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Água Viva
Lispector at her most philosophically radical. A meditation on the nature of life and time, Água Viva (1973) shows Lispector discovering a new means of writing about herself, more deeply transforming her individual experience into a universal poetry. In a body of work as emotionally powerful, formally innovative, and philosophically profound as Clarice Lispector’s, Água Viva stands out as a particular triumph.
88 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 1973
About the author
Clarice Lispector
234 books5,065 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.
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November 3, 2019
”I know that my gaze must be that of a primitive person surrendered completely to the world, primitive like the gods who only allow the broad strokes of good and evil and don’t want to know about good tangled up like hair in evil, evil that is good.”
There is an unnamed narrator, an artist who is turning his/her talents away from canvas and paint, and exchanging his/her brush for a pen to try and express himself/herself with words. Now that I finished the book I realize that I have no idea of the sex of the narrator. Maybe there was a designation, but I was happily content to see the narrator as androgynous. Does it really matter if the wisdom being shared is from a man or woman as long as that being shared is wise?
The book is a collection of thoughts loosely tied together with the struggles of the narrator to express a philosophy of life, of feelings, of being. The book shouldn’t really be categorized as fiction, philosophy, or anything. To designate it, to name it, is to tie straps to a book that was meant to be free.
I caught glimpses of the author, Clarice Lispector, peering out at me from where she was squeezed behind every letter I, quietly watching my reactions to her creation. As she was writing this book, she scribbled down thoughts on whatever was handy, ”a check, a piece of paper, a napkin” and shoved it into her purse. They all ended up “smelling of her lipstick”.
She knew she created a lot of anxiety for her editor with every manuscript she sent him, but this one in particular she knew would stretch the capacities of even his kind understanding. Translators had an equally difficult time trying to express what she was portraying without bringing a natural neatness and in the process eviscerating the concept. ”The world has no visible order and all I have is the order of my breath. I let myself happen.”
Lispector had doubts about this book, this “spineless book” that lacked a plot and each sentence was connected only by the fact that they came from the same brain, thoughts born as neighbors, but sometimes as different as Earth to Venus. Writers have always complained about some of their best writing ending up crumpled on the floor because it did not fit the plot. In this book, all Lispector kept was the best writing. All the connecting words that we use to keep the plot on a linear course are missing. The narrative is derailed, and now the train is moving as the crow flies. She wanted to cut a new path over hill and dale, through fences, crosscutting roads, so that her train can be seen where no train was meant to be seen. Words moving like an ocean liner gliding across the plains of Kansas.
The narrator talks about music. The way it makes us feel beyond, in many ways, where paint and pen can take us. ”I gently rest my hand on the record player and my hand vibrates, sending waves through my whole body; and so I listen to the electricity of the vibrations, the last substratum of reality’s realm, and the world trembles inside my hands.” When I can let myself go and just exist, a difficult thing for me, music is different. It penetrates deeper, making the core of me shiver, waking up slumbering DNA, and making me remember things that must exist in a future, or a lost present, or a different past.
”I want a clock woven from threads of solar gold.”
In the beginning, as I was licking the lips as the words were first cast, I was scared. The concepts threw my brain into a panic. I could feel myself sinking through the floor, merging with my chair, becoming something other than me. Things needed to be quiet. I needed just a dash of vodka to calm my nerves. I needed to stay away from mired thoughts caught in quicksand. A log of sanity held me up.
”I am before, I am almost, I am never.”
I was reading her sentences several times, grasping just a little bit more each time until I was nuzzling the edges of understanding. I kept holding the book closer and closer to my eyes as if thoughts were escaping as the words came from the page to my mind. At page fourteen, the mystical language of my brain turned some ancient keys, bricks shifted, walls buckled, and I was suddenly able to see more clearly what she was trying to tell me.
Gregory Rabassa, who translated one of her books into English, dedicated a whole chapter to her in his memoir. “The first thing I remember of her?” he said in an interview with the Forward. “Her physical beauty. When I first met her, I was entranced by her; she looked like Marlene Dietrich and wrote like Virginia Woolf — a good combination. She had eyes that may go back to her Ukrainian past, what Thomas Mann called krirgiesen Augen in ‘Magic Mountain.’” She may have been born in the Ukraine, but she was a Brazilian through and through.
”I follow the tortuous path of roots bursting the earth, I have a gift for passion, in the bonfire of a dry trunk I contort in the blaze.”
Don’t be afraid. Take hold of the snake’s tail and let yourself be pulled through the tall grass. What better way to meet a different version of yourself.
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
There is an unnamed narrator, an artist who is turning his/her talents away from canvas and paint, and exchanging his/her brush for a pen to try and express himself/herself with words. Now that I finished the book I realize that I have no idea of the sex of the narrator. Maybe there was a designation, but I was happily content to see the narrator as androgynous. Does it really matter if the wisdom being shared is from a man or woman as long as that being shared is wise?
The book is a collection of thoughts loosely tied together with the struggles of the narrator to express a philosophy of life, of feelings, of being. The book shouldn’t really be categorized as fiction, philosophy, or anything. To designate it, to name it, is to tie straps to a book that was meant to be free.
I caught glimpses of the author, Clarice Lispector, peering out at me from where she was squeezed behind every letter I, quietly watching my reactions to her creation. As she was writing this book, she scribbled down thoughts on whatever was handy, ”a check, a piece of paper, a napkin” and shoved it into her purse. They all ended up “smelling of her lipstick”.
She knew she created a lot of anxiety for her editor with every manuscript she sent him, but this one in particular she knew would stretch the capacities of even his kind understanding. Translators had an equally difficult time trying to express what she was portraying without bringing a natural neatness and in the process eviscerating the concept. ”The world has no visible order and all I have is the order of my breath. I let myself happen.”
Lispector had doubts about this book, this “spineless book” that lacked a plot and each sentence was connected only by the fact that they came from the same brain, thoughts born as neighbors, but sometimes as different as Earth to Venus. Writers have always complained about some of their best writing ending up crumpled on the floor because it did not fit the plot. In this book, all Lispector kept was the best writing. All the connecting words that we use to keep the plot on a linear course are missing. The narrative is derailed, and now the train is moving as the crow flies. She wanted to cut a new path over hill and dale, through fences, crosscutting roads, so that her train can be seen where no train was meant to be seen. Words moving like an ocean liner gliding across the plains of Kansas.
The narrator talks about music. The way it makes us feel beyond, in many ways, where paint and pen can take us. ”I gently rest my hand on the record player and my hand vibrates, sending waves through my whole body; and so I listen to the electricity of the vibrations, the last substratum of reality’s realm, and the world trembles inside my hands.” When I can let myself go and just exist, a difficult thing for me, music is different. It penetrates deeper, making the core of me shiver, waking up slumbering DNA, and making me remember things that must exist in a future, or a lost present, or a different past.
”I want a clock woven from threads of solar gold.”
In the beginning, as I was licking the lips as the words were first cast, I was scared. The concepts threw my brain into a panic. I could feel myself sinking through the floor, merging with my chair, becoming something other than me. Things needed to be quiet. I needed just a dash of vodka to calm my nerves. I needed to stay away from mired thoughts caught in quicksand. A log of sanity held me up.
”I am before, I am almost, I am never.”
I was reading her sentences several times, grasping just a little bit more each time until I was nuzzling the edges of understanding. I kept holding the book closer and closer to my eyes as if thoughts were escaping as the words came from the page to my mind. At page fourteen, the mystical language of my brain turned some ancient keys, bricks shifted, walls buckled, and I was suddenly able to see more clearly what she was trying to tell me.
Gregory Rabassa, who translated one of her books into English, dedicated a whole chapter to her in his memoir. “The first thing I remember of her?” he said in an interview with the Forward. “Her physical beauty. When I first met her, I was entranced by her; she looked like Marlene Dietrich and wrote like Virginia Woolf — a good combination. She had eyes that may go back to her Ukrainian past, what Thomas Mann called krirgiesen Augen in ‘Magic Mountain.’” She may have been born in the Ukraine, but she was a Brazilian through and through.
”I follow the tortuous path of roots bursting the earth, I have a gift for passion, in the bonfire of a dry trunk I contort in the blaze.”
Don’t be afraid. Take hold of the snake’s tail and let yourself be pulled through the tall grass. What better way to meet a different version of yourself.
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
July 23, 2023
I lose the identity of the world inside myself and exist without guarantees. I achieve whatever is achievable but I live the unachievable and the meaning of me and the world and you isn't obvious. It's fantastic, and I handle myself in these moments with immense delicacy. Is God a form of being:' the abstraction that materializes in the nature of all that exists:' My roots are in the divine shadows. Drowsy roots. Wavering in the dark shadows.
I am what I am,
I am sinful I am virtuous,
I am filth I am unstained,
I am ugly I am beautiful,
I am chaos I am order,
I am despair I am exultation,
I am black I am white,
I am privileged I am underprivileged,
I am fortune I am unfortune,
I am fire I am water,
I am tree I am obelisk,
I am earth I am sky,
I am the Sun I am the Moon,
I am fragment I am the whole,
I am extinct I am existing,
I am created I am annihilated,
I am known I am unknown,
I am success I am failure,
I am body I am soul,
I am logic I am nonsense,
I am captive I am free,
I am sorrow I am joy,
I am devil I am god,
I am heaven I am hell,
I am consciousness I am unconsciousness,
I am existence I am nothingness,
I am intermittent I am perpetual,
I am moment I am forever,
I was ever I will be ever,
I am dead I am alive,
I am death I am life,
I am finite I am infinite,
I am what universe comprises of
I am what universe is: I am the universe.
The abovementioned fragments of thought define essence of the book, if you just want to have superficial taste of the book then I guess that would be sufficient but if you are still reading it then welcome to the world of unconformity. These snippets pop up in front of me, when I finished the book- Agua Viva by Clarice Lispector. One of the most popular phrases- Nihilo ex Nihilo- of philosophy keeps knocking my mind right through the book, which translates to- nothing out of nothing. In other words, it means that universe is created from nothing, there is no break in-between a world that did not exist and one that did, since it could not be created from nothing in the first place. Life starts again with every stroke of death, its perpetual. The universe of Lispector also works on the principle of perpetuity, it may be realized only in instantaneous moments which reduce to nothingness as soon as you try to get hold of them. The title translates to ‘stream of life’ as it follows in rhythm wherever it finds way, logic doesn’t have much to say in it, like music or painting, you do not understand it, fully, yet you dance to the tunes of its music. It is life seen by life, may not have meaning but it has the same lack of meaning that pulsating vein has. The world of Clarice lispector is strange but absolutely like our own, formed about a strange vortex in which the matter, antimatter and soul of the universe is being churned up through the labor pains of creation to produce life, as we know in our everyday sense. Does it mean it’s about the act of creation? Or about the very act of writing about that ‘act’. Well one may not be able to tell about it confidently, it’s not in binary, it’s infiniteness and that’s the universe of Lispector, perhaps that what life itself is.
The book, as some of you might have already guessed by now, is without any characters, storylines, narrators, messages or anything else since there is no need of anything or anyone for that matter, as there is no such need in life itself. It moves on no matter what, perpetually, people, places, monuments, forms of life, planets, galaxies, universes are all temporary, just silly moments in the infiniteness of time which is perpetual. Lispector uses the meditation on the creation and the individual to convey what life is- boundless, free, incomprehensible by any logic or being. She uses the words she write as raw materials for the act of creation instead of using them as any vehicles to convey something else, as authors usually do. She keeps on creating- recreating the world through her words by instantaneous moments which vanishes to thin air as soon as one tries to comprehend them. She formulates a dense web of thoughts, facts and objects through the words, an interior monologue through which she reflects on life, what constitutes it, its being.
Agua Viva reminds me of The Book of Disquiet by Frenando Pessoa as both seem to address the similar issue- the life. You must have read about minimalist approach adopted by Ernest Hemingway and Samuel Beckett, which is characterized by an economy with words and a focus on surface description, but Lispector’s approach is somewhat different than that. It’s like trimming of grass until you find what you are looking for, the author here trims the narrative till its bare of everything which is superfluous and truth, just naked truth, manifests itself from underneath it. Clarice Lispector herself said once that it was ‘spineless’ writing which did not have any figure, reference or object to hold upon. The text has Nietzsche-esque aphorisms, which have being of their own gleaming from the words themselves, which questions the reality, its finiteness, identity, existence as the aphorisms of Pessoa force you to. These highly styled and remarkably condensed paragraphs may be read in stand alone manner however, the author manages to weave them in together through theme of being and nothingness, the flow of sentences she manages to maintain help her to transcends the ordinary limits of expression. It is somewhat like music which you hear to enjoy the rhythm though you do not always understand it or like painting, there are sensations which transform into ideas which free themselves from the slavery of words.
The book takes you through the ticklish sojourn of being and nothingness, about the being of an individual, being of the text itself and the underlying meaning or non-meaning it might be conveying; how it takes birth from nothingness to eventually become one with nothingness. And what this being comprises of, what is it about? Is it something which lies beneath us, hidden deep inside our heart to be guarded against the ravages of hell of nothingness? Or is it something related to our soul or the soul itself? Is it something from our brain, what we call consciousness which may act on our voluntary actions or unconsciousness which is beyond our voluntary control? Is it what our appearances comprise of- shape, size, color, or anything else tangible or is it intangible- the infinite, so does it mean it’s God. Actually, being comprises of everything about an individual, his color, shape, size, body, soul, consciousness, unconsciousness, thoughts, feeling everything constitutes the being. The being of an individual is not separated from that of other individuals, an object, world, or universe per se since everything originates from the same soup, in fact it was there forever and will be there forever. It all branches off the plant primula, which transforms into variegated forms which eventually annihilate, only to give birth life again- it is perpetual. We are one- the same universe which we comprise of, which we hold in ourselves, which hold us in it.
That very spring I was given the plant called primula. It's so mysterious that in its mystery is contained the inexplicable part of nature. It doesn't look at all unique. But on the precise day when spring starts its leaves die and in their place are born closed flowers that have an extremely dumbfounding feminine and masculine perfume.
The author takes you through the excruciating, probing questions of existence as it is. It may not be easy ride through the life since existence may be absurd, demanding, surprising and unmanageable since, at times, you may have to do away with morals which may not sustain the probing look of existence. The words of this wonderful book may sometimes pierce your heart like a dagger as they speak about bare truth which is generally harsh, probing and penetrating. However, the un-named narrator of the book is as brave as an individual could be in life, as she/ he does not surrender to the vagaries of life, the savage inquiry about her/ his being, authenticity of her/ his existence; instead the narrator chooses the joy of life over it. The existence itself may be cruel but the narrator realizes that perhaps the salvation lies in impersonal love and he rebels against the ‘God' (who may be the author), realizes ephemerality of existence-his being and chooses joy over sadness- the joy of being, joy of being alive.
My only salvation is joy. An atonal joy inside the essential it. Doesn't that make senser Well it must. Because it's too cruel to know that life is just one time and that we have no guarantee outside our faith in shadows-because it's too cruel, so I respond with the purity of an untamable happiness. I refuse to be sad. Let us be joyful.
Clarice Lispector pushes the limits of her language as far as she could without risking incoherence. Despite the obvious strangeness and non-confinement of her text due to her unique choices of words, syntax and grammar, she manages to produce vibrant, lively sentences which veer towards abstraction without ever quite reaching there, as if she wants to rearrange the conventional language through subtle but surprising juxtapositions to find meanings which are unthinkable and unimaginable. I really can’t say how her prose appears in its original language but translating her must have been an extremely challenging task, for the place of one punctuation might change the meaning of these highly refined sentences. It is a non-novel, a non-narrative, and yet it works within a carefully constructed framework that manages to contain its strangeness inside a unified flow of thought. The narrative is completely devoid of any traditional notions, literature is associated with, you may forget all after finishing the novel but the quintessence, the soul of it will be with you thereafter, perhaps that’s exactly what the author intended with it.
As one would expect, the prose of Lispector is highly emblematic, she talks about death which as been one of the greatest fascinations of human kind, right from the outbreak of civilization. However the treatment given by the author is as unique as her prose, death may be just an event in the continuum of time, perhaps a sort of conclusion of our existence which annihilates itself to transcend again to a living (or non-living) form, but in any case it becomes one with universe and remains so. So death may actually be a kind of explosion as body no longer bear to be a body, and it may be actually a kind of pleasure, selfish though. The mirror is being represented as some sort to portal to understand the enigma of things- life, one has to approach its depth without leaving any traces of his/ her own image upon it. The author uses emblematic beings- “he” and “she” to symbolizes the masculine and feminine spirits of the world- feminine ostensibly being the creative, pro-genitor, caring while masculine full of pride, narcissism and other traits of destruction.
There are apparent traits of post-modernism in the novel wherein anything conventional is strictly denied to realize its existence by the god like hands of the author. She forays into world unconventional through the jagged, hypnotic and mystical prose to come up with cerebrally demanding but intellectually rewarding text which is intuitively sonorous. There is a perpetual ‘you’ throughout the novel, to which the un-named narrator addresses to, whenever he/ she wants, you ponders upon the possibilities of 'you', only to realize that the ‘you’ is actually you- the reader. The author gives freedom to the narrator to communicate his/ her feelings with the reader through the broken but alive sentences of her, we could sense the feel of metafiction. The text of the novel is self-reflective in nature, as if it has being of its own radiating through its existence, as the other book- The Hour of The Star- of Lispector is. It reminds me of Maurice Blanchot since the text negates itself to reveal true existence of it, it is true being truly self- reflective. Clarice Lispector uses her personal experience and transformed it into an universal poetry through the rearrangement of language and the inter play between the gaps of reality and fiction.
The instant is. You who read me.
Agua Viva is my second read by Clarice Lispector after The Hour of the Star and I enjoyed every bit of it. The book is truly existential as the other ones by the author are. However, if you are looking for something with easy flow of narrative in which you may dive to get fast-moving expedition then this book is not for you. If you are interested in experimental fiction, to make effort to understand what may lies beneath the words and between the lines, then it is for you.
I hear the hollow boom of time. It's the world deafly forming. If I can hear that is because I exist before the formation of time. "I am" is the world. World without time. My consciousness now is light and it is air. Air has neither place nor time. Air is the non-place where everything will exist. What I am writing is the music of the air. The formation of the world. Slowly what will be approaches. What will be already is. The future is ahead and behind and to either side. The future is what always existed and always will exist. Even if Time is abolished? What I'm writing to you is not for reading-it's for being. The trumpets of the angel-beings echo in the without time. The first flower is born in the air. The ground that is earth forms. The rest is air and the rest is slow fire in perpetual mutation. Does the word "perpetual" not exist because time does not exist? But the boom exists. And this existence of mine starts to exist. Is that time starting?
I am what I am,
I am sinful I am virtuous,
I am filth I am unstained,
I am ugly I am beautiful,
I am chaos I am order,
I am despair I am exultation,
I am black I am white,
I am privileged I am underprivileged,
I am fortune I am unfortune,
I am fire I am water,
I am tree I am obelisk,
I am earth I am sky,
I am the Sun I am the Moon,
I am fragment I am the whole,
I am extinct I am existing,
I am created I am annihilated,
I am known I am unknown,
I am success I am failure,
I am body I am soul,
I am logic I am nonsense,
I am captive I am free,
I am sorrow I am joy,
I am devil I am god,
I am heaven I am hell,
I am consciousness I am unconsciousness,
I am existence I am nothingness,
I am intermittent I am perpetual,
I am moment I am forever,
I was ever I will be ever,
I am dead I am alive,
I am death I am life,
I am finite I am infinite,
I am what universe comprises of
I am what universe is: I am the universe.
The abovementioned fragments of thought define essence of the book, if you just want to have superficial taste of the book then I guess that would be sufficient but if you are still reading it then welcome to the world of unconformity. These snippets pop up in front of me, when I finished the book- Agua Viva by Clarice Lispector. One of the most popular phrases- Nihilo ex Nihilo- of philosophy keeps knocking my mind right through the book, which translates to- nothing out of nothing. In other words, it means that universe is created from nothing, there is no break in-between a world that did not exist and one that did, since it could not be created from nothing in the first place. Life starts again with every stroke of death, its perpetual. The universe of Lispector also works on the principle of perpetuity, it may be realized only in instantaneous moments which reduce to nothingness as soon as you try to get hold of them. The title translates to ‘stream of life’ as it follows in rhythm wherever it finds way, logic doesn’t have much to say in it, like music or painting, you do not understand it, fully, yet you dance to the tunes of its music. It is life seen by life, may not have meaning but it has the same lack of meaning that pulsating vein has. The world of Clarice lispector is strange but absolutely like our own, formed about a strange vortex in which the matter, antimatter and soul of the universe is being churned up through the labor pains of creation to produce life, as we know in our everyday sense. Does it mean it’s about the act of creation? Or about the very act of writing about that ‘act’. Well one may not be able to tell about it confidently, it’s not in binary, it’s infiniteness and that’s the universe of Lispector, perhaps that what life itself is.
The book, as some of you might have already guessed by now, is without any characters, storylines, narrators, messages or anything else since there is no need of anything or anyone for that matter, as there is no such need in life itself. It moves on no matter what, perpetually, people, places, monuments, forms of life, planets, galaxies, universes are all temporary, just silly moments in the infiniteness of time which is perpetual. Lispector uses the meditation on the creation and the individual to convey what life is- boundless, free, incomprehensible by any logic or being. She uses the words she write as raw materials for the act of creation instead of using them as any vehicles to convey something else, as authors usually do. She keeps on creating- recreating the world through her words by instantaneous moments which vanishes to thin air as soon as one tries to comprehend them. She formulates a dense web of thoughts, facts and objects through the words, an interior monologue through which she reflects on life, what constitutes it, its being.
Agua Viva reminds me of The Book of Disquiet by Frenando Pessoa as both seem to address the similar issue- the life. You must have read about minimalist approach adopted by Ernest Hemingway and Samuel Beckett, which is characterized by an economy with words and a focus on surface description, but Lispector’s approach is somewhat different than that. It’s like trimming of grass until you find what you are looking for, the author here trims the narrative till its bare of everything which is superfluous and truth, just naked truth, manifests itself from underneath it. Clarice Lispector herself said once that it was ‘spineless’ writing which did not have any figure, reference or object to hold upon. The text has Nietzsche-esque aphorisms, which have being of their own gleaming from the words themselves, which questions the reality, its finiteness, identity, existence as the aphorisms of Pessoa force you to. These highly styled and remarkably condensed paragraphs may be read in stand alone manner however, the author manages to weave them in together through theme of being and nothingness, the flow of sentences she manages to maintain help her to transcends the ordinary limits of expression. It is somewhat like music which you hear to enjoy the rhythm though you do not always understand it or like painting, there are sensations which transform into ideas which free themselves from the slavery of words.
The book takes you through the ticklish sojourn of being and nothingness, about the being of an individual, being of the text itself and the underlying meaning or non-meaning it might be conveying; how it takes birth from nothingness to eventually become one with nothingness. And what this being comprises of, what is it about? Is it something which lies beneath us, hidden deep inside our heart to be guarded against the ravages of hell of nothingness? Or is it something related to our soul or the soul itself? Is it something from our brain, what we call consciousness which may act on our voluntary actions or unconsciousness which is beyond our voluntary control? Is it what our appearances comprise of- shape, size, color, or anything else tangible or is it intangible- the infinite, so does it mean it’s God. Actually, being comprises of everything about an individual, his color, shape, size, body, soul, consciousness, unconsciousness, thoughts, feeling everything constitutes the being. The being of an individual is not separated from that of other individuals, an object, world, or universe per se since everything originates from the same soup, in fact it was there forever and will be there forever. It all branches off the plant primula, which transforms into variegated forms which eventually annihilate, only to give birth life again- it is perpetual. We are one- the same universe which we comprise of, which we hold in ourselves, which hold us in it.
That very spring I was given the plant called primula. It's so mysterious that in its mystery is contained the inexplicable part of nature. It doesn't look at all unique. But on the precise day when spring starts its leaves die and in their place are born closed flowers that have an extremely dumbfounding feminine and masculine perfume.
The author takes you through the excruciating, probing questions of existence as it is. It may not be easy ride through the life since existence may be absurd, demanding, surprising and unmanageable since, at times, you may have to do away with morals which may not sustain the probing look of existence. The words of this wonderful book may sometimes pierce your heart like a dagger as they speak about bare truth which is generally harsh, probing and penetrating. However, the un-named narrator of the book is as brave as an individual could be in life, as she/ he does not surrender to the vagaries of life, the savage inquiry about her/ his being, authenticity of her/ his existence; instead the narrator chooses the joy of life over it. The existence itself may be cruel but the narrator realizes that perhaps the salvation lies in impersonal love and he rebels against the ‘God' (who may be the author), realizes ephemerality of existence-his being and chooses joy over sadness- the joy of being, joy of being alive.
My only salvation is joy. An atonal joy inside the essential it. Doesn't that make senser Well it must. Because it's too cruel to know that life is just one time and that we have no guarantee outside our faith in shadows-because it's too cruel, so I respond with the purity of an untamable happiness. I refuse to be sad. Let us be joyful.
Clarice Lispector pushes the limits of her language as far as she could without risking incoherence. Despite the obvious strangeness and non-confinement of her text due to her unique choices of words, syntax and grammar, she manages to produce vibrant, lively sentences which veer towards abstraction without ever quite reaching there, as if she wants to rearrange the conventional language through subtle but surprising juxtapositions to find meanings which are unthinkable and unimaginable. I really can’t say how her prose appears in its original language but translating her must have been an extremely challenging task, for the place of one punctuation might change the meaning of these highly refined sentences. It is a non-novel, a non-narrative, and yet it works within a carefully constructed framework that manages to contain its strangeness inside a unified flow of thought. The narrative is completely devoid of any traditional notions, literature is associated with, you may forget all after finishing the novel but the quintessence, the soul of it will be with you thereafter, perhaps that’s exactly what the author intended with it.
As one would expect, the prose of Lispector is highly emblematic, she talks about death which as been one of the greatest fascinations of human kind, right from the outbreak of civilization. However the treatment given by the author is as unique as her prose, death may be just an event in the continuum of time, perhaps a sort of conclusion of our existence which annihilates itself to transcend again to a living (or non-living) form, but in any case it becomes one with universe and remains so. So death may actually be a kind of explosion as body no longer bear to be a body, and it may be actually a kind of pleasure, selfish though. The mirror is being represented as some sort to portal to understand the enigma of things- life, one has to approach its depth without leaving any traces of his/ her own image upon it. The author uses emblematic beings- “he” and “she” to symbolizes the masculine and feminine spirits of the world- feminine ostensibly being the creative, pro-genitor, caring while masculine full of pride, narcissism and other traits of destruction.
There are apparent traits of post-modernism in the novel wherein anything conventional is strictly denied to realize its existence by the god like hands of the author. She forays into world unconventional through the jagged, hypnotic and mystical prose to come up with cerebrally demanding but intellectually rewarding text which is intuitively sonorous. There is a perpetual ‘you’ throughout the novel, to which the un-named narrator addresses to, whenever he/ she wants, you ponders upon the possibilities of 'you', only to realize that the ‘you’ is actually you- the reader. The author gives freedom to the narrator to communicate his/ her feelings with the reader through the broken but alive sentences of her, we could sense the feel of metafiction. The text of the novel is self-reflective in nature, as if it has being of its own radiating through its existence, as the other book- The Hour of The Star- of Lispector is. It reminds me of Maurice Blanchot since the text negates itself to reveal true existence of it, it is true being truly self- reflective. Clarice Lispector uses her personal experience and transformed it into an universal poetry through the rearrangement of language and the inter play between the gaps of reality and fiction.
The instant is. You who read me.
Agua Viva is my second read by Clarice Lispector after The Hour of the Star and I enjoyed every bit of it. The book is truly existential as the other ones by the author are. However, if you are looking for something with easy flow of narrative in which you may dive to get fast-moving expedition then this book is not for you. If you are interested in experimental fiction, to make effort to understand what may lies beneath the words and between the lines, then it is for you.
I hear the hollow boom of time. It's the world deafly forming. If I can hear that is because I exist before the formation of time. "I am" is the world. World without time. My consciousness now is light and it is air. Air has neither place nor time. Air is the non-place where everything will exist. What I am writing is the music of the air. The formation of the world. Slowly what will be approaches. What will be already is. The future is ahead and behind and to either side. The future is what always existed and always will exist. Even if Time is abolished? What I'm writing to you is not for reading-it's for being. The trumpets of the angel-beings echo in the without time. The first flower is born in the air. The ground that is earth forms. The rest is air and the rest is slow fire in perpetual mutation. Does the word "perpetual" not exist because time does not exist? But the boom exists. And this existence of mine starts to exist. Is that time starting?
January 28, 2021
Água Viva – Living Water – in the Russian fairytales living water is a magical substance that heals any wounds and resurrects killed warriors so the story is written to revive our ability to think…
Every single instant is objectless but put together instants become the imagery of life and awareness…
This dramatic representation of personal life is obviously an artistic creation so it may be named quite adequately A Portrait of the Artist as a Mental Abstraction…
Human consciousness is the quintessence of all the things and phenomena that surround us.
Every thing has an instant in which it is. I want to grab hold of the is of the thing. These instants passing through the air I breathe: in fireworks they explode silently in space. I want to possess the atoms of time. And to capture the present, forbidden by its very nature: the present slips away and the instant too, I am this very second forever in the now.
Every single instant is objectless but put together instants become the imagery of life and awareness…
And I am haunted by my ghosts, by all that is mythic, fantastic and gigantic: life is supernatural. I walk holding an open umbrella upon a tightrope. I walk to the limit of my great dream. I see the fury of the visceral impulses: tortured viscera guide me.
This dramatic representation of personal life is obviously an artistic creation so it may be named quite adequately A Portrait of the Artist as a Mental Abstraction…
What beautiful music I can hear in the depths of me. It is made of geometric lines crisscrossing in the air. It is chamber music. Chamber music has no melody. It is a way of expressing the silence. I’m sending you chamber writing.
Human consciousness is the quintessence of all the things and phenomena that surround us.
September 22, 2018
"A fantastical world surrounds me and is me. I hear the mad song of a little bird and crush butterflies between my fingers. I'm a fruit eaten away by a worm. And I await the orgasmic apocalypse. A dissonant throng of insects surrounds me, light of an oil lamp that I am. I then go too far in order to be. I'm in a trance. I penetrate the surrounding air. What a fever: I can't stop living. In this dense jungle of words that thickly wrap around whatever I feel and think and live and transform everything I am into something of mine that nonetheless remains entirely outside me. I'm watching myself think. What I wonder is: who is it in me who is even outside of thinking:' I'm writing you all this because it's a challenge which I have to accept with humility. I'm haunted by my ghosts, by whatever is mythic and fantastical - life is supernatural."
Água Viva is a book I simply cannot easily define, it sits way out there all on its own. A non-novel in the form of a letter?, a novel in the form of an essay on the meditation of creation, a long prose poem?, a collection of obscure thoughts? a metaphysical theory?, regardless, Lispector kept me seduced within her realm in such a fascinating manner. In memory, I can't think of anything else quite like it. And I could have picked a passage of writing from any of it's pages. She paints a dark ethereal and otherworldly canvas, hypnotic, bewildering, and translucent, with metaphors aplenty, and Agua Viva felt like a refreshing break from the doldrums of a typically standard book. She admits to fear and uncertainty, but she chooses to wrap both arms and legs around each passing moment and find joy in just existing. She writes each instant like she is trying to catch her breath, and she does it with such exuberance that the reader cannot help but feel the same strange joys. There is an angular edge to her writing, with a curious monologue of tremendous depth, and it also comes across like a piece of chamber music being zapped by the building blocks of life.
The beauty of this book is undeniable, even if Lispector’s comparisons and images can be tricky to untangle. Indeed, some are impossible to fully grasp (hence the four stars and not five), and the reader’s work involved in navigating them is sometimes frustrating, sometimes delightful, but always felt with a sense of wonder. Much of what Lispector hinges on is the fragile narrative structure thrown over the piece like a thin blanket made out of a human soul, the idea that the narrator, a painter attempting to create art for the first time with words is writing an intimate letter to a single individual, presumably a lover. And yet really, the book could also be read as a letter from the author to her audience of readers. There is a certain intimacy of that contact between writer and reader, especially in light of her raw honesty throughout, which is at times is wonderfully overwhelming.
While this work is deeply conceptual, it mediates constant reminders of the material, sensational world. She profiles flowers and colors, a cigarette burn, she ruminates time and again on her own imminent death, whilst also calling out to us to run our fingers gently over each page.
I am baffled, stunned, and still trying to comprehend what I have just read. It might not have been the right introduction to Lispector's work. (One of her better known novels probably should have been a starting point), but one thing is for sure, she is a writer I will certainly not be forgetting any time soon.
Água Viva is a book I simply cannot easily define, it sits way out there all on its own. A non-novel in the form of a letter?, a novel in the form of an essay on the meditation of creation, a long prose poem?, a collection of obscure thoughts? a metaphysical theory?, regardless, Lispector kept me seduced within her realm in such a fascinating manner. In memory, I can't think of anything else quite like it. And I could have picked a passage of writing from any of it's pages. She paints a dark ethereal and otherworldly canvas, hypnotic, bewildering, and translucent, with metaphors aplenty, and Agua Viva felt like a refreshing break from the doldrums of a typically standard book. She admits to fear and uncertainty, but she chooses to wrap both arms and legs around each passing moment and find joy in just existing. She writes each instant like she is trying to catch her breath, and she does it with such exuberance that the reader cannot help but feel the same strange joys. There is an angular edge to her writing, with a curious monologue of tremendous depth, and it also comes across like a piece of chamber music being zapped by the building blocks of life.
The beauty of this book is undeniable, even if Lispector’s comparisons and images can be tricky to untangle. Indeed, some are impossible to fully grasp (hence the four stars and not five), and the reader’s work involved in navigating them is sometimes frustrating, sometimes delightful, but always felt with a sense of wonder. Much of what Lispector hinges on is the fragile narrative structure thrown over the piece like a thin blanket made out of a human soul, the idea that the narrator, a painter attempting to create art for the first time with words is writing an intimate letter to a single individual, presumably a lover. And yet really, the book could also be read as a letter from the author to her audience of readers. There is a certain intimacy of that contact between writer and reader, especially in light of her raw honesty throughout, which is at times is wonderfully overwhelming.
While this work is deeply conceptual, it mediates constant reminders of the material, sensational world. She profiles flowers and colors, a cigarette burn, she ruminates time and again on her own imminent death, whilst also calling out to us to run our fingers gently over each page.
I am baffled, stunned, and still trying to comprehend what I have just read. It might not have been the right introduction to Lispector's work. (One of her better known novels probably should have been a starting point), but one thing is for sure, she is a writer I will certainly not be forgetting any time soon.
April 10, 2015
Before you read this review: go find a version of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" and put it on. (I'm sure you have it someplace. John Cale's version is recommended, but just about anyone will do.)
Back? Good. And I guess now I'll have to explain what Cohen has to do with Lispector - I suppose it's possible that Cohen's read the book, but it's not like they're all that closely related (apart from the fact that the book opens with a cry of "hallelujah"). But what they have in common is that approach, that ecstasy that's not necessarily religious but which might be the same feeling that's behind religion - not God, but that which some people fill with God. And the self-referential attempt to capture it all in words.
The Stream of Life is a letter from a her to a him, one long monologue that begins the day she wakes up with the sun and finds that life has gone on. It's an incredible feeling, an epiphany she has to try and catch: to describe LIFE in mere words, all that's beautiful and fucked up, the concrete and the abstract, the bits you can't help but paint or sing. But just like you supposedly can't dance about architecture you can't really write about feelings; the words are just words, they don't cover it. She needs time. She has to manipulate language, duck under their superficial definitions and get at the core meaning, while at the same time trying to stop time, freeze the NOW she's trying to describe before it's passed and the feeling of having understood something is lost to the pale cast of thought and everything becomes just more words.
Where does the music go after you've played it?
Lispector goes deep-sea fishing in her language, soul, philosphy, love, art and keeps bumping into the words we once used to represent emotions rather than the emotions themselves, "the it;" she treats language the way a saxophone player in jazz might treat notes, refusing to play the basic melody but playing around it, surrounding it from all directions, alternately divebombing it and caressing it before restating the theme at the end. The novel - if you can even call it that - is subjective taken to the extreme, the sheer experience of experiencing taken to the degree where everything becomes a subject - everything is "I," I am "it." Being as a conscious act of creation: "I am myself."
"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent," as a dull Austrian once put it. But Lispector isn't a philosopher, she's a fiction writer, and she refuses to be silent; she WILL force language to capture that second of clarity, jubilation, grief, extacy - like a Coltrane who's learned to paint, like Molly Bloom on E. This is prose that wants to top poetry. It takes her 127 pages and I'll be damned if she doesn't manage it. I can't sum it up - that would sort of defeat the purpose; maybe my attempt to use words to describe her attempt to use words to speak of that which cannot be spoken about, that secret chord that goes all the way to the divine, was doomed from the beginning. But on the other hand, if it could be easily summed up we wouldn't need literature, would we?
I don't want to feel the horrible limitations of living only by that which makes sense.
I just know that The Stream of Life lights up what, for lack of a better word, I call my soul. And that it's amazing, mankind's ability to watch everything go wrong and yet stand their with nothing on our tongues but "hallelujah."
Back? Good. And I guess now I'll have to explain what Cohen has to do with Lispector - I suppose it's possible that Cohen's read the book, but it's not like they're all that closely related (apart from the fact that the book opens with a cry of "hallelujah"). But what they have in common is that approach, that ecstasy that's not necessarily religious but which might be the same feeling that's behind religion - not God, but that which some people fill with God. And the self-referential attempt to capture it all in words.
The Stream of Life is a letter from a her to a him, one long monologue that begins the day she wakes up with the sun and finds that life has gone on. It's an incredible feeling, an epiphany she has to try and catch: to describe LIFE in mere words, all that's beautiful and fucked up, the concrete and the abstract, the bits you can't help but paint or sing. But just like you supposedly can't dance about architecture you can't really write about feelings; the words are just words, they don't cover it. She needs time. She has to manipulate language, duck under their superficial definitions and get at the core meaning, while at the same time trying to stop time, freeze the NOW she's trying to describe before it's passed and the feeling of having understood something is lost to the pale cast of thought and everything becomes just more words.
Where does the music go after you've played it?
Lispector goes deep-sea fishing in her language, soul, philosphy, love, art and keeps bumping into the words we once used to represent emotions rather than the emotions themselves, "the it;" she treats language the way a saxophone player in jazz might treat notes, refusing to play the basic melody but playing around it, surrounding it from all directions, alternately divebombing it and caressing it before restating the theme at the end. The novel - if you can even call it that - is subjective taken to the extreme, the sheer experience of experiencing taken to the degree where everything becomes a subject - everything is "I," I am "it." Being as a conscious act of creation: "I am myself."
"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent," as a dull Austrian once put it. But Lispector isn't a philosopher, she's a fiction writer, and she refuses to be silent; she WILL force language to capture that second of clarity, jubilation, grief, extacy - like a Coltrane who's learned to paint, like Molly Bloom on E. This is prose that wants to top poetry. It takes her 127 pages and I'll be damned if she doesn't manage it. I can't sum it up - that would sort of defeat the purpose; maybe my attempt to use words to describe her attempt to use words to speak of that which cannot be spoken about, that secret chord that goes all the way to the divine, was doomed from the beginning. But on the other hand, if it could be easily summed up we wouldn't need literature, would we?
I don't want to feel the horrible limitations of living only by that which makes sense.
I just know that The Stream of Life lights up what, for lack of a better word, I call my soul. And that it's amazing, mankind's ability to watch everything go wrong and yet stand their with nothing on our tongues but "hallelujah."
March 19, 2016
Lispector siempre dijo que ganaba con la relectura, y no se si es eso, o simplemente que cada vez que la leo encuentro cosas distintas que me atraen y me atrapan. En esta novela, que no se si debería ser llamada novela como tal, o como prosa poética, o como qué, solo un libro de Clarice, no hay una historia. Son imágenes, muchas ya conocidas de sus otros libros, que para mi su cumbre llega en La Pasión Según GH. Está Dios, la naturaleza, el crear, las palabras, el amor, el presente, el destino.
No importa cómo se llega a el mundo de Lispector, lo importante, y bello, es que entrar en su mundo es una experiencia que no hay que perderse.
============================================================================
La magia de Clarice Lispector en este libro se siente desatada. Locura lúcida, podría llamarse. Una ausencia de anécdota real convierte esta novela en algo mágico. Porque sólo así se puede llamar a lo que hace Lispector con las palabras.
Es un desfile de sentimientos, reflexiones, donde se ven animales, flores, insectos, estaciones, el amamantar, la placenta, dios, el bien, el mal, la soledad, la libertad. Quizás si intento sacar algo de la historia podría ser esto, se trata de una mujer pintora, quien habla a un viejo amor, o quizás sólo habla a quien la lee. Habla sobre la vida, la creación, las palabras, todo contado por instantes. Es una novela de presente puro, no mira hacia atrás ni hacia adelante. Hay que leer a Lispector, porque sólo ella nos lleva hacia un lugar en donde el tiempo no existe, y todo a nuestro alrededor son palabras en movimiento, emociones latiendo.
No importa cómo se llega a el mundo de Lispector, lo importante, y bello, es que entrar en su mundo es una experiencia que no hay que perderse.
============================================================================
La magia de Clarice Lispector en este libro se siente desatada. Locura lúcida, podría llamarse. Una ausencia de anécdota real convierte esta novela en algo mágico. Porque sólo así se puede llamar a lo que hace Lispector con las palabras.
Es un desfile de sentimientos, reflexiones, donde se ven animales, flores, insectos, estaciones, el amamantar, la placenta, dios, el bien, el mal, la soledad, la libertad. Quizás si intento sacar algo de la historia podría ser esto, se trata de una mujer pintora, quien habla a un viejo amor, o quizás sólo habla a quien la lee. Habla sobre la vida, la creación, las palabras, todo contado por instantes. Es una novela de presente puro, no mira hacia atrás ni hacia adelante. Hay que leer a Lispector, porque sólo ella nos lleva hacia un lugar en donde el tiempo no existe, y todo a nuestro alrededor son palabras en movimiento, emociones latiendo.
October 8, 2019
A água é um dos quatro elementos fundamentais que, segundo a sapiência da Grécia Antiga, constitui a base da Natureza. De facto, sabe-se que este é o constituinte principal dos seres humanos e da Terra. Não é pois de todo estapafúrdio ofertar-lhe o estatuto de pedra angular da própria vida, numa assunção que tem vindo a ser aproveitada por diferentes credos e religiões.
Este texto de Clarice, de difícil classificação – não deveria eu já estar acostumado? -, não se apropria dessas ideias, que deambulam entre o biológico e o místico; antes brinca com o nome de um animal disforme, mais comummente conhecido por medusa. Como ela, a personagem principal lança sobre o leitor os seus tentáculos pejados de ideias, numa orgia de palavras pintadas a aguarela, que deixa o último num estado electrificante. Tais pensamentos bucólicos são gerados ao sabor de um descontentamento notório perante a vida que lhe coube e não a preenche, deixando as pinturas para se imiscuir na escrita, que também garante imagens.
Ao longo deste fluxo de pensamento, ela defende fundamentalmente três termos para que a sua utilização se torne rotineira - "instante-já", "é" e "it". O primeiro associa-se ao arcaico "carpe diem", que exige aproveitar o agora para ter uma total experiência de existência - bem degustada. O segundo, de índole mais complexa, luta contra as regras gramaticais ensinadas e desvincula o verbo "ser" de qualquer predicativo, colocando o ênfase no existir - "pronto e ponto" -, indepententemente dos artifícios que o compõem. Adensando campos da metafísica, o último termo alerta para algo tão patente na escrita de Clarice - a inexistência de género, em primazia da pessoa-animal, que não tem de ficar conotada a algo pura e simplesmente por questões biológicas, mal resolvidas, por vezes.
Sem surpresas para um leitor expedito, este livro não encaixa em nenhuma das normas de estrutura pré-estabelecidas, sorvendo algo de vários tipos, numa amálgama informe mas acolhedora. E, apresentando os pensamentos de um alguém - de forma lírica e desconcertante -, obriga quem o lê a reflectir sobre a sua forma de encarar a vida. Bebam esta água, da melhor nascente!
"O que estou te escrevendo não é para se ler – é para se ser."
Este texto de Clarice, de difícil classificação – não deveria eu já estar acostumado? -, não se apropria dessas ideias, que deambulam entre o biológico e o místico; antes brinca com o nome de um animal disforme, mais comummente conhecido por medusa. Como ela, a personagem principal lança sobre o leitor os seus tentáculos pejados de ideias, numa orgia de palavras pintadas a aguarela, que deixa o último num estado electrificante. Tais pensamentos bucólicos são gerados ao sabor de um descontentamento notório perante a vida que lhe coube e não a preenche, deixando as pinturas para se imiscuir na escrita, que também garante imagens.
Ao longo deste fluxo de pensamento, ela defende fundamentalmente três termos para que a sua utilização se torne rotineira - "instante-já", "é" e "it". O primeiro associa-se ao arcaico "carpe diem", que exige aproveitar o agora para ter uma total experiência de existência - bem degustada. O segundo, de índole mais complexa, luta contra as regras gramaticais ensinadas e desvincula o verbo "ser" de qualquer predicativo, colocando o ênfase no existir - "pronto e ponto" -, indepententemente dos artifícios que o compõem. Adensando campos da metafísica, o último termo alerta para algo tão patente na escrita de Clarice - a inexistência de género, em primazia da pessoa-animal, que não tem de ficar conotada a algo pura e simplesmente por questões biológicas, mal resolvidas, por vezes.
Sem surpresas para um leitor expedito, este livro não encaixa em nenhuma das normas de estrutura pré-estabelecidas, sorvendo algo de vários tipos, numa amálgama informe mas acolhedora. E, apresentando os pensamentos de um alguém - de forma lírica e desconcertante -, obriga quem o lê a reflectir sobre a sua forma de encarar a vida. Bebam esta água, da melhor nascente!
"O que estou te escrevendo não é para se ler – é para se ser."
January 6, 2018
In this short book composed of fragments, Clarice Lispector seeks to create a language to capture the instances that comprise a life. It's a book about dissolving boundaries. Lispector looks to painting and music to provide her with the tools to understand creation and expression in the context of a lived life. The work she has crafted reads almost as a dreamscape, as she moves from meditation to meditation, exploring language, identity, flowers, animals, love, sex, religion:
"I tremble with pleasure amidst the novelty of using words that form an intense thicket. I struggle to conquer more deeply my freedom of sensations and thoughts, without any utilitarian meaning: I am alone, I and my freedom. Such is my freedom that it could scandalize a primitive but I know that you are not scandalized by the fullness I achieve and that is without perceptible borders. This capacity of mine to live whatever is rounded and ample —I surround myself with carnivorous plants and legendary animals, all bathed in the coarse and twisted oblique light of a mythical sex. I proceed in an intuitive way and without seeking an idea: I am organic. And I don’t question myself about my motives. I plunge into the almost pain of an intense happiness— and to adorn me leaves and branches spring up in my hair."
In order to use words in this generative manner, Lispector has had to change how she sees the world, seeing it slant, in a move that Emily Dickinson would recognize:
"It’s that I’m perceiving a crooked reality. Seen through an oblique cut. Only now have I sensed the oblique of life. I used to only see through straight and parallel cuts. I didn’t notice the sly crooked line. Now I sense that life is other. That living is not only unwinding rough feelings— it’s something more bewitching and gracile, without losing its fine animal vigor for that."
Lispector's voyage through words and language, image and song, leads her in the end confronting death. She chooses to end, not with fear, but with hope and joy, "in an allegro con brio":
"My only salvation is joy. An atonal joy inside the essential it. Doesn’t that make sense? Well it must. Because it’s too cruel to know that life is just one time and that we have no guarantee outside our faith in shadows— because it’s too cruel, so I respond with the purity of an untamable happiness. I refuse to be sad. Let us be joyful.
"Whoever isn’t afraid to be joyful and to experience even a single time the mad and profound joy will have the best part of our truth. I am— despite everything oh despite everything— am being joyful in this instant-now that passes if I don’t capture it in words. I am being joyful in this very instant because I refuse to be defeated: so I love. As an answer. Impersonal love, it love, is joy: even the love that doesn’t work out, even the love that ends. And my own death and that of those we love must be joyful, I don’t yet know how, but they must be. That is living: the joy of the it. And to settle for that not as one defeated but in an allegro con brio."
Lispector enacts her joy in words, fixing this instant in time, and by doing so making this work a song, an allegro con brio. Joy in the face of uncertainty, creation as an act of humanity.
"I tremble with pleasure amidst the novelty of using words that form an intense thicket. I struggle to conquer more deeply my freedom of sensations and thoughts, without any utilitarian meaning: I am alone, I and my freedom. Such is my freedom that it could scandalize a primitive but I know that you are not scandalized by the fullness I achieve and that is without perceptible borders. This capacity of mine to live whatever is rounded and ample —I surround myself with carnivorous plants and legendary animals, all bathed in the coarse and twisted oblique light of a mythical sex. I proceed in an intuitive way and without seeking an idea: I am organic. And I don’t question myself about my motives. I plunge into the almost pain of an intense happiness— and to adorn me leaves and branches spring up in my hair."
In order to use words in this generative manner, Lispector has had to change how she sees the world, seeing it slant, in a move that Emily Dickinson would recognize:
"It’s that I’m perceiving a crooked reality. Seen through an oblique cut. Only now have I sensed the oblique of life. I used to only see through straight and parallel cuts. I didn’t notice the sly crooked line. Now I sense that life is other. That living is not only unwinding rough feelings— it’s something more bewitching and gracile, without losing its fine animal vigor for that."
Lispector's voyage through words and language, image and song, leads her in the end confronting death. She chooses to end, not with fear, but with hope and joy, "in an allegro con brio":
"My only salvation is joy. An atonal joy inside the essential it. Doesn’t that make sense? Well it must. Because it’s too cruel to know that life is just one time and that we have no guarantee outside our faith in shadows— because it’s too cruel, so I respond with the purity of an untamable happiness. I refuse to be sad. Let us be joyful.
"Whoever isn’t afraid to be joyful and to experience even a single time the mad and profound joy will have the best part of our truth. I am— despite everything oh despite everything— am being joyful in this instant-now that passes if I don’t capture it in words. I am being joyful in this very instant because I refuse to be defeated: so I love. As an answer. Impersonal love, it love, is joy: even the love that doesn’t work out, even the love that ends. And my own death and that of those we love must be joyful, I don’t yet know how, but they must be. That is living: the joy of the it. And to settle for that not as one defeated but in an allegro con brio."
Lispector enacts her joy in words, fixing this instant in time, and by doing so making this work a song, an allegro con brio. Joy in the face of uncertainty, creation as an act of humanity.
February 18, 2018
Beguiling improvised abstractions about consciousness via short paragraphs about mirrors, flowers, horses, writing, being, painting perfume in the air, beatitude, joy, grace, how cats never laugh, always being born through thought, "is-ness," "it-ness," maybe best described/reduced as Beckettian Brazilian Beat prose-poetry? Unlike anything I've ever read -- much longer than its 88 pages. At times sophomoric, juvenile, ridiculous, superficial, zone-out-able, but then suddenly so much more, with perfect phrasing like "a horse with the open wings of a great eagle." But then it goes back to proto-stoner silliness like how "now" is always passing, by the time you say "now" it's no longer now, etc. Anyway, my first Lispector in the updated translations (a few years ago, I read The Hour of the Star in an old translation and wasn't into it at all) -- won't be my last.
Read
May 7, 2023what the fuck…, again, less than 100 pages n she rewired my brain. full stop.
February 17, 2023
i cut out the pain of which i write to you and give you my restless joy!!!!
August 12, 2020
“Hayatımın bir konusu yok mu? Çünkü şaşırtıcı şekilde parça parça yazdım. Parçalara ayrılmış bir haldeyim. Hikayem yaşamak. Başarısızlık korkum da yok. Bırakın başarısızlık yok etsin beni, başarısızlığın görkemini istiyorum. Benim eğilip bükülen malul meleğim hep kaçıp gidiyor elimden, cennetten cehenneme düşen ve orada şeytanın tadını çıkaran meleğim.”
Tanımlanması çok zor bir metin. Sanki başı ve sonu yazılmamış bir kitabın ortasına düşmüş, kurgu karşıtı, muazzam bir monolog. Her ne kadar “it” arayışının arkasında hiçliğine karışıyor gibi olsa da arkasında terapötik bir dertleşme yatıyor gibi hissettiriyor. 102 sayfalık olmasına rağmen, kopmadan-dikkatinizi sabit tutarak okumak biraz zor. Ama ilk 20-30 sayfayı aştıktan sonra kitabın akışına uyum sağlıyorsunuz. Dili direkt kullanımı çok güzel.
“Ölmeyeceğim, duyuyor musun, Tanrı? Cesaretin yok, duyuyor musun? Öldürme beni, duyuyor musun? Çünkü nerede, ne zaman, olacağını bilmeden ölmek için doğmuş olmak bir utanç. “
Tanımlanması çok zor bir metin. Sanki başı ve sonu yazılmamış bir kitabın ortasına düşmüş, kurgu karşıtı, muazzam bir monolog. Her ne kadar “it” arayışının arkasında hiçliğine karışıyor gibi olsa da arkasında terapötik bir dertleşme yatıyor gibi hissettiriyor. 102 sayfalık olmasına rağmen, kopmadan-dikkatinizi sabit tutarak okumak biraz zor. Ama ilk 20-30 sayfayı aştıktan sonra kitabın akışına uyum sağlıyorsunuz. Dili direkt kullanımı çok güzel.
“Ölmeyeceğim, duyuyor musun, Tanrı? Cesaretin yok, duyuyor musun? Öldürme beni, duyuyor musun? Çünkü nerede, ne zaman, olacağını bilmeden ölmek için doğmuş olmak bir utanç. “
July 7, 2021
Água Viva was an exhilarating and unique experience. The metaphysical ruminations are replete with exquisite synaesthetic, lyrical imagery. Lispector delves into the layers of subjectivity and unveils the fragmented and fabricated nature of reality. She explores a gamut of existential themes, but the central motif running through the book is the perpetual attempt to capture the elusive "instant-now" - the ephemeral moments that mould the malleable memories and lie at the roots of the artistic unconscious.
The next instant, do I make it, or does it make itself? We make it together with our breath... Everything has an instant in which it is. I want to grab hold of the 'is' of the thing.
***
Can what I painted on this canvas be put into words? Just as the silent word can be suggested by a musical sound...I don't paint ideas, I paint the unattainable "forever".
***
...the invention of today is the only way to usher in the future.
***
Listen to me, listen to the silence. What I say to you is never what I say to you but something else instead. It captures the thing that escapes me and yet I live from it...One instant leads me numbly to the next and the athematic theme unfurls without a plan but geometric like the successive shapes in a kaleidoscope.
***
It's just that whatever I capture in me has, when it's now being transposed into writing, the despair that words take up more instants than the flash of a glance.
***
Beyond thoughts there are no words: it is itself...In this land of the is-itself I am pure crystalline ecstasy. It is itself. I am myself. You are yourself.
***
The instant is. You who read me are.
***
What am I doing in writing to you? Trying to photograph perfume.
***
Waiting is feeling voracious about the future.
***
To live this life is more an indirect remembering than a direct living.
***
...it is the story of instants that flee like fugitive tracks seen from the window of a train.
***
...reality has no synonyms.
***
The true thought seems to have no author.
The next instant, do I make it, or does it make itself? We make it together with our breath... Everything has an instant in which it is. I want to grab hold of the 'is' of the thing.
***
Can what I painted on this canvas be put into words? Just as the silent word can be suggested by a musical sound...I don't paint ideas, I paint the unattainable "forever".
***
...the invention of today is the only way to usher in the future.
***
Listen to me, listen to the silence. What I say to you is never what I say to you but something else instead. It captures the thing that escapes me and yet I live from it...One instant leads me numbly to the next and the athematic theme unfurls without a plan but geometric like the successive shapes in a kaleidoscope.
***
It's just that whatever I capture in me has, when it's now being transposed into writing, the despair that words take up more instants than the flash of a glance.
***
Beyond thoughts there are no words: it is itself...In this land of the is-itself I am pure crystalline ecstasy. It is itself. I am myself. You are yourself.
***
The instant is. You who read me are.
***
What am I doing in writing to you? Trying to photograph perfume.
***
Waiting is feeling voracious about the future.
***
To live this life is more an indirect remembering than a direct living.
***
...it is the story of instants that flee like fugitive tracks seen from the window of a train.
***
...reality has no synonyms.
***
The true thought seems to have no author.
November 25, 2017
başı sonu olmayan bir monolog, bir doğaçlama yaşam suyu. ilk bakışta, bildik roman okuma deneyimiyle, anlaşılmaz ve hatta anlamsız görünüyor. ancak yazar/kahramanın da bizzat muhatabından istediği şekilde okunursa kendini açıyor. metni derinliğine rağmen yüzeysel okumak, anlamı satırlarda değil satır aralarında bulmak gerekiyor basit bir ifadeyle. durmadan, takılmadan okudukça, akışa bir süre müdahale etmedikçe anlatı kendi yolunu buluyor.
yazarın amacının biçim gösterisi olmadığını da belirtmek gerek elbette. metin bir kez açıldıktan sonra bir tür yol arkadaşlığı kuruyor okurla. doğaçlamanın, çağrışımların böyle bir gücü var. düşünce ya da hisler kelimelerin katı kalıplarından kurtuluyor, cümleler çizilmiş sınırlar olmadığında daha çok anlatıyor, yazı özgürleştikçe renkleniyor, zenginleşiyor. bu, çok şeydir. bundan sonra isterseniz tekrar tekrar kitaba döner, isterseniz monologu, doğaçlamayı kendi kelimelerinizle sürdürürsünüz.
yazarın amacının biçim gösterisi olmadığını da belirtmek gerek elbette. metin bir kez açıldıktan sonra bir tür yol arkadaşlığı kuruyor okurla. doğaçlamanın, çağrışımların böyle bir gücü var. düşünce ya da hisler kelimelerin katı kalıplarından kurtuluyor, cümleler çizilmiş sınırlar olmadığında daha çok anlatıyor, yazı özgürleştikçe renkleniyor, zenginleşiyor. bu, çok şeydir. bundan sonra isterseniz tekrar tekrar kitaba döner, isterseniz monologu, doğaçlamayı kendi kelimelerinizle sürdürürsünüz.
October 31, 2012
Sorry Clarice, no dice. I wanted to like it, and I'm not opposed to structureless rhapsody per se, but Leaves of Grass (or even its introverted modernist reflection) this ain't. At first, it's true, the fact that it didn't actually annoy me - when it so easily could have - was a selling point. And I appreciated the suggestion that it should be read quickly, from afar, without too intense a focus. For a while, it kind of worked. Maybe a rereading will help. Maybe its having inspired zero excitement, interest or emotion in me is part of its magic; maybe it must sneak in unannounced to do its work. But I tend to doubt it. Apparently the one book that she herself seriously doubted, this is Clarice Lispector overcooked, undernourished and far less radical/experimental than its proponents would have as believe. Or so it seems to me on first viewing.
September 4, 2016
I think I am just not the right reader for Clarice Lispector. It's my second go at her, and while I can see, intellectually, the point of writing like this, I just fundamentally do not enjoy reading her; fundamentally, it comes down to a virtue slog.
I think part of the problem for me is that hyper-seriousness of the tone. While we can debate along with Pierre Desproges whether you really can laugh at anything -- I lean towards his view, but am still undecided -- the issues that come up in Lispector books are not in the beyond the pale genocide cannibalism dead baby tragedy category, but rather in the serious philosophical issue pile. And I get the point of taking these questions seriously and discussing them seriously, but you get the impression that this is a person, this narrator author person, who simply does not possess the capacity to see the difference between these issues and the life and death and that this is why there is a fundamental lack, not just of humor, but of the possibility of humor, anywhere, on anyone's part, as you read the book. (Come to think of it, this is one of the things I don't care for in quite a bit of actual philosophy, as well. I mean if you want to spend your life pondering the fact that signifiers are fundamentally arbitrary, be my guest, you're not wrong, but you have to, somewhere in deep down in your heart of hearts admit that this is not really a job for an adult in the same way that say, service or teaching or building and fixing stuff is, and admit that there is a funny side to your life's efforts. Taking literature seriously is all well and good, so long as we don't always take taking literature seriously so seriously, if you see what I mean.)
I think what I'm saying is that the writing has an over-dramatic and over-wrought quality that, while I can respect the achievement, I just fundamentally cannot ever love. And Lispector then puts a womany womby spin on it, which... let's just say if I had to hear again that she had eaten her placenta like cats do, I was pretty much ready to hurl the book across the room.
So the stars are the average of what I feel I should feel and what I actually do feel reading the book. I think also that I'm maybe done with her. I'll never hate her the way I hated say, Tom Wolfe after he got his second try, but it's enough, Clarice, it's enough.
I think part of the problem for me is that hyper-seriousness of the tone. While we can debate along with Pierre Desproges whether you really can laugh at anything -- I lean towards his view, but am still undecided -- the issues that come up in Lispector books are not in the beyond the pale genocide cannibalism dead baby tragedy category, but rather in the serious philosophical issue pile. And I get the point of taking these questions seriously and discussing them seriously, but you get the impression that this is a person, this narrator author person, who simply does not possess the capacity to see the difference between these issues and the life and death and that this is why there is a fundamental lack, not just of humor, but of the possibility of humor, anywhere, on anyone's part, as you read the book. (Come to think of it, this is one of the things I don't care for in quite a bit of actual philosophy, as well. I mean if you want to spend your life pondering the fact that signifiers are fundamentally arbitrary, be my guest, you're not wrong, but you have to, somewhere in deep down in your heart of hearts admit that this is not really a job for an adult in the same way that say, service or teaching or building and fixing stuff is, and admit that there is a funny side to your life's efforts. Taking literature seriously is all well and good, so long as we don't always take taking literature seriously so seriously, if you see what I mean.)
I think what I'm saying is that the writing has an over-dramatic and over-wrought quality that, while I can respect the achievement, I just fundamentally cannot ever love. And Lispector then puts a womany womby spin on it, which... let's just say if I had to hear again that she had eaten her placenta like cats do, I was pretty much ready to hurl the book across the room.
So the stars are the average of what I feel I should feel and what I actually do feel reading the book. I think also that I'm maybe done with her. I'll never hate her the way I hated say, Tom Wolfe after he got his second try, but it's enough, Clarice, it's enough.
October 2, 2012
Totally thin and plotless and long and tedious and it is the hardest Clarice Lispector book I've read so far but I still l-o-v-e it, especially when she gives me such warm closure at the end. How does she do it—take me to places where I don't want to go, opening me up, leaving me with so much for wonder. "Something like the memory of a tall monument that seems taller because it is a memory." Yes. I wouldn't carelessly share this book with friends or anything. I'm going to read all her work available in English as part of a slow self-help series. Água viva.
================
I know that after you read me it's hard to reproduce my song by ear, it's not possible to sing it without having learned it by heart. And how can you learn something by heart if it has no story?
But you will recall something that also happened in the shadow. You will have shared this first mute existence, you will have, as in the calm dream of a calm night, have run with the resin down the tree trunk. Afterwards you will say: I dreamt nothing. Will that be enough? It will. And especially in that primary existence there is a lack of error, and a tone of emotion of someone who could lie but doesn't. Is that enough? It is. (74)
================
I know that after you read me it's hard to reproduce my song by ear, it's not possible to sing it without having learned it by heart. And how can you learn something by heart if it has no story?
But you will recall something that also happened in the shadow. You will have shared this first mute existence, you will have, as in the calm dream of a calm night, have run with the resin down the tree trunk. Afterwards you will say: I dreamt nothing. Will that be enough? It will. And especially in that primary existence there is a lack of error, and a tone of emotion of someone who could lie but doesn't. Is that enough? It is. (74)
March 10, 2024
Kratki roman „Živa voda“ je vežba u pismu o prisutnosti u sadašnjosti. Fabula je svedena na trenutak pisanja pisma neimenovane slikarke nepoznatom i ljubljenom adresatu zvanom samoj sebi, a tema je trenutak, pokušaj da se oseti treperavi i živahni nerv sadašnjice, i da taj živac odreaguje kao pulsirajuća vena u pismu. Pisanje kao improvizovani džez, herkalitovska voda, iskustvo nedostatka strukture, oštra ljubav – spora nesvestica, trenutak kao veliko jaje toplih iznutrica i sl.
Ne traži se ideja u tekstu, napreduje se intuitivno. Junakinja podseća da svet nema vidljivog reda, te dopušta da se dogodi sama sebi iznova i iznova. Trenutak je živo seme, jer se u njemu začinje budući trenutak. Kroz trenutke junakinja se ponovo rađa i ovaploćuje u požudnim i nerazumnjivim frazama koje se uvijaju iza reči. “Najbolje od mene je kada ništa ne znam i fabrikujem ne znam šta... Kako ništa ne razumem, vezujem se za nesigurno pokretnu stvarnost.” Sudari rečenica pletu orgiju zbrkane estetizovane stvarnosti, a iz sudara iskaza i fraza se izdiže tišina. I to je to, tipična Lispektor, punoća i praznina kao dve strane iste medalje.
Doduše, Lispektorka ne uspeva doslovno da se drži isključivo pripovedanja neuhvatljivog toka trenutka i pulsirajućeg sada, te se povremeno kao prvoj ispomoći hvata kataloga i eseijizacije. I donekle je razumnjivo zašto je i sama sumnjala u ovaj roman. Svejedno, ovo je Lispektorkino veštičarenje jezikom u punom jeku i u jednom od svojih vrhunaca.
I ako bismo se igrali u skladu sa rečenicom prilepljenom za korice ovog izdanja a preuzete iz studije Elen Siku o ovoj brazilskoj književnici, gde je Lispektorka u jednom do mogućih svetova izjednačena sa Kafkom kao ženom, Remboom koji je doživeo pedesetu i postao majka, Hajdegerom koji je zaboravio da bude Nemac i šta ti ja znam kakvim iritantnim ali i maštoglavim komparacijama, onda bih se igrajući dodao da je Klaris sa svojom opsesijom tajnom rođenja i praskovima radosti zapravo Rastko Petrović iz perioda Otkrovenja, ali Petrović koji je po zanimanju fotograf za časopis „Burda“ iz 70ih, sa svim cvetnim fetišizacijama, zorama, ogledalima i garderoberima (plus panteri i mačići koji jedu svoju placentu) i to na nekom balkonu u klimatski toplom okruženju, gde je Klaris izašla sa skuvanom jutarnjom kafom, drži zapaljenu cigaru među prstima sa sveže nalakiranim noktima i izrazom lica Berninijeve Svete Tereze Avilske u ekstazi. Dan može da počne.
Ne traži se ideja u tekstu, napreduje se intuitivno. Junakinja podseća da svet nema vidljivog reda, te dopušta da se dogodi sama sebi iznova i iznova. Trenutak je živo seme, jer se u njemu začinje budući trenutak. Kroz trenutke junakinja se ponovo rađa i ovaploćuje u požudnim i nerazumnjivim frazama koje se uvijaju iza reči. “Najbolje od mene je kada ništa ne znam i fabrikujem ne znam šta... Kako ništa ne razumem, vezujem se za nesigurno pokretnu stvarnost.” Sudari rečenica pletu orgiju zbrkane estetizovane stvarnosti, a iz sudara iskaza i fraza se izdiže tišina. I to je to, tipična Lispektor, punoća i praznina kao dve strane iste medalje.
Doduše, Lispektorka ne uspeva doslovno da se drži isključivo pripovedanja neuhvatljivog toka trenutka i pulsirajućeg sada, te se povremeno kao prvoj ispomoći hvata kataloga i eseijizacije. I donekle je razumnjivo zašto je i sama sumnjala u ovaj roman. Svejedno, ovo je Lispektorkino veštičarenje jezikom u punom jeku i u jednom od svojih vrhunaca.
I ako bismo se igrali u skladu sa rečenicom prilepljenom za korice ovog izdanja a preuzete iz studije Elen Siku o ovoj brazilskoj književnici, gde je Lispektorka u jednom do mogućih svetova izjednačena sa Kafkom kao ženom, Remboom koji je doživeo pedesetu i postao majka, Hajdegerom koji je zaboravio da bude Nemac i šta ti ja znam kakvim iritantnim ali i maštoglavim komparacijama, onda bih se igrajući dodao da je Klaris sa svojom opsesijom tajnom rođenja i praskovima radosti zapravo Rastko Petrović iz perioda Otkrovenja, ali Petrović koji je po zanimanju fotograf za časopis „Burda“ iz 70ih, sa svim cvetnim fetišizacijama, zorama, ogledalima i garderoberima (plus panteri i mačići koji jedu svoju placentu) i to na nekom balkonu u klimatski toplom okruženju, gde je Klaris izašla sa skuvanom jutarnjom kafom, drži zapaljenu cigaru među prstima sa sveže nalakiranim noktima i izrazom lica Berninijeve Svete Tereze Avilske u ekstazi. Dan može da počne.
December 10, 2016
In the market for some rambling unmitigated narcissism? Well take a seat, sonny; have I got the book for you.
Listen. I want to like Clarice Lispector. I keep trying. But for every moment of legitimate brilliance, sparkling clarity, or that thing where an author reads your thoughts way too well...there are TEN moments like this:
"Now is the domain of now."
"Are the facts of life lemon on the oyster? Does the oyster sleep?"
"I'm a heretic. No, that's not true. Or am I? But something exists."
and, paraphrased:
"I have experienced all that is dark and true in life. I know the depths of reality and I will try to convey them to you but unless you, too, have experienced in the exact way I have, you will never understand. I am so profound. I am a painter and a writer. I know another path, I feel deeper than everyone who lives, I am pure chaos and you might think I'm admitting a flaw when I say that but actually I consider it one of the grandest virtues there is. In fact, I am all virtue; every single one of my qualities is a gift and I have no flaws. Read my ramblings and grasp only the surface of me, for I am true brilliance at my core, unfathomable."
Kindly: shut up.
I have no patience for this kind of self-indulgent writing. I can't understand how it's considered a masterpiece. And if I'm missing something, I don't care what it is -- Lispector just does not resonate with me. And I keep trying, but there's always been something in her that frustrates me profoundly ------ I just can't stand the persona she conveys in her writing. Self-absorbed, self-aggrandizing, self-...everything. And fine, that lends her a reflective nature -- even one I relate to -- that's cool.
But I can read my own damn journal entries. I don't need to read hers.
Listen. I want to like Clarice Lispector. I keep trying. But for every moment of legitimate brilliance, sparkling clarity, or that thing where an author reads your thoughts way too well...there are TEN moments like this:
"Now is the domain of now."
"Are the facts of life lemon on the oyster? Does the oyster sleep?"
"I'm a heretic. No, that's not true. Or am I? But something exists."
and, paraphrased:
"I have experienced all that is dark and true in life. I know the depths of reality and I will try to convey them to you but unless you, too, have experienced in the exact way I have, you will never understand. I am so profound. I am a painter and a writer. I know another path, I feel deeper than everyone who lives, I am pure chaos and you might think I'm admitting a flaw when I say that but actually I consider it one of the grandest virtues there is. In fact, I am all virtue; every single one of my qualities is a gift and I have no flaws. Read my ramblings and grasp only the surface of me, for I am true brilliance at my core, unfathomable."
Kindly: shut up.
I have no patience for this kind of self-indulgent writing. I can't understand how it's considered a masterpiece. And if I'm missing something, I don't care what it is -- Lispector just does not resonate with me. And I keep trying, but there's always been something in her that frustrates me profoundly ------ I just can't stand the persona she conveys in her writing. Self-absorbed, self-aggrandizing, self-...everything. And fine, that lends her a reflective nature -- even one I relate to -- that's cool.
But I can read my own damn journal entries. I don't need to read hers.
September 28, 2022
Poche pagine ma intense e complesse.
Forse non sono riuscito ad apprezzare a pieno quest'altra opera della Lispector, probabilmente la più ostica tra quelle lette fin'ora, ma d'altronde lei stessa ci mette in guardia leggendo ; "ti scrivo in disordine, lo so bene. Ma è come vivo. Lavoro solo con oggetti smarriti e ritrovati”.
“ci sono tante cose da dire che non so come dirle” e “voglio avere la libertà di dire cose senza nesso”.
Fatta questa premessa, come in altri suoi scritti, bisogna lasciarsi andare e farsi trasportare dal suo uso della parola.
La parola è la mia quarta dimensione .
Il perché a me non interessa , la causa è materia del passato.
L'armonia segreta della disarmonia : non voglio ciò che è fatto ma ciò che tortuosamente si sta ancora facendo .
Più che un istante , desidero il suo fluire .
Ho conosciuto un « < lei » che umanizzava le bestie chiacchierando con loro e attribuendo loro le sue caratteristiche . Non umanizzo le bestie perché è offensivo - bisogna rispettare la natura - sono io che mi animalizzo . Non è difficile e avviene semplicemente . Si tratta solo di non fare resistenza e di abbandonarsi .
Io non ho una trama di vita ? Sono inopinatamente frammentaria . Sono pezzo per pezzo . La mia storia è vivere . E non ho paura del fallimento . Che il fallimento mi annichilisca , voglio la gloria della caduta . Il mio angelo zoppo che si contorce schivo , il mio angelo caduto dal cielo all'inferno dove vive godendosi il male .
Sono io che sto ascoltando un fischio nel buio . Io che sono malata della condizione umana . Mi ribello : non voglio più essere una persona . Chi ? Chi prova misericordia per noi che sappiamo della vita e della morte mentre un animale , che io profondamente invidio , è incosciente della sua condizione ? Chi ha pietà di noi ? Siamo dei reietti ? Abbandonati alla disperazione ? No , deve esserci una consolazione possibile . Lo giuro : ci deve essere . Non ho il coraggio di dire la verità che sappiamo . Ci sono parole proibite . Ma io denuncio . Denuncio la nostra debolezza , denuncio l'orrore allucinante di morire ... e rispondo a tutta questa infamia con ... esattamente ciò che adesso rimarrà scritto ... e rispondo a tutta questa infamia con allegria . Purissima e leggerissima allegria . La mia unica salvezza è l'allegria .
Forse non sono riuscito ad apprezzare a pieno quest'altra opera della Lispector, probabilmente la più ostica tra quelle lette fin'ora, ma d'altronde lei stessa ci mette in guardia leggendo ; "ti scrivo in disordine, lo so bene. Ma è come vivo. Lavoro solo con oggetti smarriti e ritrovati”.
“ci sono tante cose da dire che non so come dirle” e “voglio avere la libertà di dire cose senza nesso”.
Fatta questa premessa, come in altri suoi scritti, bisogna lasciarsi andare e farsi trasportare dal suo uso della parola.
La parola è la mia quarta dimensione .
Il perché a me non interessa , la causa è materia del passato.
L'armonia segreta della disarmonia : non voglio ciò che è fatto ma ciò che tortuosamente si sta ancora facendo .
Più che un istante , desidero il suo fluire .
Ho conosciuto un « < lei » che umanizzava le bestie chiacchierando con loro e attribuendo loro le sue caratteristiche . Non umanizzo le bestie perché è offensivo - bisogna rispettare la natura - sono io che mi animalizzo . Non è difficile e avviene semplicemente . Si tratta solo di non fare resistenza e di abbandonarsi .
Io non ho una trama di vita ? Sono inopinatamente frammentaria . Sono pezzo per pezzo . La mia storia è vivere . E non ho paura del fallimento . Che il fallimento mi annichilisca , voglio la gloria della caduta . Il mio angelo zoppo che si contorce schivo , il mio angelo caduto dal cielo all'inferno dove vive godendosi il male .
Sono io che sto ascoltando un fischio nel buio . Io che sono malata della condizione umana . Mi ribello : non voglio più essere una persona . Chi ? Chi prova misericordia per noi che sappiamo della vita e della morte mentre un animale , che io profondamente invidio , è incosciente della sua condizione ? Chi ha pietà di noi ? Siamo dei reietti ? Abbandonati alla disperazione ? No , deve esserci una consolazione possibile . Lo giuro : ci deve essere . Non ho il coraggio di dire la verità che sappiamo . Ci sono parole proibite . Ma io denuncio . Denuncio la nostra debolezza , denuncio l'orrore allucinante di morire ... e rispondo a tutta questa infamia con ... esattamente ciò che adesso rimarrà scritto ... e rispondo a tutta questa infamia con allegria . Purissima e leggerissima allegria . La mia unica salvezza è l'allegria .
October 19, 2013
What is it?
- It is not a normal story book.
- It is not a normal fiction (though the official title is fiction).
- It is also not a normal non fiction book.
- It is not a normal book.
It is a book that explains/tries to explain/speaks the "essence of all beings." It can be said of a book that contains some unorganized ontological philosophical musings.....
The author explores the indefinable source of all life - the force that gives life to all beings - the 'life-force/life-energy' that makes every being a being.
She writes: "I who long to drink water at the source of the spring ---- I who am all of this, must by fate and tragic destiny only know and taste the echoes of me, because I cannot capture the me itself."
Where is this life-force present? This life force is present in the present moment of one's living.
She writes: "Every thing has an instant in which it is. I want to grab hold of the IS of the thing."
What forms this IS can take? Or in what all forms it is present now? It is present in each living being - human beings and animals. She also later sees this IS being present also in the plants and even in the inanimate beings. This IS is eternal and ever present.
She writes: "I was born like this: drawing from my mother's uterus the life that was always eternal."
In another place she writes: "I need to feel again the IT of animals. For a long time I haven't been in contact with primitive animal life. I need to study animals. I want to capture the IT in order not to paint an eagle and a horse, but a horse with the open wings of a great eagle."
So there is a no difference between the one and the other. Because each being has the same source - the eternal IS. She writes in another place very interestingly: "The sole guarantee is that I was born. You are a form of being I, and I a form of being you: those are the limits of my possibility."
Affirming the same conviction she also ends the book saying the following lines: "Look at me and love me. No: you look at yourself and love yourself. That's right." Love yourself literally means all the life forms or to be precise wherever the IS is present in the form of any being.
What is this IS? Or who is this IS?
Her answer: "....I forgot what I wrote in the dream, everything returned to the nothing, returned to the Force of what Exists and that is sometimes called God."
Does she mean to say that she knew all the truth? Or does she claim that she has received truth in some kind of ecstasy?
She responds: "We never say the final truth. May whoever knows the truth come forward. And speak. We shall listen contritely."
What does she claim and what does she regret?
She claims that she falls into a kind of trance (not in the religious sense) and in which she gets the glimpse of the IS - The Life-Force. And this she wants to pass to the readers and she realises that it is not possible with the only means that is available, i.e, the words.
She writes: "What I say is never what I say but instead something else." Ans she gives a fantastic analogy to support her claim. She writes: "How to produce the taste in words? The taste is one and words are many." Yet in another place she writes: "But now I want to see if I can capture what happened to me by using words. As I use them I'll be destroying to some extent what I felt--but that's inevitable."
Final Note:
There are some more interesting thoughts on death. For death is considered to be the end of life? And her reflections are interesting.
There are many more interesting passages and interesting quotes. The quote that I loved most is: "I want to be buried with the watch on my wrist so that in the earth something can pulse time."
And if you are a student of philosophy and are equipped with the important ontological terms, such as, "being - BEING - IS - Existing - the essence of beings", this book would speak very fluently to you.
- It is not a normal story book.
- It is not a normal fiction (though the official title is fiction).
- It is also not a normal non fiction book.
- It is not a normal book.
It is a book that explains/tries to explain/speaks the "essence of all beings." It can be said of a book that contains some unorganized ontological philosophical musings.....
The author explores the indefinable source of all life - the force that gives life to all beings - the 'life-force/life-energy' that makes every being a being.
She writes: "I who long to drink water at the source of the spring ---- I who am all of this, must by fate and tragic destiny only know and taste the echoes of me, because I cannot capture the me itself."
Where is this life-force present? This life force is present in the present moment of one's living.
She writes: "Every thing has an instant in which it is. I want to grab hold of the IS of the thing."
What forms this IS can take? Or in what all forms it is present now? It is present in each living being - human beings and animals. She also later sees this IS being present also in the plants and even in the inanimate beings. This IS is eternal and ever present.
She writes: "I was born like this: drawing from my mother's uterus the life that was always eternal."
In another place she writes: "I need to feel again the IT of animals. For a long time I haven't been in contact with primitive animal life. I need to study animals. I want to capture the IT in order not to paint an eagle and a horse, but a horse with the open wings of a great eagle."
So there is a no difference between the one and the other. Because each being has the same source - the eternal IS. She writes in another place very interestingly: "The sole guarantee is that I was born. You are a form of being I, and I a form of being you: those are the limits of my possibility."
Affirming the same conviction she also ends the book saying the following lines: "Look at me and love me. No: you look at yourself and love yourself. That's right." Love yourself literally means all the life forms or to be precise wherever the IS is present in the form of any being.
What is this IS? Or who is this IS?
Her answer: "....I forgot what I wrote in the dream, everything returned to the nothing, returned to the Force of what Exists and that is sometimes called God."
Does she mean to say that she knew all the truth? Or does she claim that she has received truth in some kind of ecstasy?
She responds: "We never say the final truth. May whoever knows the truth come forward. And speak. We shall listen contritely."
What does she claim and what does she regret?
She claims that she falls into a kind of trance (not in the religious sense) and in which she gets the glimpse of the IS - The Life-Force. And this she wants to pass to the readers and she realises that it is not possible with the only means that is available, i.e, the words.
She writes: "What I say is never what I say but instead something else." Ans she gives a fantastic analogy to support her claim. She writes: "How to produce the taste in words? The taste is one and words are many." Yet in another place she writes: "But now I want to see if I can capture what happened to me by using words. As I use them I'll be destroying to some extent what I felt--but that's inevitable."
Final Note:
There are some more interesting thoughts on death. For death is considered to be the end of life? And her reflections are interesting.
There are many more interesting passages and interesting quotes. The quote that I loved most is: "I want to be buried with the watch on my wrist so that in the earth something can pulse time."
And if you are a student of philosophy and are equipped with the important ontological terms, such as, "being - BEING - IS - Existing - the essence of beings", this book would speak very fluently to you.
August 12, 2013
This is a book that I will return to at least once a year. The prose reminds me of Saul Williams’ poetry, although Saul was born a mere five years before Lispector died in 1977, so any thoughts of reincarnation do not hold in this particular instance.
A bricolage of paragraphs longing for understanding on the present moment are placed like Tibetan prayer flags in the work -- there seems to be a thread or current running throughout the pieces. Of course Água Viva means The Stream of Life, so she spends much of the book’s length on coming to grips with mortality. Translator Stefan Tobler did a fine job in presenting this in English.
It’s a wonderful work and I cannot recommend it highly enough. Even to thumb through it a paragraph at a time seems to offer quite a payback. The book reads more like music or a painting than a novel, in fact. It is no wonder that it has influenced a great number of Brazilian artists, including musician Cazuza who read it 111 times.
A bricolage of paragraphs longing for understanding on the present moment are placed like Tibetan prayer flags in the work -- there seems to be a thread or current running throughout the pieces. Of course Água Viva means The Stream of Life, so she spends much of the book’s length on coming to grips with mortality. Translator Stefan Tobler did a fine job in presenting this in English.
It’s a wonderful work and I cannot recommend it highly enough. Even to thumb through it a paragraph at a time seems to offer quite a payback. The book reads more like music or a painting than a novel, in fact. It is no wonder that it has influenced a great number of Brazilian artists, including musician Cazuza who read it 111 times.
January 3, 2020
Em uma linha de Clarice cabe o mundo inteiro.
November 27, 2022
Clifford Sargent, (Better Than Food), said ‘be careful with Lispector, it’s not literature, it’s witchcraft’. And I get it.
You don’t read Lispector’s Água Viva with conscious understanding… you’re bewitched by it.
Lispector writes, “I don’t know what I’m writing about: I am obscure to myself. I only had initially a lunar and lucid vision, and so I plucked for myself the instant before it died and perpetually dies. This is not a message of ideas that I am transmitting to you but an instinctive ecstasy of whatever is hidden in nature and that I foretell. And this is a feast of words.” So, yeah…
In short, it’s genius. But I’m not sure I can explain exactly why!
You don’t read Lispector’s Água Viva with conscious understanding… you’re bewitched by it.
Lispector writes, “I don’t know what I’m writing about: I am obscure to myself. I only had initially a lunar and lucid vision, and so I plucked for myself the instant before it died and perpetually dies. This is not a message of ideas that I am transmitting to you but an instinctive ecstasy of whatever is hidden in nature and that I foretell. And this is a feast of words.” So, yeah…
In short, it’s genius. But I’m not sure I can explain exactly why!
February 13, 2024
Chaos readies itself again like musical instruments that are tuned before the electronic music begins. I am improvising and the beauty of what I improvise is a fugue. I feel throbbing within me the prayer that has not yet come.
(12/2/2024) ‘Blue meth of literature’ (someone had said, refer to first review below) hits even harder on a second read. Why does it not feel very familiar even though this is a re-read? The magic and brilliance of Lispector, I suppose. I only very vaguely remember being sort of flustered, when reading about a musician in an interview (somewhere, might have linked it below in my first review) very surely claiming that they have read this over fifty times, it must be a wild exaggeration. I’m starting to think I was making a premature judgement of that. This is addictive, but so is most of Lispector’s work. This one’s my first Lispector of the year, albeit a re-read, completely necessary in any case.
‘No, I was never modern. And this happens: when I think a painting is strange that’s when it’s a painting. And when I think a word is strange that’s where it achieves the meaning. And when I think life is strange that’s where life begins. I take care not to surpass myself. In all of this is great restraint. And then I get sad just to rest. I even cry gently out of sadness. Then I get up and start again. I just won’t tell you a story now is because in that case it would be prostitution. And I’m not writing to please you. Mainly myself. I have to follow the pure line and keep my it uncontaminated. Now I shall write you everything that comes into my mind with the least possible amount of policing. Because I feel attracted to the unknown.’
‘Surpassing the maximum is living the pure element. There are people who can’t stand it: they vomit. But I am used to blood. What beautiful music I can hear in the depths of me. It is made of geometric lines crisscrossing in the air. It is chamber music. Chamber music has no melody. It is a way of expressing the silence. I’m sending you chamber writing. And this writing I’m attempting is a way of thrashing myself free.’
‘The litres of blood that circulate in the veins. The muscles contracting and relaxing. The full-moon aura of the body. Parambolic— whatever that word means. Parambolic as I am. I can’t sum myself up because you can’t add a chair and two apples. I am a chair and two apples. And I cannot be added up.’
‘Pain is exacerbated life. The process hurts. Coming-to-be is a slow and slow good pain. It’s the wide stretching as far one can go. And your blood thanks you. I breathe, I breathe. The air is it. Air with wind is already a he or she. If I had to force myself to write you I would be so sad. Sometimes I can’t stand the strength of inspiration. Then I paint with a heavy heart. It’s so good that things don’t depend on me.’
‘Bird-of-paradise is pure masculinity. It has an aggressiveness of love and of healthy pride. It seems to have a cock’s comb and his crow. It just doesn’t wait for dawn. The violence of your beauty.’
‘I can’t be bothered to speak of edelweiss. Because it’s found at an altitude of three thousand four hundred metres. It’s white and woolly. Rarely reachable: it’s aspiration.’
‘No one taught me to want. But I already want. I’m lying with my eyes open looking at the ceiling. Inside is the darkness. An I that pulses already forms. There are sunflowers. There is tall wheat. I is.’
‘Like a cat whose fur bristles, I bristle when faced with myself. From the desert I would also return empty, illuminated and translucent, and with the same vibrating silence of a mirror. Its form doesn’t matter: no form manages to circumscribe and alter it. Mirror is light. A tiny piece of mirror is always the whole mirror.’
Agua Viva — does that mean jellyfish as well, I believe? As someone who is not familiar with the Portuguese (Brazilian) language, all I can think of is water and life, but I am so sure it has multi-layered meanings underneath all of that. It’s such a joyous experience reading Lispector’s lines. Some have called this one her magnus opus, but I am not in the mood to make any premature judgements. Reading Lispector is not just a form of pleasure, it is but a religious experience. Will come back to it again surely, I just know. Rated it 3* back in 2020, and then now, undoubtedly a full 5*.
‘Paradoxically, the better one’s Portuguese, the more difficult it is to read Clarice Lispector. The foreigner with a basic knowledge of Romance grammar and vocabulary can read her work with ease. The Brazilian, however, often finds her difficult. This is because her subtle rearrangements of everyday language are so surprising that they often baffle the reader, particularly the reader with little experience of her work. In Água Viva, Clarice pushed her language as far as it could go without risking incoherence. The book was written in fragments, and Olga Borelli’s editorial method, she wrote, was “breathing together, it’s breathing together.”’ — from ‘Preface’ by Benjamin Moser
Moser’s discussion of Lispector’s strange use of language I thought was sort of delightful. Having read her collected cronicas (again, and again, with a bit of chaos, most suitably, I feel), and knowing that she has a stronger affinity with the English language even though that is not her ‘dominant’ language, adds an even lovelier layer of meaning to all this.
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(17/5/2020) I went into this with quite high expectations. I don't know how I feel about it yet as it was a quick read - breezed through it very quickly. There were a couple of lines that caught my attention/stuck to me :
"I cut the pain of which I write to you and give you my restless joy."
"Look and me and love me. No: you look at yourself and love yourself. That's right."
Apparently a Brazilian musician was quite obsessed with the book and read it a hundred and eleven times. I've got a feeling that it's the kind of book that I might appreciate more the more times I read it. In an article from Sydney Review of Books, this book was referred to as : 'the blue meth of literature' (https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/revie...) which I think is a rather impressive compliment. I might have to give it another go to appreciate it more. There is an odd sort of musicality knotted through the lines in the book that I find quite appealing/attractive. The style of writing/the way it's structured is quite strange, but it did not bother me much as I quite appreciate the 'fluidity' of it. It reminded me of Bluets.
January 18, 2024
"Each of us is a symbol that deals with symbols -- everything a point of only reference to the real."
- Clarice Lispector, Água Viva.
Reading any book by Clarice Lispector is a trip. Trying to review it is nearly impossible. Plot? None. Reviewing it presents the same difficulties with language that her own book exposes. "The best is not yet written. The best is between the lines." It isn't just what she is saying, which is being translated, that we are trying to grasp (yes, I'm including you with me; us), but what she cannot say and what cannot be translated. She bumps you into the darkness to try and describe the light. It is a dance of almost, a spilt answer, and word that stumbles on the tip of the tongue to disappear. We don't need the word, we need the nearly word. She almost delivers. She tickles the right foot.
As she was writing this, and working with her editor, she changed the narrator to an artist, which was a brilliant move. She is looking to describe the sound, the taste, the smell, the essence of IT and IS in a way that perhaps only art has been able to do (music, perhaps). Was she successful? I'm not sure, define success? Did she give it a helluva shot? Yup.
- Clarice Lispector, Água Viva.
Reading any book by Clarice Lispector is a trip. Trying to review it is nearly impossible. Plot? None. Reviewing it presents the same difficulties with language that her own book exposes. "The best is not yet written. The best is between the lines." It isn't just what she is saying, which is being translated, that we are trying to grasp (yes, I'm including you with me; us), but what she cannot say and what cannot be translated. She bumps you into the darkness to try and describe the light. It is a dance of almost, a spilt answer, and word that stumbles on the tip of the tongue to disappear. We don't need the word, we need the nearly word. She almost delivers. She tickles the right foot.
As she was writing this, and working with her editor, she changed the narrator to an artist, which was a brilliant move. She is looking to describe the sound, the taste, the smell, the essence of IT and IS in a way that perhaps only art has been able to do (music, perhaps). Was she successful? I'm not sure, define success? Did she give it a helluva shot? Yup.
January 16, 2019
‘Her birimiz sembollerle uğraşan sembolleriz, her şey gerçeğe sadece tek bir referans.’
.
Zaman, mekan, karakterler belli değil bu kitapta. Ancak şunu görebiliyoruz: ‘ben sana sesleniyorum, sana beni yazıyorum, sendeki ben-bendeki seni parlatabilmek uğruna’. Pek çok cümlenin altını çizdiğim, kolay okunduğu kadar kolay hazmedilemeyecek bir kitap oldu benim için.
.
Zaman, mekan, karakterler belli değil bu kitapta. Ancak şunu görebiliyoruz: ‘ben sana sesleniyorum, sana beni yazıyorum, sendeki ben-bendeki seni parlatabilmek uğruna’. Pek çok cümlenin altını çizdiğim, kolay okunduğu kadar kolay hazmedilemeyecek bir kitap oldu benim için.
March 3, 2023
This book confirms that Lispector understands what cannot be understood. She understands that she can never and will never understand so much. That doesn’t stop her. She creates to be. “I want to die with life.”
February 19, 2020
Oooof, that was mesmerising. Poetic. Ephemeral. Felt like a trance.
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