\u2014Katrina Dodson<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Rio de Janeiro, November, 1974. At the age of twenty-three, just embarking on my career as a journalist, I secretly start trying my hand at fiction. Painstaking exercises, in which I progress at a faltering pace, unsure of what direction to take.<\/p>\n
During this time, there\u2019s a book I can\u2019t stop reading: The Passion According to G.H.<\/em>, by Clarice Lispector. I discovered it one day by chance on my sister\u2019s bookshelf. I started reading without much conviction and was immediately jolted by its tumultuous, agonizing spirit. I pushed on. I couldn\u2019t put it down.<\/p>\nAttempting to unite the two experiences, I mail one of the short pieces I\u2019ve just written\u2014no more than a confession, really\u2014to Clarice Lispector\u2019s apartment in the Leme neighborhood. I include my address and phone number, in the hopes that someday she might respond. Days go by, and my hope fades. I go back to G.H.<\/em><\/p>\n*<\/p>\n
Christmas Eve. The phone rings and a low, raspy voce identifies itself. \u201cClarrrice Lispectorrr,\u201d it says. She gets right to the point. \u201cI\u2019m calling to talk about your story,\u201d she proceeds. The voice, faltering at first, now grows firm: \u201cI have just one thing to say: you are a very fearrrful man\u201d\u2014and the r<\/em>\u2019s of that \u201cfearrrful\u201d claw at my memory to this day. The deafening silence that follows leads me to believe that Clarice has hung up the phone without even saying goodbye. But then her voice reemerges: \u201cYou are very fearrrful. And no one can write in fear.\u201d<\/p>\nAfterward, Clarice wishes me a Merry Christmas\u2014and her voice sounds far away, indifferent, like an ad on TV. \u201cYou too, ma\u2019am,\u201d I say, dragging out my words, which catch in my throat, lacking the courage to make their way out. Then comes another silence, and again I think she\u2019s hung up. Betraying the full extent of my fear, I say, \u201cHello?\u201d Clarice is laconic: \u201cWhy are you saying hello<\/em>? I\u2019m still here, and you don\u2019t say hello<\/em> right in the middle of a conversation.\u201d<\/p>\nWe have nothing else to say to each other, and she says goodbye. It was a quick call, but left me with a series of intimate after-effects that even now, more than twenty years later, I still haven\u2019t fully digested. I could say, just to feel sorry for myself, that she paralyzed me. I could say the opposite: that she helped me access something I hadn\u2019t known. To this day, I cannot write\u2014articles, personal letters, travelogues, fiction, biographies\u2014without thinking of Clarice Lispector. It\u2019s as if she\u2019s looking over my shoulder, repeating her warning, \u201cNo one can write in fear\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
*<\/p>\n
May, 1976. Word spreads through the newsroom of O Globo<\/em>, the newspaper I write for, that Clarice Lispector has decided she\u2019ll never talk to the press again. Reason enough to assign me an interview with her. Journalists have a boundless attraction to obstacles; we\u2019re constantly trying to get past roadblocks, open doors, cross borders, wear down all forms of resistance. That\u2019s not my natural temperament, but it\u2019s a practice the profession has required me to hone.<\/p>\nReluctantly, I call Clarice. A voice asks me to hold on a moment, but yet again, I must face a long silence. Finally, Clarice comes to the phone. Absolutely certain I\u2019m intruding on her, I state my request and await her refusal. To my surprise, Clarice agrees to see me.<\/p>\n
I arrive at the building where Clarice Lispector lives, on Rua Gustavo Sampaio in Leme, and identify myself. I still have that feeling of being an invader. A white-haired man seated at the reception desk asks me, looking annoyed, \u201cWhere are you going?\u201d I say the apartment number Clarice gave me on the phone. He hesitates. Then starts leafing through a black notebook, darts a sidelong glance at me, and says nothing else.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have an appointment,\u201d I insist. \u201cShe\u2019s expecting me.\u201d The doorman looks at me again. I get the feeling, however, that his thoughts are elsewhere, that he\u2019s moving just to cover up what he\u2019s thinking. He clears his throat, shuts the notebook, and says, \u201cDona Clarice\u2019s not home.\u201d And because my surprise makes him jumpy, he adds, \u201cShe just left. Something came up.\u201d<\/p>\n
I decide I\u2019m not giving up. As if time is breaking down, my mind replays every step of the path I took to get here. I discovered Clarice by chance. I made it through G.H.<\/em>, always on the verge of giving up, then ultimately finding what I hadn\u2019t been seeking. No way was this doorman taking away what was now mine.<\/p>\nI put my foot down: \u201cBut she promised she\u2019d be home. Can\u2019t you ask again, sir?\u201d The man draws me back into his weariness, and, lowering his voice, tells me, \u201cDona Clarice\u2019s home, but she asked me to say she\u2019s not.\u201d He seems genuinely relieved to tell the truth.<\/p>\n
I ask him to try just once more. The doorman picks up the intercom phone, presses a button, then says, \u201cDona Clarice, it\u2019s that young man. He insists on going up.\u201d Another contradiction: Clarice, without further discussion, grants me permission to go up. Maybe she wanted to test my determination.<\/p>\n
As I step into the elevator, the light seems dim, and I imagine some kind of electrical glitch. The elevator moves at an unusual speed, as if it could give out at any moment and start moving sideways instead of up, repeating a nightmare that haunted my childhood. I peer at myself in a mirror\u2014my image appears fluid; what I see doesn\u2019t resemble a reflection, so much as a shadow. All right, I\u2019m scared.<\/p>\n
Fleeting, outlandish scenarios seize my imagination. Clarice could call the police. She could snap and start hurling insults at me, thus shattering my image of the brilliant writer. Afterward, I\u2019d reluctantly write an article full of disappointment. Maybe it was better to turn back and save her from what was about to happen. But I knew that wasn\u2019t it. Clarice led me down a path I hadn\u2019t expected to find, but now there I was, letting the road drag me onward. She knew the whole truth.<\/p>\n
Still in the elevator, I rehearse the words I should say to flatter her, but when she opens her apartment door, I go mute. Once again I encounter an immense silence, which is now inside me. I see a woman in a turban, barely dressed, almost letting herself go. Her lipstick is outrageous, veering past her lip line. Her skin is pale and sickly, milk-white, as if faded. She\u2019s a tall woman, or at least she looks down at me. She\u2019s standing there, waiting for me to say something.<\/p>\n
I say, \u201cWe have an appointment.\u201d She answers, \u201cI told the doorman not to let anyone up herrre,\u201d and there is that voice from the phone, now incarnated into a woman, dragging its tail made of r<\/em>\u2019s. \u201cBut, since you\u2019ve come up\u2026,\u201d she corrects herself, and here comes another silence, ending in: \u201cCome in, then.\u201d It isn\u2019t a choice, apparently. She doesn\u2019t want to get upset, doesn\u2019t have the energy to fight, so she\u2019s decided to see me. I come in.<\/p>\nClarice seems to inhabit another sphere, one situated beyond the human, as if the person standing here is represented only by a mask. She takes me into a stifling living room with questionably modern furniture and a jumbled group of paintings on the walls. It dawns on me that several of them are portraits of the writer signed by renowned painters. I feel like I\u2019m in a museum and wonder whether Clarice herself is a painter, too. She points to a couch and says, \u201cSo you want an interview.\u201d Well, that\u2019s the excuse.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, an interview,\u201d I reply, certain that she\u2019s starting to understand. Clarice studies me ever so slowly, trying to locate in me, perhaps, some sign that she can trust what I say. Seemingly satisfied, she remarks, \u201cWell, you\u2019re here now.\u201d But immediately after, she gently delivers a blow: \u201cSo you\u2019re the author of that story.\u201d The \u201cauthor\u201d here is her; I\u2019m just a reporter, so this observation shocks me. Still, puffed up with pride, I say yes. \u201cIt\u2019s me.\u201d There I am, trying to take her observation as a compliment, when she smites me down: \u201cI didn\u2019t like your story. You\u2019re too fearful to be a writer.\u201d<\/p>\n
We sit. I try to recover from the blow by turning back to my questions. I pull a small tape recorder from my briefcase and absentmindedly set it on the coffee table. As soon as she sees it, Clarice starts screaming. \u201cAh, ah, ah!\u201d She\u2019s letting out these long wailing cries, stripped of all meaning, and I can only make out one word: \u201cNo.\u201d My eyes race around the room looking for the threat she\u2019s trying to get away from. I can\u2019t find it.<\/p>\n
Clarice gets up and paces around the room. Looking for a way out but not finding it, she starts wailing even louder. \u201cAh, ah, ah!\u201d she goes on, and I stare at her. I\u2019m determined to find the source of that scream\u2014what if the living room is being invaded by some stranger or a fire has broken out somewhere\u2014some sign of tragedy to which it might correspond. I don\u2019t see a thing. Clarice keeps screaming in circles in a senseless dance, arms flailing like propellers, flung about by some invisible wind, her face a wreck. \u201cWhat\u2019s wrong?\u201d I shout. She can\u2019t respond.<\/p>\n
A woman appears in the living room from who knows where and throws her arms around Clarice. An ambiguous embrace that\u2019s simultaneously a forceful blow, like those feints boxers use to shut down their opponents. They remain in this embrace a long time. Then getting hold of herself, Clarice points at the tape recorder. \u201cGet it out of here!\u201d she says, finally. \u201cI don\u2019t want that here!\u201d She reaches out her arms, and her hands start writhing, wanting to grab while also trying to flee. Her eyes, more beautiful than ever, are seasick with despair.<\/p>\n
\u201cGet it away right now.\u201d I look at my poor tape recorder, a beat-up, unreliable machine, and I still don\u2019t get it. \u201cWhat do you mean, it<\/em>?\u201d I ask. The other woman answers, still hugging Clarice, sounding like a nurse, \u201cMy friend is referring to your tape recorder. Put it away, please.\u201d I move toward it, but Clarice acts first and commands, \u201cHere, give it to me.\u201d Without thinking, I hand her the recorder. She holds it by her fingertips, full of disgust, and pauses for a few seconds, controlling her breath. Then she turns and disappears down a dark hallway, followed by the woman.<\/p>\nI sit there alone in the living room, across from those walls full of paintings, full of Clarices watching me, wondering what I\u2019m supposed to do. Do I leave without saying goodbye? Do I wait patiently for her to return? Do I follow them? I\u2019m still weighing these options, all of which seem useless, when Clarice returns empty-handed. \u201cNow we can talk,\u201d she says in a milder tone, adding, \u201cI\u2019ll give that back to you at the end of the interview.\u201d Rarely have I heard a word as monstrous as her \u201cthat.\u201d<\/p>\n
Calmer now, she finally manages to notice that I\u2019m shaken up, too. \u201cI locked it in my closet,\u201d she says, showing off the key with a triumphant look that reminds me of those photographs of hunters next to their victims. And in that bureaucratic voice of doormen and receptionists, she adds, \u201cDon\u2019t worry. I\u2019ll return it on your way out.\u201d She signals she\u2019s ready to chat. \u201cWell then?\u201d she says, indicating that she\u2019s waiting for my barrage of questions.<\/p>\n
She sits. Unsure of myself, I decide to start the conversation with general topics. Classic, impersonal questions that will open the door to any kind of answer, mere civilities disguised as real questions.<\/p>\n
The interview is tense, full of suspicion and misunderstandings. Unable to forget her screams, and unable to think straight, I ask questions like an amateur. Clarice tries to be patient, but answers in terse phrases, clearly in a bad mood. The conversation goes nowhere. I know that my interview is a failure.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy do you write?\u201d I ask, in one of my worst moments. Clarice\u2019s face frowns in displeasure. She gets up, makes like she\u2019s headed into the kitchen, but stops and says, \u201cI\u2019m going to answer you with another question: Why do you drink water?\u201d Then she glares at me, ready to end our conversation right there.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy do I drink water?\u201d I ask, stalling for time. And answer myself, \u201cBecause I\u2019m thirsty.\u201d I should have held my tongue. Then, Clarice laughs. Not a laugh of relief, but of barely contained irritation. And she says to me, \u201cYou mean you drink water so you won\u2019t die.\u201d Now she seems to be speaking only to herself, \u201cWell, me too. I write to stay alive.\u201d And with a mocking look, she hands me a glass of Coca-Cola.<\/p>\n
I never imagined that I could fail like this. The interview, which has hardly begun, is basically over, since what else can I ask after that? But I carry out my duty, since I\u2019ve got to make a living, after all. I ask the appropriate questions, and she answers, always with a certain disdain. Clarice also knows that the interview was over with that first disastrous question; the rest is just going through the motions. And she tolerates me until the very end.<\/p>\n
Afterward, when I think she\u2019s about to shoo me away, she asks me to come into the kitchen. \u201cLet\u2019s have a piece of cake,\u201d she declares. She takes a frosted cake from the fridge, covered in swirls of merengue and stale fruit. She cuts generous slices and sets them on cheap plates. The legs of the Formica table are a little loose, and it wobbles. She doesn\u2019t touch the cake, only drinks. \u201cLately, all I can drink is Coca-Cola,\u201d she says. And downs two, three tall glasses, taking long sips.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not expecting anything else, when Clarice says, \u201cI like you.\u201d Seeing that this declaration takes me by surprise, she explains herself, \u201cYou know just as well that this is all nonsense.\u201d I\u2019m not sure if that was the word, nonsense<\/em>. She wanted to tell me that, in the end, what we had tried to do together was insignificant. \u201cDo you like living?\u201d she asks me. It is a very sad time in my life, but I feel that I have to lie. Stabbing gently with her fork, she reduces her slice of cake to crumbs.<\/p>\nWe return to the living room. Clarice has me wait, and soon comes back with my tape recorder. She carries it with her arms held out like a sleepwalker, holding it with her fingertips, as if it awakened in her an immense nausea. I put it away. \u201cThere we go,\u201d she says. \u201cI don\u2019t like machines.\u201d Then she walks me to the door. \u201cCome back and visit,\u201d she says, \u201cbut never bring that again.\u201d<\/p>\n
As soon as I set foot on the sidewalk of Rua Gustavo Sampaio, I feel my skin prickling, like after a violent shock. \u201cClarice is a compulsive, who keeps on writing the same book,\u201d declares a friend\u2014and respected psychoanalyst\u2014a few days later, as I\u2019m telling him about my adventure. \u201cShe\u2019s an obsessive, not a writer.\u201d This shocks me, and I distance myself from the friend, who wasn\u2019t very close to begin with. Clarice is nearer to me.<\/p>\n
I could not separate the woman on one side (unbalanced, hypersensitive, aggressive) from the work (brilliant) on the other. There must have been some tether that kept them in a state of connection. That visit to Clarice\u2019s apartment had shown me that the two sides were linked. She wrote in search of something. She once defined that something like this, \u201cWhat\u2019s behind the back of thought.\u201d She used words to try to reach beyond words, to surpass them. She wrote to destroy words. That\u2019s why she wasn\u2019t interested in her image as a writer.<\/p>\n
I remember her telling me, \u201cI write because I need to keep searching.\u201d And what made everything all the more complicated was that she never managed to define the object that she sought. It\u2019s possibly the prevision of that object without a name that made her \u201cgo crazy.\u201d Clarice wrote to reach the silence, she manipulated words to reach beyond them, she used literature the way we use a fork. My own thoughts frightened me. I\u2019d never imagined a project so radical.<\/p>\n
*<\/p>\n
Time passes, and we run into each other on the street. Clarice is standing still in front of a shop window on Avenida Copacabana and seems to be looking at a dress. Embarrassed, I approach her. \u201cHow are you?\u201d I say. It takes her a long time to turn around. At first she doesn\u2019t move, as if she hadn\u2019t heard a thing, but then, before I get the nerve to say hello again, she turns slowly, as if searching for the source of something frightening, and says, \u201cSo it\u2019s you.\u201d In that moment, horrified, I realize that the shop window contains nothing but undressed mannequins. But then my horror, so ridiculous, gives way to a conclusion: Clarice has a passion for the void.<\/p>\n
I ask if she wants to get coffee. She says she won\u2019t have anything; she\u2019ll just keep me company. \u201cIt\u2019s so hot,\u201d she remarks. \u201cI don\u2019t handle the heat very well.\u201d It\u2019s only then that I notice how pale she is, and that trickles of sweat are tracing strange shapes on her forehead. I ask if she\u2019s feeling all right. She doesn\u2019t answer. \u201cHave you gone back to writing?\u201d she asks. I admit that I haven\u2019t, and I want to say that her comments, rather than encouraging me, have paralyzed me, but I can\u2019t do it. \u201cYou\u2019re still afraid,\u201d she says, and I don\u2019t really know what she\u2019s talking about. \u201cYou haven\u2019t defeated it yet.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now I can\u2019t hold back . \u201cWhat do you think I\u2019m afraid of?\u201d I ask. \u201cWell, of words, isn\u2019t that it?\u201d Clarice says, adding to my confusion. Her eyes rest on an old man drinking coffee at the other end of the counter. I keep quiet. \u201cWhy is that old man old?\u201d she asks suddenly. \u201cWell, because he must be all of seventy,\u201d I answer, always stuck on that mania for facts that marks journalists.<\/p>\n
She laughs for the first time. Then corrects me, \u201cYou\u2019re still getting caught up in numbers. You just can\u2019t write that way.\u201d I sit there waiting for an answer to the question she posed. I assume she\u2019s not going to give me one, until she says, \u201cThat old man is old because he\u2019s afraid of what he is.\u201d I don\u2019t know if that\u2019s exactly what she said, but it was something like this: the old man was afraid of being old, and that was precisely why he was old. It struck me as an enigma.<\/p>\n
We walk down Avenida Copacabana. Clarice hails a cab and says goodbye. Intrigued, I go back to the empty shop window. There are the mannequins, in their elegant poses, but with no elegance whatsoever. Threads, cardboard boxes, a broom, light switches, a bucket. Staring at the void, I begin to understand that Clarice sees things the other way around. She sees what\u2019s behind things.<\/p>\n
I went back to visit her three or four times. These were difficult encounters, in which she seemed more interested in listening to me than in talking, which produced in me a strange mix of vanity and despair. In the kitchen, she served me cake and soda. She\u2019d ask a lot of questions, which I\u2019d answer cautiously. She\u2019d make brief observations, full of dangling conclusions and additional queries. I could no longer read Clarice without that scratchy voice interfering, wafting with cake and Coca-Cola. It would be years before I could touch any of her books again.<\/p>\n
*<\/p>\n
Time passes, and Clarice falls gravely ill. She\u2019s hospitalized. News comes that the cancer has spread. I consider visiting her in the Lagoa Hospital, but I don\u2019t know if she\u2019ll want to see me. I don\u2019t even know if she can have visitors. She\u2019s right: I am very fearful.<\/p>\n
Clarice dies. I board a crowded, cockroach-infested bus and ride through the summer heat of Rio to get to the Israelite Cemetery in Caju to attend her burial. I stand clutching a seat back, eyeing those oblong creatures, flat as coins, crawling up the walls of the bus, and I think of G.H., who devoured a roach one day to taste life. Unfamiliar with Jewish tradition, I am surprised to find the casket sealed. Clarice\u2019s not dead, that\u2019s what this tells me. Her body\u2019s not in there, the coffin is empty. They\u2019re getting ready to bury just an empty outer shell. In disgust, I think about how roaches are the ones with an outer shell.<\/p>\n
On the way home, trying to evoke the fragile moments we spent together, I recall a terrible phrase she\u2019d told me that I\u2019d forgotten: \u201cThere\u2019s one thing I understand. Writing has nothing to do with literature.\u201d But was that really what she\u2019d said, or could it have been merely what I\u2019d gleaned of what she hadn\u2019t been able to say? And how could this be? If not writing, what would literature be? What fissure was this that Clarice, filling me with courage, was opening beneath my feet?<\/p>\n
*<\/p>\n
July, 1991. In a little bar in the Leblon neighborhood, I\u2019m drinking whiskey with the writer Otto Lara Resende, who\u2019s giving me invaluable information for my biography of the poet Vinicius de Morais. That one always leads us to women, and among several, we come around to Clarice Lispector.<\/p>\n
When I speak the name of Clarice for the first time, Otto takes a deep breath, as if something were dragging him far away from there, and he\u2019s got to focus hard not to lose himself. Then he says to me, \u201cYou\u2019d better be careful with Clarice. It\u2019s not literature. It\u2019s witchcraft.\u201d And urges that whenever I read her books, I proceed with utmost caution.<\/p>\n
This declaration, uttered by Otto the skeptic, takes on a serious dimension. I hold on to it as another enigma, one among many that my proximity to Clarice Lispector has provided me, and that someday, who knows, I\u2019ll finally decipher. It\u2019s true that for a long time now, Clarice\u2019s image has been associated with witchcraft. At the start of the seventies, she ended up as the guest of honor at the International Congress of Witchcraft held in the Santa Fe district of Bogot\u00e1.<\/p>\n
Aware that the mystery wasn\u2019t hers, but something inherent to her writing, Clarice accepted the invitation but refused to give a speech. All she did was read \u201cThe Egg and the Chicken,\u201d one of the most obscure texts she\u2019s ever written. Witches, warlocks, and sorcerers listened in silence.<\/p>\n
Otto avoids talking about Clarice, who seems to disturb him. I insist. \u201cLet\u2019s talk about Vinicius,\u201d he pushes back. Later on, another woman\u2019s name comes up: Claire Varin. Otto is referring to a Canadian literature professor from Montreal who\u2019s written two books on Clarice Lispector. Mysteriously, he warns, \u201cIt\u2019s not an intellectual attraction, it\u2019s a possession. Claire is possessed by Clarice,\u201d he says. He gives me Claire\u2019s address, but urges me to be careful. \u201cThey\u2019re witches,\u201d he says. \u201cDon\u2019t let them fool you.\u201d<\/p>\n
I can only respond to Otto\u2019s remarks as an exaggeration. He smiles and, maintaining an air of mystery, takes a long sip of his drink. \u201cMaybe it\u2019s the whiskey,\u201d I muse, to calm down. But after we part ways, and I take a cab home, I can tell that I\u2019m still unsettled. Now it\u2019s Otto\u2019s words that continue to hold sway over me. Maybe he was the witch.<\/p>\n
*<\/p>\n
Curitiba, December, 1995. I receive a package containing a copy of Langues de feu <\/em>(Tongues of Fire<\/em>), a collection of essays on Clarice Lispector recently published by Claire Varin. Turns out Otto had gone ahead and sent her my address. Around the same time, I happen to buy Claire\u2019s other book, Clarice Lispector: Rencontres br\u00e9siliennes <\/em>(Brazilian Encounters<\/em>), at a bookstore in Copacabana. The pieces were falling into place, without my having done a thing.<\/p>\nClaire has a doctorate in literature, but her books aren\u2019t the work of a specialist. They\u2019re works of passion. I still have her phone number in Montreal that Otto gave me. Now is the time.<\/p>\n
Claire answers the phone effusively. We talk for over an hour with the intimacy of two strangers from opposite hemispheres who nevertheless share the same secret. At a certain point, she asks if she might evoke something rather discomfiting that Otto once said to her: \u201cBe careful with Clarice. It\u2019s not literature. It\u2019s witchcraft.\u201d Exactly the same phrase.<\/p>\n
Poised to decipher Clarice\u2019s oeuvre, Claire had taken this sentence as a point of departure and developed what she calls a \u201ctelepathic method.\u201d Its basis is as simple as it is disorienting: one can only read Clarice Lispector by taking her place\u2014by being<\/em> Clarice. \u201cThere\u2019s no other way,\u201d she assures me.<\/p>\nI ask whether this method could in fact work. Claire answers by reading a passage from one of Clarice\u2019s cr\u00f4nicas<\/em>, brief literary sketches collected in Discovering the World<\/em>: \u201cThe character of \u2018reader\u2019 is a curious character, a strange one. While completely individual with particular reactions, the reader is also terribly linked to the writer, since, in fact, the reader is <\/em>the writer.\u201d Clarice had already taken it upon herself to inform us.<\/p>\nClaire Varin rails fiercely against all rational interpretations of Clarice\u2019s work. She asserts that they can only lead to what is alien to it, and thus to failure. \u201cThe reader must become a medium, through which Clarice incarnates herself,\u201d she declares. This is the basis for her \u201ctelepathic method,\u201d a process in which intuition is more important than understanding.<\/p>\n
After hanging up, I keep trying to resist Claire Varin\u2019s ideas. \u201cThey seem lifted from a treatise on esoterism,\u201d I tell myself. But everything leads me in the opposite direction. Everything makes me believe Claire. I go into my bedroom and come across a copy of \u00c1gua Viva<\/em> on the bed. It conjures a scene from a few years earlier, when the young rockstar Cazuza told me in an interview that \u00c1gua Viva <\/em>was his favorite book. For a long time he couldn\u2019t fall asleep without reading at least a few paragraphs. Every time he got to the end, he\u2019d draw an X<\/em> on the inside cover. He\u2019d already read \u00c1gua Viva <\/em>one hundred and eleven times. How many more times did he read it before his death two or three years later? I\u2019ll never know.<\/p>\nOnly those who enter into harmony with Clarice\u2019s writing, those who manage to oscillate, like her, between the word and fright, can keep going. They aren\u2019t stories that you read, and about which you can think afterward, \u201cFirst this happened, then that.\u201d We can\u2019t even be sure that we\u2019re reading a narrative. In \u00c1gua Viva<\/em>, Clarice brings her aesthetic of the fragment to paroxysms, to utter shock. It\u2019s hard to say what it is we\u2019re reading\u2014and it\u2019s impressive to think that it was another person, her intimate friend Olga Borelli, alone with her treasure, who \u201cput together\u201d the chaos that Clarice would jot down on napkins, paper towels, newspapers, prescription labels. When Clarice could no longer organize what she wrote, Olga would guide her. And without meddling with what she was reading, she would eke out a path, a direction in which to funnel that storm.<\/p>\nOlga has recounted this: how Clarice would hand over a heap of fragments, which her friend would patiently divide into dozens of envelopes, then put in a box, like pieces of a puzzle. Without being conscious of writing a book, Clarice would write a book. Now her readers are charged with that same freedom. Freedom to push forward blindly, only to understand much later.<\/p>\n
When it comes to Clarice, critics always repeat one word, epiphany<\/em>. It\u2019s a term taken from religion, referring to the apparition or manifestation of the divine. Clarice, however, doesn\u2019t speak of god, but of the \u201cit\u201d\u2014that is, the thing. Past critics rushed to consider her alongside phenomenology. They started saying that Clarice Lispector had written \u201cphilosophical novels.\u201d This might be a way out, but I don\u2019t know where it leads. One thing\u2019s for certain\u2014very far from Clarice.<\/p>\nThere\u2019s a woman in Paris, H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Cixous, who never wavers in her assertion that \u201cClarice is a philosophical author. She thinks, and we do not have the habit of thinking.\u201d I hold up H\u00e9l\u00e8ne\u2019s statements alongside Claire\u2019s and wonder how many Clarices can fit inside one woman. Because each of us reads in our own way, each of us is <\/em>Clarice in a way. Clarice, then, makes me encounter my own.<\/p>\n*<\/p>\n
Porto Alegre, August, 1995. As we stroll down Rua da Praia, the writer Caio Fernando Abreu recalls some of his encounters with Clarice Lispector, who was a close friend. One day, Caio went to a book signing by Clarice. She made him sit next to her and while signing books, kept repeating softly, \u201cYou\u2019re my Quixote, you\u2019re my Quixote.\u201d Caio was always gaunt and had a big goatee back then.<\/p>\n
Another time, while walking together down the same Rua da Praia, the two stopped for coffee. Clarice, with her datebook full of literary engagements, had been in Porto Alegre nearly a week. Stirring her coffee casually, she turned to Caio and asked, \u201cWhat city are we in again?\u201d<\/p>\n
Caio quickly got used to Clarice\u2019s intimate relationship with imprecision. With the pulsations that surround the facts, and aren\u2019t facts. With miasmas, rather than with reason. He read her ceaselessly for years on end. One day, he felt he had to stop. \u201cIf I didn\u2019t stop, I wouldn\u2019t be able to write anymore,\u201d he asserts. Even the closed-off Caio felt invaded by Clarice at certain moments. Not by the discreet, elegant woman whom he so admired, but by her writing.<\/p>\n
Claire Varin\u2019s thesis seems to be confirmed in this way: when a reader falls in love with an author, the reader becomes the writer. The gaunt, dreamy figure of Caio made Clarice think of Cervantes\u2019s Quixote. But for a long time, Caio was afraid to look in the mirror and see Clarice Lispector.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know if what Clarice made is only literature,\u201d he tells me. He can\u2019t help but laugh when he says \u201cliterature.\u201d The word doesn\u2019t seem adequate. It doesn\u2019t seem to say everything. \u201cSomething gets left out,\u201d he tells me. Before I have the chance to ask, he adds, \u201cI don\u2019t know what.\u201d<\/p>\n
He had to distance himself. There comes an irremediable moment in which there\u2019s no choice: either the reader distances himself from the writer and goes back to being himself, or else he\u2019ll be lost. Caio knew how to recognize that moment and distance himself in time. He started writing \u201cagainst\u201d Clarice\u2014battling with the writer who had invaded him. Maybe Clarice was right: reading is likely the most intense way of writing.<\/p>\n
*<\/p>\n
Paris, September, 1996. As a reporter for O Estado de S\u00e3o Paulo <\/em>newspaper, I arrive at the apartment of the writer H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Cixous, hailed as the most important European expert on the work of Clarice Lispector. So very far from Brazil, my hope is to meet someone who can decipher her. A disciple of Jacques Lacan, confidante to Michel Foucault, and close friend of Jacques Derrida, H\u00e9l\u00e8ne is a typical Parisian intellectual. She never met Clarice in person, but, from an early age, even without knowing what she was waiting for, she\u2019d awaited this encounter. \u201cI felt fully formed as a writer, but always thought there was some other woman I was lacking,\u201d she says. Derrida was her male other. She lacked the female one. \u201cYet I believed that I\u2019d never find her,\u201d she says.<\/p>\nH\u00e9l\u00e8ne offers a theory about the power of seduction in Clarice\u2019s writing. \u201cEvery writer writes rigorously in her own language,\u201d she says. \u201cI, for example, write in Cixous. Clarice writes in Lispector.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSome even say that what Clarice did was witchcraft, not literature,\u201d I venture to recall. At first H\u00e9l\u00e8ne refuses to consider this hypothesis. \u201cBrazil is a very archaic country,\u201d she says, and I feel a bit offended, but try to control myself. \u201cBut if witchcraft is a metaphor, I can accept it,\u201d she reflects afterward. And concludes, \u201cIt\u2019s not witchcraft. It\u2019s knowledge of language.\u201d<\/p>\n
The thing is, H\u00e9l\u00e8ne notes, we talk all day and night, endlessly\u2014but always in an unconscious state. We have no notion of language, of using a language, nor of what gets retained in words. Clarice, on the contrary, had a kind of hyperconsciousness when it came to language. She felt it all the time, and she knew that the entire language is at play in every word.<\/p>\n
I leave H\u00e9l\u00e8ne\u2019s apartment carrying a declaration that I find hard to take in: she asserts unwaveringly that Clarice is the greatest twentieth-century writer in the West and that her oeuvre is comparable only to Kafka\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Kafka, who had no homeland, might serve as a reference. Born in Ukraine, Clarice came to Brazil when she was still a baby. She married a diplomat, the father of her two sons. She finished writing her second book, The Chandelier<\/em>, in Naples. The third, The Besieged City<\/em>, was written in Bern, Switzerland. Several of the stories in Family Ties <\/em>were written in London. The Apple in the Dark <\/em>was written in Washington, D.C., between 1953 and 1954. Clarice was a writer who was always displaced from her center, or rather, who had no center.<\/p>\nA writer without a land. Clarice, H\u00e9l\u00e8ne convinces me, inhabited language\u2014she inhabited Lispector. Brazil, where her family emigrated from the Black Sea, was merely a biographical accident. When she was nine years old, she lost her mother, and with her the foreign, Ukrainian voice that she inhabited. She used to say, much later, that her rolling r<\/em>\u2019s were just an effect of a tongue-tie condition from birth. Maybe that alone wasn\u2019t it. But her difficulty with language was evident\u2014and her greatness as a writer is, in large part, a result of this difficulty. Only a person who doesn\u2019t adapt to language, who turns it inside out, who doesn\u2019t trust it, can write a body of work like Clarice Lispector\u2019s.<\/p>\n*<\/p>\n
Curitiba, December, 1997. I take a bus and happen to sit next to a thin young lady with long fingers, a broken nose, and pale forehead, who\u2019s immersed in reading T<\/em>he Passion According to G.H. <\/i>I spy on her reactions\u2014slight movements, ever so subtle, but that bestow her with a special dignity. The open pages are filled with notes, scribbles, arrows in red. The spine is bent, and the cover tattered. The rhythm of her reading is curious: the girl skips from one page to the next, then back to an earlier page, reads a little further ahead, then goes back again. She seems frozen by what she reads. I look at her: hair tied in a blue ribbon, almond-shaped eyes, freckles scattered across her youthful face, and a solemn expression, which could be taken as affectation but is no more than fright. Clarice would say that girl is <\/em>what she reads. She is <\/em>Clarice.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\u2014Translated from the Portuguese by Katrina Dodson<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Born in 1951, in Rio de Janeiro, Jos\u00e9 Castello is a Brazilian writer based in Curitiba. From 1971 to 1990, he worked as a journalist for various Rio news outlets, before leaving to pursue his long-deferred dream of writing books, while continuing a career as a books columnist. Castello went on to become a three-time winner of Brazil\u2019s top literary prize, the Pr\u00eamio Jabuti, for a biography of poet Vinicius de Moraes (<\/em>Vinicius de Moraes: o poeta da paix\u00e3o, 1994), his novel <\/em>Ribamar (2010), and a young adult novel based on the artist Arthur Bispo do Ros\u00e1rio (<\/em>Dentro de mim ningu\u00e9m entra, 2016). In addition to this essay on Lispector, from his 1999 essay collection, <\/em>Invent\u00e1rio das sombras, Castello edited <\/em>Clarice na cabeceira (2011), a volume of selections from Lispector\u2019s nine novels.<\/em><\/p>\nKatrina Dodson is a writer and literary translator living in Brooklyn. Her 2015 translation of Clarice Lispector\u2019s <\/em>Complete Stories was awarded the PEN<\/small> Translation Prize. She conducted the Art of Translation interview with Margaret Jull Costa for <\/em>The Paris Review\u2019s Summer 2020 issue. Dodson\u2019s translation of M\u00e1rio de Andrade\u2019s 1928 modernist classic, <\/em>Macuna\u00edma: the Hero With No Character, is forthcoming from New Directions in 2022.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In honor of the centennial of Lispector\u2019s birth, Katrina Dodson translates the tale of a young journalist\u2019s awkward encounters with the famous writer in the seventies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2087,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[419],"tags":[67827],"class_list":["post-149775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-culture","tag-featured"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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