The Passion According to G.H.

by Clarice Lispector

G.H., a well-to-do Rio sculptress, enters the room of her maid, which is as clear and white 'as in an insane asylum from which dangerous objects have been removed'. There she sees a cockroach - black, dusty, prehistoric - crawling out of the wardrobe and, panicking, slams the door on it. Her irresistible fascination with the dying insect provokes a spiritual crisis, in which she questions her place in the universe and her very identity, propelling her towards an act of shocking transgression. Clarice Lispector's spare, deeply disturbing yet luminous novel transforms language into something otherworldly, and is one of her most unsettling and compelling works.

Clarice Lispector was a Brazilian novelist and short story writer. Her innovation in fiction brought her international renown. References to her literary work pervade the music and literature of Brazil and Latin America. She was born in the Ukraine in 1920, but in the aftermath of World War I and the Russian Civil War, the family fled to Romania and eventually sailed to Brazil. She published her first novel, Near to the Wildheart in 1943 when she was just twenty-three, and the next year was awarded the Graça Aranha Prize for the best first novel. Many felt she had given Brazillian literature a unique voice in the larger context of Portuguese literature. After living variously in Italy, the UK, Switzerland and the US, in 1959, Lispector with her children returned to Brazil where she wrote her most influential novels including The Passion According to G.H. She died in 1977, shortly after the publication of her final novel, The Hour of the Star.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Philosophy, Brazil, Literary Fiction, Novels, Literature

208 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1964

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]

Plot-wise The Passion According to G.H. is incredibly simple: a woman enters the room of her former housemaid and there she kills a cockroach – that’s all.
But what is the stuff the inner world of a human being is made of, however?

What I used to be, was no good for me. But it was from that not-good that I’d organized the best thing of all: hope. From my own flaw I had created a future good. Am I afraid now that my new way of being doesn’t make sense? But why not let myself be carried away by whatever happens? I would have to take the holy risk of chance. And I will substitute fate for probability.

The book is a confession of the mind set free…

More and more I had nothing to ask for. And I was seeing, with fascination and horror, the pieces of my rotten mummy clothes falling dry to the floor, I was watching my transformation from chrysalis into moist larva, my wings were slowly shrinking back scorched. And a belly entirely new and made for the ground, a new belly was being reborn.

The book is a confession of the mind set free into madness…

Hell is the mouth that bites and eats the living flesh with its blood, and the one being eaten howls with delight in his eye: hell is pain as delight of the matter, and with the laughter of delight, the tears run in pain. And the tear that comes from the laughter of pain is the opposite of redemption.

Madness is an island where one attempts to hide from the world without.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Passion According to G.H. is a difficult book to talk about—in part because it attempts to say the unsayable—so I'm going to talk about it in a very roundabout, personal way. If you're one of those Dragnet types who wants 'just the facts, ma'am,' you'd better scram right about now because I have absolutely no idea where this thing is going. I guess I'll just let this review be what it wants to be.

My first crisis was—I want to say at around the age of ten. But when I say it was the first crisis you should understand that it's the first crisis I remember. Who knows when or why these things begin? I'll leave that question to the psychologists, the biochemists, the shamans... Anyway, I was (let's say) ten, and I was in my pajamas standing in the living room. It was evening—dark enough for the bright lamplight to cast hard shadows around the room—but not so late that the dingy sunlight had fully retreated. In other words, it was the dying hour. That neither/nor time of day when I'm reminded that, yes, I will die. It's nature's daily memorandum to those who've become too complacent, too forgetful, and too immortal. My mother was on the sofa, and my sister was on the chair. But I was standing there locked into place while the world moved around me. I could sense the world (vividly) moving around me. Tic Tac Dough, featuring the ever-smiley host Wink Martindale, was on the Sony Trinitron.

In a span of time too short to register—a time without duration, just as in math a line (theoretically) has length but not width or depth and is therefore invisible—I experienced the crisis. The first crisis that I remember. But I shouldn't say I experienced it because it's difficult to experience something that doesn't extend itself in time; I should say that I remembered the feeling from it. I wasn't experiencing it directly, just a dulled memory of it. And what 'it' was was this: I remembered experiencing the world suddenly as objects without meaning or context. It's like this... Imagine that you're driving down the highway at 85 mph (because you're a leadfoot) and there's traffic all around you—but then suddenly you forget how a car works. The steering wheel, the pedals just become strange, unintelligible objects that you don't know what to do with. The car itself is only a shape surrounding you, without significance. Does it even have anything to do with your motion down the highway?

That's what it was like. Everything in the world, for a period of time without duration, became random shapes and figures without any organizing principle. Think about the world as nameless matter. How strange (and perhaps even frightening) these shapes become when you don't know their 'intentions.' And this is what I remembered when I was standing in the living room, with my mother and my sister on either side and Wink Martindale in front of me. I remembered not comprehending what I was and how I had a consciousness directed at these objects. It's true—I was safe now—the experience already belonged to the past, but even its residue was terrifying. I could remember losing myself.

I never told anyone about these experiences until many years later. As a ten year old, I didn't even know if it was strange or a symptom of merely being alive. Then one day I told my girlfriend S. about these 'episodes.' Fortunately, S. was as crazy as I was and she instantly knew what I meant. It was like a dark, horrible secret opened up between us. We could never tell 'the others'—they wouldn't understand. But we needed something to call it, a way to describe what it was. Being the pretentious kid I was, I dabbled in existentialism at the time, so I borrowed the conceptual underpinning and came up with the phrase phenomenological disorientation. It stuck. When I see her now, many years later, we both remember remembering it. The dark secret. The forgetfulness.

It was not long after the naming of the remembering of the experience that I realized that I would probably always be nuts. My main fear was that I would actually get stuck in the experience. What if one day I never came back out of it? What if I could never comprehend the world, the body, or the mind I inhabited ever again? That would be insanity. That must be what insanity is, right?

I've shared this (all-too-true) reminiscence with you because The Passion According to G.H. is the stream-of-conscious description of an existential crisis very much like it. A sculptress (known only as G.H., the initials monogrammed on her luggage) enters her maid's room to discover, much to her horror, a cockroach. She attempts to kill it by closing the door of an armoire on it, but this succeeds only in injuring it and prolonging its death. She watches over this dying cockroach, and this vigil provokes a collapse of her identity and her previous notion of what it meant to be human.

What I have told you just now constitutes probably 90% of the outward 'action' of the book. That's it. Most of the it is comprised of the frantic, iterative reflections of G.H. as she embarks upon a terrifying new understanding of the world. This new world can not be spoken. Our language fails it. It is an 'inexpressive' state of being without words—a vast, timeless existence that is constant like a humming without any inflection.

Needless to say, The Passion According to G.H. is a very difficult and often unpleasant book. Because it is composed of sentences that can not precisely name what is being discussed, the strategy is one of allusion. Lispector attempts to evoke the unsayable through unconventional and paradoxical uses of language. The idea (if we can even call it that) lies in the interstices between the words. The sentences are signposts directed at some unseeable object, lost on the horizon. As such, The Passion According to G.H. is a book that is not only thought but intuited and felt.

Do I even need to tell you that this is not a book for everyone? Okay: This is not a book for everyone. Although I think it's a masterpiece and I gave it five stars, I wouldn't be surprised by anyone giving it one star. Hatred for the book is as understandable to me as admiration. I have to confess that I picked it up about a week ago, I read thirty pages, and then I shelved it. 'Not for me. Definitely not for me.' But then—I found myself thinking about it. I wanted to know what Lispector meant. Although the narrative voice of the novel was obscure and seemingly erratic, it demanded my attention. Several times throughout, G.H. speaks to an imaginary person so that she can makes some sense of what she's saying. And we soon become aware that she doesn't understand it all either. It happened to her, and now she doesn't know what to do with it. So she gives it to us, the readers, to see if we can make sense of it.

I don't know much about Clarice Lispector, other than that she was born in the Ukraine, grew up in Brazil, and died at the age of 56. But the translator of The Passion According to G.H. Idra Novey offers this anecdote which, along with the novel itself, tells us more than any biography ever could:

A friend in Brazil told me of a young woman in Rio who'd read Clarice Lispector obsessively and was convinced—as I and legions of other Clarice devotees have been—that she and Clarice Lispector would have a life-changing connection if they met in person. She managed to get in touch with the writer, who kindly agreed to meet her. When the young woman arrived, Clarice sat and stared at her and said nothing until the woman finally fled the apartment.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The world independed on me…”

Those powerful closing remarks! That brilliant made-up word stating the painful truth of humankind’s relative insignificance in the world - in stark contrast to the absolute significance that a specific human life has for each individual!

Oh, she knocked me down, again! Clarice Lispector, you daring, independent soul, you brilliant thinker, you wild, wild woman! YOU! Are me. And all of us if we dare not to know what we are.

What is Clarice Lispector’s master class? Breaking down certainties and truths and letting life emerge beyond the illusion of knowledge.

Plot?

A woman in a clean, almost sterile room encounters and injures a roach, and engages in an inner monologue about the meaning(lessness) of life. It is as if Kafka’s The Metamorphosis was told from the perspective of Gregor Samsa’s sister - had she been more intelligent, free and life-embracing. It is as if the gospel was told from the perspective of an educated and open-minded Eve, writing her memoirs with the understanding that she had to break off relations with her dominant and simple-minded (God)father to have a life of her own. An Eve who is proud to be naked!

An Eve whose metamorphosis into herself is mirrored in the roach, the intruder into a clean, almost sterile room, challenging the old Biblical concepts:

“Why, Why didn’t I want to become as unclean as the roach? What ideal was fastening me to the sentiment of an idea? Why shouldn’t I become unclean, exactly as I was discovering my whole self to be? What was I afraid of? Becoming unclean with what?
Becoming unclean with joy.”

To discover freedom, desire, sexuality and independent thinking the heroine needs to break away from the concepts of past and future, from the idea of living by the rules of past ideas and for some imaginary future redemption. Real living though can only be within a moment:

“But what I’d never experienced was the crash with the moment called “right now”.”

To free herself from the morality of the Bible, the narrator goes through stages of fear, curiosity and fascination, always keeping her freedom to herself to be able to operate within the system of past tradition and future redemption that is the norm in her world: “Freedom is a secret.” Her freedom takes place in her mind, nowhere else. And when it is too hard to reconcile her thoughts with the outside world, she has pity on the external concepts and carries the responsibility for the discrepancies herself:

“I myself prefer to consider that I have temporarily taken leave of my senses, rather than having the courage to think that all of this is a truth.”

She spits herself out of the black and white system of religion for being lukewarm, quoting the Apocalypse, and mirroring Dostoevsky’s take on women’s lack of fanaticism in The Brothers Karamazov, yet in a positive, free and independent light. The goal is “deheroization” of the self until she has no name, except for the general identity marker “I”.

“The world independed on me … “

“And so I adore it.”

Rarely have I encountered a writer who dares to write internal truth in the same direct and honest way. Clarice Lispector’s obscurity derives from the obscurity of the eternal human search for meaning while knowing there is none. Her ignorance is the highest form of knowledge in a Socratic take on the psyche. Her religion consists in accepting the narrative while rejecting the morality - quite the opposite of mainstream churchgoing, but liberating in its logic!

She blew me away, yet again. She is closer to my wild heart than any other author I know, reading her is like being with the stars for an hour, and I share the passion according to the anonymous woman alone in a clean room with a roach with whom she is passionately in love despite destroying it. The novel left my fingers yearning for brushes, wishing for oil paints to make a giant painting of a beautiful woman dancing the tango with an elegant roach - Tango For Two, the passion according to Clarice Lispector.

“And so I adore it.”

[Luís · Rating 5 out of 5]

The story of a woman who, while tidying up her room, finds a cockroach, more or less crushes it, kisses it, and then swallows it. And therefore, his life changes; she is no longer (she cannot) the woman she was before.
The book's strength lies in its precision. It sticks to this minimal, even horrific, scene of the insect and the woman. We learn almost nothing about this character's past life. No flashback supports the story, yet it holds.
The narrator loses her successive skins, illusions, hopes, and last remnants of identity from one chapter to the next. Clarice Lispector writes the great novel of depersonalization here. Yet, she does not cheat: it is never only sad nor funny; it is all simultaneously - no grace without madness - nor the other way around.
The style is impressive. The sentences seem to dance, affirming something unprecedented and suddenly retracting into doubts. The last sentence of each chapter serves as the first for the next, as if language could stop nothing in life and seize nothing for sound. Literature stands there, however, in this powerlessness of speech to speak.
"The very thing that seems meaningless - this is meaning. The moment when a 'meaninglessness' appears is always exactly the overwhelming certainty that there is a meaning there which not only I do not grasp, but whose I do not want."

[Robin · Rating 1 out of 5]

A woman goes into her former maid's room, with the intention of doing some cleaning. She spies a cockroach. She smashes it in the door of the wardrobe.

There - that's 95% of the 'plot' of this book. Really! It is a short book, granted, just shy of 200 pages, and comprised of pithy, snippety chapters. But still. That's 95% of what happens, story-wise, in this book.

The rest is a whole bunch of gobbledeegook an existential crisis that the woman (known only to us as G.H., the initials on her luggage) takes us through, as she stares into the ancient eyes of the cockroach.

I am dismayed at my inability to love this book as others do. It is revered as one of the most important works in Brazilian literature. Certainly it is experimental. Certainly it is daring. There are parts written powerfully with insight. But to sit here and join the voices of those who adore it would be pretentious on my part.

I actually hated the first 15 pages. I was adrift from the very first sentence. I had no clue what was going on - NONE, I can't emphasise that enough - what with talk about a third leg that the unnamed narrator thinks she had and now has lost. I was re-reading paragraphs over and over, grappling, trying desperately to hold on to something that made a lick of sense.

When we got to the cockroach, I was thrilled. There is a person, a place, an event that has occurred! I can dig it! Sadly though, this concreteness is short lived. The bulk of the book is G.H.'s spiritual, mystical meanderings, much of which is nonesensical difficult to grasp.

Okay, I will try not to be so reductive. Forgive me. G.H. is a privileged, upper-class sculptress who lives independently, and upon seeing the cockroach, realises the inauthenticity of her life up until now. She sees that she has anaesthetised herself with ideas of "human identity" and "hope", among other things. She goes through the painful process of shedding such things, upending everything she previously held dear, entering the "neutrality" and "nothingness" of the universe.

I did enjoy certain ideas, such as the kingdom of heaven is now, and the idea of relying on the promise of such a kingdom is actually fear of living presently. This has a positive "carpe diem" message that I can admire.

I want to find the redemption in today, in right now, in the reality that is being, and not in the promise, I want to find joy in this instant...

But much of this is very hard to read. It was such an unpleasant reading experience. The philosophical rambling soliloquy is SO dense, with so many ideas in just one paragraph, I found it overwhelming, stifling. This combined with the setting - staring at the vile roach carcass, made me feel suffocated, claustrophobic. And filled with dread at how it would end. FILLED WITH NAUSEATED DREAD.

There are parallels to be drawn with Kafka's The Metamorphosis - but I found Kafka far more palatable (yes! I used the word palatable to describe a story of a man who wakes up in the form of a dung beetle), and way more accessible.

[Bel Rodrigues · Rating 4 out of 5]

como que pode uma barata render um dos melhores livros do mundo

4,5 ⭐️

[Ashley (semi-ia) · Rating 4 out of 5]

we all really are just cockroaches

-

i have a picture of clarice lispector on my wall!!

[Paul Bryant · Rating 1 out of 5]

I feel myself to be the punctuation in the very sentence I am writing. The image of a shadow of a memory of an eyelash of a face of a memory of… er, where was I? Ah yes, musing on the incomprehensibility of incomprehension. The maid quit, I have no idea why, but she was complaining a lot about an image of a shadow of an eyelash of a memory of… no, wait, I think that was me. Or the cockroach. I squashed it, by the way. Just like the emptiness that should have been inhabited by what we call God squashed me. Did I say I have a third leg? I should mention that, it’s very important. I think it’s symbolic but every now and again I bang it on one of my exquisite yet amateurish sculptures and tears fill my eyes that otherwise are so empty because of the total meaninglessness of everything in the entire universe except my own statements about the universe’s palpable meaninglessness. And all that stuff about eyelashes and legs. I needed failure in my life it was the only way to fill the void left by the absence of God or the cockroach, one of the two. So I wrote a novel, the very novel that I feel I am the punctuation in. And I also needed to be moist (page 57) and I found nothingness was moist. Well it certainly wasn’t the cockroach, darling, that would be ridiculous.

[Rod · Rating 4 out of 5]

Holy crap. I'm not even sure what the hell it was that I just read, but it was undoubtedly the work of a genius. It probably deserves five stars just for being such a unique work of art, but I feel more comfortable with four simply because it lacked that crucial element of enjoyment. I can't say that I enjoyed it, even though I think I loved it (but what am I so afraid of?). I prefer a bit of, you know, plot and characterization, but Lispector's prose is so mesmerizing that it almost doesn't matter what she is writing; you just want to keep reading. If I didn't have a life to live I could have sat down and devoured it in one sitting. As it was, I read it in one day broken up into several sittings. I was so absorbed in it that it pained me to have to put it aside. Rarely has a book had such a hypnotic effect on me. I liken it to watching Tarkovsky's Stalker, where everything is so slowed-down and viewed at such a microscopic level that the seemingly tiniest things take on major significance. It changes your perceptions. I don't think I could even muster up the words to properly describe it, but it's an amazing book.

[Steven Godin · Rating 3 out of 5]

After recently being blown away by Lispector's The Hour of the Star I was hoping for more of the same with this, but ended up finding it a far more difficult nut to crack. She takes the most banal of situations involving a woman alone in a room with a cockroach and turns it into a sort of philosophical exploration. There is some Camus in there, Sartre too, and yes even Kafka.
The setting maybe a single room but it is as much taking place within the human soul. Through G.H. the first-person narrator, Lispector jousts with language playfully, but forcefully examining the ambiguous nature of words resulted in a range that went from the disturbing to the profound to the pretentious. The existential crisis theme is blended with an experimental edge that I found just went too far. It's plotless narrative will likely mean it's one for those with erudite tastes rather than the wider masses. Lispector further expands the reach of her text with networks of metaphor, and makes language the medium of both imprisonment and liberation. It has the feel of a manual for meditation, a set of spiritual exercises leading to new plane of being, a more authentic relation with the world, one self, and others. She certainly does everything with a European touch, and roots her French imports deep into the Brazilian soil. The result was a provocative hybrid of both fascination and bewilderment. It will likely leave those who have a fear of confined spaces and blattodea insects with clammy hands.

[julieta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Para contarles lo que me pasó con este libro mejor me siento con un café, y me tomo mi tiempo, que se pone bueno.
No voy a borrar lo que escribí la primera vez que lo leí, porque, aunque me da un poco de pudor decir que me clavé con un detalle y me perdí casi todo lo demás, es decir poco.

Y más que nada, porque me parece que a Clarice hay que entrarle con valentía. Es eso. Te lleva por lugares insospechados de la conciencia, y en este libro, que para mí es la cumbre de su obra entera, deslumbra, porque todo lo que cuenta, lo ha ido construyendo a través de su obra.

La anécdota es simple: una mujer llamada solo GH, está sola en su casa, la acaba de dejar una chica que trabajaba en su casa, y decide que, ya que tiene el día libre, quiere limpiar el cuarto de servicio donde dormía esta mujer. Ella piensa que va a encontrar un caos tremendo, pero cuando entra el cuarto está impecable. Pero en el armario se encuentra una cucaracha.

Me tendrán que disculpar por el tremendo spoiler, pero les aseguro que es lo menos importante de la novela, lo que sucede es todo interno.

Porque GH, al enfrentarse con esta cucaracha, vive un antes y un después. Entra en una experiencia mística, en donde ve presente, pasado, futuro, Dios, amor, humanidad, todo. Cruza por todos los sentimientos de la vida y encuentra la esencia de todo, la Fuente de la Vida. ¿Que cómo es que una cucaracha te puede llevar a eso? Pues tendrán que leerla, porque es una de las grandes obras que hay que leer para vivir lo que es una verdadera experiencia literaria, en todo su esplendor. No me da miedo exagerar, porque les puedo asegurar que me quedo corta, con cualquier cosa que diga. Pero hay que entrarle con todos los poros abiertos, con la cabeza despierta, y con ganas de vivirlo. Toda la genialidad de Clarice está ahí. Solo hay que saber verla.

Si lo digo así, es porque a mí me pasó esto: la leí por primera vez, y me enganché con la historia de la cucaracha, me costaba ver más que eso, y es perderme todo lo demás! La segunda vez que la leí, ahí la viví y tuve una especie de Epifanía. Hay que leer a Clarice, hay que ver hasta dónde nos lleva su mente brillante, hay que seguirla y dejar que nos guíe.



==========================================


Me sonrojo de ver mi primera reacción a este libro inigualable. Después escribiré algo mas detallado, pero por ahora solo adelanto esto: qué bueno que los libros están vivos, y que están ahí esperando a ser descubiertos. Porque la experiencia de leerlos puede cambiar completamente de una lectura a otra. La segunda lectura de este libro fue lo mejor que me pudo haber pasado...






A Clarice hay que seguirla siempre, hasta los últimos rincones de su universo. De sus muchos universos. Porque siempre te lleva a los límites, y en este libro ese limite empieza por una cucaracha. Que cuando aparece, ya no se va más, pero la hace llevarte, como acto de magia, a lugares insospechados de su conciencia. Amo a clarice, y aunque odio las cucarachas, igual le entré.

[Ana WJ]

Ugh, I had the same feelings when I crushed my first NYC roach!

[Sasha · Rating 2 out of 5]

This lady is gonna eat this dead cockroach and there's nothing you can do about it. That's what you realize at some point, that's what we're building to in this book, which is entirely about some lady eating a cockroach. She saw it and she smooshed it and later she's going to eat it and that's all that's gonna happen here, and the worst part is that's not the worst part! The worst part is that at no point during this lengthy process is she going to stop babbling about her fucking soul. Jesus fucking Christ, lady, eat it or don't.

So this is the only material drama in this book: when is she going to eat that dead cockroach. And then on she bangs for, what, 100 more pages, taking it all so fucking seriously. What a drag people like this are! Always giving you a smug pitying look at a party, as though they've figured out something profound about the nature of life that you're too silly to understand. It's not that we don't understand, you semiotic asshole. It's that the essential impartiality of the universe has nothing to do with whether we're having a good time at the party. Eat the fucking bug and get on with it if you have to, lady. I was alive already.

[Valeriu Gherghel · Rating 2 out of 5]

O pastișă supraestimată după Metamorfoza lui Franz Kafka.

Patimile după G. H. (inițialele provin, se pare, de la sintagma latinească „genus humanum”) reprezintă o „meditație vizuală” (p.86). Natura e Dumnezeu (ideea aparține lui Spinoza) și ea nu se sinchisește de nimeni. E neutrul, indiferența, în-sinele. Viața nu are o finalitate umană. Omul nu este încununarea creației, cum credeau medievalii, cum cred modernii, cum credem noi. Lumea nu există „propter nos homines” (pentru, datorită omului). Și, la urma urmelor, în acest univers, nimic nu e pentru om.

Văd în Patimile după G. H. a (și) parodie a apocalipsei. Nu este o carte de amuzament. Dacă vrem amuzament, e bine să-l căutăm în altă parte. Este, în schimb, o carte care (te) pune pe gînduri. Povestirea e în genul lui Kafka (Metamorfoza). Opiniile țin de o filosofie existențialistă și nu mai prezintă astăzi mare interes. Am copiat cîteva propoziții, ca să vă faceți o idee...

„M-am născut fără să am o misiune, natura mea nu îmi impunea nici una; și întotdeauna am fost destul de abilă ca să nu-mi impun un rol” (p.16).

„Nu înțeleg și mi-e teamă să înțeleg” (p.49).

„Cea mai groaznică descoperire a fost că lumea nu este umană și că nu sîntem umani” (p.51)

„Floarea nu a fost făcută ca noi s-o privim și să-i mirosim parfumul, și totuși o privim și o mirosim” (p.117).

„Lumea nu are intenția de frumusețe și asta înainte m-ar fi șocat: în lume nu există un plan estetic, nici măcar planul estetic al bunătății, și asta înainte m-ar fi șocat” (p.125).

[Marc Lamot · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes, it's been a long time, but a 5'er at last. So, clearly, this was an overwhelming reading experience for me. Now, don't expect a systematic review of this (relatively short) book; also a synthesis is beyond my capabilities. There's hardly a story line in it. The Brazilian writer Lispector (1920-1977) offers a disjointed internal monologue of a woman who is apparently undergoing a deep existential experience; I can't put it more concisely than that. The sentences follow each other in an almost opaque manner, with constant contradictions and paradoxes, and references to situations and persons that cannot always be traced. Deep philosophical and existential musings about identity, the universe, God, death, love, and so on, alternate with a few (literally only a few) distasting acts and surrealistic suggestions, which are mainly triggered by the discovery of something as trivial as ... a cockroach.

Doesn't sound very thrilling, I know. But it works its magic, at least with me (and I'm aware others surely aren't going to be captivated by it). I was especially touched by the apt description of the universe (and therefore also God) as indifferent/neutral, a process of dehumanization that is seen by the story telling protagonist as a liberating experience, culminating in a vitalistic confession. In a way Lispector illustrates what the core of humanism and humanization is, a very hot topic in these times of 'posthumanism'.

These few reviewing lines really don’t do justice to this book, I know, so I’ll throw in some references: Fyodor Dostoevsky, Samuel Beckett, Virginia Woolf, Franz Kafka, Max Frisch, etc., all these great ones come to mind as you read this intriguing text. These references probably weren't consciously intended by Lispector: in her autobiographical book Discovering the World she indicates that she hardly read other 'great' books. If that's true, then that's very remarkable. At times I even found she was echoing and exploring the Nietzschean universe, and by doing so, in a brilliant way stressed the essential characteristics of humanism.

I'm aware every reader will probably see something different in this book, but I experienced it essentially as a brilliant evocation of the process of purification, a (Brazilian) woman in a midlife crisis, went through, exposing fundamental existential truths. Or, for those who like a postmodernist angle: this book at least illustrates the essential role of language in struggling with reality. I'm sure I'll return to this book to deepen the mind-blowing reading experience it offers. (actual rating 4.5 stars)

[Katia N · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think I slowly start to get what Clarice is doing here. And the more I get the more I admire it. But there is no way how I can write about it properly. Hence, many quotes.

A woman is facing the moment of epiphany by fatally wounding a cockroach. It catalyses the terrific meditation which makes her to strip off her human identity. It makes her go beyond the fear, beyond what we call beauty and much farther.

Then she reassess how hard it is to be fully within the present. This requires the effort to give up on what we call “hope”. I was delaying the present for the promise of the future.”

She needs to dispose the language as well. But only when she would have use it to it’s sheer limit when it becomes an “accretion”. “Unsayable could only be given to me through the failure of my language.”

By discarding this very human stuff, she is closer to laying off her humanity, ( I want the inhuman inside the person.) By that she is approaching to the pure essence of life, life of the matter. And, by reading her I feel how she merges with this essence, “the thing” which is beyond human comprehension or expression. And how hard she needs to work to get there.

By the end I feel like everything around me and on the page murmurs and vibrates with energy:

“I tremble in fear and adoration of whatever exists. Whatever exists, and which is just a piece of thing, yet I must place my hand over my eyes against the opacity of that thing. Ah, the violent loving unconsciousness of whatever exists surpasses the possibility of my consciousness. I am afraid of so much matter - the matter vibrates with attention, vibrates with process, vibrates with inherent present time. Whatever exists beats in strong waves against the unbreakable grain that I am, and that grain whirls between abysses of calm billows of existence, if whirls and does not dissolve, that grain-seed. “

Weird, but palpable sensation stays after this book. Kudos to Clarice.

[Cláudia Azevedo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ler Clarice Lispector é sentir o estranhamento até às entranhas. Sintonizar o seu pensamento é cair num abismo, é mergulhar nas profundezas e, ao mesmo tempo, projetar o mais íntimo e sair de nós mesmos. Chega a ser quase uma experiência mística, religiosa.

[M. Malmierca · Rating 4 out of 5]

En La pasión de G. H. (1964 ), la escritora brasileña Clarice Lispector (1920-1977) nos presenta a una mujer adulta, acomodada y solitaria que, a raíz de un hecho nimio, el descubrimiento de una cucaracha en una habitación de su casa, reflexiona, a través de un profundo monólogo interior, sobre lo que ha sido su vida.

Una vida que a partir de este momento le parece una impostura, una personalidad inventada que debe intentar cambiar por lo que siente que es su verdadera esencia, su verdadera naturaleza.

Para algunos, si unimos cambio con cucaracha podemos inferir "metamorfosis". Aunque aquí, esta metamorfosis pertenezca al plano psicológico y no al físico.

El estilo es complejo, el contenido filosófico y la inacción absoluta por lo que, aunque sea una obra de ficción, posee una estructura que poco tiene que ver con la novela habitual.

En resumen, se trata de una obra de indudable calidad literaria, pero que probablemente pueda resultar aburrida para muchísimos lectores. Cada uno que decida.

[Stephen P(who no longer can participate due to illness) · Rating 5 out of 5]

She lives well. A sculptress, she is financially well off, living in a penthouse apartment furnished in shades of neutral colors. Claiming many friends she has reflected herself back to herself through their eyes. She enjoys what she sees as they do hers. Get-togethers occur at the right frequency. It is much like stopping at the gas station and filling up the tank.

Her live-in maid has left, a black african american women. Stepping into another country, the country from within another person's mind she enters the room and finds drawings on a wall. All things there is evidence that this woman who has lived in her house, seen through her eyes, has not liked her. Possibly she has hated GH. Casting this off rapidly GH determines that the maid's views are insignificant since she is not of the same caste or position.

Peeking into the former maid's closet a cockroach leaps out. She slams the door crushing it in half. The white gooed innards seep out. She panics, not at the crushed insect but the dizzying array of thoughts and questions spun sudden through her mind. Questions she has no answers for but more important, questions she does not want to answer.

Why should there be questions? GH has organized herself and her life into what she wants. She has sculpted comfort, a successful denizen of life. The questions would not stop and Lispector paces us through the initial denial and anger, then the rocking fear, slow acceptance wed to steps of retreat. Then, the digging deeper. Fearless shoveling amongst tumult. She seeks not her thoughts or apprehensions in this violent poetic prose of things but the thing itself. What the startling unique prose evokes.

Through her short sentences, repetitions to set the drum beat of rhythm Lispector takes us on a searing sweat soaked journey through the mind of a courageous person who garners the strength to seek and face what most other people spend their live's avoiding. Staring at the cockroach she sees, especially with its white innards hanging out, it is exactly what it is. Cockroaches have existed on this planet longer than any other creature and will continue to do so long after she will be gone. The cockroach even dying is what it is in this present moment. How to pose, what others think, judge, evaluate, the insincerity wrapped behind caravans of stylish cloth, does not exist. A pure acceptance. What…what if that were true for her? Alive in each present moment? It would leave her without her life, the self she worked so hard to conceive and mould herself into. She would no longer fit in, more significantly all lying in front of her lay unknown and always unknown. If in the present the future does not exist hope lays fallow. No will or goals. Would that be life? Alone and…Or…

It occurred in the moment of the cockroach. Yet looking back she can see all the unplanned moments through her existence leading to this endless journey that has no specific beginning. Such a shock. None of this can be afforded an effort. It is an act of discovery. One searches through living to discover the awaiting self. Then, the courage to allow that self to unroll. Just one’s reflection in one’s own eyes in the present moment, then the next.

Lispector penetrates GH's mind, boring relentlessly for the questions other shy from. One of the world's great modern writers. A genius at the introspection of truth. It was an honor to sweat through this so doggedly engaging testimony to strength and courage.

[Meagan✨ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extremely beautiful and, delicate.


Some Quotes

💭"I don't want beauty, I want identity.”

💭"And I want to be held down. I don't know what to do with the horrifying freedom that can destroy me.”

💭"The mystery of human destiny is that we are fated, but that we have the freedom to fulfill or not fulfill our fate: realization of our fated destiny depends on us. While inhuman beings like the cockroach realize the entire cycle without going astray because they make no choices.”

💭"Life was taking its vengeance on me, and that vengeance consisted merely in coming back, nothing more. Every case of madness involves something coming back. People who are possessed are not possessed by something that just comes but instead by something that comes back. Sometimes life comes back. If in me everything crumbled before that power, it is not because that power was itself necessarily an overwhelming one: it in fact had only to come, since it had already become too full-flowing a force to be controlled or contained - when it appeared it overran everything. And then, like after a flood, there floated a wardrobe, a person, a loose window, three suitcases. And that seemed like Hell to me, that destruction of layers and layers of human archaeology.”

💭"I shall never be able to understand it, but there must be someone who can. And I shall have to create that someone who can inside myself.”

💭"My old life was necessary to me because it was precisely its error that made me take up imagining a hope that, without the life that I led, I wouldn't have known.”




I’ve ventured into a world I know nothing about. Picked up a few books by this author, hoping I vibe. See you all on the other side.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

How to review this! Much more introspective than The Hour of the Star. G.H. means genero humano; basically human kind; otherwise we don’t know her name. She is reflecting on something that happened the day before. The premise is fairly simple G.H. is well to do; lives in a penthouse and has a maid who has just left. She decides to clean the maids room which she expects to be cluttered. The room however is clean apart from some drawings on the wall; a man, a woman and a dog. There is also a wardrobe with the door slightly ajar. Out of the door is emerging a cockroach; G.H. slams the door and splits the body of the cockroach. The white innards begin to ooze out. G.H. has what might be termed an existential crisis and seeing the white matter, she perceives this as a type of elemental matter and puts it in her mouth. That’s the plot.
This is a description of a crisis of being; most of us have them at some point. Lispector dissects it and lays it out before the reader. The structure is neat; the last sentence of the chapter is the first sentence of the next chapter. I saw some parallels with the Kafka story Metamorphosis, although the protagonist does not become the cockroach but she does take its essence into her. I saw more parallels with Camus’ Myth of Sisyphus; the absurdity of the revolt of the flesh. But also the religious imagery gives a Catholic backdrop as well. It feels a little like the accounts of medieval mystics who have been locked away in their cells for way too long with too little food and social contact. Except it is in a modern setting and is more immediate. The metaphors and allusions can be reworked in a number of ways; I’ve seen the penthouse room described as a minaret above the desert and the wardrobe as a sarcophagus (New York Times) ; but the Brazilian jungle is never far away.
Although the religious imagery is present and especially that of the mass and ingesting the body of Christ; I found no sense of transcendence. Plenty of immanence and so I think the spirituality here is probably secular. It was an interesting journey and it made me think in the same way I had to when I first encountered existentialism. I didn’t enjoy it as much as The Hour of the Star because for me it did not have the same power. For me the introspection has little use in and of itself; unless it leads to some other connection, but it’s great stuff and will need to be re-read.
4.5 stars rounded up to 5.

[K.D. Absolutely · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very thought-provoking book. This as its tagline: A world wholly alive has a Hellish power.

If you are the type of a reader who rates books according to your level of enjoyment while reading, then this book is not for you. Wait, let me correct myself. If you want to think heavily while reading, there’s a chance that you might like this book too.

I ordered this second-hand book via Amazon and paid $9.94 plus $4.99 as shipping charges. Paying $14.93 (P627.00) for a second-hand book with only 173 pages of non-stop monologues and with some of those pages already dog-eared and some with lines and markings? I still say, it was all worth it.

The narrator, known only as G. H., based on what is written on her luggage, delivers a series of monologues that comprise the bulk of this book. Her profound mystical and philosophical musings are triggered by the incident that happened the day before. Her black maid, Janair has left her home because the said maid hates G. H. So, G. H. enters the maid’s former room and when she opens the closet, she sees a big old cockroach. She abruptly closes the door so that the poor cockroach squeezes out its whitish entrails. It is still alive though and now it walks slowly. G. H. and the cockroach stare at each other eye-to-eye and it makes G.H. think of complex questions and thoughts that include existentialism and allusions to the Old Testament leading to secular description of a spiritual rebirth. I will not tell you what triggered this feeling of rebirth because it is too much of a spoiler already.

If Gabriel Garcia Marquez has his magical realism, Brazilian author Clarice Lispector (1920-1977) has her philosophical realism that seems to bridge between Albert Camus’ existentialism and Sartre’s structuralism. Lispector makes language the medium of both imprisonment and liberation, and the text is shaped in the form of a manual for meditation, a set of spiritual exercises leading at last to a more authentic relation with the world, the self and others.

At some point I could also taste a bit of Andre Breton’s automatism in his book Nadja. The use of the cockroach to a focal point in the story also brings back the memory of reading Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and the incident of G.H. staring at the eyes of the cockroach resulting to a series of profound thoughts. This made me remember a recent read: Peter Suskind’s The Pigeon. The only difference is that it is a pigeon for Suskind while it is now a cockroach for Lispector.

From the outset, this book was well received by the critics, especially in Brazil, with several book-length studies and doctoral theses devoted to it. The Passion According to G.H. is also one of the most translated of Lispector's works: into Spanish (Uruguay, 1970), French (1978), Italian (1982), Japanese and German (1984), Spanish (1979), English (1988), Danish and Norwegian (1989). It is seen by many as her magnum opus; the fact that it was chosen to be part of the UNESCO-sponsored Archivos series of critical editions of key Spanish American and lusophone works (published in 1988 with a second edition in 1996) attests to this. (Source: Wiki)

Even if I spent 2 days reading all the 173 pages, I must admit that there are still parts that I do not fully understand. Or maybe I thought I understood based on my interpretations. It is like reading a free-verse poem in prose form about so many complex philosophical takes on life. The more bewildering part though is that every time you read the same phrase or sentence, you will get a different meaning.

[Ensaio Sobre o Desassossego · Rating 4 out of 5]

Como começar a falar sobre este livro? Não sei.

Podia ser resumido assim: uma mulher de classe alta, que ficou sem empregada, entrou num quarto limpo, encontrou um desenho numa parede e uma barata no armário e, a partir disso, desencadeia-se uma crise existencial. 🪳 Quem nunca encontrou uma barata e entrou numa crise existencial? Eu nunca, mas não vou voltar a olhar para as baratas da mesma forma...

Talvez possa começar por afirmar que tive de ler o primeiro capítulo 3 (três!) vezes e certas passagens li mesmo em voz alta, o que me ajudou a compreender melhor o texto.

É um livro difícil, introspectivo, que se passa dentro da cabeça da protagonista. Entramos dentro da cabeça de alguém que está a atravessar uma profunda crise existencial e, por isso, a narrativa é descrita exactamente como muitas vezes funcionam os pensamentos, ou seja, de forma desconexa e sem sentido.

Com uma narrativa existencialista, este é um livro que toca no mais profundo da nossa alma. É bastante complexo, sim, é preciso muita paciência, sim, e precisei de ler várias vezes alguns parágrafos ou frases para entender, sim. Mas, é um livro lindo!

Sublinhar, destacar passagens e escrever nas margens são coisas que eu já costumo fazer nos meus livros. Mas desta vez, acho que bati recorde de anotações durante uma leitura e o meu livro acabou todo sublinhado, escrito, rabiscado. Numa (vã) tentativa de compreender esta viagem de G.H.

Clarice tinha um total controlo das palavras, nada - nenhuma palavra, nenhuma vírgula - é colocado ao acaso. E é preciso ser-se genial para através de uma barata conseguir dar uma aula de autoconhecimento.
Fiquei absolutamente apaixonada pela escrita poética da autora e fiquei muitas vezes simplesmente a olhar para o nada a pensar nas palavras e nas frases criadas pela Clarice.

Se eu percebi 100% do livro? Ahahaah claro que não. Fiquei com a certeza de que quero ler mais coisas de Clarice (na verdade, quero ler tudo: contos, romances e crónicas) e, acima de tudo, que este é um livro para reler em diferentes fases da minha vida.

A lição que eu tirei deste livro foi a seguinte: não precisamos encontrar sentido em tudo porque nem tudo na vida faz sentido.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

An extraordinary work by the greatest writer of the interior crisis, of the fragmented and the fragmenting, of the breaking and the broken...Her technique is impeccable - the breadcrumbs of an exterior life, of "plot" and "reasons", which are just enough to keep the reader correctly situated but never undermine the mythic and the universally personal (the self that is all self). I need to re-read it though, I need to go slow and listen hard instead of being caught up in the flow...

[João Barradas · Rating 5 out of 5]

A pedra - esse substantivo feminino - norteia a deambulação terrena, servindo para calcetar caminhos ardilosos ou como estrutura basilar de diferentes construções. Há quem, ao sabor da alquimia, a pretenda transformar em oiro; outros há que, ao toque do cinzel, pretendem extrair dela uma beleza maior, quase lapidando um diamante em bruto. Como Sísifo, cada um está encarregue de suportar a sua pedra, a sua vida, aproveitando essa malograda experiência a seu bel-prazer e retirando os prováveis ensinamentos talhados pelas feridas advindas. Teremos o vital discernimento para nomear tais desventuras? Ou melhor, precisaremos de lhes ofertar um nome?

A história deste (não!?) romance - que o é sem o ser - desenrola-se entre pedras: sozinha no seu apartamento, G.H., uma escultora de novas "vidas", reflecte e deambula, até entrar no quarto de Janair, a sua nomeada empregada - a última a abandoná-la - , onde, por entre um vislumbre radioso, destrinçou uma barata... e, com ela, toda uma alva panóplia de tempos e de espaços com poder de debelar qualquer fome por mais incauta que seja. O enredo reverbera na mente? É quase um jogo do "toca e foge". Aqui, no entanto, G.H. não se transforma num ser abjecto; antes comunga com ele para alcançar um dom de pensamento pleno. Mas o livro sustenta-se apenas sob esta inefável semi-fábula?

Na verdade, este encontro serve apenas de mote para um portal de devaneios conceptuais, em que o narrador assume o papel de dominador e sufoca o leitor, até lhe ofertar um prazer máximo. Nestes airosos intervalos, são glosados diferentes assuntos que não se esgotam em si nem agrilhoam o texto a nenhum em particular, numa aproximação sem vinculação. Caindo num quase abismo de incongruências, G.H. flutua entre reflexões e, a ritmo de galope, tenta encontrar-se a si própria: um ser espiritual, crente no transcendente, sem professar uma religião; um ser assexuado, não por não venerar o sexo mas por desprezar categorias; um ser atemporal por conseguir aproveitar o tempo em toda a sua plenitude; um ser tudo e um ser nada. No fim, ser - sem realmente o ser porque ser impõe limites e ela queria a liberdade.

Todos os pensamentos são, assim, apresentados segundo paradoxos bem trabalhados e que incitam ao debate, segundo diferentes perspectivas, sem errados nem certos… pois a própria vida é cozinhada com estes ingredientes – um agridoce permanente, doseado numa balança cujos pratos estão sempre a subir e a descer. Sinto-me um louco pecador ao almejar provar dessa hóstia que Clarice oferta a quem se sinta preparado para esse desfazer de uma massa branca que, entre uma linguagem simples embrenhada em construções frásicas “brisantes”, engrandece (deifica!?) o leitor. Essa perfeição é coroada com a brilhante forma como a autora interliga cada capítulo, num ciclo sublime. As respirações são garantidas pelos intervalos que encerram o verdadeiro segredo do livro: é nas entrelinhas que a crucial acção se desenvolve. E, por falar em transcendentes assuntos deliciantes, já repararam no número de capítulos (não numerados) que compõem esta obra?

Quem se atreve a embarcar nesta viagem iniciática, deambulando pelas diferentes estações de uma paixão de martírio? Sinto cada vez mais os estigmas que G.H. carregou ao longo da sua amarga vida. As suas reflexões, ainda que tresmalhadas, ofertam um sofrimento de sobremaneira, ao ilustrarem tão bem a condição humana numa terra (sobre)natural. Encerro o livro sem pretender pensar, para não o destruir nem me destruir. Quero construir-me, sem alcançar nenhum patamar em particular, nenhuma designação específica, porque também este não é um livro de nenhum género… mas de todos, de forma omnisciente e omnipresente (cravejado de tantas marcas quantas as que eu lhe fiz)!

"Este livro é como um livro qualquer. Mas eu ficaria contente se fosse lido apenas por pessoas de alma já formada." (pág. 7)

"A condição humana é a paixão de Cristo." (pág. 137)

[Roman Clodia · Rating 4 out of 5]

... and I am not understanding whatever it is I'm saying, never! never again shall I understand anything I say. Since how could I speak without the word lying for me? how could I speak except timidly like this: life just is for me. Life just is for me, and I don't understand what I'm saying. And so I adore it.

A plotless, spiritual, mystical and richly dense interior exploration from Lispector that can be difficult, even mystifying at times, but which can also feel exciting, thrilling even, for the way it rehearses the collapse not just of individual, self and all the usual epistemological categories but also language itself - quite an achievement for a piece of text.

Utilising paradox and dialectics, the narrator's voice is lyrical and hypnotic as we experience her existential crisis and the emergence of some kind of post- post-humanism - quite extraordinary for a book written and published in the 1960s: 'We shall be inhuman - as the loftiest conquest of man. Being is being beyond human.'

The imagery throughout speaks more than the textual surface: from the conjuration of a biblical 'gospel' to the evocation of the Catholic mass and the idea of being 'baptized by the world' - but Lispector moves beyond these instances of religious culture to a kind of pure state, 'the nucleus of life' where even language has been extinguished. Is this madness? I've seen some reviews claim so but I'm not so sure.

I have no claims to fully understanding this book and, in any case, thinks it's one which operates beyond an intellectual level where the powerful placement of words is as urgent as whatever meaning we take from them - even while the text itself moves towards a state of what is unsayable.

Lispector continues to astonish me. This is absolutely not the place to start with her work and is one which I will want to come back to after reading further in and about her visions for literature. And what a tremendous job from her translator, Idra Novey, who adds a brief note at the end wishing Lispector was still alive to help guide and validate her word choices.

[Antonio Luis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Difícil, intensa, abstracta, introspectiva, sobre la realidad sin nombres, sin artificios, sin comprenderla. A ratos repulsiva.
Muy original.
No es un libro que narre... exactamente. Es una experiencia. Ocurre.

La protagonista, G.H., al principio tan segura, tan seria, tan cabal, explota su identidad a partir de un hecho nimio para todos.
Y ese proceso interno nos acontece en su lectura.
Nivel Kafka.

Desde el principio muestra su intención, su objetivo, y su forma, con un lenguaje muy complicado. He tenido que releer casi cada párrafo sin terminar de comprenderlo.

“¿Tendré que fabricarme la palabra como si lo que me aconteciera fuese crear?
Voy a crear lo que me ha acontecido. Solo porque vivir no se puede narrar. Vivir no es vivible. Tendré que crear sobre la vida.
Y sin mentir. Crear sí, mentir no.
Crear no es imaginación, es correr el gran riesgo de acceder a la realidad. Entender es una creación, mi único modo.”

Esta frase funciona como el manifiesto de lo que pretende transmitir en este libro y la manera de hacerlo; entender no es reproducir la vida, sino crearla, porque la experiencia es demasiado cruda para describirla directamente. No imagina, rehace su propio sentido mientras lo vive.

¿Algo que se puede ir acotando mientras se va expandiendo?

Su pensamiento parece ir descubriéndose a sí mismo mientras se escribe, es casi una revelación mística, el tono de toda la narración es muy filosófico. Ir desgranando esta experiencia es ir aceptando la pertenencia a algo más grande e inabarcable. Una compresión íntima y universal.

“En cuanto a mí misma, siempre conservé una comilla a mi izquierda y otra a mi derecha. Esa imagen de mí entre comillas me satisfacía, y no solo superficialmente.
Yo era la imagen de lo que no era, y esa imagen del no ser me colmaba por completo: uno de los modos más fuertes de ser es ser negativamente.”

Son numerosos los párrafos así de extraños y complejos. Parece una paradoja, construye su identidad a partir de su ausencia o negación, no se define por lo que es, sino por lo que no es; se siente plena precisamente en el vacío, en el no ser, se empieza a conocer al reconocer la conciencia de lo que falta. El no ser también es una manera intensa y verdadera de ser.

Y parece que plantea además que la identidad en lugar de afirmación puede ser vacío, límite, borde. Creo que una de las bases es esa noción de identidad a partir de G.H...
Llevaba una máscara confortable que se va armando desde fuera, desde su yo social, y su verdadero yo está fuera de esa máscara.

Vivir entre comillas es verse como una representación, como una versión artificial o citada de sí misma, como un personaje construido dentro de una cita o de una interpretación de sí misma. Pero esa idea le satisfacía, tal vez porque así encuentra una existencia reconocible. Nos asumimos en esa versión representada socialmente de nosotros mismos. Aunque no sea real o del todo auténtica, nos da "forma", nos da "existencia". (También es muy posible de que se me vaya la pinza porque la narración se las trae...)

Y en esos pensamientos llega, como un acontecimiento clave, como una epifanía negativa, la confrontación con una cucaracha, y a partir de ahí esta mujer se asoma al abismo de lo vivo.

Esa cucaracha intrascendente, repulsiva y sin mayor significancia, está tan viva como nosotros, y reconoce ésto como una revelación insoportable, envejece de golpe:
“Entonces, antes de comprender, mi corazón encaneció como encanecen los cabellos.”

Es la señal de un tránsito radical: G.H. entra en contacto con lo elemental, con la materia viva antes del lenguaje, antes del poner nombre a cada cosa, antes del concepto.
Como si el lenguaje interfiriera en su descubrimiento, poner nombres es apartarse de la verdad de las cosas. G.H. dice:... Pero a mí me corresponderá impedirme el dar nombre a la cosa. El nombre es una añadidura, e impide el contacto con la cosa. El nombre de la cosa es un intervalo… la cosa desnuda es tan tediosa...”
La cucaracha, el trozo de cosa, lo que es irreductible y bruto, aparece como una verdad primigenia, sin los filtros humanos.

De ahí que G.H. también diga: “Procuré racionalizar mi repugnancia.”

Pero diría que fracasa, porque la experiencia no es racionalizable, es algo anterior, es algo animal. “Haber matado era mucho más grande que yo.” El intento de aplastar la cucaracha la pone frente a la desproporción entre su vida tan organizada y superior con esa vida tan básica que quiere destruir, y en la que, al mismo tiempo, se revela a sí misma. Y ese estado alterado lo describe así: “Y en mi gran dilatación, yo estaba en el desierto. ¿Cómo explicarte?” El desierto como metáfora del vacío, para su desnudez interior, ya no es laimagen entre comillas, sino solo la esencia.

En lo más bajo encuentra una revelación de lo más alto en este viaje interior. La autora asocia lo abyecto con lo sagrado, el mundo sin filtros. Y aceptar sin comprender.
“Pero mi liberación solo se producirá si tengo el impudor de mi propia incomprensión.”
El impudor de no entender es la libertad, el dejar de fingir, de construir máscaras, de racionalizar. La incomprensión como verdad.
Solo podrá liberarse si se atreve a reconocer sin vergüenza que no lo entiende. Su propia incomprensión es admitir su no saber, su confusión interior, y solo podrá ser libre si acepta que no hay que comprenderlo todo, y aún así mira de frente, sin miedo.

Y así parece finalizar la novela: “No temas la carencia: ella es nuestro mayor destino… El amor ya está, está siempre. Falta solo el golpe de gracia. Que se llama pasión.”
La carencia no es la falta de algo sino la condición para abrirse a la vida. La pasión es ese toque que rompe la fachada de la identidad, para adorar lo que no se comprende, y cierra con una idea muy hermosa y desconcertante:

“La vida me es, y no comprendo lo que digo. Y entonces adoro.”
Es la culminación del viaje interior, G.H. llega a un punto donde el lenguaje, la razón, ya no sirve. Y, al no comprender, solo queda la adoración, una forma de entrega, de aceptación de lo real. Ésa diría que es "La pasión según G.H.", la protagonista reconoce sus límites en lo más elemental. Y lo que acontece, para ella, solo puede ser narrado creando este libro, porque “Vivir no es narrable… Entender es una creación.” Esa frase resume el libro y la esencia de lo quiere decir Clarice Lispector.

[Nelson Zagalo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ler “A Paixão Segundo G.H.” (1964), de Clarice Lispector, é como ler o tom de Beckett traduzido pela poética de Pessoa. Nada aqui é convenção, tudo é experimental, não existe princípio, meio, nem fim, porque existem apenas interrogações. Interrogações que se vão abrindo como matrioskas, de onde vão saindo novas questões que como borboletas voam para longe sem aguardar por resposta. É uma obra carregada de existencialismo, mas mais do que isso, é uma obra confessional, recorda-nos Santo Agostinho, pelo confronto das ações passadas com os julgamentos do presente e as punições do futuro. Mas vai mais fundo, pela dor que Lispector imprime em G.H. que nos recorda a dor a que Von Trier submete C.G. em “Antichrist” (2009).
...
continuar a ler, com links e imagens, no Virtual Illusion
https://virtual-illusion.blogspot.com...

[philosophie · Rating 4 out of 5]

[Ολόκληρη η κριτική εδώ.]

Δώσ' μου το χέρι σου. Γιατί δεν ξέρω πια για τι πράγμα μιλάω. Νομίζω πως τα επινόησα όλα, τίποτα από αυτά δεν υπήρξε! Αν όμως επινόησα αυτό που μου συνέβη χθες - ποιος μου εγγυάται πως δεν επινόησα επίσης τη ζωή μου ολόκληρη πριν από χθες;

Όταν μια γυναίκα, γνωστή στον αναγνώστη απλώς ως Α. Γ., μπαίνει σε ένα δωμάτιο που κατ' όνομα ανήκει σε αυτήν, βιώνει την απογοήτευση πολλών από τις προσδοκίες που συνήθως συνδέονται με ένα δωμάτιο, αφού αυτός ο χώρος φαινομενικά αρνείται να παίξει στατικό ρόλο, αποκτά υπόσταση κι έρχεται να επιβληθεί ουσιαστικά στον ιδιοκτήτη του. Καθώς το δωμάτιο επεκτείνεται και συστέλλεται, η ταυτότητα της ηρωίδας συνεχώς ανατρέπεται κι επαναπροσδιορίζεται.

Ψάχνω, ψάχνω. Προσπαθώ να καταλάβω. Προσπαθώ να δώσω σε κάποιον αυτό που έζησα και δεν ξέρω σε ποιον, μα δεν θέλω να μείνω με αυτό που έζησα. Δεν ξέρω τι να το κάνω αυτό που έζησα, φοβάμαι αυτή τη βαθιά αποδιοργάνωση. Δεν εμπιστεύομαι αυτό που μου συνέβη. Να μου συνέβη κάτι που εγώ, μην ξέροντας πώς να το ζήσω, το έζησα σαν κάτι άλλο; Αυτό θα ήθελα να το ονομάσω αποδιοργάνωση, και θα είχα τη σιγουριά να ριψοκινδυνεύσω, γιατί θα ήξερα πού να επιστρέψω μετά: στην προηγούμενη οργάνωση. Προτιμώ να το ονομάσω αποδιοργάνωση γιατί δεν θέλω να αυτοεπιβεβαιωθώ σε ό,τι έζησα - με την αυτοεπιβεβαίωση θα έχανα τον κόσμο όπως τον είχα, και ξέρω πως δεν έχω δυνατότητα για άλλον.

Το έργο Τα κατά Α. Γ. πάθη είναι η περιγραφή της υπαρξιακής κρίσης, της μάχης με την πραγματικότητα, τη μεταμορφωμένη σε κατσαρίδα πραγματικότητα, που, επειδή ακριβώς χρησιμοποιεί την τεχνική της ροής συνείδησης, καταδεικνύει τον κατακερματισμένο και θρυμματισμένο εσωτερικό κόσμο του αφηγηματικού υποκειμένου. Τα ψίχουλα μιας εξωτερικής ζωής, το πλέγμα της πλοκής δηλαδή, είναι αρκετά για να κρατήσουν σε ενάργεια τον αναγνώστη, με την αοριστία του καθολικά προσωπικού να μη διαταράσσεται και να μην υπονομεύεται.

[Ben Winch · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Passion According to G.H. is something like a miracle, so uniquely potent that you wonder how a human being could have conjured it. It’s poetry:

The green water of the air. I see everything through a full glass. [...] It’s eleven in the morning in Brazil. It’s now. That means exactly now. Now is time swollen to the limit. Eleven o’clock has no depth. Eleven o’clock is full of eleven hours up to the brim of the green glass. Time trembles as a motionless balloon. The air is fertilised and wheezing.

... yet also inextricably linked to the mundane:

I finally got up from the breakfast table, that woman. Not having a maid that day would give me the type of activity I wanted: arranging. I always liked to arrange things. I guess it’s my only real vocation. By putting things in order, I create and understand at the same time. [...] I looked around the apartment: where would I begin?

In between these poles – the free-associative meditation on universal laws prevalent in her later work (which, to me, does not succeed as G.H. does in making that meditation pertinent) and a solid grasp of the everyday that, in offsetting it, makes it truly luminous – is where the magic happens. And somehow this unique mode, this combination of tones never before attempted, allows Clarice Lispector – gives her the privilege – to write like this:

The first bind had already involuntarily burst, and I was breaking loose from the law, though I intuited that I was going to enter the hell of living matter – what kind of hell awaited me? but I had to go. I had to sink into my soul’s damnation, curiosity was consuming me.

So I opened my eyes all at once, and saw the full endless vastness of the room, that room that was vibrating in silence, laboratory of hell.

Histrionic? Somehow, G.H. is anything but. Somehow, this beyond-rudimentary framework of a woman in a room with a roach fully justifies the most cosmic of mind-flights. Why? Because – I hazard a guess – this is something we’ve all felt, this face-to-face with “neutral” unthinking but feeling life (the centipede writhing under the boot, the fish suffocating in the boat) that brings us up short with sudden identification, because something writhes in our guts too like the dying creature we are watching.

Still, to have captured, held and explored this revelation – to have magnified it like a novel and sung its essence like a song – is an achievement uniquely Lispector’s. A true achievement. Probably one of the great achievements in writing of the 20th century.

(I wrote the above halfway through G.H.; I presume my impression was true but can’t entirely confirm it, since soon I was distracted by life and other more addictive reading, and maybe from over-confidence in Lispector I put her down and never regained the same immersion. To re-read.)