Perto do Coração Selvagem

by Clarice Lispector

Alternative cover edition for ISBN 8532508103.

A amoralidade diante da maldade. O instinto na condução da trama, com uma certa dose de automartírio. A história de Joana — não a Virgem d’Orleans, mas a personagem de Clarice Lispector nesta obra de estréia, marcou a ficção brasileira em 1944. A narrativa inovadora (ainda hoje) provocou frisson nos círculos literários. A técnica de Clarice Lispector funde subjetividade com objetividade, alterna os focos literários e o tempo cronológico dá lugar ao psicológico (o presente entremeado ao intermitente flashback).

A prosa leve discorre com fluência e fluidez nos meandros da protagonista, na sua visão de mundo e interação com os demais personagens. Tudo isso revelou Clarice Lispector como mais que mera promessa na prosa da Geração de 45. É o texto do sensível e do imaginário, ora enfrentando ora diluindo-se aos incidentes reais de Joana.

Deve-se ler a obra com instrumentos de anatomia: usa-se bisturi para dissecá-la e pinça para estudar os personagens como órgãos autônomos, que se ligam por estranhas artérias e nervos à personagem de coração e cérebro Joana. São eles: o pai prematuramente falecido, incentivador das brincadeiras na infância; a tia assustada com as estripulias da órfã, a quem chama de víbora; o tio fazendeiro, afetuoso com Joana e abúlico diante das reclamações da mulher; o professor confidente e orientador (como a paixão da puberdade); Otávio, o rapaz que se casa com Joana ao romper o noivado com Lígia, de quem posteriormente se torna amante; Lígia, grávida de Otávio, conta tudo à protagonista; o homem sem nome, sustentado pela mulher, participante silenciosa do romance clandestino e sem compromisso dele com Joana.

A leitura é caleidoscópica. A protagonista ora tem uma cor, ora outra, conforme o momento ("real" ou onírico). As cores dançam no enredo misturado ao cenário e às sensações da menina-mulher-amante. Joana desfila na vida dos outros personagens, destilando o veneno de víbora, instilado com ironia e respostas cruéis diante dos fatos. A leitura também é lúdica, quando o leitor tenta adivinhar o que a autora preparou páginas adiante e se surpreende com o que presencia. O livro, como os demais títulos de Clarice Lispector relançados pela Rocco, recebeu novo tratamento gráfico e passou por rigorosa revisão de texto, feita pela especialista em crítica textual Marlene Gomes Mendes, baseada em sua primeira edição.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Brazil, Literary Fiction, Novels, Latin American, Philosophy

204 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1943

About the author

Clarice 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.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Life’s a bitch and then you die… Chickens don’t know the adage…

Leaning her forehead against the cold and shiny windowpane she gazed at the neighbor’s yard, at the big world of the hens-that-didn’t-know-they-were-going-to-die. And she could smell as if it were right beneath her nose the warm, hard-packed earth, so fragrant and dry, where she just knew, she just knew a worm or two was having a stretch before being eaten by the hen that the people were going to eat.

A young woman describes her weltanschauung… She recalls the fragments of her childhood and girlhood… And her story is about feeling alive… Of being conscious of existence… Elation of being…

I have a body and everything that I do is a continuation of my beginning; if the Mayan civilization doesn’t interest me it is because I have nothing in me that can connect with its bas-reliefs; I accept everything that comes from me because I am unaware of the causes and I may be trampling something vital without knowing it; this is my greatest humility…

Whatever she feels, she feels in her own unique way…

Between one instant and another, between past and future, the white vagueness of the interval. Empty like the distance from one minute to the next in the clock’s circle. The bottom of events rising up silent and dead, a little bit of eternity.

A wretched marriage… Unhappiness… A miserable lover… Now she’s alone and lonely… She turns into a dot.

“…has it ever occurred to you that a dot, a single dot without dimensions, is the utmost solitude? A dot cannot even count on itself, as often as not it is outside itself.”

Our feelings, thoughts, emotions, knowledge and experience make out of us what we are.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fleetingly wonderful...

“All of me swims, floats, crosses what exists with my nerves, I am nothing but a desire, anger, vagueness, as impalpable as energy.”

Joana and Lídia - two women, two sides of one medal. Together, they would have been a deity.

On their own, they are two people sharing the love of one man, Otávio, who is floating between the stable, motherly safety of Lídia, and the wild, independent Joana, who can’t be owned by anyone:

“Either I light up and am wonderful, fleetingly wonderful, or I am obscure, wrapped in curtains. Lídia, whatever she is, is immutable, always with the same bright base.”

Why did this young, wild, passionate tale touch me so much? Why is it so hard to put into words the admiration I felt for the young woman Joana, who with seeming ease understands herself and her incompatibility with other people? And who is willing to accept it too? Her vision of the world is tolerant and open-minded, and she doesn’t expect any hypothetical (yet quite unnecessary) gods to know more than she does herself:

“I don’t know a thing, I am able to give birth to a child and I don’t know a thing. God will receive my humility and will say: I was able to give birth to a world and I don’t know a thing.”

No reproach, no demands, no rules, no dogma. Just a goddess giving birth to a first child feeling vulnerable and inexperienced, and destined to make mistakes and lose control when the child grows up and claims an independent life. I like that notion of a deity - the first one I have come across which doesn’t fill me with anger, guilt and nauseating frustration at the injustice of it all. Unfortunately, the beauty of the idea doesn’t make it any more true than other, less pretty cosmic conceptions! And Joana knows that, instinctively, rejecting the idea of one truth, one path to a happiness that symbolises a stasis she can’t embrace.

“What comes after happiness?”

Her question resonates with my childhood memories of the fairytale endings: “And they lived happily ever after …” - those optimistic words were never explained, the reader was never introduced to the concept of HOW happiness would be achieved, forever after - that most vital part of the eternal question always left unanswered. What a brilliant thing for Joana to ask!

Most people move between the security of the life Lídia represents and the wish to acknowledge the wild in the soul that Joana symbolises, and only very few people dare to choose being alone in the world in order to feel fully alive, without being understood. Joana’s conception of marriage shows her understanding of the human dilemma, and explains her unwillingness to blindly submit to a “happiness” that restricts her freedom:

“And being a married woman, that is, a person with her destiny all mapped out. From then on all you do is wait to die. I thought not even the freedom to be unhappy is preserved because you are dragging another person around with you. There is someone who is always observing you, who scrutinizes you, who sees your every move. And even the weariness of living has a certain beauty when it is born alone and desperate - I thought. But as a couple, eating the same bland bread every day, watching your own defeat in the other person’s defeat … All this without considering the weight of your habits reflected in the other person’s habits, the weight of the common bed, the common table, the common life, preparing and threatening the common death. I always said; never.”

And yet she married, and she didn’t know why. That is life in a nutshell, fluctuating between sad happiness and sweet sadness, between boring, death-invoking routine and exciting, scary, lonely wild-life. To know that you can be and feel both is to be human: a free, thinking, living human.

Fleetingly wonderful!

[Ashley · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE ONLY BOOK EVER WRITTEN. BURY THIS WITH ME WHEN I DIE. my absolute favourite of all time! iamreelingiamsickiamdistraughtbecausehowdoesoneconceiveofsuchamasterpiececiwantocry. and i will write a review one day that'll be my new magnum opus because there is just so so much to say but alas i'll never be able to say it all. i have never ever resonated with a character and felt so deeply as i have with this

-

here’s me trying to get through my christmas break tbr before the break ends. this might be my new favourite book ever??

[Orsodimondo · Rating 4 out of 5]

NELLA GOCCIA DI TEMPO CHE VENIVA


Clarice Lispector: 10 dicembre 1920 Čečel'nyk, Ucraina – 9 dicembre 1977, Rio de Janeiro.

Che cosa si ottiene quando si è felici, dopo che si è felici che cosa succede, cosa viene? Essere felici serve a raggiungere che cosa?
Chiede la piccola Joana alla sua insegnante.

Cresciuta, Joana chiede invece al marito:
Hai mai pensato che un punto, un unico punto senza dimensioni, è il massimo della solitudine? Un punto non può contare neppure su se stesso, non c’è in lui né fu né non-fu.



Della trama non si può parlare perché non c’è. In confronto a Lispector, Virginia Woolf è Dumas.
Quella poca trama che emerge è più che altro da intuire, trasmessa al lettore per illuminazioni allucinatorie, confonde presente e passato, mescola realtà e immaginazione, incrocia l’amore con la rabbia, che forse è perfino odio.
Joana è bambina, parla col padre, poi è più cresciuta, il padre muore, va a vivere con la zia, poi in collegio, si sposa, il marito, Otàvio, cominciamo a conoscerlo presto perché, come dicevo, prima e dopo vanno di pari passo, Joana partorisce, ama, odia, tradisce, è tradita, abbandonata. E poi... Nulla. Tutto. La vita. E la morte.



Joana, e qualcosa mi fa credere che l’impressione si ripeterebbe leggendo anche altre opere di Lispector, quelle della maturità, sembra preda di un tumulto mistico. Che è anche flusso mistico. O, estasi mistica.
Si tratta di un misticismo esistenziale, un misticismo della Natura: non mi pare si possa parlare di fede in dio, questo dio o quell’altro.
I suoi personaggi, questa Joana, sono alla ricerca di un senso delle cose e dell’essere.
Una ricerca che si svolge e si esprime per frammenti, flash, ripetizioni e variazioni:
stati di coscienza enigmatici, collassi dell’identità personale, fughe impossibili dagli ordini stabiliti
li definisce Alfredo Giuliani nella quarta e nel suo articolo su Repubblica intitolato Debutto selvaggio (del 27 settembre 1987).



Esordio fulminante, primo libro pubblicato quando la bella ucraina cresciuta in Brasile sin da piccola, Greta Garbo che incontra Marlene Dietrich, quando Clarice aveva solo ventitre anni e studiava legge.
Lispector viene sempre avvicinata a Joyce e Virginia Woolf: da Joyce arriva il titolo di questo suo primo romanzo, la frase presa dal Dedalus è messa in esergo. Il flusso di coscienza la incastra tra lo scrittore irlandese e la scrittrice inglese. Ma a me ricorda più di tutti Djuna Barnes.



E sullo stream of consciousness, Emanuele Trevi così si esprime:
Il fibrillante, imprevedibile modernismo dell'autrice rifugge da un impiego sistematico del flusso di coscienza. Se ogni tecnica è una specie di specchio nel mondo, qui la superficie riflettente appare deliberatamente infranta in minuscoli pezzi. La prima e la terza persona si accavallano creando prospettive multiple, dal monologo che scaturisce dal più buio fondo dell'identità allo sguardo dall'alto di una voce narrante che sa tutto – e quasi se ne rammarica. Non c'è regola apparente nei trapassi… Più del flusso di coscienza, allora, conta il trascorrere, di quella coscienza, da un individuo all'altro, tanto più vicina alla sua natura selvaggia quanto più indifferenziata, molteplice come i colori ma unica come la luce che li genera. Ed è così che nel suo primo libro Clarice può disegnare un autoritratto che è anche il racconto di un sofferto ménage à trois, sovrapponendo ed alternando con grande sapienza i punti di vista, come se pensieri e sentimenti fossero malattie virali che circolano fra gli attori del dramma corrodendo i limiti dell’identità e dell'alterità, facendo di ognuno lo specchio segreto di chi gli sta di fronte.


Il ritratto che Giorgio De Chirico fece di Clarice Lispector nella primavera del 1945.

P.S.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohHP1...
Prima e unica intervista televisiva di Clarice Lispector, febbraio 1977.

[Luís · Rating 4 out of 5]

The unleashing of lucidity.
In "Near the Wild Heart," Clarice tells Joan's story, a girl who soon becomes an orphan after her father and mother pass away, and has always had a habit of introspection. Speaking of Lispector, and especially this book, the sensation that runs through the veins after reading is a dive so deep in itself, deep enough not to return to the surface as before.
The novel's narrative is fragmented, with flashbacks of the main character's memories that intertwine with his day-to-day dialogues with other characters. Discussions do not appear in the reading, but leave a feeling of being monologues because Clarice never goes into the perception of the mind of the character in front of words and external means.
The novel walks in strenuous steps in white silence.
The book is hard to read. As mentioned, it does not return to the surface as it did before. Instead, it is a dive, an attempt to know ourselves, ask little, understand more, and understand what is necessary. It's novel to feel "in the stomach," not to be understood. Clarice Lispector is indeed human; her quest for clarity reveals, from another angle, her dissatisfaction with a shaped reality. Joana, the book's character, understands that it is eternal in her continuous thinking, and she gets tired of it several times. She goes on like a caterpillar who, even bruised, fat, and ugly, weaves a cocoon around her to reach her other stage.
As Hermann Hesse said, "There is no way more obscure for a man than he who takes it to himself."
In this novel, Clarice shows that the path is only obscure if we do not find, recognize, identify, and transmit our light. The tunnel is deep, but how do we know what we have if we become accustomed to the darkness of unconsciousness?

[Garima · Rating 5 out of 5]

Where does music go when it’s not playing?—she asked herself.
And disarmed she would answer:
May they make a harp out of my nerves when I die.

A quest for measuring the eternity and finding some sense in defining the immortality while the object of all desires remains nothing but one’s own life. A truly wild heart.

Like a breath of fresh, melancholic air, Clarice Lispector finally entered my world and brought along an exquisite gift of precious reflections made out of the lyrical strands of dazzling sentences. A sororal feeling ascended, settled down and went away only to come back with full force after small intervals of opening and closing each new chapter of this astonishing literary feat.

...now she was sadly a happy woman.

A childhood full of questions leading up to womanhood full of unsure answers, the journey of Joana’s life comprises of rampant jumps and reckless missteps between a dark abyss and the bright limitless sky. A person of extremes and yet it’s not hard to imagine her universe. In fact, it was dangerously easy for me to understand her and making out her silhouette even from a good distance. A sense of affinity was present throughout as if a part of me wandered through some anonymous streets without my knowledge and poured her heart out to another wandered soul. Some of those shared thoughts if splashed on a piece of paper would form a familiar picture of words written in this book, which made me ignore the apparent flaws in Joana’s character and admire her plunge into a dreamy reality. An oxymoronic joy was thus realized by contemplating every random feeling which either led to articulated ramblings or enthralling discoveries.

Maybe women’s divinity wasn’t specific, but merely resided in the fact of their existence. Yes, yes, there was the truth: they existed more than other people, they were the symbol of the thing in the thing itself. And woman was mystery in itself, she discovered. There was in all of them a quality of raw material, something that might one day define itself but which was never realized, because its real essence was “becoming.” Wasn’t it precisely through this that the past was united with the future and with all times?

I was spellbound after reading the aforementioned quote and my mind went back and forth to that young girl of 23, sitting in her room, not alone but in the enchanting company of her sparkling words and innocently creating a literary work which is undeniably worthy of being called a masterpiece. She possibly saved her life through writing but she has definitely given me a new lifeline of her magical thoughts. Whether one read in order to connect or to walk on the uncharted paths, the satisfaction rendered from few books is hard to describe. In that case, only a short, heartfelt 'Thank You' can be directed towards the said book and its respected author. So, Thank You, Clarice. (I'm clearly besotted!)

I don’t feel madness in my wish to bite stars, but the earth still exists. And because the first truth is in the earth and the body. If the twinkling of the stars pains me, if this distant communication is possible, it is because something almost like a star quivers within me.

A Beauty to Behold



Clarice Lispector

[Léa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Near to the Wild Heart is an astounding story following a woman’s journey through a world of womanhood, heartbreak, an innate desire to be loved and whether any of us truly know who we are.

Clarice’s prose endlessly sweeps me off feet... my favourite book EVER EVER EVER!!!

[Bel Rodrigues · Rating 4 out of 5]

"é que tudo o que eu tenho não se pode dar. nem tomar. eu mesma posso morrer de sede diante de mim."

pelo amor DE DEUS, gente.

[Valeriu Gherghel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Între lunile martie și noiembrie 1942, o femeie de 21 de ani face o serie de însemnări. Arată aceste însemnări unui prieten și acesta îi spune că tocmai a redactat o carte. Cartea se va publica în octombrie 1943, într-o mie de exemplare. Tirajele de azi nu sînt mai mari în ceea ce-i privește pe debutanții români.

Din mia de exemplare, Clarice Lispector (10 decembrie 1920 - 9 decembrie 1977) primește o sută și trimite o parte din suta asta criticilor literari din Brazilia. Nu se aștepta probabil la nici un ecou. Peste un an, primește un premiu rîvnit și numele ei începe să circule. Criticii văd în proza ei o ilustrare a modernismului și o pun în descendența lui James Joyce și a Virginiei Woolf, autori pe care Lispector încă nu-i citise. Mai tîrziu va fi comparată și cu Franz Kafka.

În Aproape de inima vijelioasă a lumii (titlul i-a fost propus de editor și este un citat din Potret al artistului la tinerețe de Joyce), există un narator (sfios și foarte puțin vorbăreț) care povestește, uneori, rar, despre Joana, despre tatăl ei și, în a doua parte a cărții, despre soțul ei, un anume Otávio, dar mai ales avem monologul interior al Joanei care ajunge să acopere nu numai discursul naratorului, ci și monologul interior al lui Otávio și orice alt discurs în general.

Stilul e acesta: „Ah, avea să moară. Da, avea să moară. Simplu, cum zburase pasărea. Şi-a aplecat capul într-o parte, cu gingăşie, ca o nebună blîndă; dar era uşor, era uşor, aşa de uşor... nu era ceva ce ține de inteligență... e moartea care va veni, va veni... Cîte secunde au trecut? Una sau două. Sau mai multe. Frigul” (p.166).

Și încă: „Din adîncuri Te strig [Dumnezeule] şi nimic nu îmi răspunde nimic şi deznădejdea mea e uscată ca nisipul deşertului şi uluirea mea mă sufocă, mă umileşte, Dumnezeule, această mîndrie de a trăi îmi pune căluş, eu nu sînt nimic, din adîncuri Te strig din adîncuri Te strig din adîncuri Te strig din adîncuri Te strig...” (p.171).

[Fionnuala]

Clarice Lispector by Giorgio de Chirico, 1945

The title of this book is a phrase from James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: he was alone, he was unheeded, happy, and near to the wild heart of life. According to the introduction, Clarice Lispector didn't choose the title and hadn't actually read any Joyce at that point in her life. The title was chosen by a male friend and the bright pink cover of the first edition was chosen by a man in the publishing wing of the paper she worked for. The terms of payment were also chosen by others, one hundred copies for the author to keep/sell from a print run of one thousand.

So it seems as if Lispector more or less sleepwalked through the preparation of her book for publishing, allowing others to make all the important decisions. But when we realise that she had written the book over a very short period while working full-time as a journalist, studying for a law degree, and obeying the conventions of 1942 Brazilian society by getting formally engaged - then we are less surprised. When did she sleep, never mind make decisions about her book?

While I was reading this book, I wondered what title Lispector would have picked for the work she described as a groping in the darkness - if the choice had been hers - and I figured that the words 'night' and 'sleep' might have been involved. Joana, the main voice of this story, seems to live in a penumbral space between day and night. She floats through daytime as if it was a little bit of dream mixed with reality, and inhabits the night as if darkness were something concrete, the dense, dark night was cut down the middle, split into two black blocks of sleep. Where was she? Between the two pieces, looking at them (the one she had already slept and the one she had yet to sleep), isolated in the timeless and the spaceless, an empty gap.This stretch would be subtracted from her years of life.

Night has helped to shape Joana's being, her courage had developed with the light off.
Each night, she approaches sleeping as if it was an adventure, falling from the easy clarity in which she lived into the same mystery, dark and cool, crossing darkness. Dying and being reborn.

The more we read about Joana, the more we realize that like day and night, and brightness and darkness, she is full of contradictions and oppositions: She was sadly a happy woman....Happiness was erasing her, erasing her...

Joana believes that it is impossible to ever put into words the feelings she experiences - since doing so will transform them into something other: the most curious thing is that the moment I try to speak not only do I fail to express what I feel but what I feel slowly becomes what I say. Or at least what makes me act is not, most certainly, what I feel but what I say.

In spite of Lispector's apparently foreign-sounding Portuguese (she was born in the Ukraine) which the translator has translated into slightly foreign-sounding English, the author somehow succeeds in conveying the truth and meaning of Joana's conflicting emotions to the reader. There is a naturalness and spontaneity about the writing that makes the many impossibilities in the text possible. I can imagine that if anyone set out consciously to write the way Lispector does, or if she herself tried to repeat this kind of writing, it might not work so well. It works here because there are twenty three years of uncensored feeling poured into it.
That's the only explanation I can come up with.

[Agnieszka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Freedom isn’t enough. What I desire doesn’t have a name yet.

It took me some time to understand that one can’t please everyone. And if you’re trying then sooner than later you'll end up feeling only disappointment and emptiness. Trying to pleasing others against your own desires and needs you only hurt yourself. And nobody even notices that.
Oh, Clarice how did you do that, that like hurricane, after all this is how you were named, entered in my well-ordered life? With this novel, so honestly and deeply penetrating soul, I felt all these questions returned to me. All these concerns and problems, big and small ones resounded in my head, reminding me myself when I was at your age.

I started reading with some obvious associations. Firstly, the title. He was unheeded, happy, and near to the wild heart of life , it is Joycean Stephen Dedalus in his quest of own identity.
Then the cover, intriguing and unsettling, as from some futuristic dreamscape, where some woman is lying as if she was sleeping or waiting. But for what ? Or whom ? Is she waiting for somebody to wake her up to the life ? Or maybe she prefers dreaming than living ?
And so Joana is. A little live egg according to her father, a viper for her aunt, betrayed by her husband Otavio. Child, girl, woman. And whom is she for herself ? Stranger, with wild animal inside her, always diffrent from others, distant, hidden behind own dreams. Joana examining her life, her soul. Joana in the mirrors, in the rain, in the stars. Sadly a happy woman. Thoughts flow through her mind incessantly, her soul scattered on millions atoms, sliding from one truth to the other, and still questions and more questions. What would become of Joana.

Prose is elliptical and hypnotic, reminds Virginia Woolf in Waves . The plot almost doesn't exist, and if - it's secondary, because what really matters here is Joana's inner life. Only images, flashes and snatches, and self-exploration to finally make her decision, to be triumphantly reborn.

I will surpass myself in waves, ah, Lord, and may everything come and fall upon me, even the incomprehension of myself at certain white moments because all I have to do is comply with myself and then nothing will block my path until death-without-fear, from any struggle or rest I will rise up as strong and beautiful as a young horse.

[Judy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I almost did not post my thoughts about this book. I seem to be the only person on the internet who doesn't think this book is amazing. A collection of Clarice Lispector's short short stories was published in 2015 and got lots of attention as well as praise. I got curious. As usual, I started with her first novel.

It is not fun or easy to read. The style is one of extreme introspection and stream of consciousness. I think many people go through this kind of thing at the cusp of adulthood. She wrote the book when she was nineteen. I think I went through it but I didn't know or understand what it was and I sure didn't talk about it to anyone, except maybe a little with a friend of my parents who was nothing like my parents.

Reading this, I found it true that one person's introspection is not interesting to others. Too personal, certainly not linear. However, though many people on Goodreads disliked Sheila Heti's How Should A Person Be, most of them thought this book was beyond great. I liked Heti's book because I could understand what she wrote.

I got that Joana was often unhappy and happy at the same time; that she was disassociated from other people, that she was having trouble integrating her self with her body, that she had a horror of being trapped and an obsession with freedom. All of that is real to me.

Once in a while she would express these things in ways I could connect with. Mostly she sounded mentally ill. Perhaps we are all mentally ill during puberty.

The last chapter or so reminded me of Renascence by Edna St Vincent Millay; my favorite poem ever when I was in 8th grade.

OK Goodreads people. Refute me!

[Jibran · Rating 5 out of 5]

He was alone. He was unheeded, happy and near to the wild heart of life.
_James Joyce.

Near to the Wild Heart is a tribute to James Joyce insofar as the title is taken from one of his novels under a writer's early influence that is a vital element in the commencement and development of a new talent with her pen out, uncapped. It is the delicate abyss of disorder carefully arranged with the abrasive and highly inquisitive stream of thought that marks her out, indeed, puts her above so many half measures, among the crowd of established fictionists, just with her one-book stride, accomplished at the youthful age of 23, when most people are happy to indulge in breathtaking romantic fantasies or truculent defiance of the status quo (whatever that might be) as a credible explanation of the existential puzzle.

...now she was sadly a happy woman.

Clarice shook me out of my somnolent contentment and pulled me into a mirror house of transcendental imagery, leaving me trapped among reflections of illusion of the contorted self, standing at the elusive frontier between reality and imagination, between the physical and the mental, among a shadow cast of flickering thoughts like the flame of a candle, dully luminous and coldly pale, yet with the power to burn the complacent moth into nonexistence. When that happened, I became the moth and she became the candle.

Freedom isn’t enough. What I desire doesn’t have a name yet.

As with most good novels that invent a set of parameters to define the use of language, to say nothing of the dazzling images that flood the reader's consciousness, Near to the Wild Heart, too, cannot be stripped down to its plot and content. Whether she's a motherless child being brought up by the absentminded father, or living at her aunt's not knowing why her father abandoned her (he's dead), or when she gets married to Otavio to escape the terror of happiness (i.e. love) that's eating her from the inside, every stage in Joanna's life is a reflection painfully embedded in the memory of things past and future, gyrating their way out of the momentary present. It is the singular continuation of the intolerable agitation of the soul which is captured in a dynamic image that ironically bespeaks a sharper state of dejection, exhaustion, and ennui just when her life's path is laid out clearly ahead of her (Clearly? Really? Joanna seems to be asking)

I perpetually go on inaugurating myself, opening and closing circles of life, throwing them aside, withered, impregnated with the past.

Having been introduced to Clarice with her gem of a debut, I take delight in my sudden acquiescence in knowing for what awaits me in the rest of her novels.

...inspiration sends pain throughout my body.


October '15.

[Prerna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Have you ever forgotten that you are human? Felt free from the awareness of yourself that otherwise constantly assaults you? Have you sometimes felt like you are an entire village but at other times have been lost like a dot? Have you felt the narcissistic but insurmountable need to prove your body, especially around cheerful people? Have you maybe felt the great desire to dissolve until your ends merged with the beginnings of things? Oh don't worry. Your condition isn't fatal. It is, but only in the way everything you've ever encountered, touched, heard, felt and seen is. You just happen to be a protagonist in a Clarice Lispector novel.

This is my first Lispector book, but I already know I will be intimately familiar with all of her writing. She's the sort of writer who'll show you eternity in a blink. Or to be more poignant and pretentiously referential, she'll show you fear in a handful of dust. And all of that fear is the same: crippling existential agony.

For Lispector, the real essence of life is 'becoming', through which all times are united. The desire to 'become' itself is a veiled expression of the desire to cease. Every process is just a revelation instead of creation.

So before you read her, ask yourself: what is out there? What is in here, near to the wild heart? Sink into the incomprehension of yourself. After all, words are merely pebbles rolling into the river. Then read her and punish yourself. If you haven't already.

[The Artisan Geek]

25/4/21
Read this for my classics book club -- thoroughly confused, but would definitely like to read her short stories :)

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[Steven Godin · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Eternity wasn't just time, but something like a deeply rooted certainty that she couldn't contain it in her body because of death; the impossibility of going beyond eternity was eternity; and a feeling in absolute, almost abstract purity was also eternal. What really gave her a sense of eternity was the impossibility of knowing how many human beings would succeed her body, which would one day be far from the present with the speed of a shooting star.'


Not many writers could match writing about life experiences in the manner Clarice Lispector writes about them. For a 23 year-old at the time this is a pretty remarkable book I have to say. Almost like a Brazilian Virginia Woolf but with more of a darkly humorous existential dread. Not a lot actually happens, but then one does not read Lispector for a conventonal plot. Passage after passage I was hypnotized by Joana's lingering thoughts and affinities; dive into her ocean of solitudes and walk the corners of her family surroundings. Lispector's technique and poetic use of language really does make her feel like one of a kind.

For me, The Hour of the Star is superior, but this was still one dazzling feast on the eyes.

[J.L. Sutton · Rating 5 out of 5]

“She wanted even more: to be reborn always, to sever everything that she had learned, that she had seen, and inaugurate herself in new terrain where every tiny act had a meaning, where the air was breathed as if for the first time.”



Clarice Lispector's Near to the Wild Heart is fantastic! I recently read James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man from which the title came. In that work, Joyce writes, “He was alone, unheeded, near to the wild heart of life.” In some ways, a similar type of proclamation is being made in Lispector's work. There is a sense, as in Joyce's work, that Lispector is forging something new with her female protagonist, Joana, “Freedom isn't enough. What I desire doesn't have a name yet...I shall arise as strong and comely as a young colt.”

Published when she was just 23, Lispector's debut novel created a sensation in her home country of Brazil. As it follows Joana's life from childhood through unhappy marriage and beyond, it seems fairly straightforward. However, Near to the Wild Heart is evocative of Joana's journey in a way that makes you feel you are there as her life is taking shape. 4.5 stars

[Quirine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've said it before and I'll say it again: take any sentence from Clarice Lispector's books and you'll have a poem on its own. This one took me quite long to read because this time I was struggling with giving myself over to the hypnosis that is needed to truly appreciate her work. With Agua Viva I surrendered completely, with this one I felt myself fighting back, looking for sense and order where there was none. But when her words hit they hit HARD.

This is more a work of philosophy than anything else - mostly about the separation between the living being and the thinking being. Do we truly know ourselves? Can we? Are we our thoughts, do we create ourselves, can we be truthful? I feel deeply connected to Lispector's search for the essence of it all, the undeniable truth, the thing that lies on the tip of your tongue but always slips away when you think you have it. So, after a bit of a struggle, I still cannot do anything but give this 4 stars.

[liv ❁ · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book that is so deeply for the ones that constantly feel on the outskirts of society. Who refuse to be anything other than themselves, but have accepted (possibly falsely, but with evidence) that their selves are not loveable to anyone. It's for the kids in the hearts of us who were never understood, hated by the ones who should unconditionally love us as soon as we were out of the womb because we were different and weird. The ones who yearn for deep connection more than anything yet cannot seem to feel anything. Next to nothing can penetrate the barrier they have subconsciously put up, no matter how much they think they want to let something in. It's for the people who prefer isolation because it is so much safer than anyone they've ever met, because, maybe you aren't very good at letting people in, but also, maybe no one has really ever wanted to enter into your space. The ones that tend to scare people with their intensity. The ones who have a wall between them and the world and aren't quite sure how much of it is because of themselves or because of the world. The people who have tried to give up what marks them almost as "inhuman" and off-putting to others, what made them so starkly different from their family that they could not be understood, and learned that it is not worth it to pretend to be something that you are not. That a solitary life can sometimes be very lonely, but it is nothing compared to the isolation you feel when trying to be with someone who does not care to understand the depths of your soul. Or rather can't because they refuse to delve into the depths of their own soul.

Lispector writes to explore the depths of herself, the nature of the world. Instead of shying away from the aspects that frighten her, she dives deep into them, feeling that fear, allowing it to envelop her. Taking it into her mouth, swishing it around, tasting every single aspect of it. Analyzing the whole of it. Never shying away. She is a conduit for ideas, letting them stream out from her mind and onto the page. I adore her.

[Roman Clodia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Her whole body and soul lost their boundaries, they merged and fused into a single chaos, gentle and amorphous, relaxed and with uncertain movements, like matter that was simply alive. It was perfect renewal, creation.

Even though this was first published in the early 1940s (and was started when Lispector was, amazingly, just 19), it feels like a text which illustrates the theoretical concept of écriture feminine - not because of gender essentialism but because of the way gender is imbricated with and through culture.

The prose is fluent, hallucinogenic at times, alight with figurative images and sometimes resistant to linear logic and analysis: this is writing that has to be felt rather than merely understood and so has an appeal to somewhere more visceral than just the brain.

If this eschews linguistic order, it also refuses to offer up neat and tidy 'characterisation' (and I put that in scare quotes because the very idea of 'character' is interrogated critically in the book): Joana cannot be categorised easily, her 'self' is slippery and divided ('she had always been two, the one who superficially knew that she was, and the one that truly existed in depth'), so that the narrative shifts between interior and external views of her that clash and collide. Her duality (at least) is implicitly contrasted to the more simple division of the unfaithful Otavio ('this man who divided himself between two homes and two woman') and it is Joana who, in one intense scene, finds him unknowable, not himself.

Challenging 'the marriage plot' that underpins so much bourgeois fiction, Lispector has her protagonist exclaim:

marriage is a goal, after I get married nothing more can happen to me. Just imagine: to have someone always at your side, never to know loneliness. - My God! - never to be by yourself, never, never. And to be a married woman, in other words, someone with her destiny traced out.

I've seen this described stylistically as stream-of-consciousness but, technically speaking, it isn't: it's too unfractured at the sentence level, too syntactically correct (at least in English translation). It is, though, deeply introspective and the movement of the story, such as it is, traces the psychic journey of Joana, a journey that has no ending other than death so that she's always in an open state of becoming.

Experimental, modernist, feminist: there are so many ways in which this can be analysed in intellectual and theoretical terms - but its appeal is deeper and more physical than that, just as Joana is constantly finding herself embodied, from the fear of being buried in her unwelcoming aunt's overflowing breasts, to her awareness that 'she carried her diseased body with her, a troublesome wound'.

I'm late to Lispector - if her first novel written so young is this extraordinary, what does she go on to do?

[Patrizia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sinfonia per voce sola, magnetica e seducente, con una gamma di toni e variazioni da lasciare stupefatti.
Joana bambina accanto al padre, momento felice cui tenderà a tornare per tutta la vita, inseguendo, già adolescente e poi donna, una libertà che le impedisce di legarsi e di amare fino in fondo. Sposa Otávio e presto si rende conto che l’amore è un rischio, se diventa devozione a un uomo. È un istante, in cui l’io si sdoppia, allontanandolo da sé. Quella sensazione improvvisa di felicità, in cui era
“tanto corpo da essere puro spirito. Immateriale, attraversava gli avvenimenti e le ore, scivolandovi in mezzo con la leggerezza di un istante”, diventa una gabbia e “i minuti che erano soltanto suoi lei li sentiva elargiti, spezzati in piccoli cubi di ghiaccio che doveva ingoiare in fretta, prima che si sciogliessero”. Libera da ogni ricordo, dal passato, avvolta nella nebbia di un presente indistinto, Joana sente l’inquietudine crescere, insieme all’infelicità. Non è fatta per le relazioni con gli altri. Cerca e scava in un’interiorità esasperata, ricca di colori. Momenti rossi, momenti grigi, grande costante cui aspira il mare, immenso e imperscrutabile, il mistero dietro le cose che, se svelato, le priva di essenza. Il tempo, fatto di attimi che si susseguono, distillati, scanditi o anche dilatati in immagini, il segreto dell’eternità in quella successione. I fatti sono momenti, passato e futuro sono separati dal bianco del vuoto. Per Joana si chiudono cicli della vita, lei torna ogni volta in se stessa, più libera, nell’illusione di essere immortale, nell’accettazione della morte come possibilità di fondersi all’infanzia e come unica possibile immortalità.
Scritto a poco più di 19 anni, questo romanzo ha il respiro delle cose. Non vi sono spazi o intervalli tra le parole. La prosa è densa, piena. Il rumore della pioggia allontana la paura del buio, i rumori del mondo si fanno parole e le parole sono suono.

[Hugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is another book that has been on the to-read shelf for a very long time. My only previous experience of reading Lispector was Agua Viva, which was short but very difficult to follow, but her reputation is such that I felt I should try again, and her first book seemed a good place to start.

This one is also quite a difficult read - the translation reflects the unusual linguistic style of the original, it is poetic and largely about emotions rather than actions (there is a plot of sorts, as it follows episodes in the life of Juana from early childhood through to the decision to leave her unfaithful husband Otávio). In the early part of the book the childhood parts are alternated with her adult life.

I am glad that I read this, but I really don't feel qualified to assess or review it adequately.

[Malacorda · Rating 2 out of 5]

Timothy Leary's dead. No, no, he's outside looking in.


Mi dispiace davvero tanto, ho cercato con ogni buona volontà se non di farmelo piacere almeno di comprenderlo; ma ora io qui non ho nessun motivo per scrivere una falsa sviolinata soltanto perché è piaciuto alla maggior parte di amici e vicini, e l'unica verità che posso scrivere è che l'ho trovato cervellotico e farraginoso.

Quando ho iniziato a leggerlo non avevo idea di cosa aspettarmi: un po' per via del fatto che i vari commenti e recensioni mi hanno dipinto un quadro molto eterogeneo, ma anche e soprattutto per quella che è la storia personale dell'autrice: nata in Ucraina, naturalizzata brasiliana, afferma di non avere nulla a che fare con il suo paese di origine, e di non averci mai nemmeno messo piede dal momento in cui finché era là l'hanno sempre dovuta tenere in braccio... ma Dio solo sa se non è vero che si può sentire la nostalgia per un qualcosa o per un luogo che non si è mai conosciuto. Io credo anzi che sia la forma di nostalgia più profonda e dolorosa. Del resto, il sangue non mente e gli occhi nemmeno: una che assomiglia così tanto a Marlene Dietrich non può che essere europea dalla punta dei capelli fin nel midollo.

Tutte le attenzioni dell'autrice sembrano essere qui irrimediabilmente calamitate da quel particolare momento della giornata (e dunque della vita) che occorre per ognuno di noi al risveglio, con modalità credo molto simili per tutti: la luce è debole e soffusa, l'intera stanza si compone di diverse sfumature di grigi, tra le lenzuola indugiano ancora gli echi e i sentori dei sogni, la mente non è più del tutto addormentata ma non è ancora del tutto sveglia e cosciente, e in tale stato può accadere di essere iper-ricettivi nei confronti di una qualche riflessione o sentimento particolare, e allo stesso modo può accadere di ripromettersi e figurarsi magnifiche sorti e progressive, epici cambiamenti che poi verranno regolarmente sgonfiati e smontati dall'inizio vero e proprio della giornata e dalla sua inevitabile routine. Ecco, il libro pare essere un'unica ed esagerata dilatazione di quei pochi minuti di semi-incoscienza: ogni frase e riflessione della protagonista (ma anche del marito e anche dell'amante del marito e dell'amante di lei), lei da bambina ma anche da ragazzina e da adulta, ogni considerazione sembra scaturita da quelle condizioni anche quando il racconto si sta necessariamente svolgendo in un momento diverso dal risveglio. E' un fluttuare costante, un galleggiamento che a mio avviso e per i miei gusti si protrae troppo a lungo. E' un torpore troppo uniforme per poter durare oltre vent'anni e per potersi posare uguale identico su più personaggi.

Quel che ne esce, da tutto questo fluttuare, è il quadro di un'infanzia ma soprattutto di un'adolescenza fatte di infelicità e di estrema difficoltà (per non dire impossibilità) di rapportarsi con gli altri. Di più, la protagonista ha difficoltà ad esprimersi persino con sé stessa, tra sé e sé: quel "tutto, tutto!" ripetuto in maniera talmente ossessiva, sfibrante e delirante da non significare proprio niente di niente, mi ha fatto pensare ad uno stato di iperventilazione o ad uno stato allucinatorio. O forse è il contrario, forse c'è il bisogno di una qualche sostanza psicoattiva per agevolare l'apertura di canali di comunicazione con il resto del mondo. Uno stato di incoscienza che è una costante, non ha sviluppo nel corso della lettura e non ha soluzione di continuità: in questo senso è più un racconto che un romanzo.

Credo non vi sia dubbio alcuno circa il fatto che l'autrice intendesse qui esprimere dolore, un male di vivere, una bestia che si dimena senza sapere bene da che parte rivolgersi. Non saprei dire in quale misura questo dolore sia solo immaginato o veramente vissuto sulla propria pelle, ma propendo più per la seconda ipotesi. Tra queste pagine e tra tutto questo galleggiamento di pensieri in libertà, c'è un dolore sordo e muto, radicato e inconsulto al punto da venire ingannevolmente percepito come una sorta di forza e selvaticità. E visti il titolo e la citazione di Joyce da cui il titolo stesso è tratto, il fluttuante stato allucinatorio viene associato (in maniera un po' troppo riduttiva e sbrigativa) all'essere artista. Perché invece è solo un cuore sanguinante, non c'è nessuna forza ma solo tanto dolore, mescolato con tanta solitudine e tanta immaturità. L'immaturità, ovviamente, è del personaggio, mentre la giovane autrice alla sua opera prima dimostra di sapersi muovere con cognizione sul terreno che si è scelta, questo è innegabile, indipendentemente dal fatto che la formula risulti più o meno gradita al lettore. E' chiaro quanto quest'opera sia debitrice a Il lupo della steppa di Hesse, forse fin troppo, ecco un altro dei difetti: arriva quasi a farne la parodia. C'è persino un Bach che qua e là fa capolino al posto di Mozart: ma Bach è una faccenda troppo massiccia per poterlo far apparire qui e lì come se fosse un folletto o un gattino, e in nessun caso ti può sostituire Mozart visto che i due sono agli antipodi sia come musicalità che come personalità.

In ogni caso, è stata una nuova esperienza di lettura: mi si conceda di aver comunque fatto un passo in più rispetto chi dice "non mi piace" senza averlo letto e rispetto chi scrive "brutto" senza aver sviscerato un po' di percome e di perché.

[Alexandra (Lexi) Roselyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Genius. Clarice Lispector, I might just be your biggest fan.

[cypt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Koks gėris! Skaityti sunkoka - labai tirštas tekstas, bet sykiu - kaip banga perlieja. Galvoj nesutelpa, kad jį parašė 23 m. (!!!) debiutuojanti (!!!) autorė - išvis. Kaip sakė ją labai mylinti kolegė, "dar nenutolusi nuo savo laukinės širdies".

Siužeto labai daug nėra: toks tarsi brandos romanas, kaip mergaitė lieka našlaite ir užaugusi išteka. Įvykių minimaliai, skyrelių daug, bet jie plaukiojantys - tai apie tą, tai apie aną. Didysis romano grožis ir stiprybė - sąmonės srautas, nuostabiai parašytas ir labai tikslingas. Pas Joyce'ą arba ir Woolf sąmonės srautas kartais būna toks truputį random - atskleisti dar vieną perspektyvą, leist mums pasibūt kokio nors Leopoldo galvoje. Pas Lispector tarsi irgi, jis išjudina pasakojimą, daro jį visiškai netvarų, virpantį ir chaotišką. Kaip ir ta pati Žoana, iš kurios perspektyvos mums viskas rodoma. Grožis - gyvenimo "tiesos", atrandamos ne Apmąstymuose ar kokiame nors Įvykyje, o tiesiog kasdienybėj, lekiant, vienai minčiai verčiantis per kitą, ties nė viena labiau neapsistojant.

Bet man gražiausia romane buvo tai, kaip sąmonės srautas pasitarnauja parodyti mažo vaiko pasauliui, nesugebėjimui į ką nors susitelkti, šokinėjimui nuo vienos minties prie kitos, chaosui - ir sykiu baimei, nejaukumui, kylančiam iš to chaoso, kai pasaulis tave ima tarsi dusinti. Neįtikėtinai paveiku - o kartu toks keistas efektas, skaitai ir ima darytis baugu, atrodo, ir tave tas pasaulis užgriūna, kartu su tuo vaiku. Kaip ir paauglystės chaosas, nejaukumas, kai visko per daug. Viskas labai artima, suprantama ir tuo kažkaip net biški skausminga. Net buvau nustojus skaityti kažkur ties puse - per daug nejauku buvo. Bet labai gerai.

Norisi imt ir cituoti gabalais (nors šiaip tiesiog norisi skaityt ir skaityt tuos gabalus vis iš naujo):

Net nesuprato, ar jai juoktis, nes nieko itin smagaus čia nebuvo. Priešingai, ak, priešingai, ten buvo tai, kas nutiko vakar. Užsidengusi veidą rankomis luktelėjo beveik susigėdusi, jausdama savo juoko ir iškvėpimų šilumą, tuoj pat išsisklaidančią. O vanduo sruvo per basas jos kojas, skverbėsi pro pirštus ir skaidrus skaidrus nubėgdavo kaip permatomas žvėrelis. Permatomas ir gyvas... Panoro jo atsigerti, švelniai krimstelėti. Pasisėmė rieškučiomis. Mažytis tylus ežerėlis ramiai tviskėjo saulėje, darėsi šiltas, lašėjo, kol jo neliko. Smėlis sugėrė jį akimirksniu ir plytėjo sau, sakytum niekada nebūtų regėjęs nė lašelio vandens. Ji susišlapino veidą, lyžtelėjo tuščią sūrų delną. Druska ir saulė buvo švytinčios strėliukės, įsmingančios tai šen, tai ten, įtempiančios šlapio veido odą. Jos laimė padidėjo, susitelkė gerklėje kaip oro duobė. Bet dabar tai buvo rimtas džiaugsmas, be jokio noro juoktis. Toks džiaugsmas, kad tuojau pravirksi, Dieve mano. Pamažu atėjo mintis. Be baimės, ne pilka ir verksminga, kaip būdavo iki šiol, o nuoga ir tyli kaip baltas smėlis po saule. Tėtukas mirė. Tėtukas mirė. Ji lėtai alsavo. Tėtukas mirė. Dabar tikrai žinojo, kad tėvas miręs. Dabar, prie jūros, kur spindesys - tai žuvyčių lietus. Tėvas miręs, kaip kad jūra yra neaprėpiama! - ūmai susivokė ji. Tėvas miręs, kaip kad nematyti jūros dugno, pajuto. (p. 45-46)

Atsigulė kniūbsčia ant smėlio, rankomis užsidengusi veidą, palikusi tik mažutį plyšelį orui. Vis tamsiau, tamsiau, tada pamažu ėmė ryškėti apskritimai, raudonos dėmės, pūstašoniai virpantys burbulai, tai didėjantys, tai mažėjantys. Smėlio kruopelės graužė odą, spaudėsi į ją. Net užsimerkusi jautė, kaip greitai jūra pakrantėje susisiurbia bangas, irgi užmerktais vokais. Ir jos klusniai grįžta, delnai ištiesti, kūnas laisvas. Gera klausytis jų mūšos. Aš esu žmogus. Ir daugybė dalykų dar atsitiks. Kas? Kas nutiks, ji papasakos sau pačiai. Vis tiek niekas nesuprastų: ji ką nors pagalvodavo, bet paskui nemokėdavo lygiai taip papasakoti. Ypač neįmanoma su tais apmąstymais. Pavyzdžiui, kartais šaudavo mintis ir nustebusi ji svarstydavo: kodėl anksčiau taip nepagalvojau? (p. 47)

Tie burbulai - kaip nuo viršelio.

Žiauriai patiko, norėčiau dar, norėčiau apsakymų, norėčiau lietuviškai - kažkaip įspūdingai suskamba tie sakiniai.

[Maxwell]

A young woman finds immortality in the everyday in Lispector’s debut novel that recalls Woolf and Joyce in a style wholly her own.

“The world rolls and somewhere out there are things I don’t know.”

From an early age Joana feels different from other people. She doesn’t have the words to describe it, but she knows there’s something fundamental she lacks, or perhaps she contains more of it–whatever ‘it’ is–than others. This something is essential to her being; she can’t name it, can’t get her hands on it, yet nevertheless it drives her forward in life. She’s often perceived as cold, inhuman; but to others she has an alluring quality that makes them feel like they have a deeper view into the secret mysteries of life. She elevates their status while constantly searching for her own meaning, if one exists at all.

“Her life was made up of complete little lives, of whole, closed circles, which isolated themselves from one another.”

When her father dies, she’s sent to her aunt who then sends her on to a boarding school; she never quite finds her footing in these social dynamics but often finds safety and reassurance in the sublime qualities of nature. She meets Otavio whom she eventually marries, but feels confined by the conventions of marriage and her expected place in that dynamic. He has his love, she hers. They struggle and debate, often sparking new thoughts and ideas in each other, yet causing the other to crumble and question their existence together as well.

“I am thus a toy that is wound up and which when done will not find its own, deeper life. Try to calmly admit that I may only find it if I look for it in the small springs.”

That is, essentially, the ‘plot’ of this novel, if you can call it that. In that way that it’s presented, it reads more like philosophical musings, thoughts on metaphysical concepts, and an open wound being prodded. Joana can’t seem to let herself be happy; perhaps, she’s incapable. She spends much of her time in her own head, wrestling with the idea of living versus the practice of it. She observes others, often looking out windows at nature, peering into the sand or standing on a cliff by the sea, seeking. I found her depiction, her creation, complex and relatable.

“I must not forget, I thought, that I have been happy, that I am being happier than one can be. But I forgot, I’ve always forgotten.”

Lispector’s writing is phenomenal. Challenging, but phenomenal. To think she published this, her debut novel, at the age of 23 is unbelievable. It’s poetry. There are difficult passages, entire pages where you have to let go of the need to grasp meaning in order for ideas and images to surface. Hold on to those and you will take away something rich and lasting.

There’s a universality to the story that clearly transcends time, nationality, gender, identity in any form. She gets to the meat of life and renders it on the page. The messy, ugly, bloody meat.

“Everything, everything.” “De profundis.” “Movement explains form.” Circles and lines. Tick-tock, tin-dlen, the clock continues, ocean waves roll on, and so do we.

[Algernon · Rating 5 out of 5]

She wanted more: to be reborn always, to sever everything that she had learned, that she had seen, and inaugurate herself in a new terrain where every tiny act had a meaning, where the air was breathed as if for the first time. She had the feeling that life ran thick and slow inside her, bubbling like a hot sheet of lava. Maybe she loved herself ... And what if, she thought distantly, a bugle suddenly cut through that mantle of night with its sharp sound and left the plains free, green and vast ... And then nervous white horses with rebellious neck and leg movements, almost flying, crossed rivers, mountains, valleys ... Thinking of them, she felt the cool air circulate inside herself as if it had come out of a cool, moist, hidden grotto in the middle of the desert.

Insomnia ... Lying awake in the dark, unable to sleep, thoughts running faster and wilder through your head, elegant arguments about life being chased by flights of fancy through phantasmagoric landscapes. The vast majority of us forget all about these moments in the light of the new dawn. Clarice Lispector chronicles her journey into the night in all its splendor and all its agony with amazing grace and uncompromising honesty, all the more laudable for the young writer who penned this debut novel at only 23 years old. I saw her stream of conscience compared positively with Joyce and Proust, but because it's been decades since I visited these two titans of literature, I would rather compare Clarice Lispector with two recent friends I made in my own imaginary journeys : she is the lonely hunter lost in an ice palace, a bridge over troubled existentialist waters that brings together the loneliness of Carson McCullers with the lyricism of Tarjei Vesaas. She is a poet of the disturbing and obscure pathways through the inner landscapes of a hungry, wild, free, curious and brilliant mind.

The only thing she hadn't got used to was sleeping. Sleeping was an adventure every night, falling from the easy clarity in which she lived into the same mystery, dark and cool, crossing darkness. Dying and being reborn.

The story of Clarice Lispector debut novel starts with Joana, a child prodigy, gifted with a rare sensibility for the natural world, a restlessness and a thirst for meaning. Before the end of the book Joana will experience the loss of loved ones, life among strangers, physical passion and devotion to her husband, jealousy and depression. But all these intrusions of the outside world pale in comparison with the brightness and intensity of her inner life. Joana is both intriguing and aloof for the people around her, running one moment hot, the other icy cold and analytical, judgemental. Yet for me she is consistent over the years in her enthusiasm for life in all its aspects, physical and metaphysical, and in her despair at the vastness and indifference of the universe.

Any quotations taken out of context from this type of long, introspective novel is bound to be misleading and insufficient to capture the whole essence of the arguments, but for me they are still useful examples of the powerful personality and intimate confessions of the author.

Her thoughts were, once erected, garden statues and she looked at them as she followed her path through the garden.

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There was a great, still moment, with nothing inside it. She dilated her eyes, waited. Nothing came. Blank. But suddenly the day was wound up and everthing spluttered to life again, the typewriter trotting, her father's cigarette smoking, the silence, the little leaves, the naked chickens, the light, things coming to life again with the urgency of a kettle on the boil.

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Let us cry together, quietly. For having suffered and continuing on so sweetly. Tired pain in a simplified tear. But this was a yearning for poetry, that I confess, God. Let us sleep hand in hand. The world rolls and somewhere out there are things I don't know. Let us sleep on God and mystery, a quiet, fragile ship floating on the sea, behold sleep.
Why was she so burning and light, like the air that comes from a stove whose lid is lifted?

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The imagination grasped and possessed the future of the present, while the body was there at the beginning of the road, living at another pace, blind to the experiences of the spirit ...

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For a minute it seemed to her that she had already lived and was at the end. And right afterwards, that everything has been blank until now, like an empty space, and that she could hear far off and muffled the din of life approaching, dense, frothy and violent, its tall waves cutting across the sky, drawing nearer, nearer ... to submerge her, to submerge her, drown her, asphyxiating her ...

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Just as the space surrounded by four walls has a specific value, provoked not so much because it is a space but because it is surrounded by walls, Otavio made her into something that wasn't her but himself and which Joana received out of pity for both, because both were incapable of freeing themselves through love, because she had meekly accepted her own fear of suffering, her inability to move beyond the frontier of revolt. Besides: how could she tie herself to a man without allowing him to imprison her? How could she prevent him from developing his four walls over her body and soul? And was there a way to have things without those things possessing her?

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Sometimes she rebelled distantly: life is long ... She feared the days, one after another, without surprises, of pure devotion to a man. To a man who would freely use all of his wife's forces for his own bonfire, in a serene, unconscious sacrifice of everything that wasn't his own personality.

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I carry on always inaugurating myself, opening and closing circles of life, tossing them aside, withered, full of the past. Why so independent, why don't they merge into just one block, providing me with ballast? Fact was they were too whole. Moments so intense, red, condensed in themselves that they didn't need past or future in order to exist.

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While music whirls around and develops, the dawn, the strong day and the night all live, with a constant note in the symphony, that of transformation. It is music unsupported by things, space or time, the same color as life and death. Life and death in ideas, isolated from pleasure and pain.

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The distance that separates emotions from words. I've already thought about that. And the most curious thing is that the moment I try to speak not only do I fail to express what I feel, but what I feel slowly becomes what I say. Or at least what makes me act is not what I feel but what I say.

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I am the light wave that has no other field but the sea, I thrash about, slide, fly, laughing, giving, sleeping, but woe is me, always in me, always in me.

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Words are pebbles rolling in the river. It wasn't happiness that she felt then, but what she felt was fluid, sweetly amorphous, resplendent instant, somber instant.

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All of me swims, floats, crosses what exists with my nerves. I am nothing but a desire, anger, vagueness, as impalpable as energy.

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Highly recommended to students of human nature and lovers of introspective journeys.

[Cláudia Azevedo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Belíssimo e profundo, por vezes, mas também repetitivo e confuso. Tanto amei como bocejei, desejando que o fim chegasse depressa.
A culpa é desta Joana, personagem com a qual não engracei, mas também de uma escrita tortuosa e difícil de seguir.
Esta não é a minha Clarice Lispector, a dos contos e de A Hora da Estrela, que me marcou tanto.

[emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

'I don’t know what you are made of, I swear.'

Lispector is not for everyone (needless to say/reiterate), but she's forever the one for me. The more I read, and re-read her, I am drenched in awe, gratitude, and limitless, raw, unadulterated admiration. To quote Celia Paul , 'Time is a substance' (whatever that means), but that's exactly the vibe of Lispector's 'Near to the Wild Heart', I reckon.

'Sincerely, I live. Who am I? Well, that’s a bit much. I remember a chromatic study by Bach and my mind strays. It is as cold and pure as ice, yet you can sleep on it. My consciousness strays, but it doesn’t matter, I find the greatest serenity in hallucination. It is curious that I can’t say who I am. That is to say, I know it all too well, but I can’t say it. More than anything, I’m afraid to say it, because the moment I try to speak not only do I fail to express what I feel but what I feel slowly becomes what I say. Or at least what makes me act is not what I feel but what I say. I feel who I am and the impression is lodged in the highest part of my brain, on my lips (especially on my tongue), on the surface of my arms and also running through me, deep inside my body, but where, exactly where, I can’t say. The taste is grey, slightly reddish, a bit bluish in the old parts, and it moves like gelatin, sluggishly. Sometimes it becomes sharp and wounds me, colliding with me.'

'Once or twice more in her life—perhaps late one afternoon, in an instant of love, at the moment of death—she would have the sublime creative unconsciousness, the sharp, blind intuition that she was really immortal for all time.'

'In the garden the darkness frayed into a veil and the sunflowers trembled in the breeze that was starting to pick up. But the little lights still twinkled in the depths of the distance like the sea’s.'

'—what about this happiness born of pain, the steel creasing my skin, this cold that is jealousy, no, this cold that is like this: oh, so you’ve come all this way? well you have to go back. But this time I won’t start over, I swear, I won’t rebuild anything, I’ll stay behind like a rock off in the distance, at the beginning of the road. There is something that reels with me, reels, reels, dazes me, dazes me, and calmly deposits me back where I started.'

'—her unconfessed dread of the rainless nights of old, in the darkness wide awake. How many times will I have to live through the same things in different situations?'

'Between one instant and another, between past and future, the white vagueness of the interval. Empty like the distance from one minute to the next in the clock’s circle—rising up—a little bit of eternity—a black bird, a dot growing on the horizon, drawing closer to awareness like a ball thrown from the end to the beginning—exploding before perplexed eyes in an essence of silence. Leaving behind it the perfect interval like a single sound vibrating in the air. Be reborn later, store away the strange memory of the interval, not knowing how to mix it into life.'

'He went out, took his time choosing a bag of bonbons. He ended up buying a fairly large bag of apricot ones. When he turned the corner, he’d suck on his first bonbon, hands in pockets. His eyes filled with tenderness thinking about it. Why not? he asked himself suddenly irritated. Who said great men don’t eat bonbons? Except that in biographies no one remembers to mention it.'

'—observing him in one of his ugly moments—His ugliness didn’t excite her, didn’t inspire pity—She looked at him without paying attention to his words—A certain degree of blindness is necessary in order to see certain things. This is perhaps the mark of an artist. Any man might know more than him and safely reason, according to the truth. But those things in particular cannot be seen with the light on. In the darkness they become phosphorescent.'

'—I don’t nourish my errors, but may they all nourish me—Now he was going to work. As if everyone was watching and nodding approvingly, closing their eyes in their assent: yes, that’s right, very good. Someone real was bothering him and on his own he became unstuck, nervous. For “everyone” was watching him—Would she end up mad or what? He had no idea. Perhaps only suffering. He stopped, reread it. To not leave this world, he thought with a certain ardor—.'

'—he wasn’t obliged to practice law, to look at and deal with those affrontingly human people, parading, exposing their lives shamelessly. He reread his notes—The pure scientist stops believing in what he likes, but cannot stop himself from liking what he believes. The need to like: the mark of man—Reading what she had written was like being in front of her. He conjured her up and, avoiding her eyes, saw her in her moments of distraction, her face white, vague and light. And suddenly great melancholy descended over him. What exactly am I doing?'

[João Barradas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Há uma eterna questão que acompanha a produção literária de um escritor. Que altar pejam de ladainhas para obterem as suas tamanhas façanhas? Ou melhor, que deus bajulam para lhes garantir uma constante e inesgotável originalidade? Facilmente se entende que a maioria dos temas escalpelizados são sorvidos do quotidiano em que estes deambulam, reflectindo as suas preocupações e abespinhações. E a funesta questão do "género" da não-ficção perde o sentido e a necessidade.

Não deixa de ser caricato que a primeira experiência (conhecida) de Clarice no mundo das letras seja um romance de formação sobre uma jovem mulher, Joana de nome. Ela que, querendo ser "herói" (e não heroína), pretende deslaçar as amarras com que a sociedade a prende, deixar de ser uma marioneta de outrém e tomar as rédeas da sua vida. No fundo, fundir-se - para o bem e para o mal - com a Natureza que a circunda e não a oprime. Com ela descobre a sexualidade natural - como ondas a vagar numa praia - e aplica cegamente a Lei de Lavoisier: nada se cria, nada se perde, tudo se transforma.

Num exercício de aproximação da grandeza, Clarice demonstra os seus dotes de genialidade - consegue prender a atenção do leitor, mesmo revelando a súmula da história nas primeiras páginas. E à repetição quase infantilizada de certas expressões (numa tentativa de criar realidades mais sui generis), soma-se o retorno primário a temas religiosos bem patentes na sua bibliografia: os laivos de similiridade com cenas bíblicas, a reflexão sobre o valor da condição humana, o rumo das vidas em círculo, a conexão com a Natureza espiritual. Sem esquecer a introdução de certas ideias que viriam a ser melhor desenvolvidas noutras obras.

Uma fusão mágica, entre uma viagem iniciática e uma primeira obra, resulta num prefácio perfeito para o mundo caleidoscópico da autora. A ladainha final, proferida por Joana, deverá ter reverberado na mente dela, ao longo da sua existência, bem como a vontade preemente de transmutação no animal-amuleto, símbolo da liberdade selvagem que a persegue a cada palavra escrita. Até atingir um estádio de perfeita imperfeição, perto mas longe, tangível mas impalpável, real mas etéreo, concreto mas confuso. E, no fim, o coração bate num galope incessante por mais e mais!

"Eu mesma posso morrer de sede diante de mim. A solidão está misturada à minha essência..."
"(...) a dor de hoje será amanhã tua alegria; nada existe que escape à transfiguração".