Clarice Lispector (born Chaya Pinkhasivna Lispector; December 10, 1920 – December 9, 1977) was a Ukrainian-born Brazilian novelist and short story writer acclaimed internationally for her innovative novels and short stories. Born to a Jewish family in Podolia in Western Ukraine, as an infant she moved to Brazil with her family, amidst the disasters engulfing her native land following the First World War.
She 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 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 Kafka. (Wikipedia)
Lispector’s Struggle with Writing and Ethics
It is about an ethics of writing, about how writing can be true to life, to “a life,” without necessarily laying claim to the truth of that life. It is about the hesitations, affirmations, and disruptive explosions that mark any text as it tries to describe and negotiate the world.
Lispector on Difficult Passions
By the end G. H. accepts, even embraces, passion, if at the price perhaps of accepting that she is neither subject nor object but, like the cockroach, abject.
- Lispector, Clarice. The Hour of the Star. Trans. Benjamin Moser. New York: New Directions, 2011.
- Lispector, Clarice. The Passion According to G. H.. Trans. Idra Novey. New York: New Directions, 2012.
On Clarice Lispector
A conversation about The Hour of the Star, with Sonia Roncador (University of Texas at Austin)
Hour of the Star (1985 movie)
A Hora da Estrela (filme completo):
Lispector Videos II
Interview with Clarice Lispector – São Paulo, 1977 (English subtitles):
Clarice Lispector and Her Books 🇧🇷 (Legendas em português):
Benjamin Moser on Clarice Lispector:
Clarice Lispector’s The Hour of the Star (Lecture 1, Part 1):
Clarice Lispector’s The Hour of the Star (Lecture 1, Part 2):
THE HOUR OF THE STAR by Clarice Lispector – Book Review:
The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector: Careless Classics:
Lispector Videos
Interview with Clarice Lispector – São Paulo, 1977 (English subtitles):
Clarice Lispector – The Passion According to G.H BOOK REVIEW:
Clarice Lispector and Her Books 🇧🇷 (Legendas em português):
THE PASSION ACCORDING TO G. H. by Clarice Lispector:
The Hour of the Star:
Macabéa eats and drinks very little, but she likes Coca-Cola. Indeed, her taste for Coke is one of the few fundamental facts of her existence, something that anchors her in the world and gives her a sense of who she is: “When she woke up she no longer knew who she was. Only later did she think with satisfaction: I’m a typist and a virgin, and I like coca-cola. Only then did she dress herself in herself, she spent the rest of her day obediently playing the role of being” (27). In fact, the narrator tells us that Coca-Cola is sponsoring the novel, forcing his hand, making him finally embark on his story: “the account that soon is going to have to start is written with the sponsorship of the most popular soft drink in the world, even though it’s not paying me a cent, a soft drink distributed in every country. [. . .] This drink which contains coca is today. It’s a way for a person to be up-to-date and in the now” (15). As Thomas Waldemar observes, the narrator thus presents “Coca-Cola [as] the point of departure for his text.” Waldemar suggests that the notion that Coke would really sponsor a text such as this is “as laughable as it is preposterous” (“Imperfect Harmony” 103). But the claim shows that the narrator is not so far-distanced from Macabéa as he may like to think, and that not even a writer such as Lispector can ever entirely escape the consumer culture that Coke instantiates and represents.
The Passion According to G. H.:
As Mark Prendergast notes, “Coffee made modern Brazil, but at an enormous human and environmental cost” (Uncommon Grounds 22). The most important crop during the colonial period was sugar, grown in the country’s Northeast, but when sugar prices dropped in the 1820s attention shifted to coffee, cultivated in the Southeast, near Rio de Janeiro. Both sugar and coffee were harvested and processed by slave labour, and as coffee boomed the number of Africans imported annually actually rose over the first half of the nineteenth century, even as elsewhere the slave trade was coming to an end—Britain and the USA had ended the transatlantic transport of enslaved Africans (if not slavery itself) in 1807, but trade to Brazil continued (legally until 1831; illegally thereafter) until the 1860s. Slavery was not abolished until 1888, later than any other country in the Western hemisphere. Prendergast quotes a Brazilian member of parliament: “Brazil is coffee [. . .] and coffee is the negro” (23). As for the environment, coffee cultivation led to the wholesale destruction of the Atlantic forest. When the land around Rio was exhausted, the industry simply moved south and west towards São Paulo. The frontier of dissolution moves on, just as a strong coffee keeps sleep temporarily at bay.
- Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Trans. Leon Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.
- Moser, Benjamin. Why this World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
- Spinoza, Benedict de. A Spinoza Reader: The Ethics and Other Works. Ed. and Trans.
Edwin Curley. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994.
Lispector Questions II
The following questions are taken from your blog posts…
Titles
Which title is your favourite? And why so many?
What do you think the title “The Hour of the Star” represents?
Authors
Do you think the way Macabéa’s story was told and the perspective we are presented with would be different if the author was a woman?
Do you think Clarice Lispector was influenced by her youth to write Macabéa’s portrayal of innocence? Since the last few years she was alive, she appeared the complete opposite of how Macabéa is in her book?
Do you think that the success of this book has anything to due with the occurrence and timing of Lispector’s death?
What do you think makes an author qualified to write stories on experiences they have not had to live through and what title do you think is most appropriate for this book?
Narrators
Why did the author choose a male writer figure to be the narrator of Macabea’s story?
What did you think about the fictional author Rodrigo S.M and his thoughts on women?
How does the switch between empathy and distance in the narrator’s writing affect how you see Macabea?
Did you feel the unconventional narration style added or detracted from the reading experience of the book?
How does Rodrigo’s introspective nature and his own existential struggles influence his portrayal of Macabéa’s experiences? Do you believe his perspective provides a complete picture of her life, or are there aspects that might be overlooked or misrepresented?
Readers
Was everyone else as confused as me throughout the book?
Did you like the novel? Why?
Did you feel this book was cold or were you emotionally invested?
Macabéa
What do you think would have been different if Macabéa had even a little bit of knowledge about the world and her disease?
Out of Rodrigo S.M. and Macabea, who is more of the epitome of Clarice Lispector; or do these three characters overlap with each other?
Do you think Macabea’s life would have gotten “better” if she had not died?
Do you think Olimpico took advantage of Macabea? Why or why not?
What did you think of Macabéa? Do you think she is as stupid as the narrator makes her out to be? Speaking of the narrator, what was your opinion of him?
How does Macabéa’s ignorance and innocence shape her identity throughout the novel? What do you think contributed to her naivety? Was it her upbringing, society, gender norms, or others? How do you think her personality isolated her from the world around her?
Do you feel like Macabea reflects any challenges/experiences of girlhood?
How would you contrast Olímpico with Macabéa?
Do you think Macabéa was content with her life?
Why do you think Macabea was so “gullible?” For instance, believing everything on the radio, and believing angels exist simply because she believed they did. Another one is believing death is not real simply because she is alive.
How does Macabea’s relationship with her abusive aunt shape her sense of self-worth and identity throughout the novel?
Where you as frustrated by Macabea as I was? If not, did you find anything else about the story to be frustrating?
Would you appreciate life as much as Macabéa did if you lived life in her shoes? Also, how does Rodrigo’s perspective influence how we interpret the novella?
Do we think that Macabea’s love for coca-cola was a hint that she actually wanted to live in riches and be active in consumerism culture?
Do you think Macabea had the power or voice to define herself, or was she defined by the people in her life and overall by her position in society?
Do you think Macabéa was ever in control of her own life or was even a real person that the narrator observed?
To what extent was Macabea truly what the narrator described? What was the impact of perceiving Macabea’s life from this perspective?
Life and Death
In what ways does Macabéa’s tale speak to more general concerns of life and the pursuit of meaning?
What makes Macabea’s life more meaningful?
Did you see Macabea’s death coming?
What is your take on the intended impacts of having Macabea die in the end?
How did you guys feel when she died? Was it sad for you?
What role did Macabéa’s short and abrupt ending have in telling her story? What about the context of her death tells us more about her and of her life within the story being told by Rodrigo?
What is the significance of Macabéa’s sudden moment of clarity and transcendence before her death?
Do you think Macabea’s ending is somewhat positive because as he writes “She was finally free of herself and of us” (76) or do you think it’s negative because the character and a part of the author end up dying “I know because I just died with the girl” (76)?
Other Themes
What do you think ‘explosion’ meant or symbolized?
What do you think the usage of (explosion) meant? Do you think it was an emotional expression or was it used to symbolize something I missed?
Why did the author Clarice Lispector choose to insert “(explosion)” all throughout the book, or for example on page 33? I originally thought it could be literal, and when writing Lispector heard explosions, or it was the narrator that was hearing explosions, but based on the setting of this book I think that that’s not the answer. Could it be when a character is having a revelation or someone’s mindset is changing?
What does the strawberry season mean? What is it symbolic of? Is it symbolic at all?
What have your encounters with fortune tellers been like and what did you think about Madame Carlota’s readings?
Meanings
I still don’t know what the message of this novel is. Is it that nothing matters? Or is it that everything matters?
What was your main takeaway from this novel? What do you think the message on life and death is that the novel wants to send?
Why do you feel Lispector wrote this book? What was she trying to convey?
What do you think the narrator was trying to tell us? Is there a deeper message, or is it just a bunch of disjointed philosophical ideas?
What question do you think this book is about? What is it trying to ask of the reader?
Other
What are your opinions on the novel’s philosophical themes?
Do you think the author was right to worry about the ethical and accurate representation of poverty in his writing? Or do you think that this worry was making a duty toward poor people bigger than it needed to be?
How everyone feels about the ending not necessarily as reader who didn’t receive a gratifying conclusion, but as a person who by reading this novel bared witness to such bitter injustice that is never amended?
How do you think Lispector felt writing from the perspective of a writer who could never be exact on what he wanted to say?
My question is what are your thoughts on the line “sadness was a luxury”? Do you think this is true?
despite the fact that this was a short book, did you still find yourself able to get into the plot and the characters, and if so, in what ways?
How do you think Lispector felt writing from the perspective of a writer who could never be exact on what he wanted to say?
Lispector Questions I
- What are the different ways in which a text can be difficult? What makes this particular text difficult?
- Why might we want to read difficult texts? What might they offer?
- What do we know of the maid? What does G. H. know of her?
- Why a cockroach? How would the text be different if it were another animal or thing that G. H. encountered in the maid’s room?
- Is the cockroach a metaphor or symbol? If so, what is it a metaphor or symbol of? How does our reading of the text change if we decide it is not a metaphor?
- What does this text have to say about the relationship between humans and animals? And about what it is to be human?
- What does this text have to say about scale, about how small things may have big impacts?
- Why does the narrator talk of “giving up” (186)? What is she giving up?
- Is this a religious text? If so, of what kind? How does G. H.’s experience compare to other forms of religious experience?
- What, if anything, does the narrator learn from her experience? How does it change her?
The following questions are taken from your blog posts…
On Reader´s Emotions and Reactions
I’m wondering if you’ve also had strong feelings towards G.H as well? Do you pity her? Loathe her? Like her?
Did anyone understand this read?
Is introspection worth pursuing if dread is all that comes from it?
On the Narrator
How would you have interpreted this book if the narrator wasn’t rich and privileged?
Why does she dislike poor people and cockroaches so much? The symbolism of the past that she escaped? Or, what about her strange reaction to how the maid left the room? I was confused by that. What exactly did she not like about it so much… that it was organized and immaculate?
Can she be considered stable?
Are any understandings, G.H. reaches toward the end of the novel reliable ones since she’s quite obviously in the midst of a serious identity crisis?
On Narration
The last sentence of each section (or “chapter” if you could even call it that) is also the first sentence of the next. Why do you think the author made that choice? How does it contribute to the fluidity of thought of the text?
Did you notice the repetitive structure that Lispector used? If yes, did this help you with reading and grasping the true essence of the book?
What did you make of Lispector’s use of repetition? Like me, did it seem overused to you? Did you also find it stripped the meaning of the words? Or did you notice some other use/purpose for it that I didn’t notice?
On Religion
What did you make of the references to both Hell, but also to God?
The Roach
How does she change her perspective all because she ate a cockroach? Like I get that this is symbolic, but really?? A cockroach??
What do you think of her disgust for poverty and cockroaches?
Why does the author choose a seemingly insignificant situation to be the trigger of the main character’s spiritual journey?
Intertextuality
Was the author influenced by The Metamorphosis?
Other
How does being human work as a constraint? Can you see this in any aspect of your life? Physically or mentally?
What is the significance of the trope of the “third leg”? What do you think it represents?
I’m curious as to the inclusion of the maid’s drawing that she left for G.H. What did you all take from it?
