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A descoberta do mundo
As crônicas de Clarice Lispector publicadas no Jornal do Brasil de 1967 a 1973 nos permitem compreender melhor a escritura desta que se consagrou como uma das maiores escritoras do Brasil. Se nos contos e romances o mistério de uma narrativa envolve o leitor num processo quase que iniciático, nas crônicas esse mistério vai aos poucos sendo desvendado, revelando o mundo pessoal e subjetivo da autora enigmática que viveu no Leme, próximo às areias e ao mar de Copacabana, que tanto apreciava. Ao aceitar o convite do JB para escrever uma coluna aos sábados, Clarice Lispector sente a estranheza entre ser escritora e jornalista: “Na literatura de livros permaneço anônima e discreta. Nesta coluna, estou de algum modo me dando a conhecer”, comenta na crônica de 21 de setembro de 1968.
Gênero leve, ameno, de leitura mais fácil, a crônica traz quase sempre a interpretação de um fato conhecido por todos, investido pela subjetividade de quem comenta o assunto, dando um sabor novo ao acontecido. Com a sua despretensão, a crônica quebra o monumental, o extraordinário, celebrando o cotidiano, o dia a dia e mostra belezas insuspeitáveis através da argúcia, da graça, do humor de quem a escreve. A informalidade investe de leveza uma linguagem cuja densidade busca revelar o segredo das coisas mais simples, o cotidiano transfigurado pelo olhar de Clarice, que redescobre nas Macabéas de todo dia a luminosidade de uma presença estelar. Entre flanelas e vassouras, mulheres simples e humildes se transformam em personagens que se eternizam. Aninha, Jandira, Ivone ou Aparecida são algumas dessas estrelas que saem de suas vidas apagadas para serem reveladas pelo olhar atento e sensível, onde escapa, por vezes, um leve e sorrateiro toque de humor, como no caso da empregada que fazia análise, ou da “mineira calada”, que gostava de ler livros complicados.
(fonte: Amazon)
Gênero leve, ameno, de leitura mais fácil, a crônica traz quase sempre a interpretação de um fato conhecido por todos, investido pela subjetividade de quem comenta o assunto, dando um sabor novo ao acontecido. Com a sua despretensão, a crônica quebra o monumental, o extraordinário, celebrando o cotidiano, o dia a dia e mostra belezas insuspeitáveis através da argúcia, da graça, do humor de quem a escreve. A informalidade investe de leveza uma linguagem cuja densidade busca revelar o segredo das coisas mais simples, o cotidiano transfigurado pelo olhar de Clarice, que redescobre nas Macabéas de todo dia a luminosidade de uma presença estelar. Entre flanelas e vassouras, mulheres simples e humildes se transformam em personagens que se eternizam. Aninha, Jandira, Ivone ou Aparecida são algumas dessas estrelas que saem de suas vidas apagadas para serem reveladas pelo olhar atento e sensível, onde escapa, por vezes, um leve e sorrateiro toque de humor, como no caso da empregada que fazia análise, ou da “mineira calada”, que gostava de ler livros complicados.
(fonte: Amazon)
624 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1984
About the author
Clarice Lispector
262 books9,390 followersClarice Lispector was a Brazilian writer. Acclaimed internationally for her innovative novels and short stories, she was also a journalist. Born to a Jewish family in Podolia in Western Ukraine, she was brought to Brazil as an infant, amidst the disasters engulfing her native land following the First World War.
She grew up in northeastern Brazil, where her mother died when she was nine. The family moved to Rio de Janeiro when she was in her teens. While in law school in Rio she began publishing her first journalistic work and short stories, catapulting to fame at age 23 with the publication of her first novel, 'Near to the Wild Heart' (Perto do Coração Selvagem), written as an interior monologue in a style and language that was considered revolutionary in Brazil.
She left Brazil in 1944, following her marriage to a Brazilian diplomat, and spent the next decade and a half in Europe and the United States. Upon return to Rio de Janeiro in 1959, she began producing her most famous works, including the stories of Family Ties (Laços de Família), the great mystic novel The Passion According to G.H. (A Paixão Segundo G.H.), and the novel many consider to be her masterpiece, Água Viva. Injured in an accident in 1966, she spent the last decade of her life in frequent pain, steadily writing and publishing novels and stories until her premature death in 1977.
She has been the subject of numerous books and references to her, and her works are common in Brazilian literature and music. Several of her works have been turned into films, one being 'Hour of the Star' and she was the subject of a recent biography, Why This World, by Benjamin Moser.
She grew up in northeastern Brazil, where her mother died when she was nine. The family moved to Rio de Janeiro when she was in her teens. While in law school in Rio she began publishing her first journalistic work and short stories, catapulting to fame at age 23 with the publication of her first novel, 'Near to the Wild Heart' (Perto do Coração Selvagem), written as an interior monologue in a style and language that was considered revolutionary in Brazil.
She left Brazil in 1944, following her marriage to a Brazilian diplomat, and spent the next decade and a half in Europe and the United States. Upon return to Rio de Janeiro in 1959, she began producing her most famous works, including the stories of Family Ties (Laços de Família), the great mystic novel The Passion According to G.H. (A Paixão Segundo G.H.), and the novel many consider to be her masterpiece, Água Viva. Injured in an accident in 1966, she spent the last decade of her life in frequent pain, steadily writing and publishing novels and stories until her premature death in 1977.
She has been the subject of numerous books and references to her, and her works are common in Brazilian literature and music. Several of her works have been turned into films, one being 'Hour of the Star' and she was the subject of a recent biography, Why This World, by Benjamin Moser.
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May 26, 2021
Tengo desasosiego. Eso. No sabría de qué otra forma llamar a esto que siento. Y eso me viene cuando leo a Clarice. Leerla me causa felicidad, siempre, y mucho sentirme desacomodada, me desconcierta. Ella, parecería que habla desde un centro del universo. Como si de ella saliera la lava que sostiene al mundo. El calor necesario para la vida. De ella sale el misterio, la intuición, el instinto. Y será por eso, que cuando la leo, me involucra y me revuelve emociones que me toma un rato poder identificar.
En sus crónicas, que son mucho más que eso, habla sobre trivialidades como el hecho de que le gusta usar perfume, o una charla que tuvo con un taxista. Una llamada telefónica de un cantautor brasileño (Caetano!). Chico Buarque, Tom Jobim, amigas que conoce de poco o mucho tiempo, anécdotas de sus hijos, animales, conversaciones con las mujeres que trabajan en su casa, fragmentos de novela o cuento. Y de repente, aunque esté hablando de lo más trivial, te lanza unas joyas que te hacen darte cuenta que ella está conectada con otra cosa, algo indescifrable, que se siente lejano, y lo dice de la manera más natural del mundo, como si cualquiera accediera a aquello que ella ve.
“Pero, yendo a lo más profundo, llego muy pensativa a la conclusión de que no existe nada más difícil que entregarse totalmente. Esta dificultad es uno de los dolores humanos.”
En este libro, que como bien se sabe, son crónicas para un periódico que escribió durante varios años, por necesidad exonómica (un punto que menciona en varias de ellas) pero de alguna manera la hicieron accesible para mucha gente que no había podido leer sus novelas. Ella dice que eso es porque cuando lees en un periódico, tienes otra disposición, a entender, pero yo creo que es más que eso. Sí que hay algo de ella que se revela. Y es su mirada. También hay claves sobre su literatura, que va soltando como si hablara del café que se tomó con una amiga:
“Y cuando escribo no es la clásica novela. Aunque es novela. Solo que me guía al escribirla siempre un sentido de investigación y descubrimiento. No, no de sintaxis por la sintaxis en sí, sino de una sintaxis que se aproxime lo más posible y me aproxime a lo que estoy pensando en el momento de escribir.”
También me gusta mucho esta comparación que hace entre lo que le gusta leer, y lo que ella misma escribe:
“Convertir en atractivo un libro es un truco perfectamente legítimo. Prefiero, no obstante, escribir con el mínimo de trucos. Para mis lecturas, prefiero lo atractivo, pues me cansa menos, exige menos de mí como lectora, pide poco de mí en cuanto a participación íntima. Pero para escribir quiero prescindir de todo lo que yo pueda prescindir: para quien escribe, esta experiencia vale la pena.”
“la oración profunda no es la que pide, la oración más profunda es la que ya no pide.”
Parece estar en contacto con algo que nos conecta. Como si fuera una sacerdotisa, Me gusta que se sienta cotidiana, pero a la vez intuitiva, extraña, sabes que en ella se combina el quitarse importancia, con el conectar con el más allá. Siempre leerla es una aventura, pero no diría que es fácil. Con Clarice siempre hay que entregarse a la lectura, confiando que te va a llevar a lugares inesperados, incluso cuando esa lectura es estas crónicas, que son una manera maravillosa de acercarte a su lectura, si nunca la has leído, pero también son un gran acompañamiento para seguir cerca de ella. Me pasa que con su literatura he tenido que aprender a entregarme, pero con sus crónicas, sus cartas, he llegado a quererla mucho. Siempre Clarice, gente, es buena para la vida.
(Creo que una cosa que hipnotiza de su manera de escribir, es porque sus palabras tienen la certeza de una verdad como si fuera de siempre, como si fuera de antes de que se inventara el tiempo.)
En sus crónicas, que son mucho más que eso, habla sobre trivialidades como el hecho de que le gusta usar perfume, o una charla que tuvo con un taxista. Una llamada telefónica de un cantautor brasileño (Caetano!). Chico Buarque, Tom Jobim, amigas que conoce de poco o mucho tiempo, anécdotas de sus hijos, animales, conversaciones con las mujeres que trabajan en su casa, fragmentos de novela o cuento. Y de repente, aunque esté hablando de lo más trivial, te lanza unas joyas que te hacen darte cuenta que ella está conectada con otra cosa, algo indescifrable, que se siente lejano, y lo dice de la manera más natural del mundo, como si cualquiera accediera a aquello que ella ve.
“Pero, yendo a lo más profundo, llego muy pensativa a la conclusión de que no existe nada más difícil que entregarse totalmente. Esta dificultad es uno de los dolores humanos.”
En este libro, que como bien se sabe, son crónicas para un periódico que escribió durante varios años, por necesidad exonómica (un punto que menciona en varias de ellas) pero de alguna manera la hicieron accesible para mucha gente que no había podido leer sus novelas. Ella dice que eso es porque cuando lees en un periódico, tienes otra disposición, a entender, pero yo creo que es más que eso. Sí que hay algo de ella que se revela. Y es su mirada. También hay claves sobre su literatura, que va soltando como si hablara del café que se tomó con una amiga:
“Y cuando escribo no es la clásica novela. Aunque es novela. Solo que me guía al escribirla siempre un sentido de investigación y descubrimiento. No, no de sintaxis por la sintaxis en sí, sino de una sintaxis que se aproxime lo más posible y me aproxime a lo que estoy pensando en el momento de escribir.”
También me gusta mucho esta comparación que hace entre lo que le gusta leer, y lo que ella misma escribe:
“Convertir en atractivo un libro es un truco perfectamente legítimo. Prefiero, no obstante, escribir con el mínimo de trucos. Para mis lecturas, prefiero lo atractivo, pues me cansa menos, exige menos de mí como lectora, pide poco de mí en cuanto a participación íntima. Pero para escribir quiero prescindir de todo lo que yo pueda prescindir: para quien escribe, esta experiencia vale la pena.”
“la oración profunda no es la que pide, la oración más profunda es la que ya no pide.”
Parece estar en contacto con algo que nos conecta. Como si fuera una sacerdotisa, Me gusta que se sienta cotidiana, pero a la vez intuitiva, extraña, sabes que en ella se combina el quitarse importancia, con el conectar con el más allá. Siempre leerla es una aventura, pero no diría que es fácil. Con Clarice siempre hay que entregarse a la lectura, confiando que te va a llevar a lugares inesperados, incluso cuando esa lectura es estas crónicas, que son una manera maravillosa de acercarte a su lectura, si nunca la has leído, pero también son un gran acompañamiento para seguir cerca de ella. Me pasa que con su literatura he tenido que aprender a entregarme, pero con sus crónicas, sus cartas, he llegado a quererla mucho. Siempre Clarice, gente, es buena para la vida.
(Creo que una cosa que hipnotiza de su manera de escribir, es porque sus palabras tienen la certeza de una verdad como si fuera de siempre, como si fuera de antes de que se inventara el tiempo.)
December 3, 2021
“I'm so mysterious that I don't understand myself”
A few weeks ago, Clarice Lispector had flabbergasted me with her The Passion According to G.H.. But after that inimitable existential monologue, this is a completely different book. It collects the articles Lispector wrote for a Brazilian newspaper between 1967 and 1973. Especially in the beginning these are kind of diary entries: the author mainly writes about events and incidents in her daily life or memories from her youth, and muses about the emotions she’s enduring, now and then. But gradually these are replaced by longer reflections and musings, and even full-fledged short stories. What struck me most is how hard Lispector is on herself: she regularly mentions how unsympathetic she feels she is, how flawed her writing is, and how she falls short in many other areas. Her introspection is not as merciless as that of Karl Ove Knausgaard, for example, but it comes close. There were some nice observations from time to time, illustrating the very intuitive way Lispector stood in life, and how she searched to capture reality through language. But overall this collection was a bit too heterogeneous for me to have the same impact as her masterpiece.
A few weeks ago, Clarice Lispector had flabbergasted me with her The Passion According to G.H.. But after that inimitable existential monologue, this is a completely different book. It collects the articles Lispector wrote for a Brazilian newspaper between 1967 and 1973. Especially in the beginning these are kind of diary entries: the author mainly writes about events and incidents in her daily life or memories from her youth, and muses about the emotions she’s enduring, now and then. But gradually these are replaced by longer reflections and musings, and even full-fledged short stories. What struck me most is how hard Lispector is on herself: she regularly mentions how unsympathetic she feels she is, how flawed her writing is, and how she falls short in many other areas. Her introspection is not as merciless as that of Karl Ove Knausgaard, for example, but it comes close. There were some nice observations from time to time, illustrating the very intuitive way Lispector stood in life, and how she searched to capture reality through language. But overall this collection was a bit too heterogeneous for me to have the same impact as her masterpiece.
Read
May 21, 2026This is imho better translation and more complete set of Clarice's cronicas. Below is just her words (passages I liked the most subjectively categorised into broader themes). My review is under another edition.
Moments:
The sense of beauty is our link with infinity. It is our way of connecting to it. There are moments, albeit rare, when the existence of infinity is so present that we experience a kind of vertigo. Infinity is a coming into being. It is always the present, indivisible by time. Infinity is time. Time and space are the same thing.
There were two people with whom I had such a strong connection that I ceased to exist, while still continuing to be. How can I explain that? We would gaze into each other’s eyes and say nothing, and I was the other person and the other person was me.
Until day began to break, almost very slowly to break. No one was tired, although it was high time that we were. We walked. And on the street corners of Paris, Santiago discovered the first flower sellers. Impossible to say how many roses he bought me. I know that they were too many for me to hold, and roses spilled onto the ground as I went. If I’ve ever been pretty, it was on that early Paris morning with roses overflowing from my full-to-the-brim arms. And a man who heaps a woman with flowers like that is not coldly lucid.
But Ceschiatti didn’t like the head he made of me, and he’s the sort who needs to be satisfied with his work. In Switzerland we had a terrace where, in one corner, we kept the coal to heat the house which had no central heating. And Ceschiatti ended up throwing my head onto that pile of coal. I only forgave him because it looked rather pretty, that head half-cracked open among broken lumps of coal. …Then heavy snow fell, and the result was black coal, pure white snow and a cracked head. Image he thanked him:…Thank you, Ceschiatti, for the head you didn’t like, for the rough black coal, for the snow that fell in silent flakes.
Orchid—Beautiful, exquise and unfriendly. Unspontaneous. In need of a glass dome. Yet it is a magnificent woman, this cannot be denied. It can also not be denied that it is noble; it is an epiphyte, that is, it is born on another plant without, however, taking nutrition from it. I’m lying: I adore orchids.
Night-blooming Jasmine—Has the scent of the full moon. It is phantasmagorical and a little frightening: it only comes out at night, with its intoxicating smell, mysterious, silent. It belongs also to deserted street corners and darkness, to the gardens of houses with their lights turned off and their shutters closed. It is dangerous.
MEMORY OF A DIFFICULT SUMMER Insomnia made the dimly lit city levitate. Not a single door was shut and every window gave out its own hot light. Insects swarmed around the streetlights. Along the riverbank the tables, the few weary conversations, children asleep on laps. The wide-awake levity of the night would not let us go to our beds; we walked as slowly as nomads. We were part of the streetlights’ yellow vigil, and the winged insects, and the rounded, waiting hills, and the vigil of an entire celestial vault. We were part of the great waiting that, in and of itself, is what the whole universe does. Just as those other enormous insects had once drunk slowly from the waters of that river.
Social and moral issues
Long before I felt “art,” I felt the profound beauty of struggle. [She went to study law because she wanted to reform penal system in Brazil]. But I have a simpleminded way of approaching social issues: I wanted to “do” something, as if writing were not doing. What I’m incapable of doing is using writing for that purpose, however much that inability pains and humiliates me. The problem of justice is for me so obvious and basic a sentiment that I cannot feel surprised by it—and if I’m not surprised I cannot write. Also because for me writing is seeking. The sense of justice was never something I needed to search for, never something I discovered, and what shocks me is that this isn’t equally obvious to everyone.
Come and see me another day. But I can already tell you that, in Brazil, it’s practically impossible to live on what you earn from books. The solution is to become a journalist and have another job on the side: by accumulating side jobs you can cobble together the money you need to live reasonably well, financially speaking.
AI: Man was programmed by God to solve problems, but he has started to create them rather than solve them. The machine was programmed by man to solve the problems that he created. But the machine is actually beginning to create problems that disorient and swallow up man. The machine continues to grow. It’s huge now. To the point where man ceases to be a human organism. [Prescience but hope as well that it was 50 years and still similar.]
And having maids—let’s be honest here and call them servants—is an offence against humanity.
And what have I learned since, simply by opening my rather narrow eyes a little wider? I saw that the problem of prostitution is clearly a social problem. Behind this lies another deeper problem: many men prefer to pay precisely because they want to avoid feelings or affection, precisely because they want to humiliate and be humiliated. This avoidance of love is a fact: men pay to avoid it. There are even married men who choose to be the sole breadwinner so as make their wife an object they pay for.
So why, then, this sudden killing of Indians? He replied: “Indians have been killed ever since the discovery of Brazil.” At the time of the discoveries, there were about a million and a half indigenous peoples; now, at most, and this is an optimistic estimate, there are eighty thousand still living in tribes. Part of that early indigenous population disappeared after contact with the European culture that destroyed them. The Indians were sacrificed to the large farms and plantations or the big cities built by those ...If we continue to be the object of other countries’ ambitions, we Brazilians will continue to be the poor wretches we are and will continue to kill not only Indians, but ourselves too.
A woman on BBC Woman hours was talking about being prisoner of war. “And I believe that if we appeal to people’s good side, we’ll almost always be successful.” I know what she means, but she’s wrong. There comes a time when we must forget about being human and compassionate and take a stand, however wrongly, for the victim, and take a stand, however wrongly, against the enemy. And return to a more primitive stage of dividing people into good and bad. The moment of survival is the moment when the victim is allowed to be cruel, cruel and angry—when not understanding others is the right thing to do. It is also important not to forgive.”
DIES IRAE (Day of judgement) I woke up in a rage. No, I don’t like the world at all. The majority of people are dead and don’t know it, or else are alive but live like charlatans. And love, instead of giving, makes demands. And anyone who does love us wants us to fulfill some need of theirs. Lying brings remorse. And not lying is a gift the world does not deserve. And I can’t even do what that partially paralyzed girl did to voice her rage, namely, smash a vase. I am not partially paralyzed. Although something inside tells me that we are all partially paralyzed. And we die without so much as an explanation. Even worse—without so much as an explanation we live. And having maids—let’s be honest here and call them servants—is an offense against humanity. And being obliged to be what people call “presentable” infuriates me. Why can’t I walk around in rags, like the men I sometimes see in the street with a beard down to their chest and a Bible in their hand, those gods who have made madness a way of understanding the world? And why, just because I’ve written a few things, is it assumed that I must continue to write? I warned my sons that I had woken up in a rage, and they ignored me. But I don’t want to ignore it. I would like to do something to finally break the tense tendon sustaining my heart.
People who don’t understand life think it’s just a series of things that happen. Those same people adore Van Gogh because he cut off his ear; Toulouse-Lautrec because he was a dwarf; Modigliani because he had tuberculosis; Rembrandt because he starved to death; James Dean because he died in a car accident; Marilyn Monroe because she killed herself. Such people believe in posterity because they think they are posterity. Well then: I [swear word] on the head of posterity.”
Woolf:I don’t like it when people say I have an affinity with Virginia Woolf (I only read her after writing my first book): the reason is that I do not want to forgive her for committing suicide. Our horrible duty is to keep going to the end. And not to rely on anyone. Live your own reality. Discover the truth. And in order to suffer less, numb yourself slightly.
Communicate to other prominent people and the readers
I don’t think it’s mere coincidence: some politicians have been known to hire paid assassins. And there are a huge number of antidemocrats in the States. In a way, America is more backward than we are: you only have to think of the problems Black people had and still have in that supposedly democratic country. But tell me, Zagallo, what matters most to you?” “Peace.” (Me too, but it depends on what terms. For example, I don’t want the kind of peace Spain has under the heel of Franco.)
“In what way did inspiration come to you?” “I think it came in all sorts of ways. But I don’t think it was exactly unconscious. Even when it seems unconscious, I think that the kernel of inspiration is a lived experience of some sort—image, sound, pain, distress—previously stored away and suddenly, for whatever external reason, revived. But my case is very special: I’m not a writer, I’m a writing professional.”
“Creating a painting is creating a new world. The artist is the first viewer of his work. The previous solutions, the knowledge already acquired, are of no use for the new work. I can only paint when I manage to forget what I have learned. Otherwise, I think I would only be remaking paintings I’d already painted. And they would, therefore, be mere copies, replicas. No, Clarice, I think that when we set out on a journey in search of something that we can only intuit, then we fix our route, we choose the cardinal point of our goal. But that’s not the same as foreseeing what will be revealed only upon arrival. A psychoanalyst friend of mine, Professor Décio de Sousa, who died in October 1970, used to say that when you’re waiting for a child to be born, you don’t know what color its eyes will be, you only know that a child will be born. Clarice, you know better than I that the character lives its life irrespective of the author, and surprises the author. Perhaps that’s what Pirandello meant with his Six Characters in Search of an Author.”
Writing specifically this column
Besides, I don’t want to write any more. I’m writing now because I need the money. I’d prefer to stay silent. There are things I have never written, and I will die without having written them. And I certainly won’t be paid for those.
I write at typewriter speed and, when I look at what I’ve written, I realize that I’ve revealed a certain part of me. I think that even if I wrote about the problem of coffee overproduction in Brazil, I would still end up being personal. Am I on the verge of becoming popular? What a frightening thought. I’m going to see what I can do, if I can do anything. I’m consoled by something Fernando Pessoa wrote, and which I read somewhere: “Speaking is the simplest way of making ourselves unknown.”
It’s curious, this experience of writing lighter pieces and for lots of readers, when I used to write “my things” for just a few. It’s a very pleasant sensation. What’s more, I’ve been spending a lot of time with myself recently and was surprised to discover that being me is bearable, sometimes even pleasant. Well, not always.
feel I have almost achieved my freedom. To the point of no longer needing to write. If I could, would leave my space on this page blank: filled with the greatest silence. And readers, on seeing this blank space, would fill it with their own desires.
To be frank, this can scarcely be called a column. It is simply what it is. It does not correspond to any genre. Genre no longer interests me. What interests me is mystery. Is there some ritual attached to mystery? I believe there is. In order to adhere to the certainty of things. Meanwhile, I somehow already adhere to the earth. I am a daughter of nature: I want to hold things, feel them, touch them, I want to exist. [Sartr] And all this is part of a totality, of a mystery. I am but one being. Before there was a ditterence between the writer and me (or am I wrong? I cannot be certain). But no longer. I am but one being. And I leave you to be yourself.Does that frighten you? I believe it does. But it is worthwhile. Even if it hurts. For the pain soon passes. [ she is more convincingly than him].
Writing as a process and consciousness
I think every writer is a born actor. In first place, the writer takes on the role of themselves and really inhabits the part. A writer is someone who tires easily, and ends up feeling slightly bored with herself, since her intimate contact with herself is, of necessity, too prolonged.
Then Guimarães Rosa said something to me that I will never forget because it made me so happy: he said that he read my work “not for the literature, but for the life.” He then reeled off lots of quotes from my books—I didn’t recognize one of them.
What is fiction? It is, I suppose, the creation of beings and events that did not actually exist, but who could exist were they alive. But the idea that a book should conform to a certain type of novel—well, frankly, je m’en fiche.fn1
As a reader, I prefer the attractive type of book, because it’s less tiring, less demanding, requires little real engagement. But as a writer, I want to dispense with everything I can possibly dispense with: that is what makes the experience worthwhile.
know perfectly well what a so-called real novel is. And yet, when I read one, with its tangle of facts and descriptions, I just feel bored. The novels I write aren’t the standard novel. And yet they are still novels. Except that what guides me as I write is a sense of searching and discovering. No, not syntax for syntax’s sake, but a syntax that gets as close and gets me as close as possible to what I’m thinking at the actual moment of writing. In fact, when I think about it now, I’ve never chosen language. All I’ve done is go with the flow.
I don’t even really know how to write. Writing is about knowing how to breathe within the sentence. And how to put some silence both in the lines and between the lines, so that the reader can breathe with me, unhurriedly, adapting to my rhythm as well as to theirs, in a sort of indispensable counterpoint.
Writing: It saves the imprisoned soul, it saves the person who feels useless, it saves each day we live through and can only understand if we write about it. Writing is trying to understand, it’s trying to reproduce the unreproducible, it’s feeling to the deepest depths an emotion that would otherwise remain vague and suffocating. Writing is also bestowing a blessing on a life that was not blessed.
Something must have gone wrong somewhere: when I write, however hard I try to express myself, I have the feeling that I have never really expressed myself. I find this so distressing that it seems to me that I now concentrate more on trying to express myself than on the actual thing expressed. Nevertheless, I will attempt the following: a kind of silence. Even while continuing to write, I will use silence. And if something that you might call expression appears, then let it emanate from who I am. No more: “I express myself, therefore I am.” It will be: “I am, therefore I am.”
TO REMEMBER WHAT NEVER EXISTED To write often means remembering what never existed. So how can I know what has never existed? Like this: as if I were remembering. By an effort of memory, as if I had never been born. I was never born. I have never lived. But I remember, and remembering is like an open wound.
SILKEN THREADS I’ve hardly read anything by Henry James who, according to a friend of mine, is a marvelous writer. He, Henry James, is both clear and hermetic. By quoting him, will I be becoming hermetic for my readers? I apologize. I have to say certain things, and those things are not easy. Read and reread the quote below.
“What kind of experience is intended and where does it begin and end? Experience is never limited and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spiderweb, of the finest silken threads, suspended in the chamber of consciousness and catching every airborne particle in its tissue. It is the very atmosphere of the mind; and when the mind is imaginative—much more when it happens to be that of a man of genius—it takes to itself the faintest hints of life, it converts the very pulses of the air into revelations.”
I am far from being a genius, but what revelations! All those pulses caught in the air. The fine threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness. And in our unconscious our very own enormous spider. And how wonderful life is with its sticky webs. Tell me if I begin to become too much myself. I have a tendency to do that.
But I can also be objective too. So much so that I can turn those subjective silken threads into objective words.
What’s more, all words are objects, objective. Moreover, of one thing you can be sure, you don’t need to be intelligent: the spider isn’t, and words, well, words are inevitable. Do you see what I mean? There’s no need really. You just have to receive, just as I am simply giving. Receive me with silken threads.
Moments:
The sense of beauty is our link with infinity. It is our way of connecting to it. There are moments, albeit rare, when the existence of infinity is so present that we experience a kind of vertigo. Infinity is a coming into being. It is always the present, indivisible by time. Infinity is time. Time and space are the same thing.
There were two people with whom I had such a strong connection that I ceased to exist, while still continuing to be. How can I explain that? We would gaze into each other’s eyes and say nothing, and I was the other person and the other person was me.
Until day began to break, almost very slowly to break. No one was tired, although it was high time that we were. We walked. And on the street corners of Paris, Santiago discovered the first flower sellers. Impossible to say how many roses he bought me. I know that they were too many for me to hold, and roses spilled onto the ground as I went. If I’ve ever been pretty, it was on that early Paris morning with roses overflowing from my full-to-the-brim arms. And a man who heaps a woman with flowers like that is not coldly lucid.
But Ceschiatti didn’t like the head he made of me, and he’s the sort who needs to be satisfied with his work. In Switzerland we had a terrace where, in one corner, we kept the coal to heat the house which had no central heating. And Ceschiatti ended up throwing my head onto that pile of coal. I only forgave him because it looked rather pretty, that head half-cracked open among broken lumps of coal. …Then heavy snow fell, and the result was black coal, pure white snow and a cracked head. Image he thanked him:…Thank you, Ceschiatti, for the head you didn’t like, for the rough black coal, for the snow that fell in silent flakes.
Orchid—Beautiful, exquise and unfriendly. Unspontaneous. In need of a glass dome. Yet it is a magnificent woman, this cannot be denied. It can also not be denied that it is noble; it is an epiphyte, that is, it is born on another plant without, however, taking nutrition from it. I’m lying: I adore orchids.
Night-blooming Jasmine—Has the scent of the full moon. It is phantasmagorical and a little frightening: it only comes out at night, with its intoxicating smell, mysterious, silent. It belongs also to deserted street corners and darkness, to the gardens of houses with their lights turned off and their shutters closed. It is dangerous.
MEMORY OF A DIFFICULT SUMMER Insomnia made the dimly lit city levitate. Not a single door was shut and every window gave out its own hot light. Insects swarmed around the streetlights. Along the riverbank the tables, the few weary conversations, children asleep on laps. The wide-awake levity of the night would not let us go to our beds; we walked as slowly as nomads. We were part of the streetlights’ yellow vigil, and the winged insects, and the rounded, waiting hills, and the vigil of an entire celestial vault. We were part of the great waiting that, in and of itself, is what the whole universe does. Just as those other enormous insects had once drunk slowly from the waters of that river.
Social and moral issues
Long before I felt “art,” I felt the profound beauty of struggle. [She went to study law because she wanted to reform penal system in Brazil]. But I have a simpleminded way of approaching social issues: I wanted to “do” something, as if writing were not doing. What I’m incapable of doing is using writing for that purpose, however much that inability pains and humiliates me. The problem of justice is for me so obvious and basic a sentiment that I cannot feel surprised by it—and if I’m not surprised I cannot write. Also because for me writing is seeking. The sense of justice was never something I needed to search for, never something I discovered, and what shocks me is that this isn’t equally obvious to everyone.
Come and see me another day. But I can already tell you that, in Brazil, it’s practically impossible to live on what you earn from books. The solution is to become a journalist and have another job on the side: by accumulating side jobs you can cobble together the money you need to live reasonably well, financially speaking.
AI: Man was programmed by God to solve problems, but he has started to create them rather than solve them. The machine was programmed by man to solve the problems that he created. But the machine is actually beginning to create problems that disorient and swallow up man. The machine continues to grow. It’s huge now. To the point where man ceases to be a human organism. [Prescience but hope as well that it was 50 years and still similar.]
And having maids—let’s be honest here and call them servants—is an offence against humanity.
And what have I learned since, simply by opening my rather narrow eyes a little wider? I saw that the problem of prostitution is clearly a social problem. Behind this lies another deeper problem: many men prefer to pay precisely because they want to avoid feelings or affection, precisely because they want to humiliate and be humiliated. This avoidance of love is a fact: men pay to avoid it. There are even married men who choose to be the sole breadwinner so as make their wife an object they pay for.
So why, then, this sudden killing of Indians? He replied: “Indians have been killed ever since the discovery of Brazil.” At the time of the discoveries, there were about a million and a half indigenous peoples; now, at most, and this is an optimistic estimate, there are eighty thousand still living in tribes. Part of that early indigenous population disappeared after contact with the European culture that destroyed them. The Indians were sacrificed to the large farms and plantations or the big cities built by those ...If we continue to be the object of other countries’ ambitions, we Brazilians will continue to be the poor wretches we are and will continue to kill not only Indians, but ourselves too.
A woman on BBC Woman hours was talking about being prisoner of war. “And I believe that if we appeal to people’s good side, we’ll almost always be successful.” I know what she means, but she’s wrong. There comes a time when we must forget about being human and compassionate and take a stand, however wrongly, for the victim, and take a stand, however wrongly, against the enemy. And return to a more primitive stage of dividing people into good and bad. The moment of survival is the moment when the victim is allowed to be cruel, cruel and angry—when not understanding others is the right thing to do. It is also important not to forgive.”
DIES IRAE (Day of judgement) I woke up in a rage. No, I don’t like the world at all. The majority of people are dead and don’t know it, or else are alive but live like charlatans. And love, instead of giving, makes demands. And anyone who does love us wants us to fulfill some need of theirs. Lying brings remorse. And not lying is a gift the world does not deserve. And I can’t even do what that partially paralyzed girl did to voice her rage, namely, smash a vase. I am not partially paralyzed. Although something inside tells me that we are all partially paralyzed. And we die without so much as an explanation. Even worse—without so much as an explanation we live. And having maids—let’s be honest here and call them servants—is an offense against humanity. And being obliged to be what people call “presentable” infuriates me. Why can’t I walk around in rags, like the men I sometimes see in the street with a beard down to their chest and a Bible in their hand, those gods who have made madness a way of understanding the world? And why, just because I’ve written a few things, is it assumed that I must continue to write? I warned my sons that I had woken up in a rage, and they ignored me. But I don’t want to ignore it. I would like to do something to finally break the tense tendon sustaining my heart.
People who don’t understand life think it’s just a series of things that happen. Those same people adore Van Gogh because he cut off his ear; Toulouse-Lautrec because he was a dwarf; Modigliani because he had tuberculosis; Rembrandt because he starved to death; James Dean because he died in a car accident; Marilyn Monroe because she killed herself. Such people believe in posterity because they think they are posterity. Well then: I [swear word] on the head of posterity.”
Woolf:I don’t like it when people say I have an affinity with Virginia Woolf (I only read her after writing my first book): the reason is that I do not want to forgive her for committing suicide. Our horrible duty is to keep going to the end. And not to rely on anyone. Live your own reality. Discover the truth. And in order to suffer less, numb yourself slightly.
Communicate to other prominent people and the readers
I don’t think it’s mere coincidence: some politicians have been known to hire paid assassins. And there are a huge number of antidemocrats in the States. In a way, America is more backward than we are: you only have to think of the problems Black people had and still have in that supposedly democratic country. But tell me, Zagallo, what matters most to you?” “Peace.” (Me too, but it depends on what terms. For example, I don’t want the kind of peace Spain has under the heel of Franco.)
“In what way did inspiration come to you?” “I think it came in all sorts of ways. But I don’t think it was exactly unconscious. Even when it seems unconscious, I think that the kernel of inspiration is a lived experience of some sort—image, sound, pain, distress—previously stored away and suddenly, for whatever external reason, revived. But my case is very special: I’m not a writer, I’m a writing professional.”
“Creating a painting is creating a new world. The artist is the first viewer of his work. The previous solutions, the knowledge already acquired, are of no use for the new work. I can only paint when I manage to forget what I have learned. Otherwise, I think I would only be remaking paintings I’d already painted. And they would, therefore, be mere copies, replicas. No, Clarice, I think that when we set out on a journey in search of something that we can only intuit, then we fix our route, we choose the cardinal point of our goal. But that’s not the same as foreseeing what will be revealed only upon arrival. A psychoanalyst friend of mine, Professor Décio de Sousa, who died in October 1970, used to say that when you’re waiting for a child to be born, you don’t know what color its eyes will be, you only know that a child will be born. Clarice, you know better than I that the character lives its life irrespective of the author, and surprises the author. Perhaps that’s what Pirandello meant with his Six Characters in Search of an Author.”
Writing specifically this column
Besides, I don’t want to write any more. I’m writing now because I need the money. I’d prefer to stay silent. There are things I have never written, and I will die without having written them. And I certainly won’t be paid for those.
I write at typewriter speed and, when I look at what I’ve written, I realize that I’ve revealed a certain part of me. I think that even if I wrote about the problem of coffee overproduction in Brazil, I would still end up being personal. Am I on the verge of becoming popular? What a frightening thought. I’m going to see what I can do, if I can do anything. I’m consoled by something Fernando Pessoa wrote, and which I read somewhere: “Speaking is the simplest way of making ourselves unknown.”
It’s curious, this experience of writing lighter pieces and for lots of readers, when I used to write “my things” for just a few. It’s a very pleasant sensation. What’s more, I’ve been spending a lot of time with myself recently and was surprised to discover that being me is bearable, sometimes even pleasant. Well, not always.
feel I have almost achieved my freedom. To the point of no longer needing to write. If I could, would leave my space on this page blank: filled with the greatest silence. And readers, on seeing this blank space, would fill it with their own desires.
To be frank, this can scarcely be called a column. It is simply what it is. It does not correspond to any genre. Genre no longer interests me. What interests me is mystery. Is there some ritual attached to mystery? I believe there is. In order to adhere to the certainty of things. Meanwhile, I somehow already adhere to the earth. I am a daughter of nature: I want to hold things, feel them, touch them, I want to exist. [Sartr] And all this is part of a totality, of a mystery. I am but one being. Before there was a ditterence between the writer and me (or am I wrong? I cannot be certain). But no longer. I am but one being. And I leave you to be yourself.Does that frighten you? I believe it does. But it is worthwhile. Even if it hurts. For the pain soon passes. [ she is more convincingly than him].
Writing as a process and consciousness
I think every writer is a born actor. In first place, the writer takes on the role of themselves and really inhabits the part. A writer is someone who tires easily, and ends up feeling slightly bored with herself, since her intimate contact with herself is, of necessity, too prolonged.
Then Guimarães Rosa said something to me that I will never forget because it made me so happy: he said that he read my work “not for the literature, but for the life.” He then reeled off lots of quotes from my books—I didn’t recognize one of them.
What is fiction? It is, I suppose, the creation of beings and events that did not actually exist, but who could exist were they alive. But the idea that a book should conform to a certain type of novel—well, frankly, je m’en fiche.fn1
As a reader, I prefer the attractive type of book, because it’s less tiring, less demanding, requires little real engagement. But as a writer, I want to dispense with everything I can possibly dispense with: that is what makes the experience worthwhile.
know perfectly well what a so-called real novel is. And yet, when I read one, with its tangle of facts and descriptions, I just feel bored. The novels I write aren’t the standard novel. And yet they are still novels. Except that what guides me as I write is a sense of searching and discovering. No, not syntax for syntax’s sake, but a syntax that gets as close and gets me as close as possible to what I’m thinking at the actual moment of writing. In fact, when I think about it now, I’ve never chosen language. All I’ve done is go with the flow.
I don’t even really know how to write. Writing is about knowing how to breathe within the sentence. And how to put some silence both in the lines and between the lines, so that the reader can breathe with me, unhurriedly, adapting to my rhythm as well as to theirs, in a sort of indispensable counterpoint.
Writing: It saves the imprisoned soul, it saves the person who feels useless, it saves each day we live through and can only understand if we write about it. Writing is trying to understand, it’s trying to reproduce the unreproducible, it’s feeling to the deepest depths an emotion that would otherwise remain vague and suffocating. Writing is also bestowing a blessing on a life that was not blessed.
Something must have gone wrong somewhere: when I write, however hard I try to express myself, I have the feeling that I have never really expressed myself. I find this so distressing that it seems to me that I now concentrate more on trying to express myself than on the actual thing expressed. Nevertheless, I will attempt the following: a kind of silence. Even while continuing to write, I will use silence. And if something that you might call expression appears, then let it emanate from who I am. No more: “I express myself, therefore I am.” It will be: “I am, therefore I am.”
TO REMEMBER WHAT NEVER EXISTED To write often means remembering what never existed. So how can I know what has never existed? Like this: as if I were remembering. By an effort of memory, as if I had never been born. I was never born. I have never lived. But I remember, and remembering is like an open wound.
SILKEN THREADS I’ve hardly read anything by Henry James who, according to a friend of mine, is a marvelous writer. He, Henry James, is both clear and hermetic. By quoting him, will I be becoming hermetic for my readers? I apologize. I have to say certain things, and those things are not easy. Read and reread the quote below.
“What kind of experience is intended and where does it begin and end? Experience is never limited and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spiderweb, of the finest silken threads, suspended in the chamber of consciousness and catching every airborne particle in its tissue. It is the very atmosphere of the mind; and when the mind is imaginative—much more when it happens to be that of a man of genius—it takes to itself the faintest hints of life, it converts the very pulses of the air into revelations.”
I am far from being a genius, but what revelations! All those pulses caught in the air. The fine threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness. And in our unconscious our very own enormous spider. And how wonderful life is with its sticky webs. Tell me if I begin to become too much myself. I have a tendency to do that.
But I can also be objective too. So much so that I can turn those subjective silken threads into objective words.
What’s more, all words are objects, objective. Moreover, of one thing you can be sure, you don’t need to be intelligent: the spider isn’t, and words, well, words are inevitable. Do you see what I mean? There’s no need really. You just have to receive, just as I am simply giving. Receive me with silken threads.
June 23, 2016
Dit is een parel van een boek. Het laat je huilen van ontroering en lachen van alle spitsvondigheden. Enerzijds zijn er geniale korte verhaaltjes waarvan je denkt ' hoe heeft ze het toch bedacht', anderzijds zijn er mijmeringen en feiten waarbij ze zo tot de essentie doordringt ... Het is meer dan alleen mooie woorden, het is wat ze er mee doet en hoe ze de taal gebruikt, zo soepel. Kortom, dit is echt veruit het beste boek dat ik dit jaar gelezen heb en het heeft me overtuigd ook de biografie en andere werken van haar te lezen. Ik zou zeggen: savoureren met een goed glas wijn... Maar ik ben er natuurlijk als een grote slokop doorheen gevlogen en de wijn is ook achterwege gebleven ...
February 10, 2017
Bueno, cuando se dice crónicas, no son esto exactamente.
Clarice lleva todo a un siguiente nivel, y no podía ser de otra forma en el espacio que ocupó escribiendo para un diario en Brasil.
Digamos que tiene un espacio, ese lugar será bien aprovechado sí o sí.
Tengo que decirlo igual, ella es una mística, de las palabras, de las ideas, del lenguaje, y en estas crónicas ya está hablando de cosas más cercanas, y lejanas a la vez.
Lo dice una fanática de Clarice, que es lo que soy, y no hay manera de serlo a medias.
No hay nada a medias con Clarice,en realidad.
Porque solo ella despierta verdades que viven en quien la lee, y su voz es pura certeza.
Creo que hay otros libros que tienen más anécdotas, aquí hay algunas muy buenas, entrevistas, y muchas ideas que desarrolla a su manera.
Es como más hacia adentro, que otros libros de crónicas que había leído suyos.
Es precioso todo lo que escribe, un terremoto, y para mí leer este lado de su escritura, es una parte muy importante de conocer su trabajo.
Qué misterio tienes, Clarice.
Clarice lleva todo a un siguiente nivel, y no podía ser de otra forma en el espacio que ocupó escribiendo para un diario en Brasil.
Digamos que tiene un espacio, ese lugar será bien aprovechado sí o sí.
Tengo que decirlo igual, ella es una mística, de las palabras, de las ideas, del lenguaje, y en estas crónicas ya está hablando de cosas más cercanas, y lejanas a la vez.
Lo dice una fanática de Clarice, que es lo que soy, y no hay manera de serlo a medias.
No hay nada a medias con Clarice,en realidad.
Porque solo ella despierta verdades que viven en quien la lee, y su voz es pura certeza.
Creo que hay otros libros que tienen más anécdotas, aquí hay algunas muy buenas, entrevistas, y muchas ideas que desarrolla a su manera.
Es como más hacia adentro, que otros libros de crónicas que había leído suyos.
Es precioso todo lo que escribe, un terremoto, y para mí leer este lado de su escritura, es una parte muy importante de conocer su trabajo.
Qué misterio tienes, Clarice.
August 20, 2019
Não lhes chamaria exactamente crónicas. A escrita de Lispector leva-nos na sua corrente. É íntima, cheia de uma luz morna. Ao longo de quase 700 páginas vamos conhecendo melhor a escritora. Há coisas do quotidiano, mas que através da voz de Lispector são importantíssimas, há insónia, há política, há um Deus ao qual não consegue rezar, entre muitas outras coisas bonitas, ora leves, ora pesadas. Fez da linguagem um milagre.
~
"... e o amor, em vez de dar, exige. E quem gosta de nós quer que sejamos alguma coisa de que eles precisam."
"E tudo é muito menos para um coração de repente enfraquecido que só suporta o menos, só pode querer o pouco e aos poucos."
"Ira, transforma-te em mim em perdão, já que és o sofrimento de não amar."
"... morrerei numa ida para uma tonta felicidade de primavera. Mas não me apressarei de um instante a vinda dessa felicidade - pois esperá-la vivendo é a minha vigília de vestal."
~
"... e o amor, em vez de dar, exige. E quem gosta de nós quer que sejamos alguma coisa de que eles precisam."
"E tudo é muito menos para um coração de repente enfraquecido que só suporta o menos, só pode querer o pouco e aos poucos."
"Ira, transforma-te em mim em perdão, já que és o sofrimento de não amar."
"... morrerei numa ida para uma tonta felicidade de primavera. Mas não me apressarei de um instante a vinda dessa felicidade - pois esperá-la vivendo é a minha vigília de vestal."
April 23, 2013
É um livro que muda o modo de ver o mundo e a realidade que nos cerca, é algo para ler uma frase em 1 minuto e pensar sobre ela por mais 10. Mas aviso, Clarice não nasceu para ser entendida e sim para ser sentida. Tenho uma imensa admiração.
March 10, 2017
'Er was eens Clarice Lispector, mijn God.'
June 29, 2009
Li esse livro como eu costumava ler os salmos da Bíblia; abrindo uma página ao acaso, buscando nas palavras daquele dia uma correlação com o meu estado de espírito.
April 26, 2025
Me llevo muchas cosas de sus escritos. Pensamientos y descripciones de memorias que me identifican. Tiene momentos de altos y bajos, pero vale la pena su lectura.
Mí calificación: ⭐⭐⭐🌹(la rosa merece ocupar el lugar de la cuarta estrella)
Mí calificación: ⭐⭐⭐🌹(la rosa merece ocupar el lugar de la cuarta estrella)
August 4, 2016
'Wat wilde ik bereiken toen ik begon te schrijven? Ik wilde iets schrijven wat rustig en tijdloos was, iets als de herinnering aan een groot monument, dat groter lijkt omdat het een herinnering is. Maar ik wilde dat monument terloops ook echt beroerd hebben. Ik weet werkelijk niet wat het woord 'monument' voor mij symboliseerde en uiteindelijk heb ik totaal andere dingen geschreven.' (p.120)
De ontdekking van Clarice Lispectors wereld is een klap. Haar mijmer- en herinneringen slaan je recht in je gezicht. Zo hard dat iedere zin blijft natrillen lang nadat je haar woord voor woord hebt geproefd. En niet omdat ze bruusk, hard of choquerend schrijft. Noch omdat ze verrast of met verstomming slaat. Allerminst. Zo verfijnd, zo alledaags, zo doordacht. Aangrijpend emotioneel, diep-filosofisch en even vaak luchtig komisch. Je bent van slag omdat ze zo geweldig schrijft.
Haast met trots loop je met die rode kaak de nieuw ontdekte wereld tegemoet. (Of is het eerder een gezonde jaloezie?)
De ontdekking van Clarice Lispectors wereld is een klap. Haar mijmer- en herinneringen slaan je recht in je gezicht. Zo hard dat iedere zin blijft natrillen lang nadat je haar woord voor woord hebt geproefd. En niet omdat ze bruusk, hard of choquerend schrijft. Noch omdat ze verrast of met verstomming slaat. Allerminst. Zo verfijnd, zo alledaags, zo doordacht. Aangrijpend emotioneel, diep-filosofisch en even vaak luchtig komisch. Je bent van slag omdat ze zo geweldig schrijft.
Haast met trots loop je met die rode kaak de nieuw ontdekte wereld tegemoet. (Of is het eerder een gezonde jaloezie?)
October 2, 2017
Je wordt als vanzelf verliefd op deze dame...
June 11, 2020
AL LINOTIPISTA
Disculpe que me equivoque tanto en la máquina. Primero porque mi mano derecha resultó quemada. Segundo, no sé por qué.
Ahora un pedido: no me corrija. La puntuación es la respiración de la frase, y mi frase
respira así. Y si a usted le parezco rara, respéteme también. Incluso yo me vi obligada a respetarme.
Escribir es una maldición.
Disculpe que me equivoque tanto en la máquina. Primero porque mi mano derecha resultó quemada. Segundo, no sé por qué.
Ahora un pedido: no me corrija. La puntuación es la respiración de la frase, y mi frase
respira así. Y si a usted le parezco rara, respéteme también. Incluso yo me vi obligada a respetarme.
Escribir es una maldición.
Read
March 22, 2021'Een kapotte spiegel moet je in zee gooien.'
p. 414
p. 414
June 28, 2026
Revelación de un mundo 5/5
Descubrimientos 4/5
Descubrimientos 4/5
July 16, 2018
"A Descoberta do Mundo", livro que reúne as crónicas de Clarice Lispector, foi finalmente publicado em Portugal. Centenas de pensamentos originais, numa mistura de discurso autobiográfico e um profundo conhecimento intutivo das profundezas do ser humano. A não perder. Aqui vai um exemplo: "Saudade é um pouco como fome. Só passa quando se come a presença. Mas às vezes a saudade é tão profunda que a presença é pouco: quer-se absorver a outra pessoa toda. Essa vontade de um ser o outro para uma unificação inteira é um dos sentimentos mais urgentes que se tem na vida."
July 19, 2015
I love this book. Although is about so many little things, it shows how concerned was Clarice with the "estado de graca", with the miracle. A miracle that had nothing to do with any God. Her voice is transmitted to the reader in this books almost a secret. A secret published every week in a national journal. And yet a secret, a very intimate one. One of my favorite readings. A book that I will be forever "currently reading".
August 28, 2020
O livro é riquíssimo. É notável a evolução do conforto da autora nessa escrita rotineira, curta e picada pra o jornal a deixando mais desnuda e transparente, mais real. Também vale ressaltar o quanto ela fala de outros artistas, com outros artistas, relata entrevistas com figuras grandes da arte no Brasil. Acho um enorme privilégio, por exemplo, a oportunidade de ler uma conversa transcrita dela com Tom Jobim.
Eu diria que esse livro é o mais brasileiro que li nos últimos tempos, brasileiro aqui como um adjetivo que reúna o que há de bom no nosso país: a simplicidade, a nossa arte, o calor, o mar, uma fazenda, a amizade. Não acho que minha impressão é usual, Clarice pode ser pesada, mas esse livro eu diria que é leve. Talvez porque eu aprendi a entendê-la, a acompanhar seu derrame de pensamentos, talvez porque é leve mesmo.
Eu o li rapidamente, mas indico como uma leitura de cabeceira em um longo período de tempo com doses de 15 minutos diárias. Tem alegria, profundidade, tristeza, revolta e, sobretudo, tem riqueza.
Este foi o livro de Clarice que mais tive prazer na leitura até agora, ficarei com saudades.
Criei um laço com a autora depois desse, nos primeiros que li tinha uma espécie de medo/vergonha dela e agora não, estou confortável com cada sentimento que a leitura me proporciona. Acho que peguei o jeito de entendê-la, a meu modo é claro.
Acho que Clarice ou você ama ou não entendeu nada. Melhor dizendo, ou você ama ou não sentiu nada, os textos delas são feitos pra sentir.
Vale nota que o livro é denso, longo e de letra miúda.
Eu diria que esse livro é o mais brasileiro que li nos últimos tempos, brasileiro aqui como um adjetivo que reúna o que há de bom no nosso país: a simplicidade, a nossa arte, o calor, o mar, uma fazenda, a amizade. Não acho que minha impressão é usual, Clarice pode ser pesada, mas esse livro eu diria que é leve. Talvez porque eu aprendi a entendê-la, a acompanhar seu derrame de pensamentos, talvez porque é leve mesmo.
Eu o li rapidamente, mas indico como uma leitura de cabeceira em um longo período de tempo com doses de 15 minutos diárias. Tem alegria, profundidade, tristeza, revolta e, sobretudo, tem riqueza.
Este foi o livro de Clarice que mais tive prazer na leitura até agora, ficarei com saudades.
Criei um laço com a autora depois desse, nos primeiros que li tinha uma espécie de medo/vergonha dela e agora não, estou confortável com cada sentimento que a leitura me proporciona. Acho que peguei o jeito de entendê-la, a meu modo é claro.
Acho que Clarice ou você ama ou não entendeu nada. Melhor dizendo, ou você ama ou não sentiu nada, os textos delas são feitos pra sentir.
Vale nota que o livro é denso, longo e de letra miúda.
January 21, 2025
I would like to start by thanking my brother for gifting me this amazing meeting with Clarice, you know me too well and I love you. Reading all of the chronicles she has ever published in the Newspaper was an spiritual experience. Clarice tends to be quite reserved in her books and even though I always felt connected to her and to her (maybe because she is one of the few female authors writing from my cultural perspective), this book made me feel like I know her.
Many of the stories take a form of private conversation, an intrusive thought in her head,
a debrief. There is a lot of mystery surrounding her and reading what she wrote during the years where different historical and personal aspects were changing was extremely interesting.
Many argue that she is not political enough for not addressing politics directly. To me the beauty in Clarice’s writing was always the things that she never said but made you understand. She often talks about inequality, about the difficult times, about the loss of freedom.
Reading about her friendships with many amazing artists and watching her portray then through her eyes was an amazing experience. I goes to show that all Brasilian woman have indeed been in love with a Chico at least once.
One thing that she makes clear in her book is her confusion, and her love. Love for her children, for her country for life.
I love you Clarice
Many of the stories take a form of private conversation, an intrusive thought in her head,
a debrief. There is a lot of mystery surrounding her and reading what she wrote during the years where different historical and personal aspects were changing was extremely interesting.
Many argue that she is not political enough for not addressing politics directly. To me the beauty in Clarice’s writing was always the things that she never said but made you understand. She often talks about inequality, about the difficult times, about the loss of freedom.
Reading about her friendships with many amazing artists and watching her portray then through her eyes was an amazing experience. I goes to show that all Brasilian woman have indeed been in love with a Chico at least once.
One thing that she makes clear in her book is her confusion, and her love. Love for her children, for her country for life.
I love you Clarice
October 2, 2020
lendo um pouco de Clarice de uma forma mais fragmentada temos uma imagem mais concreta de seu universo. aqui há tudo de miscelâneo, de cotidiano, memórias, aforismos, entrevistas, até estudos de cenas e personagens - e a autora parece transbordar por entre todos esses fragmentos sem emendas. é bem prazeroso ver como pequenos pensamentos diários são posteriormente remodelados em outras alegorias ou em textos narrativos mais estruturados.
não parece ser um estilo o que une essa obra em algo conciso, mas um fervor bem humano e gelado de alguém à procura de si e à procura de se dizer o indizível, fervor que parece estar sempre pronto a surgir em qualquer momento de seu dia, mês após mês, ano após ano. A Descoberta do Mundo me forçou a lê-lo como algum salmo ou como um mapa de algum lugar que ainda não visitei. dei uma colherada por dia e mesmo assim é difícil digerir e aceitar um livro que parece ser tão honesto e cru mas que deliberadamente mantém tantos segredos. O que li foi emprestado por um amigo, porém pretendo ter um de cabeceira - sabe-se lá quando precisarei consultar esse tal hermetismo tão arcano das palavras que pescam não-palavras, mas inexplicavelmente me sinto seguro o mantendo por perto, sei lá - não sei, mas aceito.
não parece ser um estilo o que une essa obra em algo conciso, mas um fervor bem humano e gelado de alguém à procura de si e à procura de se dizer o indizível, fervor que parece estar sempre pronto a surgir em qualquer momento de seu dia, mês após mês, ano após ano. A Descoberta do Mundo me forçou a lê-lo como algum salmo ou como um mapa de algum lugar que ainda não visitei. dei uma colherada por dia e mesmo assim é difícil digerir e aceitar um livro que parece ser tão honesto e cru mas que deliberadamente mantém tantos segredos. O que li foi emprestado por um amigo, porém pretendo ter um de cabeceira - sabe-se lá quando precisarei consultar esse tal hermetismo tão arcano das palavras que pescam não-palavras, mas inexplicavelmente me sinto seguro o mantendo por perto, sei lá - não sei, mas aceito.
March 24, 2026
Nouvelles lues dans le cadre d'un cours :
"Jouer à penser" (Page 12);
"Amour immortel" (Page 21);
"Dies lrae" (Page 33);
"En faveur de la peur" (Page 41);
"L'affaire du stylo en or" (Page 62);
'Une joyeuse entrevue" (Page 66);
'Restes du carnival" (Page 102);
"Appartenir" (Page 145);
" En quête de l'autre" (Page 159);
'Si j'étais moi" (Page 215);
'Condition humaine" (Page 227);
" Humilité et technique" (Page 300);
"Je prends en charge le monde" (Page 338);
"La machine écrit" (Page 437);
"Juste une poussière dans l'oeil" (Page 613).
Coup de coeur pour "Une joyeuse entrevue", j'ai beaucoup aimé le style de Lispector mieux que L'heure de l'étoile que j'avais également lu dans un autre cours. C'est peut-être la formule de ce recueil que j'ai préférée.
Je vais peut-être le finir un jour...
"Jouer à penser" (Page 12);
"Amour immortel" (Page 21);
"Dies lrae" (Page 33);
"En faveur de la peur" (Page 41);
"L'affaire du stylo en or" (Page 62);
'Une joyeuse entrevue" (Page 66);
'Restes du carnival" (Page 102);
"Appartenir" (Page 145);
" En quête de l'autre" (Page 159);
'Si j'étais moi" (Page 215);
'Condition humaine" (Page 227);
" Humilité et technique" (Page 300);
"Je prends en charge le monde" (Page 338);
"La machine écrit" (Page 437);
"Juste une poussière dans l'oeil" (Page 613).
Coup de coeur pour "Une joyeuse entrevue", j'ai beaucoup aimé le style de Lispector mieux que L'heure de l'étoile que j'avais également lu dans un autre cours. C'est peut-être la formule de ce recueil que j'ai préférée.
Je vais peut-être le finir un jour...
November 5, 2023
Como explicar que Clarice Lispector es increíble. No puedo creer que haya existido una mente como tal. Es como si todo aquello que por instantes rozó nuestra mentes mientras vivíamos, hubiera sido tomado por Clarice, procesado en un amalgama de sentires e ideas fascinantes, y luego devuelto a nosotros; como puesto en una cotidianidad marcada por lo bello y lo astuto. Es fascinante esta mujer. Había crónicas que leía, y leía, y leía y no podía creer que hubiera leído algo tan profundo, tan ruidoso en su sutileza. Por ahora solo soy una persona absorta en sus palabras.
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June 6, 2023dnf
Ahlala… C’est le genre de livre qui me peine d’arrêter mais je sais, je sens que je n’accroche pas et qu’il est inutile de persévérer. Peut-être réessayerais-je un jour, peut-être n’était-ce pas le bon moment, peut-être que ce format de chroniques n’est pas ce que je préfère…
Ahlala… C’est le genre de livre qui me peine d’arrêter mais je sais, je sens que je n’accroche pas et qu’il est inutile de persévérer. Peut-être réessayerais-je un jour, peut-être n’était-ce pas le bon moment, peut-être que ce format de chroniques n’est pas ce que je préfère…
June 29, 2023
sustentar-se das palavras sem pressa e sem hora pra acabar. clarice é um vício que pode durar a vida toda.
August 23, 2024
Ik kreeg dit boek voor mijn verjaardag van twee Goodreads vrienden. Lispector snapt het en ik nu ook. Bedankt!
July 1, 2026
é sempre lindo ler clarice. "por não estarem distraidos" é um dos textos mais bonitos quem eu já li
July 17, 2024
4,5 *
November 5, 2025
Ze legt, naar eigen zeggen, "de menselijke ziel een beetje bloot". Nog nooit heb ik iemand dat met pen en papier zo mooi zien doen.
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November 7, 2024Over enkele jaren heen af en toe wat gelezen. Clarice haar fantasie en filosofische gedachtenstromen zijn zo interessant en aangrijpend. Veel onderlijnd.
January 14, 2022
"Lieve hemel, zei ze afwezig. Want ze was soms afwezig. Dan verloor haar gezicht zich in een rimpelloos, onpersoonlijk verdriet. Een verdriet dat ouder was dan haar geest. Haar ogen staarden leeg; ik zou zelfs durven zeggen een beetje nors. Wie dan bij haar was leed en kon niets doen. Alleen maar wachten."
"Ik stapte uit mijn donker in het licht en ontdekte dat dat ook van mij was"
"Maar ik moet eerst zeggen dat er niets frissers en echters bestaat dan de werkelijkheid, als die zonder angst ontsluierd wordt. Er komt geen droom aan te pas, zelfs niet als het om een verzonnen werkelijkheid gaat, en nauwelijks toekomst: het is altijd nu. En er is geen angst. Heel uitzonderlijk: in die zonder angst door de verbeelding ontsluierde werkelijkheid ligt de rijkdom niet langer achter ons, als een herinnering, of bestaat hij alleen nog maar als een wens voor de toekomst. Hij is er, huiverend"
"O, als ik het had geweten was ik niet geboren, als ik het had geweten was ik niet geboren. Waanzin ligt vlak naast de wreedste wijsheid"
"De woorden halen me in en zijn me voor, ze proberen me uit en veranderen me, en als ik niet oppas is het te laat: dan heb ik dingen gezegd zonder ze gezegd te hebben"
" 'Wat is het makkelijkst om te doen?'
'Bestaan als de angst over is.'
'Wat is het moeilijkst om te verwezelijken?'
'Je eigen betrekkelijke geluk dat voortkomt uit zelfkennis.' "
"Ik stapte uit mijn donker in het licht en ontdekte dat dat ook van mij was"
"Maar ik moet eerst zeggen dat er niets frissers en echters bestaat dan de werkelijkheid, als die zonder angst ontsluierd wordt. Er komt geen droom aan te pas, zelfs niet als het om een verzonnen werkelijkheid gaat, en nauwelijks toekomst: het is altijd nu. En er is geen angst. Heel uitzonderlijk: in die zonder angst door de verbeelding ontsluierde werkelijkheid ligt de rijkdom niet langer achter ons, als een herinnering, of bestaat hij alleen nog maar als een wens voor de toekomst. Hij is er, huiverend"
"O, als ik het had geweten was ik niet geboren, als ik het had geweten was ik niet geboren. Waanzin ligt vlak naast de wreedste wijsheid"
"De woorden halen me in en zijn me voor, ze proberen me uit en veranderen me, en als ik niet oppas is het te laat: dan heb ik dingen gezegd zonder ze gezegd te hebben"
" 'Wat is het makkelijkst om te doen?'
'Bestaan als de angst over is.'
'Wat is het moeilijkst om te verwezelijken?'
'Je eigen betrekkelijke geluk dat voortkomt uit zelfkennis.' "
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