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authentically from the sources named within the pieces themselves. And every flash of the sword comes on the wind. Always, forever, the wind Pete O'Brien
Who is Clarice Lispector?
  
In the first thirty pages of Benjamin Moser's Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector, I read that the woman who would later give birth to the subject of the biography was raped by invading soldiers, as a result of which she came down with syphilis. In the town where said woman lived, the mystics thought childbirth could conceivably cure the disease. Clarice Lispector was born in the Ukraine in 1920 in the hope that she might save her mother, but it was not to be, and her mother died of the disease. When Clarice was less than a year old her family fled to Brazil, where others in their family had likewise relocated because of the intensifying danger and oppression at home, so as not to be killed because they were Jewish. Thus did Clarice survive. In her adulthood she married a Brazilian diplomat and acquired Brazilian citizenship. But the life of hosting dinners for dignitaries far from home was not for her. Eventually she left her husband and returned to Brazil, where she supported herself and her two sons by her writing. I put the book down and look around the room. Outside, the sword lies in shadow on the ground, full of hidden power.
I am familiar with the legendary Clarice. Like James Joyce or Virginia Woolf, but in a way distinctly her own, she invented her own technique of fiction whereby the writer is an amorphous character in the narrative, whose process, thoughts, and reflections blend in the story she tells. Lispector's internal writer is a keenly self-aware woman who tells the story her way. Here story and process wax equally important and inseparable. With each sentence, she reaches out to the reader, seeking to include him or her in the telling. No other writer does it so well. How masterful, the breaks in and out of the story! Some say not to write this way, but in Lispector's pages the method is honed and honored magnificently.
In the English language, I see a field once dominated by males—Yeats, Wordsworth, Shelley, and so on—a great room full of them, and, oh, hello, Emily Dickinson. The conventional bias maintained that men, not women, did the thinking, so men did the writing. This strong male bias or machismo carried over to Latinx and Spanish writers, where the greats were, well, Borges, Fuentes, Cortázar, Márquez, Lorca, Cela, Cervantes, Neruda, Paz, and so on and on, all men. (Of course, today we have women writers, though as a matter of personal taste, Esquivel, Allende, and Cisneros don't appeal to me, at least not yet). But Lispector! Unusual name. Stories written in Portuguese and translated into English. A car whips around the bend.
My life intersects hers briefly: I was born in 1976, she died December 9, 1977 (she was born December 10). December is Lispector Month. She advanced the art of fiction by her astonishing and deep blueprint of compositional style that breathed new life into the art of fiction. The light is on.
 Photo of Rio de Janeiro by Agustin Diaz Gargiulo on Unsplash
I muse on Clarice Lispector. The United State's next door neighbor of Latin America is a stronghold of surrealism. I love One Hundred Years of Solitude. Magical stories don't end after that, Kafka's Metamorphosis, and some strange series on television. 9-11 is a horrific surreal day in history, but savor surrealist creative writing. Today, for instance, there's Jonas Karlsson for The Room and Jesse Ball for The Way Through Doors. Lispector invented a flavor to mine as a particularly fertile garden of incongruencies. Surrealism is new again. Like a sword falling off the table.
Read Lispector as an act of resistance to walls of fear, lies, deception, and ignorance. To reject xenophobia forthrightly is to nourish the mind and advance the cultures of the world. Love the plutocrat's so-called outlaws: immigrants are people dressed in rags carrying children on foot. Break the wall by knowing and respecting the other side. Plutocrat Wall screams LIES FEAR GREED COWARDICE. It is cynical and brutal. The future belongs to the people. If a family returns home, they are murdered. If they keep on, little ones are seized from parents' sides. So everyone must do the right thing in his or her own way. Plutocrat lives for luxury hotel. Bear witness. The act of witness is its own reward and blessing. Hear the sound of the wind. The wind is Lispector. The sword shakes in the air: it is levitating.
I take note of the Wikipedia entry on Clarice Lispector. That she once lived a short drive from where I live today, just outside Washington, D.C. in Chevy Chase, Maryland. (As indicated in Moser's biography, she lived the diplomatic life for nearly ten years there and up until she returned to Brazil). That she revolutionized Brazilian literature. That Sérgio Milliet named her the foremost introspective novelist, declaring she plumbed the depths of the modern soul. That she was injured in an accident, but died of ovarian cancer. That although some argue James Joyce influenced her writing, she never read him until after she wrote the novel that established her as a major figure in Brazil. I leave my desk, turn around, and reach for the sword, but it is absent and my hand closes on a single drop of water suspended in the air like a thought. From time to time writers stumble across someone whose work they both admire and that has a major impact on his or her own writing. The way Haruki Murakami meshes surrealism into an everyday world thrills me. In the past I read English translations of all of his novels and stories that came round. After I moved on and he faded from my mind, no one took his place. It was not until a literary agent at a writer's conference blurted out, "Clarice Lispector!" and urged me to read The Hour of the Star, that I came to know this astonishing Brazilian who lived from 1920 to 1977. And my jaw dropped to the floor. Today, I am looking for the sword.
The first sentences of A Hora da Estrela by Clarice Lispector: Benjamin Moser's translation of the same for The Hour of the Star:"Tudo no mundo começou com um sim. Uma molécula disse sim a outra molécula e nasceu a vida. Mas antes da pré-história havia a pré-história da pré-história e havia o nunca e havia o sim. Sempre houve. Não sei o quê, mas sei que o universo jamais começou. I deliberately try a story in Lispector's style. After all, isn't imitation the highest praise?"All the world began with a yes, one molecule said yes to another molecule and life was born. But before pre-history there was the prehistory of prehistory and there was the never and there was the yes. It was ever so. I don't know why, but I do know that the universe never began. Make no mistake, I only achieve simplicity with enormous effort."
It's like they say, either you're a first-rate you or a second-rate someone else. I have another Lispector exercise. More than that one, "The Diversion" leans on Lispector and Woolf. I could include the other story here, but one is enough.
When the rain stops, I drive, then jog to Lispector's former address in Chevy Chase, Maryland (4421 Ridge Street), with the freedom either to be inspired by the great Clarice Lispector—or not.
 On December 17, 2018, her brick house and front yard tree are gone, another house is there. The house on the right as you face it looks to be the same one that was there at the time of her residence. What does it matter? It's a curiosity, it's the sword. There is no one around to ask, but what if there were someone who lived here all those years, someone aged 75 or older, someone old enough to remember something or other about her?
 Just two blocks away from the address where, as Moser notes, Lispector lived from September 1952 to June 1959 (her son Paulo was born in 1953), there is, recently renovated and reopened to the public, a place devoted to writers. The Writer's Center. Apparently it was founded the year before Lispector's death. Is there a connection? The director is in a meeting. What I like most about The Writer's Center is that I can say: Cla-Reese-Li Spec-Tur,  What else is there to say? I leave Chevy Chase. I rename it Lispector. The sword melts into the paper and groans like the mooring of a ship in a harbor for old souls.
My interest in a Clarice Lispector Special! began with some historical flash fiction I did, specifically "The Sword." The idea was to bring into the light one of the world's greatest writers of the 20th century who deserves to be more widely read. On this journey, in addition to Clarice Lispector's works, now widely available in English translation, Benjamin Moser's biography, Why This World, opens the door to the life (1920-1977) of this extremely gifted and prolific writer whose stories quickly became famous in her lifetime. Imagine. Clarice was only an infant when her Ukrainian family fled from the enemy and came to live in Brazil. Later, as an adult married to a diplomat, she recrossed the Atlantic, and also lived for a time in Maryland, before she left her husband, returned to Brazil, and supported herself and her two sons by her writing. In her lifetime she was heralded as comparable to Virginia Woolf and James Joyce. Elizabeth Bishop said she was “better than Borges.” In 2019 I was in touch via email with Brazilians Lorena Cutlak (poet and teacher) and Tiago Amorim, to learn more. Lorena graciously authorized me to share our exchange in FlashPoint. It was my great pleasure and privilege to hear her discuss Clarice and her own perspectives on writing and other writers. Muito obrigado, Lorena! [Emails of Lorena Cutlak and Pete O'Brien] It was also my good fortune and pleasure to correspond with Tiago Amorim, who further enriched my understanding of Lispector. He describes his experience of reading her work, with observations on her achievement and her reception, in a piece he writes in Portuguese and translates into English, “O espanto de Clarice Lispector”/“The Astonished Wonder of Clarice Lispector.” Abrazos, Tiago! Professor Earl Fitz, a long-time leading expert on Clarice Lispector, does the introduction. Many thanks, Earl! Benjamin Moser is one who has magnificently drawn attention to Clarice Lispector's genius. Here is his translation of an interview with the writer. Thank you, Benjamin. And readers, Enjoy! Next I'm happy to include Israel Ruiz, who has a wonderful poem based on his visit to Pelourinho, Brazil with his friend and colleague Femi Ojo-Ade from Nigeria. It is written in Spanish and entitled “Visita a Pelourinho, Salvador Bahía de Todos los Santos, Brasil (circa 2005).” I translated Ruiz's poem into English and include both versions. Muchas gracias, Professor Ruiz! Now on to Michael S. Glaser, and his poem “Spring,” which I like for this Clarice Lispector Special! because it suggests a person like the historical Clarice, who returns after an absence to be embraced and seen with new eyes. Hugs, Michael! Finally, a look at how things have changed in the world since Clarice's day. Here we have Xanax, social media, and phone craze courtesy of C.M. Mayo. Enjoy! “Anaconda is the New Swallow” by C.M. Mayo. Many thanks, C.M.! And one from me that I hope you will enjoy: “The Diversion.” When the editors at FlashPoint and I first started exploring the possibility of a Clarice Lispector Special!, Carlo Perlo noted the following resources:
The Paris Review (with many U.S. readers) |
