Clarice Lispector (, born Chaya Pinkhasivna Lispector (; ) December 10, 1920December 9, 1977) was a
Ukrainian-born Brazilian novelist and
short story writer. Her distinctive and innovative works delve into diverse narrative forms, weaving themes of intimacy and introspection, earning her subsequent international acclaim. Born to a Jewish family in
Podolia
Podolia or Podillia is a historic region in Eastern Europe located in the west-central and southwestern parts of Ukraine and northeastern Moldova (i.e. northern Transnistria).
Podolia is bordered by the Dniester River and Boh River. It features ...
in Western Ukraine, as an infant she moved to Brazil with her family, amidst the
pogroms committed during the Russian Civil War.
Lispector grew up in
Recife
Recife ( , ) is the Federative units of Brazil, state capital of Pernambuco, Brazil, on the northeastern Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic coast of South America. It is the largest urban area within both the North Region, Brazil, North and the Northeast R ...
, the capital of the northeastern state of
Pernambuco
Pernambuco ( , , ) is a States of Brazil, state of Brazil located in the Northeast Region, Brazil, Northeast region of the country. With an estimated population of 9.5 million people as of 2024, it is the List of Brazilian states by population, ...
, where her mother died when she was nine. The family moved to
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro, or simply Rio, is the capital of the Rio de Janeiro (state), state of Rio de Janeiro. It is the List of cities in Brazil by population, second-most-populous city in Brazil (after São Paulo) and the Largest cities in the America ...
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 the age of 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.
Lispector 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. After returning to Rio de Janeiro in 1959, she published the stories of ''
Family Ties'' (''Laços de Família'') and the novel ''
The Passion According to G.H.'' (''A Paixão Segundo G.H.''). Injured in an accident in 1966, she spent the last decade of her life in frequent pain, steadily writing and publishing novels and stories, including ''
Água Viva'', until her premature death in 1977.
Lispector has been the subject of numerous books, and references to her and her work are common in Brazilian literature and music. Several of her works have been turned into films. In 2009, the American writer
Benjamin Moser published ''
Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector.'' Since that publication, her works have been the object of an extensive project of retranslation, published by
New Directions Publishing
New Directions Publishing Corp. is an independent book publishing company that was founded in 1936 by James Laughlin (1914–1997) and incorporated in 1964. Its offices are located at 80 Eighth Avenue in New York City.
History
New Directions ...
and
Penguin Modern Classics, the first Brazilian to enter that prestigious series. Moser, who is also the editor of her anthology ''The Complete Stories'' (2015), describes Lispector as the most important Jewish writer in the world since
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a novelist and writer from Prague who was Jewish, Austrian, and Czech and wrote in German. He is widely regarded as a major figure of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of Litera ...
.
Early life, emigration and Recife
Clarice Lispector was born Chaya Lispector in
Chechelnyk,
Podolia
Podolia or Podillia is a historic region in Eastern Europe located in the west-central and southwestern parts of Ukraine and northeastern Moldova (i.e. northern Transnistria).
Podolia is bordered by the Dniester River and Boh River. It features ...
, a rural
shtetl
or ( ; , ; Grammatical number#Overview, pl. ''shtetelekh'') is a Yiddish term for small towns with predominantly Ashkenazi Jews, Ashkenazi Jewish populations which Eastern European Jewry, existed in Eastern Europe before the Holocaust. The t ...
in what is today
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...
. She was the youngest of three daughters of Pinkhas Lispector and Mania Krimgold Lispector. Her family suffered significantly in the
pogrom
A pogrom is a violent riot incited with the aim of Massacre, massacring or expelling an ethnic or religious group, particularly Jews. The term entered the English language from Russian to describe late 19th- and early 20th-century Anti-Jewis ...
s that followed the dissolution of the
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...
, circumstances later dramatized in her older sister
Elisa Lispector's autobiographical novel ''No exílio'' (''In Exile'', 1948). They eventually managed to flee to Romania, from where they emigrated to Brazil, where her mother Mania had relatives. They sailed from
Hamburg
Hamburg (, ; ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg,. is the List of cities in Germany by population, second-largest city in Germany after Berlin and List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, 7th-lar ...
and arrived in Brazil in the early months of 1922, when Chaya (Clarice) was little more than one year old.
The Lispectors changed their names upon arrival. Pinkhas became Pedro; Mania became Marieta; Leah became Elisa, and Chaya became Clarice. Only the middle daughter, Tania (April 19, 1915 – November 15, 2007), kept her name. They first settled in the northeastern city of
Maceió
Maceió (), formerly anglicised as Maceio, is the capital and the largest city of the coastal state of Alagoas, Brazil. The name "Maceió" is an Indigenous term for a Spring (hydrology), spring.
Most maceiós flow to the sea, but some get trapped ...
,
Alagoas
Alagoas () is one of the 27 federative units of Brazil and is situated in the eastern part of the Northeast Region, Brazil, Northeast Region. It borders: Pernambuco (N and NW); Sergipe (S); Bahia (SW); and the Atlantic Ocean (E). Its capital is ...
. After three years, during which Marieta's health deteriorated rapidly, they moved to the city of
Recife
Recife ( , ) is the Federative units of Brazil, state capital of Pernambuco, Brazil, on the northeastern Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic coast of South America. It is the largest urban area within both the North Region, Brazil, North and the Northeast R ...
, Pernambuco, settling in the neighbourhood of Boa Vista, where they lived at number 367 in the Praça Maciel Pinheiro and later in the Rua da Imperatriz.
In Recife, where her father continued to struggle economically, her mother – who was paralysed (although some speculate she had been raped in the Ukraine pogroms,
there is no confirmation on this by relatives and close friends) there are records that Mania's illness was in fact hemiplegia, that is, partial paralysis of half of the body resulting from trauma (violence caused by Bolsheviks) and that later she also had tremors caused by Parkinson's disease – finally died on September 21, 1930, aged 42, when Clarice was nine. Clarice attended the Colégio Hebreo-Idisch-Brasileiro, which taught
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...
and
Yiddish
Yiddish, historically Judeo-German, is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated in 9th-century Central Europe, and provided the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with ...
in addition to the usual subjects. In 1932, she gained admission to the Ginásio Pernambucano, then the most prestigious secondary school in the state. A year later, strongly influenced by
Hermann Hesse
Hermann Karl Hesse (; 2 July 1877 – 9 August 1962) was a Germans, German-Swiss people, Swiss poet and novelist, and the 1946 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His interest in Eastern philosophy, Eastern religious, spiritual, and philosophic ...
's ''
Steppenwolf'', she "consciously claimed the desire to write".
In 1935, Pedro Lispector decided to move with his daughters to the then-capital, Rio de Janeiro, where he hoped to find more economic opportunity and also to find Jewish husbands for his daughters.
The family lived in the neighborhood of
São Cristóvão, north of downtown Rio, before moving to
Tijuca
Tijuca () (meaning marsh or swamp in the Tupi language, from ''ty'' ("water") and ''îuk'' ("rotten")) is a neighbourhood of the Rio de Janeiro#North Zone, Northern Zone of the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It comprises the region of Saens P ...
. In 1937, she entered the
Law School of the University of Brazil, then one of the most prestigious institutions of higher learning in the country. Her first known story, "Triunfo", was published in the magazine ''Pan'' on May 25, 1940. Soon afterwards, on August 26, 1940, as a result of a botched gallbladder operation, her father died, aged 55.
While still in law school, Clarice began working as a journalist, first at the official government press service the
Agência Nacional and then at the important newspaper ''
A Noite''. Lispector would come into contact with the younger generation of Brazilian writers, including
Lúcio Cardoso, with whom she fell in love. Cardoso was gay, however, and she soon began seeing a law school colleague named Maury Gurgel Valente, who had entered the Brazilian Foreign Service, known as
Itamaraty
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MRE; ; literally: ''Ministry of External Relations'') conducts Brazil's foreign relations with other countries. It is commonly referred to in Brazilian media and diplomatic jargon as Itamaraty, after the Itamarat ...
. In order to marry a diplomat, she had to be naturalized, which she did as soon as she came of age. On January 12, 1943, she was granted Brazilian citizenship. Eleven days later she married Gurgel.
''Near to the Wild Heart''
In December 1943, Lispector published her first novel, ''Perto do coração selvagem'' (''Near to the Wild Heart''). The novel, which tells of the inner life of a young woman named Joana, caused a sensation. In October 1944, the book won the prestigious Graça Aranha Prize for the best debut novel of 1943. One critic, the poet
Lêdo Ivo, called it "the greatest novel a woman has ever written in the Portuguese language." Another wrote that Lispector had "shifted the center of gravity around which the Brazilian novel had been revolving for about twenty years". "Clarice Lispector's work appears in our literary world as the most serious attempt at the introspective novel," wrote the São Paulo critic
Sérgio Milliet. "For the first time, a Brazilian author goes beyond simple approximation in this almost virgin field of our literature; for the first time, an author penetrates the depths of the psychological complexity of the modern soul."
This novel, like all of her subsequent works, was marked by an intense focus on interior emotional states. When the novel was published, many claimed that her stream-of-consciousness writing style was heavily influenced by
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer and one of the most influential 20th-century modernist authors. She helped to pioneer the use of stream of consciousness narration as a literary device.
Vir ...
or
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (born James Augusta Joyce; 2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influentia ...
, but she only read these authors after the book was ready. The epigraph from Joyce and the title, which is taken from Joyce's ''
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
''A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'' is the second book and first novel of Irish writer James Joyce, published in 1916. A ''Künstlerroman'' written in a modernist style, it traces the religious and intellectual awakening of young Ste ...
'', were both suggested by
Lúcio Cardoso.
Shortly afterwards, Lispector and Maury Gurgel left Rio for the northern city of
Belém
Belém (; Portuguese for Bethlehem; initially called Nossa Senhora de Belém do Grão-Pará, in English Our Lady of Bethlehem of Great Pará), often called Belém of Pará, is the capital and largest city of the state of Pará in the north of B ...
, in the state of
Pará
Pará () is a Federative units of Brazil, state of Brazil, located in northern Brazil and traversed by the lower Amazon River. It borders the Brazilian states of Amapá, Maranhão, Tocantins (state), Tocantins, Mato Grosso, Amazonas (Brazilian st ...
, at the mouth of the
Amazon
Amazon most often refers to:
* Amazon River, in South America
* Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin
* Amazon (company), an American multinational technology company
* Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek myth ...
. There, Maury served as a liaison between the Foreign Ministry and the international visitors who were using northern Brazil as a military base in World War II.
Europe and the United States
On July 29, 1944, Lispector left Brazil for the first time since she had arrived as a child, destined for
Naples
Naples ( ; ; ) is the Regions of Italy, regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 908,082 within the city's administrative limits as of 2025, while its Metropolitan City of N ...
, where Gurgel was posted to the Brazilian Consulate. Naples was the staging post for the troops of the
Brazilian Expeditionary Force
The Brazilian Expeditionary Force (, FEB), nicknamed (literally "the Smoking Snakes"), was a military division of the Brazilian Army and Air Force that fought as part of Allied forces in the Mediterranean Theatre of World War II. It numbere ...
whose soldiers were fighting on the
Allied side against the
Nazis
Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...
. She worked at the city's military hospital, taking care of wounded Brazilian troops In
Rome
Rome (Italian language, Italian and , ) is the capital city and most populated (municipality) of Italy. It is also the administrative centre of the Lazio Regions of Italy, region and of the Metropolitan City of Rome. A special named with 2, ...
, Lispector met the Italian poet
Giuseppe Ungaretti, who translated parts of ''Near to the Wild Heart'', and had her portrait painted by
Giorgio de Chirico
Giuseppe Maria Alberto Giorgio de Chirico ( ; ; 10 July 1888 – 20 November 1978) was an Italian artist and writer born in Greece. In the years before World War I, he founded the art movement, which profoundly influenced the surrealists. His ...
. In Naples, she completed her second novel, ''O Lustre'' (''The Chandelier'', 1946), which like the first focused on the interior life of a girl, this time one named Virgínia. This longer and more difficult book also met with an enthusiastic critical reception, although it had a lower impact than ''Near to the Wild Heart''.
Gilda de Melo e Sousa wrote, "Possessed of an enormous talent and a rare personality, she will have to suffer, fatally, the disadvantages of both, since she so amply enjoys their benefits." After a short visit to Brazil in 1946, Lispector and Gurgel returned to Europe in April 1946, where he was posted to the embassy in
Bern
Bern (), or Berne (), ; ; ; . is the ''de facto'' Capital city, capital of Switzerland, referred to as the "federal city".; ; ; . According to the Swiss constitution, the Swiss Confederation intentionally has no "capital", but Bern has gov ...
, Switzerland. This was a time of considerable boredom and frustration for Lispector, who was often depressed. "This Switzerland," she wrote her sister Tania, "is a cemetery of sensations." Her son Pedro Gurgel Valente was born in Bern on September 10, 1948, and in the city she wrote her third novel, ''A cidade sitiada'' (''The Besieged City'', 1946).
The book Lispector wrote in Bern, ''The Besieged City'', tells the story of Lucrécia Neves, and the growth of her town, São Geraldo, from a little settlement to a large city. The book, which is full of metaphors of vision and seeing, met with a tepid reception and was "perhaps the least loved of Clarice Lispector's novels", according to a close friend of Lispector's. Sérgio Milliet concluded that "the author succumbs beneath the weight of her own richness." And the Portuguese critic João Gaspar Simões wrote: "Its hermeticism has the texture of the hermeticism of dreams. May someone find the key."
After leaving Switzerland in 1949 and spending almost a year in Rio, Lispector and Gurgel traveled to
Torquay
Torquay ( ) is a seaside town in Devon, England, part of the unitary authority area of Torbay. It lies south of the county town of Exeter and east-north-east of Plymouth, on the north of Tor Bay, adjoining the neighbouring town of Paignt ...
, Devon, where he was a delegate to the
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) is a legal agreement between many countries, whose overall purpose was to promote international trade by reducing or eliminating trade barriers such as tariffs or quotas. According to its p ...
(GATT). They remained in England from September 1950 until March 1951. Lispector liked England, though she suffered a miscarriage on a visit to London.
In 1952, back in Rio, where the family would stay about a year, Lispector published a short volume of six stories called ''Alguns contos'' (''Some Stories'') in a small edition sponsored by the Ministry of Education and Health. These stories formed the core of the later ''Laços de família'' (''Family Ties''), 1960. She also worked under the pseudonym Teresa Quadros as a women's columnist at the short-lived newspaper ''Comício''.
In September 1952, the family moved to
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...
, where they would live until June 1959. They bought a house at 4421 Ridge Street in the suburb of
Chevy Chase
Cornelius Crane "Chevy" Chase (; born October 8, 1943) is an American comedian, actor, and writer. He became the breakout cast member in the first season of ''Saturday Night Live'' (1975–1976), where his recurring ''Weekend Update'' segment b ...
, Maryland. On February 10, 1953, Lispector gave birth to her second son, Paulo. She grew close to the Brazilian writer
Érico Veríssimo, then working for the
Organization of American States
The Organization of American States (OAS or OEA; ; ; ) is an international organization founded on 30 April 1948 to promote cooperation among its member states within the Americas.
Headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States, the OAS is ...
, and his wife Mafalda, as well as to the wife of the ambassador, , daughter of the former Brazilian dictator
Getúlio Vargas. She also began publishing her stories in the new magazine ''
Senhor
''Senhor'' (, abb. ''Sr.''; plural: ''senhores'', abb. ''Sr.es'' or ''Srs.''), from the Latin ''Senior'' (comparative of '' Senex'', "old man"), is the Portuguese word for lord, sir or mister. Its feminine form is ''senhora'' (, abb. ''Sr.a'' ...
'', back in Rio. But she was increasingly discontented with the diplomatic milieu. "I hated it, but I did what I had to
��I gave dinner parties, I did everything you're supposed to do, but with a disgust…" She increasingly missed her sisters and Brazil, and in June 1959, she left her husband and returned with her sons to Rio de Janeiro, where she would spend the rest of her life.
Later years
''Family Ties''
In Brazil, Lispector struggled financially and tried to find a publisher for the novel she had completed in Washington several years before, as well as for her book of stories, ''Laços de família'' (''Family Ties''). This book included the six stories of ''Some Stories'' along with seven new stories, some of which had been published in ''Senhor''. It was published in 1960. The book, her friend
Fernando Sabino wrote her, was "exactly, sincerely, indisputably, and even humbly, the best book of stories ever published in Brazil." And
Érico Veríssimo said: "I haven't written about your book of stories out of sheer embarrassment to tell you what I think of it. Here goes: the most important story collection published in this country since
Machado de Assis
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (), often known by his surnames as Machado de Assis, ''Machado,'' or ''Bruxo do Cosme Velho''Vainfas, p. 505. (21 June 1839 – 29 September 1908), was a pioneer Brazilian people, Brazilian novelist, poet, playwr ...
", Brazil's classic novelist.
''The Apple in the Dark''
''A Maçã no escuro'' (''The Apple in the Dark''), which Lispector had begun in
Torquay
Torquay ( ) is a seaside town in Devon, England, part of the unitary authority area of Torbay. It lies south of the county town of Exeter and east-north-east of Plymouth, on the north of Tor Bay, adjoining the neighbouring town of Paignt ...
, had been completed in 1956 but was repeatedly rejected by publishers, to Lispector's despair. Her longest novel and perhaps her most complex, it was finally published in 1961 by the same house that had published ''Family Ties'', the in
São Paulo
São Paulo (; ; Portuguese for 'Paul the Apostle, Saint Paul') is the capital of the São Paulo (state), state of São Paulo, as well as the List of cities in Brazil by population, most populous city in Brazil, the List of largest cities in the ...
. Driven by interior dialogue rather than by plot, its purported subject is a man called Martim, who believes he has killed his wife and flees deep into the Brazilian interior, where he finds work as a farm laborer. The real concerns of the highly allegorical novel are language and creation. In 1962, the work was awarded the Carmen Dolores Barbosa Prize for the best novel of the previous year. Around this time she began a relationship with the poet
Paulo Mendes Campos, an old friend. Mendes Campos was married and the relationship did not endure.
''The Passion According to G.H.'' and ''The Foreign Legion''
In 1964, Lispector published one of her most shocking and famous books, ''
A paixão segundo G.H.'', about a woman who, in the maid's room of her comfortable Rio penthouse, endures a mystical experience that leads to her eating part of a cockroach. In the same year, she published another book of stories and miscellany, ''The Foreign Legion''.
The American translator
Gregory Rabassa
Gregory Rabassa (March 9, 1922 – June 13, 2016) was an American literature, literary translation, translator from Spanish and Portuguese to English. He taught for many years at Columbia University and Queens College.
Life and career
Rabassa w ...
, who first encountered Lispector in the mid-1960s, at a conference on Brazilian literature, in Texas, recalled being "flabbergasted to meet that rare person
ispectorwho looked like
Marlene Dietrich
Marie Magdalene "Marlene" DietrichBorn as Maria Magdalena, not Marie Magdalene, according to Dietrich's biography by her daughter, Maria Riva ; however, Dietrich's biography by Charlotte Chandler cites "Marie Magdalene" as her birth name . (, ; ...
and wrote like
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer and one of the most influential 20th-century modernist authors. She helped to pioneer the use of stream of consciousness narration as a literary device.
Vir ...
".
On September 14, 1966, Lispector suffered a serious accident in her apartment. After taking a sleeping pill, she fell asleep in her bed with a lit cigarette. She was seriously injured and her right hand almost had to be amputated.
The next year, Lispector published her first children's book, ''O Mistério do coelho pensante'' (''The Mystery of the Thinking Rabbit'', 1967), a translation of a book she had written in
Washington, in English, for her son Paulo. In August 1967, she began writing a weekly column ("''
crônica
or (''chronicle''; see spelling differences in Portuguese) is a Portuguese-language form of short writings about daily topics, published in newspaper or magazine columns. ''Crônicas'' are usually written in an informal, observational and some ...
''") for the ''
Jornal do Brasil
''Jornal do Brasil'', widely known as ''JB'', is a daily newspaper published by Editora JB in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The paper was founded in 1891 and is the third oldest extant Brazilian paper, after the ''Diário de Pernambuco'' and ''O Esta ...
'', an important Rio newspaper, which greatly expanded her fame beyond the intellectual and artistic circles that had long admired her. These pieces were later collected in the posthumous work ''A Descoberta do mundo'' (''The Discovery of the World'', 1984).
''The Woman Who Killed the Fish'' and ''An Apprenticeship or The Book of Pleasure''s
In 1968, Lispector participated in the political demonstrations against Brazil's hardening military dictatorship, and also published two books: her second work for children, ''A Mulher que matou os peixes'' (''The Woman Who Killed the Fish''), in which the narrator, Clarice, confesses to having forgotten to feed her son's fish, and ''An Apprenticeship or The Book of Pleasures.''
Her first novel since ''G.H.'', ''Uma Aprendizagem ou O Livro dos Prazeres'' was a love story between a primary teacher, Lóri, and a philosophy teacher, Ulisses. The book drew on her writings in her newspaper columns, as she conducted interviews for the glossy magazine ''Manchete''. The book received a new translation in April 2021 by New Directions. ''Cleveland Review of Books'' called it "a novel about the distance between people, but also the distances between the self and the self, the self and 'the God.'"
''Covert Joy'' and ''Água Viva (The Stream of Life)''
In 1971, Lispector published another book of stories, ''Felicidade clandestina'' (''Covert Joy''), several of which hearkened back to memories of her childhood in
Recife
Recife ( , ) is the Federative units of Brazil, state capital of Pernambuco, Brazil, on the northeastern Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic coast of South America. It is the largest urban area within both the North Region, Brazil, North and the Northeast R ...
. She began working on the book that many would consider her finest, ''
Água Viva'' (''The Stream of Life''), though she struggled to complete it. Olga Borelli, a former nun who entered her life around this time and became her faithful assistant and friend, recalled: When the book came out in 1973, it was instantly acclaimed as a masterpiece. "With this fiction," one critic wrote, "Clarice Lispector awakens the literature currently being produced in Brazil from a depressing and degrading lethargy and elevates it to a level of universal perennity and perfection." The book is an interior monologue with an unnamed first person narrator to an unnamed "you", and has been described as having a musical quality, with the frequent return of certain passages.
["Clarice Lispector's Água Viva"](_blank)
, ''Iowa Review''. ''Água viva'' was first translated into English in 1978 as ''The Stream of Life'', with a new translation by Stefan Tobler published in 2012.
''Where Were You at Night'' and ''The Via Crucis of the Body''
In 1974, Lispector published two books of stories, ''Onde estivestes de noite'' (''Where Were You at Night'')—which focuses in part on the lives of aging women—and ''A via crucis do corpo'' (''The Via Crucis of the Body''). Though her previous books had often taken her years to complete, the latter was written in three days, after a challenge from her publisher,
Álvaro Pacheco, to write stories about themes relating to sex. Part of the reason she wrote so much may have had to do with her having been unexpectedly fired from the ''Jornal do Brasil'' at the end of 1973, which put her under increasing financial pressure. She began to paint and intensified her activity as a translator, publishing translations of
Agatha Christie
Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, (; 15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976) was an English people, English author known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving ...
,
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish author, poet, and playwright. After writing in different literary styles throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular and influential playwright ...
, and
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe (; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic who is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales involving mystery and the macabre. He is widely re ...
.
In 1975 she was invited to the First World Congress of Sorcery in
Bogotá
Bogotá (, also , , ), officially Bogotá, Distrito Capital, abbreviated Bogotá, D.C., and formerly known as Santa Fe de Bogotá (; ) during the Spanish Imperial period and between 1991 and 2000, is the capital city, capital and largest city ...
, an event which garnered wide press coverage and increased her notoriety. At the conference, her story "The Egg and the Hen", first published in ''The Foreign Legion'', was read in English.
''A Breath of Life'' and ''The Hour of the Star''
Lispector worked on a book called ''Um sopro de vida: pulsações'' (''
A Breath of Life: Pulsations'') that would be published posthumously in the mid-1970s. The book consists of a dialogue between an "Author" and his creation, Angela Pralini, a character whose name was borrowed from a character in a story in ''Where Were You at Night''. She used this fragmentary form for her final and perhaps most famous novel, ''A Hora da estrela'' (''The Hour of the Star'', 1977), piecing the story together, with the help of Olga Borelli, from notes scrawled on loose bits of paper. ''The Hour of the Star'' tells the story of Macabéa, one of the iconic characters in Brazilian literature, a starving, poor typist from
Alagoas
Alagoas () is one of the 27 federative units of Brazil and is situated in the eastern part of the Northeast Region, Brazil, Northeast Region. It borders: Pernambuco (N and NW); Sergipe (S); Bahia (SW); and the Atlantic Ocean (E). Its capital is ...
, the state where Lispector's family first arrived, lost in the metropolis of Rio de Janeiro. Macabéa's name refers to the
Maccabees
The Maccabees (), also spelled Machabees (, or , ; or ; , ), were a group of Jews, Jewish rebel warriors who took control of Judea, which at the time was part of the Seleucid Empire. Its leaders, the Hasmoneans, founded the Hasmonean dynasty ...
, and is one of the very few overtly
Jewish
Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...
references in Lispector's work. Its explicit focus on Brazilian poverty and marginality was also new.
Death
Shortly after ''
The Hour of the Star'' was published, Lispector was admitted to the hospital. She had inoperable
ovarian cancer
Ovarian cancer is a cancerous tumor of an ovary. It may originate from the ovary itself or more commonly from communicating nearby structures such as fallopian tubes or the inner lining of the abdomen. The ovary is made up of three different ...
, though she was not told the diagnosis. She died on the eve of her 57th birthday and was buried on December 11, 1977, at the Jewish Cemetery of Caju, Rio de Janeiro.
Awards and honors
*1944 Graça Aranha national prize for fiction for ''Near to the Wild Heart''
*1961 Cármen Dolores Barbosa Prize for ''The Apple in the Dark''
*Lispector won a prize from the Campanha Nacional da Criança for “O mistério do coelho pensante” (the mystery of the thinking rabbit) in 1967.
*1969 Golfinho de Ouro Prize for ''An Apprenticeship''
*First prize in the tenth Concurso Literário Nacional in 1976 for her contributions to Brazilian literature.
*2013
Best Translated Book Award, shortlist, ''A Breath of Life: Pulsations''
*2016
PEN Translation Prize, winner, ''The Complete Stories'', trans.
Katrina Dodson
*In 2018 a
Google Doodle
Google Doodle is a special, temporary alteration of the logo on Google's homepages intended to commemorate holidays, events, achievements, and historical figures. The first Google Doodle honored the 1998 edition of the long-running annual Bu ...
was created to celebrate her 98th birthday.
Bibliography
Novels
* ''
Near to the Wild Heart'' (1943)
Translated in 1990 by Giovanni Pontiero and in 2012 by Alison Entrekin
* ''The Chandelier'' (1946)
Translated in 2018 by Benjamin Moser and Magdalena Edwards
* ''The Besieged City'' (1949)
Translated in 2019 by Johnny Lorenz
* ''The Apple in the Dark'' (1961)
Translated in 1967 by Gregory Rabassa
Gregory Rabassa (March 9, 1922 – June 13, 2016) was an American literature, literary translation, translator from Spanish and Portuguese to English. He taught for many years at Columbia University and Queens College.
Life and career
Rabassa w ...
and in 2023 by Benjamin Moser
* ''
The Passion According to G.H.'' (1964)
Translated in 1988 by Ronald Sousa and in 2012 by Idra Novey
* ''An Apprenticeship or The Book of Pleasures'' (1968)
Translated in 1986 by Richard A. Mazzara and Lorri A. Parris; translated in 2021 by Stefan Tobler
* ''
Água viva'' (1973)
Translated in 1978 by Elizabeth Lowe and Earl Fitz as ''The Stream of Life''; translated in 2012 by Stefan Tobler retaining original title
* ''
The Hour of the Star'' (1977)
Translated in 1992 by Giovanni Pontiero and in 2011 by Benjamin Moser
* ''
A Breath of Life'' (1978)
Translated in 2012 by Johnny Lorenz
Short story collections
* ''Alguns contos'' (1952) – ''Some Stories''
* ''Laços de família'' (1960) – ''
Family Ties''. Includes works previously published in ''Alguns Contos''.
* ''A legião estrangeira'' (1964) – ''The Foreign Legion''
* ''Felicidade clandestina'' (1971) – ''Covert Joy''
* ''A imitação da rosa'' (1973) – ''The Imitation of the Rose''. Includes previously published material.
* ''A via crucis do corpo'' (1974) – ''The Via Crucis of the Body''
* ''Onde estivestes de noite'' (1974) – ''Where You Were at Night''
* ''Para não esquecer'' (1978) – ''Not to Forget''
* ''A bela e a fera'' (1979) – ''Beauty and the Beast''
* ''The Complete Stories'' (2015) – Translated by
Katrina Dodson
Children's literature
* ''O Mistério do Coelho Pensante'' (1967) – ''The Mystery of the Thinking Rabbit''
**
* ''A mulher que matou os peixes'' (1968) – ''The Woman Who Killed the Fish''
** ''The Woman Who Killed the Fish'', trans. Benjamin Moser (New Directions, 2022)
* ''A Vida Íntima de Laura'' (1974) – ''Laura's Intimate Life''
* ''Quase de verdade'' (1978) – ''Almost True''
**
* ''Como nasceram as estrelas: Doze lendas brasileiras'' (1987) – ''How the Stars were Born: Twelve Brazilian Legends''
Journalism and other shorter writings
* ''A Descoberta do Mundo'' (1984) – ''The Discovery of the World'' (named ''Selected Chronicas'' in the English version). Lispector's newspaper columns in the ''
Jornal do Brasil
''Jornal do Brasil'', widely known as ''JB'', is a daily newspaper published by Editora JB in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The paper was founded in 1891 and is the third oldest extant Brazilian paper, after the ''Diário de Pernambuco'' and ''O Esta ...
''.
* ''
Visão do esplendor'' (1975) – ''Vision of Splendor''
* ''
De corpo inteiro'' (1975) – ''With the Whole Body''. Lispector's interviews with famous personalities.
* ''
Aprendendo a viver'' (2004) – ''Learning to Live''. A selection of columns from ''The Discovery of the World''.
* ''
Outros escritos'' (2005) – ''Other Writings''. Diverse texts including interviews and stories.
* ''
Correio feminino'' (2006) – ''Ladies' Mail''. Selection of Lispector's texts, written pseudonymously, for Brazilian women's pages.
* ''
Entrevistas'' (2007) – ''Interviews''
* ''Todas as Crónicas'' (2018). ''Too Much of Life: The Complete Crônicas'', trans.
Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson (New Directions, 2022)
Correspondence
* ''Cartas perto do coração'' (2001) – ''Letters near the Heart''. Letters exchanged with
Fernando Sabino.
* ''Correspondências'' (2002) – ''Correspondence''
* ''Minhas queridas'' (2007) – ''My dears''. Letters exchanged with her sisters
Elisa Lispector and Tania Lispector Kaufmann.
See also
*
Brazilian literature
* ''
Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector''
*
Benjamin Moser
References
Further reading
*
Benjamin Moser, ''
Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector'', Oxford University Press (2009),
*
Braga-Pinto, César, "Clarice Lispector and the Latin American Bang," in Lucille Kerr and Alejandro Herrero-Olaizola (eds). New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2015. pp. 147–161
* Earl E. Fitz, ''Sexuality and Being in the Poststructuralist Universe of Clarice Lispector: The Différance of Desire'', University of Texas Press (2001),
* Giffuni, C. "Clarice Lispector: A Complete English Bibliography," Lyra, Vol. 1 No. 3 1988, pp. 26–31.
* Levilson Reis, "Clarice Lispector," in Cynthia M. Tompkins and David W. Foster (eds.), ''Notable Twentieth-Century Latin American Women'' (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2001), pp. 165–69.
* Musch, S. and B. Willem, "Clarice Lispector on Jewishness after the Shoah. A Reading of Perdoando Deus," Partial Answers - A Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas, Vol. 16 No. 2 2018, pp. 225–23
*
Patrick Autréaux''Placenta-Book'', on ''Agua Viva'' tr. Tobias Ryan, in AGNI
External links
Official site (in Portuguese)The Brazilian Sphinx By Lorrie Moore. ''
NY Review of Books'', September 24, 2009
An appreciation by Anderson Tepper in ''Nextbook''Clarice Lispector: An Influential and Original Brazilian Writerin English, translated from the Portuguese, at ''Vidos Lusófonas''
Interview with TV Cultura, Sao Paulo, Feb 1977Portuguese with English subtitles.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lispector, Clarice
20th-century Brazilian novelists
Brazilian short story writers
Exophonic writers
Postmodern writers
Translators of Edgar Allan Poe
Translators of Oscar Wilde
20th-century Brazilian journalists
20th-century Brazilian women writers
Brazilian women journalists
Brazilian women novelists
Brazilian women short story writers
1920 births
People from Vinnytsia Oblast
1977 deaths
Deaths from cancer in Rio de Janeiro (state)
Deaths from ovarian cancer