autora que limpe esse ranço da minha mente.
Preciso começar dizendo que eu adoro Clarice Lispector. A Hora da Estrela é um livro maravilhoso e inesquecível. Além disso, a brasileira nascida na Ucrânia está no rol dos autores clássicos e mais importantes do século XX por mérito, porque ela é mesmo fantástica.
Dito isso, é também preciso apontar que Um Sopro de Vida (Pulsações) é um livro póstumo, organizado para publicação por outra pessoa que não Clarice. Apesar de Clarice estar doente na época que escreveu esse livro, sua doença, um câncer de ovário, só foi descoberto mais tarde e quando já era inoperável. E ele tem cara de exatamente isso.
O livro é uma espécie de literatura experimental, onde temos uma não-conversa entre um autor e uma personagem criada por ele. Parece uma grande busca interna psicológica do porquê os autores precisam de personagens e o que elas significam. Aqui o autor não tem nome, mas a personagem tem, Angela.
É estranho porque o livro não possui uma linha narrativa, e não tem exatamente nem início e nem fim, é só uma grande catarse. Eu não conseguiria dar spoiler nem se quisesse.
Foi um dos livros mais difíceis e chatos que já li na minha vida. Pronto falei.
Tem belíssimas citações, é verdade, mas também me pareceu um exercício muito sem sentido sobre o sentido da escrita. Pura masturbação mental que não me levou a lugar nenhum. Espero em breve ler algo da autora que limpe esse ranço da minha mente.
May 21, 2013
I am going to exercise caution, and out of respect for others faith and strong beliefs I will refrain from commenting too strongly on what I have just finished reading here. It is obvious to me that Clarice Lispector thought a great deal about her own death and dying. The book is highly meditative. It also felt quite Catholic to me, and I have no idea whether Lispector was Catholic or not. I myself was raised a Lutheran which frankly ended badly for me. I am also a recovering alcoholic and drug addict who has so far successfully practiced the twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and turned my will over to a "power greater than myself" over twenty-six years ago on a Easter Sunday. I was also visited at bedside back then by the Christian savior called Jesus Christ. At that time for me the visit was real and my faith in this version of God helped me to abstain from the drugs that were destroying my body. I stayed away long enough in which to get a new life, to patch up and make amends to the many people I made suffer, and to engage my heart's desire, knowing that I would and could sustain this momentum for life if I kept my nose to the ground. But the mind is a powerful thing that can imagine realities that may not exist anywhere else in the world outside of the person believing them. And it takes what it takes. Every person's pain threshold is their very own and not to be judged by assholes such as myself who might think they know better than anybody else. There are many of those among us. For the record I no longer believe in much of anything these days except treating others as I wish to be treated. We all believe in something and I believe I am completely finished when I die. I do hope I will have added something to the quality of life throughout the entire process and duration of my artistic life.
This last book of Clarice Lispector read hollow to me. In a way, I wish it would have felt more desperate. As much as she must have felt at the time it did not transcend for me on to the page. But I am looking forward to reading a bit more of her plot-driven work, and will always attempt while reading her to see the world through Lispector vision, but I am not promising that I actually will.
This last book of Clarice Lispector read hollow to me. In a way, I wish it would have felt more desperate. As much as she must have felt at the time it did not transcend for me on to the page. But I am looking forward to reading a bit more of her plot-driven work, and will always attempt while reading her to see the world through Lispector vision, but I am not promising that I actually will.
August 28, 2012
of the four lispector novels released by new directions this year, this is the only one not to have appeared previously in english translation. originally published the year after she died, a breath of life (sopro de vida) finds the brazilian writer revisiting the familiar milieu of existential musings, meditative reveries, and contemplations on the nature of mortality common throughout her works. cleverly offered as an ongoing dialogue between the author (an autobiographically-tinted male counterpart) and a character of his creation (angela), a breath of life was posthumously assembled from the disorganized and unrevised manuscript by a close friend. ever-present, despite the pain and "agony" with which she apparently finished this book, is lispector's magnificent prose and singular style.
included in this edition is a brief and interesting epistolary exchange between series editor/translator/lispector biographer benjamin moser and pedro almodóvar where moser requests of the famed film director an introduction to the book (which, save for his response, he did not provide).
*translated from the portuguese by johnny lorenz
included in this edition is a brief and interesting epistolary exchange between series editor/translator/lispector biographer benjamin moser and pedro almodóvar where moser requests of the famed film director an introduction to the book (which, save for his response, he did not provide).
i've always wanted to find someday a person who would live for me because life is so full of useless things that i can only bear it through extreme muscular asthenia, i suffer from moral indolence in living. i tried to make angela live in my place- but she too wants only the climax of life
*translated from the portuguese by johnny lorenz
October 5, 2022
It will take time to process this exquisite poetic prose. It is the poetry of life and death, the dance they make. Like a tango the Author and Angela alternate the voice. Written by Clarice Lispector and publish after her death from ovarian cancer, this book is another of the special books devoted to the spiritually provocative considerations about death and dying. It may seem odd, but this was a gorgeous book. Told in stream of consciousness by the author, a thinly veiled Lispector, and his/her muse, Angela, I am reminded of Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs Dalloway. My feelings upon just finishing this book are similar to when I closed the cover of Ocean Vuong's On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous.
December 31, 2020
Si me pidieran hacer un resumen de esta lectura no sabría por donde empezar. Con apenas 150 páginas, esta obra póstuma de Lispector me ha acompañado a lo largo de diciembre. Es un libro que no puede leerse rápido, que pide paciencia, sosiego, repasar ideas y fragmentos y deleitarse en su prosa. Es un libro denso y hermosísimo que se ha convertido en el que más he subrayado de mi vida (y yo no soy de subrayar libros). He sentido que me hablaba a mí en todo momento, que sus pulsaciones eran a menudo puñaladas.
February 4, 2016
Creo que mi implacable voracidad lectora juega en contra de libros como este. Libros cuya brevedad, lejos de incitar el consumo a contrarreloj, implica un descenso de la velocidad necesario para detenerse a contemplar el paisaje. Y es que Un soplo de vida es una de las mejores meditaciones sobre la inspiración y creatividad literaria que he leído nunca. Un asombroso ejercicio de reflexión sobre el oficio de escritor, el proceso de construcción de una obra y el poder transformador de la literatura que se sustenta sobre un diálogo tenso/místico que el protagonista y autor (alter ego de la propia Lispector) mantiene con su fascinante y díscolo personaje. La profundidad e implicaciones de la historia son sencillamente brutales. Sin embargo, leerla de un tirón perjudica en gran medida su impacto y produce cierta sensación de sofoco que se refleja inevitablemente en la nota. Aún así, me ha parecido un libro brillante y muy recomendable.
Want to read
September 4, 2017"برای من زمان یعنی زوال ماده.گندیدن اندام واره ها چنان که انگار زمان کرمی باشد غارتگر گوشت میوه.زمان وجود ندارد.آنچه زمان می نامیم جنبش تطور چیزهاست،ولی زمان که خودش وجود ندارد."ص 14
"رهایم از تقدیر.یعنی تقدیرم به رهایی رسیدن بود؟"ص 16
"میترسم از شروع.از وجود داشتن گاهی رعشه بر اندامم می افتد.میترسم از منیدنم.بس خطرناکم.مرا به نامی نامیدند و با خویش بیگانه ام کردند."ص17
"رهایم از تقدیر.یعنی تقدیرم به رهایی رسیدن بود؟"ص 16
"میترسم از شروع.از وجود داشتن گاهی رعشه بر اندامم می افتد.میترسم از منیدنم.بس خطرناکم.مرا به نامی نامیدند و با خویش بیگانه ام کردند."ص17
January 16, 2020
There are distinct commonalities and something like a presiding thread of development that link the three late Clarice Lispector novels THE PASSION ACCORDING TO G.H., ÁGUA VIVA, and A BREATH OF LIFE, the last of which, currently under consideration, was published posthumously thanks to the dedication of Lispector's friend Olga Borelli. THE HOUR OF THE STAR, the final novel Lispector published during her lifetime, marks a decided departure from the trajectory embodied by the sequential schematics of modification mobilized in those three late novels, and though it is also very much a masterpiece it is quite different for reasons that have to do with more than just its comparative accessibility, an accessibility born of its exhumation of more classical forms. I have not yet read AN APPRENTICESHIP OR THE BOOK OF PLEASURES, the novel that appeared between THE PASSION ACCORDING TO G.H. and ÁGUA VIVA. THE PASSION ACCORDING TO G.H., ÁGUA VIVA, and A BREATH OF LIFE are essentially non-narrative works, experimental and hyper-modern(ist), each finding a way to elevate the white-hot intensity of its creation to the moment-to-moment surface operations of the text as well as to the form. They are digressive, meditative, incantatory novels, both poetic and philosophical, locating the individual creative act in the creation of the world and of reality. They deal with the infinite, the turbulence of embodied experience, and the transcendent yearning of raw enunciation. They locate the very seed of Life in the instant and establish diverse means to access multiple planes of ecstatic communion. If THE PASSION ACCORDING TO G.H. is the closest of the three novels to a conventional one, this is because it is engineered around the geography of an encounter. Its profound and tremendously poignant poetic flights occur in reference to events that occur in a specific domestic space at a specific time with a discernible sequence. Barely a narrative, more like the coordinates of a narrative. ÁGUA VIVA goes further into fragmentation and deterritorialization, almost completely abandoning spatiotemporal coordinates. In his introduction to the New Directions edition of ÁGUA VIVA, Benjamin Moser notes that the novel's title would instantaneously evoke the jellyfish for any Brazilian, suggesting to Moser "the hint of invertebrate floating." Olga Borelli compared ÁGUA VIVA to THE PASSION ACCORDING TO G.H. by suggesting as regards the earlier book: it "has a backbone, doesn't it?" This strikes me as absolutely correct in terms of the precise reduction-expansion ÁGUA VIVA constitutes. The invertebrate variation. Both THE PASSION ACCORDING TO G.H. and ÁGUA VIVA are novels written by fictional female narrators who we come to discover are addressing their writing to a second person with whom they are or at some point have been amorously linked. The development of A BREATH OF LIFE, which in large part retains the coordinate-suspending invertebrate approach, occurs primarily because the absentee addressee of the two previous novels gives way to a second voice, an operative other, creating dialogue, a pas de deux. The prose style remains similar to that of the previous two novels, as do the baseline concerns, but now takes the form of vertiginous interlocution. The voices are those of Author, male, and Angela Pralini, female and nominally his creation, but with earthly connections which would appear to extend into the domain of familial relations (mother, father, etc.). The novel's first epigraph is from Genesis: "And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." Keen readers will note the connection also to Prometheus and Mary Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN. There is also a connection to the brief passage in ÁGUA VIVA when the painter-narrator compares her writing, addressed to a nebulous beloved, to mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Angela Pralini is enigmatic but she has voice and agency. Both she and Author fluctuate between ecstasy and agony, perhaps two species of intensity more alike than unalike. “Every book is blood, it’s pus, it’s excrement, it’s heart torn to shreds, it’s nerves cut to pieces, it’s electric shock, it’s coagulated blood running like boiling lava down the mountain.” Angela is both transcendental flight and earthly. “I need grandeur and the smell of grass.” She is the music of creative will incarnate. “I am a vibrant and crystalline burst of clarinet.” If ÁGUA VIVA was a literary work explicitly conceived as an extension of the practice of abstract painting, A BREATH OF LIFE repeatedly points to musical precedent. No writers are mentioned in the book, but composes are repeatedly referenced. (The filmmaker Federico Fellini is even mentioned once.) Author has clearly produced Angela (she of that notably Italian-seeming sobriquet) out of the desperation of solitude. It is mentioned more than once. “Angela and I are my inner dialogue—I talk to myself. I’m tired of thinking the same thoughts.” Angela would seem to be both Other and internalized projection, a split within the self. Author would seem to be including both Angela and himself when he states: “All the words written here can be summed up by an ever-present state I call ‘I am being.’” As a figure of material transgenesis, Angela also serves to represent possible transmutations inherent to the activity of writing. “What does Angela wants from life? Little by little I’ll find out. At the same time I’ll find out what I want from life. It’s just that Angela is propelled by ambition and I by chaste humility.” It is not the writer or the writing that is ambitious but the the written that is ambitious. The written takes on its own life and demands its own autonomous demands. It is by way of creating a female that Author can become a sexual unity, a circle closed, but he also breathes into Angela traits he is missing, though this appears at times to get away from him. Writing takes on life beyond the writer, it can live for centuries and centuries, but it also judiciously augments the writer, serving as a kind of armor and as a kind of filling-out. “Angela’s advantage over me is that she is non-spatial, while I occupy a place and even after death I shall continue to occupy the earth.” This could very easily be a writer assessing his work. However, many if not most of the finest passages belong to Angela. Take for example the lengthy passage about jewels from pages 118-120. I also adore the following paragraph: “The greatest thing one can have is the house. Beethoven understood this and composed a resplendent symphonic overture called ‘The Consecration of the House.’ I heard this music that reassures me at six-thirty on a still sleepy morning. Hearing such remarkable music provoked a delirious dream in which the things of the house moved around and were bewitched. So I thought: I must simply must have enormous corollas of fine smooth but wild feathers to place in my house.” This is fleet and uncanny literature conducted with unyielding fervor. Again, readers of THE PASSION ACCORDING TO G.H. and ÁGUA VIVA will be familiar with the general methodology of the piece as well as with its particular intensity. I often think of certain of my favourite philosophers when I read Lispector. I thought about Henri Bergson and Vilém Flusser (the latter of whom I had just finished reading) when I read ÁGUA VIVA. Often when I read Lispector I think of Spinoza. Her pantheism always strikes me as Spinozist. She routinely writes about God or the God etc., often doing so by locating this God in the world of extension. The spirit and psyche are product of the material world, the two are of the same substance. When Author says of Angela that “She’s a substantial beast,” I interpret this statement to mean that Angela is an expression of substance, Spinoza's infinite substance. Mind and spirit are of the material. Immanent. Lispector at one point uses a telling neologism, addressed in the Notes at the back of the New Directions edition. In Portuguese the neologism was "imanescença." Translator Johnny Lorenz renders the word in English as "immanescence." Does not this word which would appear to combine "immanence" and "evanescence" perfectly capture the core of Lispector's work, combining the chimerical and the infinitely concrete? Life itself. Coursing, a violence of flux and force, both firm and utterly evasive. And death. Death is likewise the Other that Life has projected and which is nonetheless internal to itself. We know Lispector never lived to see A BREATH OF LIFE published. Whether she intended the final sections of the book to be as haunted by death as they are is impossible for me to say. Certainly Olga Borelli would seem to have had a lot of leeway in terms of the final shape of this anomalous text. One way or another: the book ends facing death and it ends stammering. I thought of the later works of Derrida, many dealing with death. In Lispector as in Derrida death is a kind of philosophical impossibility that cannot be outwitted on those terms. Whatever else death is, it is a mystery of Life. Death belongs to Life. Clarice Lispector wrote circles around it. Her voice routinely did reconnaissance at the outermost reaches. Her late work went especially far beyond the beyond. A string of absolutely dazzling masterpieces, A BREATH OF LIFE the ultimate crown jewel. Angela on The Jewel: "It shines. This is without equal. It is always unique. And has sacred rage." This rage is the rage of volcanoes, suns, the biggest bangs.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 646 reviews