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Selected Crônicas
"In 1967, Brazil's leading newspaper asked the avant-garde writer Lispector to write a weekly column on any topic she wished. For almost seven years, Lispector showed Brazilian readers just how vast and passionate her interests were. This beautifully translated collection of selected columns, or crônicas, is just as immediately stimulating today and ably reinforces her reputation as one of Brazil's greatest writers. Indeed, these columns should establish her as being among the era's most brilliant essayists. She is masterful, even reminiscent of Montaigne, in her ability to spin the mundane events of life into moments of clarity that reveal greater truths."—Publishers Weekly
296 pages, Paperback
First published November 17, 1996
73 people are currently reading
934 people want to read
About the author
Clarice Lispector
246 books8,247 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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Displaying 1 - 30 of 57 reviews
September 26, 2008
I can no longer recall where it began but I know I did not start at the beginning. It was, in a manner of speaking, all written simultaneously. Everything was there, or appeared to be there as if within the temporal space of an open piano with its simultaneous keys.
I wrote with the utmost care as the narrative began to take shape inside me, and only after the fifth version had been patiently drafted did I become fully aware of the text. Only then did I begin to understand more clearly what was waiting to be expressed.
My great fear was that, out of impatience with my slowness in understanding myself, I might arrive at some meaning with undue haste. I had the impression , or rather felt certain that the more time I gave myself, the more spontaneously would the narrative begin to surface.
Increasingly I find that it is all a matter of patience, of love begetting patience, of patience begetting love.
The book came together simultaneously as it were, emerging more here than there, or suddenly more there than here: I would interrupt a sentence in Chapter Ten, let us say, in order to write Chapter Two, which I would then abandon for months on end while I wrote Chapter Eighteen. I showed endless patience: putting up with the considerable inconvenience of disorder without any reassurance that I would finish the book. But then order, too, can bring a sense of disquiet.
As always, the greatest difficulty is waiting. (I’m feeling rather odd, a woman will tell her doctor. You’re going to have a baby. And here was me thinking I was dying, the woman replies.) My deformed soul growing and swelling, while I remain uncertain whether something is about to come to light.
In addition to this tiresome waiting, it requires infinite patience to reconstitute in gradual stages the initial vision which came in a flash. Recovering that vision is extremely difficult.
And to make matters worse, I am quite hopeless when it comes to editing. I am incapable of narrating an idea, and do not know how to ‘embellish an idea with words’. What I write does not refer to past thought, but to thought in the present: whatever comes to the surface is already expressed in the only possibly words, or simply does not exist.
As I write them down, I am convinced once more that, however paradoxical it may sound, the greatest drawback about writing is that one has to use words. It is a problem. For I should prefer a more direct form of communication, that tacit understanding one often finds between people. If I could write by carving wood or by stroking a child’s head or strolling in the countryside, I would never resort to using words. I would do what so many people do who are not writers, and with the same joy and torment as those who write, and with the same bitter disappointments which are beyond consolation. I would live and no longer use words. And this might be the solution. And as such, be most welcome.
From: The Making of a Novel
(May 2nd 1970
pgs: 139-140)
I wrote with the utmost care as the narrative began to take shape inside me, and only after the fifth version had been patiently drafted did I become fully aware of the text. Only then did I begin to understand more clearly what was waiting to be expressed.
My great fear was that, out of impatience with my slowness in understanding myself, I might arrive at some meaning with undue haste. I had the impression , or rather felt certain that the more time I gave myself, the more spontaneously would the narrative begin to surface.
Increasingly I find that it is all a matter of patience, of love begetting patience, of patience begetting love.
The book came together simultaneously as it were, emerging more here than there, or suddenly more there than here: I would interrupt a sentence in Chapter Ten, let us say, in order to write Chapter Two, which I would then abandon for months on end while I wrote Chapter Eighteen. I showed endless patience: putting up with the considerable inconvenience of disorder without any reassurance that I would finish the book. But then order, too, can bring a sense of disquiet.
As always, the greatest difficulty is waiting. (I’m feeling rather odd, a woman will tell her doctor. You’re going to have a baby. And here was me thinking I was dying, the woman replies.) My deformed soul growing and swelling, while I remain uncertain whether something is about to come to light.
In addition to this tiresome waiting, it requires infinite patience to reconstitute in gradual stages the initial vision which came in a flash. Recovering that vision is extremely difficult.
And to make matters worse, I am quite hopeless when it comes to editing. I am incapable of narrating an idea, and do not know how to ‘embellish an idea with words’. What I write does not refer to past thought, but to thought in the present: whatever comes to the surface is already expressed in the only possibly words, or simply does not exist.
As I write them down, I am convinced once more that, however paradoxical it may sound, the greatest drawback about writing is that one has to use words. It is a problem. For I should prefer a more direct form of communication, that tacit understanding one often finds between people. If I could write by carving wood or by stroking a child’s head or strolling in the countryside, I would never resort to using words. I would do what so many people do who are not writers, and with the same joy and torment as those who write, and with the same bitter disappointments which are beyond consolation. I would live and no longer use words. And this might be the solution. And as such, be most welcome.
From: The Making of a Novel
(May 2nd 1970
pgs: 139-140)
October 28, 2024
god i just love her and her mind and the prism of every translation it shines through
July 16, 2013
Took me a while to finish as I read the book basically as a daily devotion. Nothing earth-shattering here, and honestly I have to say I was a bit disappointed in it as a whole. I was prepared for some courageous activity on the page but really did not connect to much of anything. Nonetheless, it was nice to visit with Clarice Lispector for these last several months. She made a good friend though she always had the last word, that is, until my speaking out now.
January 28, 2025
این شاهکار در ایران با ترجمهی خوب و دقیقِ مجید پروانهپور توسط نشر نونوشت منتشر شده که برای علاقهمندان لیسپکتور یک غنیمت و عیش مدام و بیپایانه.
کتاب «یاد آوردن آنچه هرگز نبوده است» گزیدهایست از داستانکها و یادداشتهای لیسپکتور، یادداشتهایی از جنس یادداشتهای ویرجینیا وولف یا از جنس یادداشتهای تسوتایوا یا یادداشتهای سیلویا پلات و کافکا و ...
کتاب «یاد آوردن آنچه هرگز نبوده است» گزیدهایست از داستانکها و یادداشتهای لیسپکتور، یادداشتهایی از جنس یادداشتهای ویرجینیا وولف یا از جنس یادداشتهای تسوتایوا یا یادداشتهای سیلویا پلات و کافکا و ...
November 15, 2024
Having become a self-proclaimed Clarice Lispector fan, reading the Crônicas was a dream. Literally. It was this strange (lovely) shift from dream to reality to dream again. Reading all these diaries has broadened my sense of what words can do and their nature of being rooted in reality yet so detached from it. I wonder if there’s any way to write about the world while still remaining in it. Very much i didn’t want to be here so i picked up a pen.
Staring at this text box, I’m feeling flustered trying to start. I have way too many pull quotes. Instead of trying to find an organized way to begin, I am just going to fall head first in.
I’m moved by this sense of time in her writing, how there’s never enough of it. I would have this feeling that it was fleeting and escaping from the words, “for as long as you like is all that anyone, young or old, could possibly wish for” (3) while at other points time seemed like a wild thing to capture. to find a way to hold onto. “do not sacrifice today for tomorrow. If you are unhappy at present, do something about it now, because we only exist from one now to the next” (55) while at other points it was something to endure… for however long we must endure it. “Shall I have to spend my entire life waiting for Sunday to pass?” (103) I'm not sure if this is the effect of these pieces being part of a column or if this the colder season making time seem impossible or if this is a third more mysterious thing.
I’d like to think her writing is all similar while all being quite different. Her voice always finds you, eventually, regardless of the tangents she takes you on. For instance, she’d go from “And not to lie is a gift the world does not deserve” (7) to “And we die without so much as an explanation. And worst of all — we live without so much as an explanation” (7) to “To get used to happiness is dangerous. We could become more selfish because happy people are selfish. They are less sensitive to human suffering and we might not feel obliged to try and help those in need” (26) to “I have no desire to forge life because existence already exists” (77) to “to be loyal is to be disloyal to all the rest” (84) to “We must never forget that we are cannibals. We must respect our cruelty” (118) to “Dreamers, they began practicing tolerance: it was heroic to be tolerant” (209) to “To write often means remembering what never existed. So how can I know what has never existed? Like this: as if I were remembering. By an effort of memory, as if I had never been born. I was never born. I have never lived. But I remember, and remembering is like an open wound” (182) to “All fools must go to heaven” (155) she would write about how terrible and awful and sad everything is, but then have one liners like “For I am convinced life is beautiful” (36). just this sentence alone has layers i am reeling over. to be convinced life is beautiful has this evocative opposite reaction that to her, at one point, it wasn’t (as it is for most of us). (also note how i cheated by putting a lot of quotes in this one example)
reading this spring passage as it’s autumn turning into winter made me wistful for a time that’s to come (but also a time that’s been lost so many times). “I know what spring is like because I can smell the pollen in the atmosphere as if it were mine, I can feel myself tremble when a little bird sings, and feel like that I am unconsciously renewing my life. Because I am alive…But existing can sometimes cost blood, and there is no way of avoiding this because it is in my blood that I feel spring. And it hurts. Spring gives me things. It gives me the wherewithal to live. And I feel that I shall die on a spring day. Die of wounding love and a broken heart” (45)
the interview with Neruda was a (pleasant) surprise.
Neruda
“—Have you suffered much for love?”
—I am prepared to suffer even more” (66)
seriously. i might have to get this tattooed. or something.
the part about the shoe seller really hurt me because, like, why am I in this. “And to this day he sells shoes with the air of a scholar, as if his feet never touched this rough earth which wears out the soles of our shoes” (104)
her musing about writing was also interesting. sometimes i get tired of writers writing about writing, but she does it in a way that’s so fresh and crisp and cold. “Creation is not an understanding, it is a new mystery” (146). i was thinking about writing as creation and storytelling as creation in relation to her later quote, “People so badly need to be able to tell themselves their own story” (206). we so badly want to ‘understand’ our lives by remembering and storytelling, but also in a backwards way we so desperately want to make a mystery of ourselves. because there’s no way to properly capture life in words. we are cursed to only make ourselves a further abstraction by trying to articulate. there is no way to win. then again, why would i want to win anything at all?
another quote: “All this because they wanted to give something a name; because they wanted to exist, they who already existed. They were then to learn that unless one is distracted, the telephone does not ring; that it is necessary to be out for that letter to arrive, and that when the telephone finally does ring, the wasteland of waiting has already disconnected the wires. All this, all this, because they were no longer distracted” (168) if i was younger and read this i would've cried on the spot. shoutout the version of myself that once wrote in their diary my entire life is trying to distract myself from it, a million things await you. you're going to grow up and move away and go to college and read Clarice Lispector.
ah, she’s just so human. from the egg passages to the “I forgot to add that I find the turtle completely immoral…How can one comprehend a turtle? How can one comprehend God?” (179). i love turtles! don’t do this to me!
thoughts on love:
“Lots of people would prefer adolescent love to haunt them for the rest of their lives. It would make a better story” (6) “One thing I do know: love, however violent, is pure. And that is how I have come to discover that I am not pure” (21) “Love is poverty in the end. Love is to possess nothing…It is conceded precisely to those unworthy agents who would spoil everything unless they were allowed some vague intuition” (83) “So long as I imagine that God is good because I am evil, I shall find myself loving nothing: it will simply be my way of accusing myself” (159) “when I triumphantly wrote in my diary that I did not believe in love, that was precisely when I loved most of all” (197) “...Perhaps love is to give one’s own solitude to others? For it is the very last thing we have to offer” (197)
there’s also the part “I shall make no more assumptions. But simply say Yes to the world” (188) that rings so much with her Hour of the Star. i had to stop reading and try not to cry here. she is everywhere in her writing, she bleeds right through it.
and closing quote: “Don’t you find there is frightening emptiness in everything? Yes, there is. Meanwhile one waits for the heart to understand” (204) i think the heart trying to understand, waiting to understand, is where we will always be at odds with ourselves. the mind, the soul, the body, the heart, they are never truly aligned and i’m beginning to suspect that that is a gift. we will never be able to settle and sit still because there will never be a time we are perfectly in harmony. there will never be a place in our lives where we completely understand what it is we are doing here. what a joy to be able to keep living, even if i have to say this through tears. what a blessing to have this opportunity to try and share these moments, even if these moments will never be perfectly understood. the heart waits, the heart weights, the heart weighs us down. but only so we can crumple to the floor and remember that our feet do in fact touch the ground and the fact we feel so far away from life and the world and reality only proves that we are part of it. something, something, something, dreams are only dreams, so remember to write them down.
Staring at this text box, I’m feeling flustered trying to start. I have way too many pull quotes. Instead of trying to find an organized way to begin, I am just going to fall head first in.
I’m moved by this sense of time in her writing, how there’s never enough of it. I would have this feeling that it was fleeting and escaping from the words, “for as long as you like is all that anyone, young or old, could possibly wish for” (3) while at other points time seemed like a wild thing to capture. to find a way to hold onto. “do not sacrifice today for tomorrow. If you are unhappy at present, do something about it now, because we only exist from one now to the next” (55) while at other points it was something to endure… for however long we must endure it. “Shall I have to spend my entire life waiting for Sunday to pass?” (103) I'm not sure if this is the effect of these pieces being part of a column or if this the colder season making time seem impossible or if this is a third more mysterious thing.
I’d like to think her writing is all similar while all being quite different. Her voice always finds you, eventually, regardless of the tangents she takes you on. For instance, she’d go from “And not to lie is a gift the world does not deserve” (7) to “And we die without so much as an explanation. And worst of all — we live without so much as an explanation” (7) to “To get used to happiness is dangerous. We could become more selfish because happy people are selfish. They are less sensitive to human suffering and we might not feel obliged to try and help those in need” (26) to “I have no desire to forge life because existence already exists” (77) to “to be loyal is to be disloyal to all the rest” (84) to “We must never forget that we are cannibals. We must respect our cruelty” (118) to “Dreamers, they began practicing tolerance: it was heroic to be tolerant” (209) to “To write often means remembering what never existed. So how can I know what has never existed? Like this: as if I were remembering. By an effort of memory, as if I had never been born. I was never born. I have never lived. But I remember, and remembering is like an open wound” (182) to “All fools must go to heaven” (155) she would write about how terrible and awful and sad everything is, but then have one liners like “For I am convinced life is beautiful” (36). just this sentence alone has layers i am reeling over. to be convinced life is beautiful has this evocative opposite reaction that to her, at one point, it wasn’t (as it is for most of us). (also note how i cheated by putting a lot of quotes in this one example)
reading this spring passage as it’s autumn turning into winter made me wistful for a time that’s to come (but also a time that’s been lost so many times). “I know what spring is like because I can smell the pollen in the atmosphere as if it were mine, I can feel myself tremble when a little bird sings, and feel like that I am unconsciously renewing my life. Because I am alive…But existing can sometimes cost blood, and there is no way of avoiding this because it is in my blood that I feel spring. And it hurts. Spring gives me things. It gives me the wherewithal to live. And I feel that I shall die on a spring day. Die of wounding love and a broken heart” (45)
the interview with Neruda was a (pleasant) surprise.
Neruda
“—Have you suffered much for love?”
—I am prepared to suffer even more” (66)
seriously. i might have to get this tattooed. or something.
the part about the shoe seller really hurt me because, like, why am I in this. “And to this day he sells shoes with the air of a scholar, as if his feet never touched this rough earth which wears out the soles of our shoes” (104)
her musing about writing was also interesting. sometimes i get tired of writers writing about writing, but she does it in a way that’s so fresh and crisp and cold. “Creation is not an understanding, it is a new mystery” (146). i was thinking about writing as creation and storytelling as creation in relation to her later quote, “People so badly need to be able to tell themselves their own story” (206). we so badly want to ‘understand’ our lives by remembering and storytelling, but also in a backwards way we so desperately want to make a mystery of ourselves. because there’s no way to properly capture life in words. we are cursed to only make ourselves a further abstraction by trying to articulate. there is no way to win. then again, why would i want to win anything at all?
another quote: “All this because they wanted to give something a name; because they wanted to exist, they who already existed. They were then to learn that unless one is distracted, the telephone does not ring; that it is necessary to be out for that letter to arrive, and that when the telephone finally does ring, the wasteland of waiting has already disconnected the wires. All this, all this, because they were no longer distracted” (168) if i was younger and read this i would've cried on the spot. shoutout the version of myself that once wrote in their diary my entire life is trying to distract myself from it, a million things await you. you're going to grow up and move away and go to college and read Clarice Lispector.
ah, she’s just so human. from the egg passages to the “I forgot to add that I find the turtle completely immoral…How can one comprehend a turtle? How can one comprehend God?” (179). i love turtles! don’t do this to me!
thoughts on love:
“Lots of people would prefer adolescent love to haunt them for the rest of their lives. It would make a better story” (6) “One thing I do know: love, however violent, is pure. And that is how I have come to discover that I am not pure” (21) “Love is poverty in the end. Love is to possess nothing…It is conceded precisely to those unworthy agents who would spoil everything unless they were allowed some vague intuition” (83) “So long as I imagine that God is good because I am evil, I shall find myself loving nothing: it will simply be my way of accusing myself” (159) “when I triumphantly wrote in my diary that I did not believe in love, that was precisely when I loved most of all” (197) “...Perhaps love is to give one’s own solitude to others? For it is the very last thing we have to offer” (197)
there’s also the part “I shall make no more assumptions. But simply say Yes to the world” (188) that rings so much with her Hour of the Star. i had to stop reading and try not to cry here. she is everywhere in her writing, she bleeds right through it.
and closing quote: “Don’t you find there is frightening emptiness in everything? Yes, there is. Meanwhile one waits for the heart to understand” (204) i think the heart trying to understand, waiting to understand, is where we will always be at odds with ourselves. the mind, the soul, the body, the heart, they are never truly aligned and i’m beginning to suspect that that is a gift. we will never be able to settle and sit still because there will never be a time we are perfectly in harmony. there will never be a place in our lives where we completely understand what it is we are doing here. what a joy to be able to keep living, even if i have to say this through tears. what a blessing to have this opportunity to try and share these moments, even if these moments will never be perfectly understood. the heart waits, the heart weights, the heart weighs us down. but only so we can crumple to the floor and remember that our feet do in fact touch the ground and the fact we feel so far away from life and the world and reality only proves that we are part of it. something, something, something, dreams are only dreams, so remember to write them down.
March 18, 2022
apparently 'cronicas' is a weekly thing in Brazilian newspapers where writers are given some space to talk about whatever they want, be it a vignette or a short essay or an anecdote etc.
i haven't read a lot of #ClariceLispector but enough to know i strongly revere her unique voice and techniques, so this collection of her possibly best cronicas was a very very exciting prospect for me. can't say i fully enjoyed it tho. i think i was too bothered that the pages were too cramped. like the text isn't that small but felt so maybe because her writing in itself is dense. each sentence packs heavy thoughts, often in attempts to untangle mysteries of life and our existence many would fear to tread.
she is a courageous writer that way: how she allows her thoughts to ventures on unpopularly touched grounds. here she passes by islands of complicated childhood psychology, arguments on which animals are best, curious neighbors, and other short compositions that more than aiming to enlighten the reader simply poses these difficult, but definitely resonant abstract questions. ("To write often means remembering what never existed," she says. and "remembering is like an open wound.")
if a male caucasian writer had a body of work as Lispector's he'd be considered a contemporary classic by now -- associated with Sartre, Kundera, and the like.
anyway as much as i love her these 200 pages felt more like 500 to me. not that it's terrible, but again, the weight of internal struggles she curiously touched on were a lot to binge-read. maybe this is best experienced the way she originally intended: once a week, with coffee and a rainy Saturday morning.
i haven't read a lot of #ClariceLispector but enough to know i strongly revere her unique voice and techniques, so this collection of her possibly best cronicas was a very very exciting prospect for me. can't say i fully enjoyed it tho. i think i was too bothered that the pages were too cramped. like the text isn't that small but felt so maybe because her writing in itself is dense. each sentence packs heavy thoughts, often in attempts to untangle mysteries of life and our existence many would fear to tread.
she is a courageous writer that way: how she allows her thoughts to ventures on unpopularly touched grounds. here she passes by islands of complicated childhood psychology, arguments on which animals are best, curious neighbors, and other short compositions that more than aiming to enlighten the reader simply poses these difficult, but definitely resonant abstract questions. ("To write often means remembering what never existed," she says. and "remembering is like an open wound.")
if a male caucasian writer had a body of work as Lispector's he'd be considered a contemporary classic by now -- associated with Sartre, Kundera, and the like.
anyway as much as i love her these 200 pages felt more like 500 to me. not that it's terrible, but again, the weight of internal struggles she curiously touched on were a lot to binge-read. maybe this is best experienced the way she originally intended: once a week, with coffee and a rainy Saturday morning.
August 26, 2019
- There is something here which frightens me. When I discover what it is, I shall also discover what I like about this place. Fear has always guided me to the things I love; and because I love, I became afraid. It was often fear which took me by the hand and led me. Fear leads me to danger. And everything I love has an element of risk.
- Not exactly a miracle. But what about certain coincidences? I experience them all the time, lines which keep coinciding and crossing one another, and as they cross they form a faint, fleeting point. So faint and fleeting, so subtle and elusive that simple to speak of it is like speaking of nothing.
- Madness borders on the most humiliating wisdom. By absorbing madness, I became quietly hallucinated. For me, the chair is an object. Useless so long as I am looking at it. What is the time please, so that I may know if I am living in this moment? Creativity stems from some origin but today it eludes me and all I have is this incipient madness which is in itself a valid creation. I have no further interest in valid things. I am liberated or lost... Future technology threatens to destroy all that is human in man, but technology cannot touch madness: and so that is where all that is human in man can take refuge...
May 7, 2018
Clarice Lispector is the best discovery of mine in the past year when it comes to finding new authors, and ever since I consider her my all-time favorite writer.
I love her special syntax, her originality, and creativity.
This book, maybe more 'casual' than her other books being a column for a newspaper, is still very good, and way more original than any other paper column I've read.
like the book of her short stories which sums up most of her works outside of her novels, this book really blossoms from the middle of it, where she got to a new level of what I call - excellence in her style and writing, that associative and original, those chapter you can't stop reading in one breath... those moments when you can't put the book off your hands. I wonder what happened in those years that opened that channel. I just love it.
I was surprised to find some early versions of some of her best short stories, like the chicken and the egg, and more. I'm not sure, but I think those were first sketches for the versions that eventually turned out in her books, and it's a fascinating look in her editing process.
I love her special syntax, her originality, and creativity.
This book, maybe more 'casual' than her other books being a column for a newspaper, is still very good, and way more original than any other paper column I've read.
like the book of her short stories which sums up most of her works outside of her novels, this book really blossoms from the middle of it, where she got to a new level of what I call - excellence in her style and writing, that associative and original, those chapter you can't stop reading in one breath... those moments when you can't put the book off your hands. I wonder what happened in those years that opened that channel. I just love it.
I was surprised to find some early versions of some of her best short stories, like the chicken and the egg, and more. I'm not sure, but I think those were first sketches for the versions that eventually turned out in her books, and it's a fascinating look in her editing process.
July 31, 2023
“É mesmo pureza? O que é primitivo é pureza. O que é espontâneo é pureza. O que é ruim é pureza? Não sei, sei que às vezes a raiz do que é ruim é uma pureza que não pôde ser.”
clarice lispector is sylvia plath for girls of the nordestina brasileira diaspora.
clarice lispector is sylvia plath for girls of the nordestina brasileira diaspora.
March 31, 2024
Another huge win for the Clarice Lispector fanclub. Makes me wish I was alive and living in Brazil for the time when a short column by Lispector would appear in the weekly newspaper. She writes the way I wish I thought
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June 23, 2025I think, maybe, an interesting study in where diaristic CNF can falter. You are initially struck with how un-Lispector it all seems, and only then can you realize that this is Lispector, but maybe not in the form you drew kinship. It all seems a bit too nascent and lacking in that degree of reflection to turn the individual into the universal. Sometimes there is gold, but too few and far between.
January 28, 2008
A wonderful introduction to Lispector. It's a collection of short pieces Lispector used to write as a columnist for . They are not at all journalistic however. Instead they are wonderful meditations, philosophical bits, encounters, prose poems. This is the sort of book I like to read when I feel stuck.
August 10, 2016
amazing. perfect. need to read 100 more times to fully digest.
March 18, 2012
A delight that Brazil newspapers give novelists and poets a column of their own to write about anything they want, which is exciting for a writer like Clarice Lispector who is very personal, anecdotal, inquisitive. I enjoyed this selection of her cronicas, but I drifted multiple times for pieces like the chicken and egg story, found it "weird" that she would hate turtles so much and predict their extinction in a thousand years or so, and I wish there were more pieces about teenagers in anguish and married couples who seem to have achieved such a normal=standard life that they appear to have failed it somehow, in hindsight. I would like to read more parts about love, loss, existential crises, having pets, reading lists, what dreams and nightmares Clarice Lispector has had.
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SELECT ANNOTATIONS & UNDERLINES
- "Torture and Glory" is about knowing a girl whose father is the owner of a bookshop, thus giving the girl access to all these books, including one that Clarice Lispector really wants to read. The girl promises to lend it, but each day that Clarice Lispector shows up at the girl's house to receive the book, the girl is like, "Oops, sorry, someone else has it right now," and "Oops, I still haven't gotten it back." This went on for a while until one day, the girl's mom notices this happening and is like, "What are you doing! The book is right here!" and gives it to Clarice Lispector who can have it for as long as she likes, the mom said, which gave Clarice Lispector such pleasure, she wrote, "On arriving home I did not start to read. I pretended not to have the book, so as to postpone the pleasure of discovering I had it. I opened the book some hours later and read some lines, I closed it once more, went wandering through the house, ate some bread and butter to pass the time, pretended I could not remember where I had put the book, found it again, opened it for several moments. I invented the most absurd strategies to postpone that clandestine thing called happiness."
- "The Case of the Gold Fountain Pen" : receiving a gold pen as a gift, having two sons—one wants it because he likes nice things and wants to own them, the other who does not want it because it belongs to his mom, which disturbs Clarice Lispector a little, because she is puzzled as to why he does not express his desire for it. I understand and relate to this son more.
- "people who are over-preoccupied with external order are precisely those who are suffering from inner disorder and need some counter-balance to give them some reassurance" (totally why I kept my room so clean while in school: √)
- ". . .more down-to-earth and less romantic: the love of someone who had already suffered for love"
- "She was not the type of woman to notice if a man was interested in her unless he declared himself—whereupon she would express surprise and accept the fact."
- "She saw a man who had once been her lover. And she thought to herself: no matter how much love he may have received since, I was the one who gave him my whole body and soul. The two of them looked at each other, scrutinized each other, he no doubt started by that painted mask. She could think of nothing to say except to ask him if he was still her friend. He replied, yes, for always."
- "cidetismo, which means being able to project unconscious images into the sphere of hallucination" (?)
- A friend of Clarice Lispector directed her to Henry James and she came upon this passage which she recommends us to read several times, which I did:
- "He had failed to understand that loyalty is not something pure, that to be loyal is to be disloyal to all the rest."
- "I take advantage of the phoney job they have given me to conceal my identity and turn it into my real occupation."
- "the elixir of prolonged death"
- "the delicate abyss of disorder"
- "That one moment of mutual intimacy divided us even more."
- Page 101 is heartbreaking : the sincerity of a child who loves a small chick so much that you dread something bad happening to it which would ruin everything
- "They merged like waters from the same waterfall."
- "Making the great sacrifice of not being mad. I am not mad out of solidarity with the thousands of people who, in order to construct the possible, have also sacrificed the truth which would be madness."
- "[this] God Who is in a perpetual state of cosmic evolution towards greater perfection."
- "She explained that, when she fell in love, she had no idea that 'things were really like that.'"
- Epigraph for Clarice Lispector's novel A Paixão segundo which is a quote from art historian Bernard Berenson that she wanted to leave in English vs. translating it into Portuguese or any other language because it would not capture the "beauty and perfection".
- "It was important to carry on writing without waiting for the right moment, because the right moment never comes. Writing has never been easy for me. I knew from the outset this was my vocation. Having a vocation is not the same as having talent. One can have a vocation and no talent—in other words, feel compelled to write without knowing where to start."
- "Her only hiding place was herself, her own soul which she had once bared in her notebook."
- The bubblegum story that begins on page 143: lol and <3
- "Creation is not an understanding, it is a new mystery."
- "There is something here which frightens me. When I discover what it is, I shall also discover what I like about this place. Fear has always guided me to the things I love; and because I love. I become afraid. It was often fear which took me by the hand and led me. Fear leads me to danger. And everything I love has an element of risk." (hm, not sure what to make of this yet)
- "I know that one loves what we call God with grave and solemn love, with respect, fear and reverence. Yet no one ever told me about loving Him as a Mother. And just as this maternal love does not diminish God but makes Him greater, so being the Mother of the World released my love." (interesting! I never thought of loving God in this way, always from the inferior-child-follower perspective)
- ". . .How can one comprehend God? The point of departure must surely be: 'I do not know'. Which means total surrender."
- "Anyone who achieves a high level of abstraction has reached the frontiers of madness."
- "What have I achieved in the end? What is missing in my life? I am contented as any[one], so why this sense of emptiness, this longing? What is this anxiety, as if I were only capable of loving what I do not know?"
- "And what does one do when one is happy? What do I make of happiness? What am I to make of this strange, penetrating tranquility which is already beginning to cause me anguish like some great silence? To whom shall I give this happiness of mine which is beginning to frighten me and tear me apart?"
- "The sudden way the dot falls neatly on the i, that sensation of being so much a part of existence, and everything being so clearly itself, was unbearable."
================================
SELECT ANNOTATIONS & UNDERLINES
- "Torture and Glory" is about knowing a girl whose father is the owner of a bookshop, thus giving the girl access to all these books, including one that Clarice Lispector really wants to read. The girl promises to lend it, but each day that Clarice Lispector shows up at the girl's house to receive the book, the girl is like, "Oops, sorry, someone else has it right now," and "Oops, I still haven't gotten it back." This went on for a while until one day, the girl's mom notices this happening and is like, "What are you doing! The book is right here!" and gives it to Clarice Lispector who can have it for as long as she likes, the mom said, which gave Clarice Lispector such pleasure, she wrote, "On arriving home I did not start to read. I pretended not to have the book, so as to postpone the pleasure of discovering I had it. I opened the book some hours later and read some lines, I closed it once more, went wandering through the house, ate some bread and butter to pass the time, pretended I could not remember where I had put the book, found it again, opened it for several moments. I invented the most absurd strategies to postpone that clandestine thing called happiness."
- "The Case of the Gold Fountain Pen" : receiving a gold pen as a gift, having two sons—one wants it because he likes nice things and wants to own them, the other who does not want it because it belongs to his mom, which disturbs Clarice Lispector a little, because she is puzzled as to why he does not express his desire for it. I understand and relate to this son more.
- "people who are over-preoccupied with external order are precisely those who are suffering from inner disorder and need some counter-balance to give them some reassurance" (totally why I kept my room so clean while in school: √)
- ". . .more down-to-earth and less romantic: the love of someone who had already suffered for love"
- "She was not the type of woman to notice if a man was interested in her unless he declared himself—whereupon she would express surprise and accept the fact."
- "She saw a man who had once been her lover. And she thought to herself: no matter how much love he may have received since, I was the one who gave him my whole body and soul. The two of them looked at each other, scrutinized each other, he no doubt started by that painted mask. She could think of nothing to say except to ask him if he was still her friend. He replied, yes, for always."
- "cidetismo, which means being able to project unconscious images into the sphere of hallucination" (?)
- A friend of Clarice Lispector directed her to Henry James and she came upon this passage which she recommends us to read several times, which I did:
"Experience is never limited and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider's web of thie finest silken threads, suspended in the chambers of consciousness and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue. It is the very atmosphere of the mind; and when the mind is imaginative—more so when it happens to be that of a man of genius—it takes to itself the faintest hints of life, it converts the very pulses of the air into revelations."
- "He had failed to understand that loyalty is not something pure, that to be loyal is to be disloyal to all the rest."
- "I take advantage of the phoney job they have given me to conceal my identity and turn it into my real occupation."
- "the elixir of prolonged death"
- "the delicate abyss of disorder"
- "That one moment of mutual intimacy divided us even more."
- Page 101 is heartbreaking : the sincerity of a child who loves a small chick so much that you dread something bad happening to it which would ruin everything
- "They merged like waters from the same waterfall."
- "Making the great sacrifice of not being mad. I am not mad out of solidarity with the thousands of people who, in order to construct the possible, have also sacrificed the truth which would be madness."
- "[this] God Who is in a perpetual state of cosmic evolution towards greater perfection."
- "She explained that, when she fell in love, she had no idea that 'things were really like that.'"
- Epigraph for Clarice Lispector's novel A Paixão segundo which is a quote from art historian Bernard Berenson that she wanted to leave in English vs. translating it into Portuguese or any other language because it would not capture the "beauty and perfection".
A complete life may be one ending in
so full an identification with the non-self
that there is no self to die.
- "It was important to carry on writing without waiting for the right moment, because the right moment never comes. Writing has never been easy for me. I knew from the outset this was my vocation. Having a vocation is not the same as having talent. One can have a vocation and no talent—in other words, feel compelled to write without knowing where to start."
- "Her only hiding place was herself, her own soul which she had once bared in her notebook."
- The bubblegum story that begins on page 143: lol and <3
- "Creation is not an understanding, it is a new mystery."
- "There is something here which frightens me. When I discover what it is, I shall also discover what I like about this place. Fear has always guided me to the things I love; and because I love. I become afraid. It was often fear which took me by the hand and led me. Fear leads me to danger. And everything I love has an element of risk." (hm, not sure what to make of this yet)
- "I know that one loves what we call God with grave and solemn love, with respect, fear and reverence. Yet no one ever told me about loving Him as a Mother. And just as this maternal love does not diminish God but makes Him greater, so being the Mother of the World released my love." (interesting! I never thought of loving God in this way, always from the inferior-child-follower perspective)
- ". . .How can one comprehend God? The point of departure must surely be: 'I do not know'. Which means total surrender."
- "Anyone who achieves a high level of abstraction has reached the frontiers of madness."
- "What have I achieved in the end? What is missing in my life? I am contented as any[one], so why this sense of emptiness, this longing? What is this anxiety, as if I were only capable of loving what I do not know?"
- "And what does one do when one is happy? What do I make of happiness? What am I to make of this strange, penetrating tranquility which is already beginning to cause me anguish like some great silence? To whom shall I give this happiness of mine which is beginning to frighten me and tear me apart?"
- "The sudden way the dot falls neatly on the i, that sensation of being so much a part of existence, and everything being so clearly itself, was unbearable."
August 21, 2024
You can find me at the altar worshipping an icon of Clarice Lispector.
Her prose is deeply imbued with introspective insight that it feels indulgent, almost gluttonous, to devour her columns in such quick succession. Every word of hers is a miracle, every sentence a revelation-I need to go back to bask in her language, taking precise note of every sensation she elicits. Lispector's columns and work in general hover on the edge of senselessness, which paradoxically, are why they are so lucid. This article articulates Lispector's genius so much better than I can: https://gagosian.com/quarterly/2023/04/27/essay-waiting-for-clarice/. Must read!!
"To pass from the physical word to its meaning is to reduce it first to splinters, just as the firework remains a dull object until it is fated to become a brilliant flare in the sky and achieves its own death. (In its passage from being simply body to something maddened by love, the bee arrives at the supreme moment: it dies.)
"But the typewriter goes faster than my fingers. The typewriter writes inside me. And I have no secrets apart from mortal ones. Those are all I need in order to become a creature with eyes, who will die one day. How can I explain what has just occurred to me? For I can now see that there is a price to be paid for everything, and that life is so costly it can even bring about death".
Favorite crônicas (columns)
In Favour of Fear
Belonging
An Experience
Discovering the World
Perilous Night
The Egg and the Chicken
The Princess
Racing Against the Typewriter
Pen Drawing of a Little Boy
The Making of a Novel
Spring in Switzerland
Spain
Words Purely Physical
To Remember What Never Existed
The Gratuitous Act
Fear of the Unknown
What is anguish?
Her prose is deeply imbued with introspective insight that it feels indulgent, almost gluttonous, to devour her columns in such quick succession. Every word of hers is a miracle, every sentence a revelation-I need to go back to bask in her language, taking precise note of every sensation she elicits. Lispector's columns and work in general hover on the edge of senselessness, which paradoxically, are why they are so lucid. This article articulates Lispector's genius so much better than I can: https://gagosian.com/quarterly/2023/04/27/essay-waiting-for-clarice/. Must read!!
"To pass from the physical word to its meaning is to reduce it first to splinters, just as the firework remains a dull object until it is fated to become a brilliant flare in the sky and achieves its own death. (In its passage from being simply body to something maddened by love, the bee arrives at the supreme moment: it dies.)
"But the typewriter goes faster than my fingers. The typewriter writes inside me. And I have no secrets apart from mortal ones. Those are all I need in order to become a creature with eyes, who will die one day. How can I explain what has just occurred to me? For I can now see that there is a price to be paid for everything, and that life is so costly it can even bring about death".
Favorite crônicas (columns)
In Favour of Fear
Belonging
An Experience
Discovering the World
Perilous Night
The Egg and the Chicken
The Princess
Racing Against the Typewriter
Pen Drawing of a Little Boy
The Making of a Novel
Spring in Switzerland
Spain
Words Purely Physical
To Remember What Never Existed
The Gratuitous Act
Fear of the Unknown
What is anguish?
February 5, 2025
Lispector’s work is tricky to navigate as a rushed reader. (Not to be confused with fast readers! I’m slow but feel pressure to finish books so I can get that brief hit of closing one and cracking open another. Sometimes this works; most of the time it just means I’m incapable of reading multiple books simultaneously.)
These crônicas, or literary segments unique to Brazilian newspapers, serve as the perfect medium for Lispector’s prose. Most passages were brief. Some lasted a few pages, but none reached the complexity of her novels. And even with the simplicity of the format, I still couldn’t speed through. Her words demand patience and attention, dammit!
She has a way of portraying hope and despair side by side that I find very comforting. While her novels made me want to know her, these passages made me feel as if I did. Especially because of our shared enchantment with Recife and admiration/fear of eggs.
Some lines to chew on:
On taxi rides: It struck her that the torture endured by people who are timid has never been fully described. Traveling in that speeding taxi, she died a little.
On writing: … There is an accepted standard of good taste which is actually much worse than bad taste. Just to amuse myself or, as a simple experiment, I sometimes walk that thin line between the two.
On technological advancements: … but technology cannot touch madness: and so that is where all that is human in man can take refuge.
On London: People on the streets are so badly dressed that they end up giving the impression of being quite stylish.
On love: Perhaps love is to give one’s own solitude to others? For it is the very last thing we have to offer.
On eggs: The Moon is inhabited with eggs…
These crônicas, or literary segments unique to Brazilian newspapers, serve as the perfect medium for Lispector’s prose. Most passages were brief. Some lasted a few pages, but none reached the complexity of her novels. And even with the simplicity of the format, I still couldn’t speed through. Her words demand patience and attention, dammit!
She has a way of portraying hope and despair side by side that I find very comforting. While her novels made me want to know her, these passages made me feel as if I did. Especially because of our shared enchantment with Recife and admiration/fear of eggs.
Some lines to chew on:
On taxi rides: It struck her that the torture endured by people who are timid has never been fully described. Traveling in that speeding taxi, she died a little.
On writing: … There is an accepted standard of good taste which is actually much worse than bad taste. Just to amuse myself or, as a simple experiment, I sometimes walk that thin line between the two.
On technological advancements: … but technology cannot touch madness: and so that is where all that is human in man can take refuge.
On London: People on the streets are so badly dressed that they end up giving the impression of being quite stylish.
On love: Perhaps love is to give one’s own solitude to others? For it is the very last thing we have to offer.
On eggs: The Moon is inhabited with eggs…
February 3, 2025
it was really nice to get through this as if i was reading my favorite section of the daily newspaper— the original intended format of the lispector's cronicas
going through it all made me wonder how the translator was able to go through all of her work and render all the passion and brilliance, as if one were a medium. i wish i could read it in its original portuguese
also noticed most of my highlighting/annotating happened at the first half and last 15-20 pages of the book— made for a strong start and finish
upgrading to the complete version soon + i look forward to passing my version on to a friend in need. it's one of those books, in my opinion!
going through it all made me wonder how the translator was able to go through all of her work and render all the passion and brilliance, as if one were a medium. i wish i could read it in its original portuguese
also noticed most of my highlighting/annotating happened at the first half and last 15-20 pages of the book— made for a strong start and finish
upgrading to the complete version soon + i look forward to passing my version on to a friend in need. it's one of those books, in my opinion!
January 23, 2019
There were passages I could not comprehend. There were passages I underlined and read aloud to my husband and therapist because they articulated so perfectly a feeling I had that I could not put into words on my own. In Clarice Lispector's hands, an egg can be a metaphor for our entire existence and understanding of the world. Or maybe, just an egg. A child can be full of possibility and wisdom and terror and malice. Every encounter is a lens through which we can see our place in the world and reconsider what we thought we knew about ourselves. Also, there are a lot of taxi drivers.
May 12, 2022
This was my first venture into Clarice Lispector, and I wanted to love her, but I struggled with this collection. The format of the crônicas makes it hard to read this with any speed, and there’s so much disjointed content in a row. There were bits I loved, but for the most part I was trudging. I think I’ll still attempt some of her fiction (later).
November 21, 2024
Some beautiful and true aphorisms
“We die without so much as an explanation. And worst of all - we live without so much as an explanation”
“Birth was the death of one being divided into two solitary beings. It only seemed easy now that he had learned to cope with his secret terror which would last until death. The terror of being on earth yet longing for heaven.”
“We die without so much as an explanation. And worst of all - we live without so much as an explanation”
“Birth was the death of one being divided into two solitary beings. It only seemed easy now that he had learned to cope with his secret terror which would last until death. The terror of being on earth yet longing for heaven.”
May 29, 2019
Perhaps the single most inspiring book to me (someone who aspires to write but has little faith in words). Lispector creates her own form with her Cronicas and thus, spilled another shade of her soul onto pages that we are fortunate to have reprinted and translated today.
March 13, 2021
Lispector’s first two entries in this book give the sense of dipping her toe in, but her signature voice and brilliantly exhausting scope soon snap into place, along with some surprisingly funny pieces as well. The result is a collection at least as cohesive and impressive as her novels.
December 11, 2021
Although this took me a really long time to finish this, I absolutely loved reading this! The writing style is simple, conversational, yet engaging. I need to read more of her works, Lispector just seems like such a thoughtful and intelligent writer. Enjoyed this immensely ❤️
December 28, 2022
One of the primary things I love about Clarice is how she traces cognition and sensation with all the motion of an adventure story--the real plot being what happens between senses and synapses--and in these vignettes, you get that in its purest form.
July 4, 2023
Disappointing, though certain passages would make up for it enough for me to continue reading. I think that it could be attributed to this being a collection of entries as well as it being some of her later work, though I’ll have to read more Lispector to be certain!!
May 7, 2024
Read 157/212, had to return to the library before leaving for the summer :(( But wonderful short stories! I wish I could have finished them all before the semester ended. Many of them are more-so quite distinct meditations, independently standing, rather than stories.
May 5, 2017
Clarice Lispector is a phenomenon and I would not miss one of her books!!! I'm moving my way through and will continue for the rest of my days on this planet! Blowing my mind! LOVEEEE!
December 20, 2017
Probably my fav clarice lispector read. So so good
July 28, 2019
How can one comprehend a turtle? How can one comprehend God?
The point of departure must surely be: ‘I do not know’. Which means total surrender.
Oh Clarice.
The point of departure must surely be: ‘I do not know’. Which means total surrender.
Oh Clarice.
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