Clarice Lispector

Name(s):

Clarice Lispector (in Ukraine, Chaya Lispector).

Family 

Mother: Marieta Lispector (in Ukraine, Mania Lispector), (1889-1930).

Father: Pedro Lispector (in Ukraine, Pinkhas Lispector), (1885-1940).

Marriage and Family Life

Lispector was married to the Brazilian diplomat, Maury Gurgel Valente (b. 1921) from 1943-1959. The couple had two sons, Pedro (b. 1948) and Paulo (b. 1953). She grew up with two sisters, Elisa (in Ukraine, Leia), (1911-1989), and Tania (whose name was not changed) (1915-2007).

Education

In the northeastern Brazilian city of Recife, Lispector first attended the João Barbalho School and then the Colégio Hebreo-Idisch-Brasiliero, where she studied Hebrew and Yiddish. In 1932, she attended the Ginásio Pernambucano. After moving to Rio de Janeiro with her father and sisters in 1935, Lispector attended a small school in the neighborhood of Tijuca before taking a preparatory course for university. Later, she enrolled at the prestigious National Law Faculty of the University of Brazil (1939-1943). While still a student, she wrote for the Brazilian government press service, Agência Nacional. Lispector graduated with a law degree but never practiced.  

Religion

Lispector grew up in a Jewish family. They fled anti-Semitic pogroms in Ukraine, settling in the Catholic yet religiously syncretistic Brazil. Her writing has been interpreted as engaging ideas from both Jewish and Christian mysticism.

 Transformation(s)

Lispector identified strongly with the country of Brazil, even when living abroad with her husband in Italy, Switzerland, England, and the United States. Though nationality is not explicitly thematized, an ambivalent idea of “home” plays a central role in her works: many of the female protagonists in her novels have rich inner lives, but they are also deeply embedded in their surroundings, especially their physical homes. Joana in Near to the Wild Heart (1943) and G.H. in The Passion According to G.H (1964) are two clear examples, because the stories take place almost entirely in a woman’s interior (mental and domestic) space. Lispector returned to Brazil from abroad in 1959, shortly before the military dictatorship began in 1964, which would remain in place until after her death. Themes of class, gender, and race appear throughout her works. Her most political novel is arguably The Hour of the Star (1977), which touches on freedom, futurity, news media, economics, and more.

Works/Agency  

Novels: Perto do Coração Selvagem / Near to the Wild Heart, 1943; O Lustre / The Chandelier, 1946; A Cidade Sitiada / The Besieged City, 1948; A Maçã no Escuro / The Apple in the Dark, 1961; A Paixão segundo G.H. / The Passion According to G.H., 1964; Uma Aprendizagem ou O Livro dos Prazeres / An Apprenticeship or The Book of Delights, 1969; Água Viva / The Stream of Life, 1973; A hora da Estrela / The Hour of the Star, 1977; Um Sopro de Vida / A Breath of Life, 1978 (comprised of fragments compiled by Olga Borelli after Clarice’s death in 1977).

Children’s Stories: O Mistério do Coelho Pensante / The Mystery of the Thinking Rabbit, 1967; A Mulher que matou os peixes / The Woman Who Killed the Fish, 1968; A Vida Íntima de Laura / Laura’s Intimate Life, 1974; Quase de verdade / Almost True, 1978; Como nasceram as estrelas: Doze lendas brasileiras / How the Stars were Born: Twelve Brazilian Legends, 1987.

In 1961, Lispector won the Prêmio Jabuti literary award for her short story collection, Family Ties (1960). From 1967 to 1973, she wrote a weekly column in the newspaper, Jornal do Brasil. A collection of her columns was published posthumously in 1984 and was titled A Descoberta do Mundo / The Discovery of the World. Lispector wrote numerous other newspaper columns, short stories, and correspondences.

Reputation

Lispector was a literary celebrity during her lifetime. Her first novel, Near to the Wild Heart, won the Graça Aranha prize for fiction in 1944, immediately launching the young writer to fame. She fascinated critics and was seen as elusive, giving only one filmed interview. The 1977 interview, recorded in São Paulo only months before the author died of cancer, is available online: (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w1zwGLBpULs&feature=emb_imp_woyt)

Legacy and Influence

In recent years, several international academic conferences have been held on themes in Lispector’s work. Among these, the proceedings from “After Clarice: Lispector’s Legacy,” conducted through TORCH: The Oxford Research Centre on the Humanities, were published as a book and edited by Adriana Jacobs and Claire Williams. Paulo Gurgel Valente, her youngest son, spoke at a tribute held by the Brazil LAB at Princeton University in 2020, commemorating the centenary year of his mother’s birth. The Brazil LAB launched a collaborative, open-ended sonic library called Clarice 100 Ears. The mission of the library is to collect voice recordings of Lispector’s work that is read aloud by fans across the globe as “a way to embrace all immigrants, all languages and silences, and the freedom of imagination.” (clarice.princeton.edu)  

To further celebrate Lispector, an official website was launched on December 10, 2020. The website was developed by a team of designers, developers, and researchers from Estúdio Cru and the Moreira Salles Institute (IMS). It won second place in the Best Digital Design category of the Brasil Design Award. (https://site.claricelispector.ims.com.br)

Controversy

Lispector’s book of short stories called The Via Crucis of the Body (1974) was met with negative reviews because the stories explored eroticism, especially the sexual desires of older women.

New and Unfolding Information and/or Interpretations

In the 21st-century, scholars have placed Lispector’s work beside European male philosophers such as Gilles Deleuze, René Descartes, and Baruch Spinoza. Themes of animalism and incarnation in Lispector’s writings have inspired trans-humanist thinkers such as Rosi Braidotti, who discusses the novelist in her book Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming (2002). Trans-humanism is a philosophical and literary movement aimed at reconceptualizing ‘the human’ and ‘humanity.’ The movement is motivated by worries that Renaissance and Enlightenment models of human nature have supported—if not directly caused—oppressive political structures: a neo-colonialist world banking system, the racist U.S. prison system, and more. Lispector has played a significant role in the trans-humanist genre because she displaces ‘the human’ as a privileged category by blurring boundaries between humans, animals, and God.

Primary (selected):

Lispector, Clarice. The Hour of the Star (1977). Edited and Translated by Benjamin Moser. New York: New Directions Books, 2011. 

Lispector, Clarice. Near to the Wild Heart (1943). Translated by Alison Entrekin. Edited by Benjamin Moser. New York: New Directions Books, 2012.

Lispector, Clarice. The Passion According to G.H. (1964). Translated by Idra Novey. Edited by Benjamin Moser. New York: New Directions Books, 2012.

Lispector, Clarice. The Complete Short Stories. Translated by Katrina Dodson. Edited by Benjamin Moser. New York: New Directions Books, 2015.

Archival Resources (selected): 

Borelli, Olga. Clarice Lispector: esboço para um possível retrato. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Nova Fronteira, 1981.

Braidotti, Rosi. Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002.

 Cixous, Hélène. Reading with Clarice Lispector. Edited and Translated by Verena Andermatt Conley. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990.

Fraga, Mariana Nóbrega. Points of Contact: Reading Clarice Lispector in Contemporary Italian Feminist Philosophy. Ann Arbor: Proquest LLC, 2017.

Jacobs, Adriana X., and Claire Williams, eds. After Clarice: Reading Lispector’s Legacy in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge: Legenda, 2022.

Lispector, Elisa. No Exílio / In Exile. Rio de Janeiro: Irmãos Pongetti, 1948.

Moser, Benjamin. Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector. 

New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Muraro, Luisa. The Symbolic Order of the Mother. Translated by Francesca Novello. Edited by Timothy S. Murphy. Albany: SUNY Press, 2018.

Negrete, Fernanda. “Approaching Impersonal Life with Clarice Lispector.” Humanities 7, no. 55 (2018).

Web Resources (selected):

Fukelman, Clarisse. “Short stories: The Via Crucis of the Body” (1974). Accessed February 14, 2022. https://site.claricelispector.ims.com.br/en/book/a-via-crucis-do-corpo/ 

Lozada, Lucas Iberico. “Overlooked No More: Clarice Lispector, Novelist Who Captivated Brazil” (2020). The New York Times, accessed December 19, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/18/obituaries/clarice-lispector-overlooked.html 

Sahi, Aishwarya. “The Stolen Joys of the Body: Aging and Sexuality in Clarice Lispector’s Short Stories” (2021). Los Angeles Review of Books, accessed June 14, 2022. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-stolen-joys-of-the-body-aging-and-sexuality-in-clarice-lispectors-short-stories/

Vieira, Nelson H.. "Clarice Lispector” (1999). Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women. Jewish Women's Archive. https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/lispector-clarice