The witchcraft of clarice lispector

the enigmatic brazilian author whose work will take you through an existential vortex

“When I speak the name of Clarice for the first time, Otto takes a deep breath, as if something were dragging him far away from there, and he’s got to focus hard not to lose himself. Then he says to me, ‘You’d better be careful with Clarice. It’s not literature. It’s witchcraft.’ And urges that whenever I read her books, I proceed with the utmost caution.”

-José Castello

Clarice Lispector came into my life the summer of 2021, her eyes boring into mine from the cover of her Complete Stories, displayed on a bookshop table. there was no title on the front cover, just those inescapable eyes. drawn to them, i turned the book over and read, “Sphinx, sorceress, sacred monster. The revival of Clarice Lispector has been one of the true literary events of the twenty-first century.” (Paul Seghal, New York Times)

other glittering reviews graced the back of the book. soon i was $21.95 poorer, but i knew my life would be richer for having read this book.

cover image for Complete Stories

i read through the stories slowly, savoring them. (“Covert Joy,” “Remnants of a Carnival,” and “Beauty and the Beast or the Enormous Wound” stood out as particular favorites.) these stories were unlike any other, with language and syntax being used in a way i had never read before.

i needed more.

i was lucky to find the rest of her work at various bookshops, only resorting to order online Benjamin Moser’s Why This World, Clarice’s biography.

my Clarice Lispector collection

Clarice was born Chaya Pinkasivna Lispector in 1920 in a tiny town in the Ukraine, not being given the name Clarice until her family immigrated to Brazil when she was a year old. Clarice’s mother fell ill and died in Clarice’s ninth year. she was raised by her father and sisters in near-poverty, and managed to get into one of the best secondary schools in the country. she ended up studying law in college, even though in high school she voiced a desire to write, after being inspired by Herman Hesse’s writing (specifically Steppenwolf, whose themes echo into her first novel, Near to the Wild Heart). she published stories in magazines and worked as a journalist, abandoning her law career (thank god).

Clarice photographed by Bluma Wainer, Paris, 1946

Clarice’s writing has been likened to mysticism and witchcraft, with grammar and syntax so strange that translators are left baffled at how to translate the nearly untranslatable, and readers are left entranced by the effect of her words. Benjamin Moser writes:

“In Água Viva, she had wanted to compose a kind of music of words, or a book that, like an abstract sculpture, could be seen (and not read) from an airplane. In A Breath of Life, she says that she wants to write a book that would be like a dance, ‘pure movement.’”

Clarice would often have to correct her translators as they went over drafts, explaining that she meant to use that word, she meant to put that comma there, that she knew how to write properly- this was the way she chose to write. Clarice reviewed the original translations of her work into english and obviously gave them the green light, but they didn’t make any kind of impact in the english-speaking literary world. it wasn’t until Benjamin Moser spearheaded a movement to get her works retranslated into english, after reading her in a college class, that Clarice’s popularity began to flourish, decades after her death.

Clarice’s novels and stories are notoriously difficult to read- a certain frame of mind is required to dive into her work. if you are looking for quick escapism, Clarice will do you no favors. but if you are searching for a body of work that explores the mystical as well as the mundane, in language you have never read before, then Clarice is for you.

Clarice, photo courtesy of Paulo Gurgel Valente

my journey with Clarice’s work began with her Complete Stories, reading a few at a time, then setting it down for a while to read other books. starting with at least a few of her stories is a great way to dip your toes in, see how you feel, and once acclimated, take the plunge into the deep end. For her novels, I would recommend starting with An Apprenticeship or the Book of Pleasures, The Hour of the Star, or Near to the Wild Heart. these are, in my opinion, her most accessible novels. to go deeper, read The Passion According to G.H., The Breath of Life, Água Viva, The Apple in the Dark, and The Chandelier. (note: at the time of this writing, i have not yet read The Besieged City, as i was only recently able to find it in a shop [thank you Book People of Austin, Texas!]. we will leave that one in limbo. read as you please.)

my collection of these four books come together to form the likeness of Clarice. obsessed.

additionally, i highly recommend Benjamin Moser’s Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector. this biography details her family’s rough immigration to Brazil (they had chosen Brazil over the United States; i sometimes wonder what would have happened had they chosen the U.S. instead. would i be reading clarice in her native language of english, then, instead of translated from portuguese? would she have become a household name in the western world? or would she have become a writer at all?), Clarice’s upbringing in Recife, her education, her travels around the world as a diplomat’s wife, and more. it also incorporates literary analyses of her work. if you don’t want to be spoiled, avoid this biography until you’ve read through her work. i read it in the middle of my reading journey, and actually found it helpful to read the analyses of her more difficult books (such as The Apple in the Dark and The Chandelier) before diving into them.

one book i have not mentioned is Too Much of Life: The Complete Crónicas. this book is different from the others in that it’s a collection of all the columns she wrote for Jornol do Brasil, spanning from 1967 to 1973, with some various additional work from other publications. crónicas are unique to portuguese-language culture and there is nothing quite like it in the U.S. that i’m aware of. crónistas, as they were called, would write daily entries for newspapers or magazines on topics of their choosing, almost like a daily blog post. this is the book that i believe shows the reader the true, everyday Clarice, and by the end you’ll feel as if you just read the last letter from a dear friend. her crónicas contain such musings as:

“A CHALLENGE FOR PSYCHOANALYSTS: I dreamed that a fish took off its clothes and was left naked.”

“And just because I have done a little writing, why do people assume I must go on being a writer? I warned my children that I had woken up in a rage and advised them to ignore me. But I am in no mood to ignore anything. I should like to do something once and for all to burst this straining tendon which sustains my heart. And what about those who give up? I know a woman who gave up. And she seems quite contented: her way of coping with life is to keep herself occupied. But no occupation satisfies her. And nothing I have ever done satisfies me. Anything I did with love ended up in pieces. I did not even know how to love, not even how to love.”

“I said to a friend:

—Life has always asked too much of me.

She replied:

—But don’t forget that you also ask too much of life.”

Too Much of Life also contains interviews and short essays on brazilian artists and writers that interested Clarice. i read this book immediately after finishing Why This World because i just couldn’t get enough of Clarice. this was a side to her i’d never read, and it was pure delight.

however, the easygoing writing style of her crónicas is very different from the real-life encounters that have been reported with her.

in José Castello’s essay collection Inventario das sombras, he recounts his multiple meetings with Clarice, each of them painfully awkward, yet tinged with reverence. (Katrina Dodson translated this essay and published it in The Paris Review.) “I write because I need to keep searching,” Clarice confessed to Castello. my favorite moment of the essay is when Castello happened to run into Clarice in town, a while after he had interviewed her for O Globo and made her scream in fright by pulling out a tape recorder:

“Clarice is standing still in front of a shop window on Avenida Copacabana and seems to be looking at a dress. Embarrassed, I approach her. ‘How are you?’ I say. It takes her a long time to turn around. At first she doesn’t move, as if she hadn’t heard a thing, but then, before I get the nerve to say hello again, she turns slowly, as if searching for the source of something frightening, and says, ‘So it’s you.’ In that moment, horrified, I realize that the shop window contains nothing but undressed mannequins. But then my horror, so ridiculous, gives way to a conclusion: Clarice has a passion for the void.”

Too Much of Life UK cover image

while Clarice has shared her millions of words with the world, she remains an enigmatic figure of almost mythic proportions and her writing has baffled and enchanted readers worldwide. her work remains unmatched in its originality and style, and if you have not experienced her work (because it is an experience, unlike any you will have while reading), i implore you to take the plunge.

illustration of Clarice by Cecilia Carlstedt

sources:

• quotes from Clarice Lispector: Madame of the Void by José Castello & Katrina Dodson and Too Much of Life: The Complete Crónicas by Clarice Lispector

• biographical info from Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector by Benjamin Moser

• illustration of Clarice from A Lost Interview with Clarice Lispector by Benjamin Moser