Clarice Lispector

In Água Viva Clarice Lispector aims to 'capture the present'. Her direct, confessional and unfiltered meditations on everything from life and time to perfume and sleep are strange and hypnotic in their emotional power and have been a huge influence on many artists and writers, including one Brazilian musician who read it one hundred and eleven times. Despite its apparent spontaneity, this is a masterly work of art, which rearranges language and plays in the gaps between reality and fiction. Translated by Stefan Tobler With an Introduction by Benjamin Moser 'An emblematic twentieth-century artist who belongs in the same pantheon as Kafka and Joyce.' Edmund White 'Lispector stands at the pinnacle of Brazil's impressive literary achievement.' Washington Post Book World

Agua Viva

having this from the first 2 pages. i knew it was game fucking over

madina

These instants passing through the air I breathe: in fireworks they explode silently in space. I want to possess the atoms of time. And to capture the present, forbidden by its very nature: the present slips away and the instant too, I am this very second forever in the now. Only the act of love—the limpid star-like abstraction of feeling—captures the unknown moment, the instant hard as crystal and vibrating in the air and life is this untellable instant, larger than the event itself: during love the impersonal jewel of the moment shines in the air, the strange glory of the body, matter made feeling in the trembling of the instants—and the feeling is both immaterial and so objective that it seems to happen outside your body, sparkling on high, joy, joy is time's material and the essence of the instant.

sarah

But if I hope to understand in order to accept things- the act of surrender will never happen. I must take the plunge all at once, a plunge that includes comprehension and especially in- comprehension. And who am I to dare to think? What I have to do is surrender. How is it done? I know however that only by walking do you know how to walk and-miracle-find yourself walking. 

Instead of being black the sky seems to be an intense navy blue, a color I’ve painted in stained glass. I like intensities. With my glance I must look after I must look after thousands of plants and trees and especially the giant water lily. Its there. And I look at her. 

Note that I dont mention my emotional impressions: I lucidly speak about some of the thousands of things and people I look after. Nor is it a job because I dont earn any money from it. I just get to know what the world is like. 

Is it a lot of work to look after the world? Yes. You will no doubt ask me why I look after the world. It's because I was born charged with the task. As a child I looked after a line of ants: they walk single file carrying a tiny piece of leaf. That doesn't keep each one from communicating something to the ones coming the other way. Ant and bee are not “it”. They are “they”.

I lost friends, I dont understand death. The horrible duty is to go to the end. And counting on no one. To live your life yourself. And to suffer as much as to dull myself a bit. Because I can no longer carry the sorrows of the world. What can I do when I feel totally what other people are and feel? I live them but no longer have the strength. I don’t want to tell even myself certain things. It would be to betray the is-itself. I feel that I know some truths. Which I already foresee. But truths have no words. Truths or truth? I'm not going to speak of the God, He is my secret.The sun is shining today. The beach was full of a nice wind and a freedom. And I was on my own. Without needing anybody. It's hard because I need to share what I feel with you. The calm sea. But on the lookout and suspicious. As if a calm like that couldn't last. Something's always about to happen. The unforeseen, improvised and fatal, ascinates me. I have started to communicate so strongly with you that I stopped being while still existing. You became an I. It's so hard to speak and say things that cant be said. It's so silent. How to translate the silence of the real encounter between the two of us? So hard to explain: I looked straight at you for a few instants. Such moments are my secret. There was whats called perfect communion. I call it an acute state of happiness. lm terribly lucid and it seems I'm reaching a higher plane of humanity. 

soir

Está fazendo um dia de sol. A praia estava cheia de vento bom e de uma liberdade. E eu estava só. Sem precisar de ninguém. É diffcil porque preciso repartir contigo o que sinto. O mar calmo. Mas à espreita e em suspeita. Como se tal calma não pudesse durar. Algo está sempre por acontecer. O imprevisto improvisado e fatal me fascina.

cracked this open, finally!!!, at ritual kopi sanur. (this was such a long overdue read - first encounter was through sfpc spring 2024 class wayward sentences: "What is a window if not air framed by right angles?" "So writing is the method of using the word as bait: the word fishing for whatever is not word.") that night felt mundane but I knew i was transforming & am transformed by reading this - I was given a language that enriched the vocabulary to explain the interiority of my own self. 

outside of the actual wondrous ideas enraptured within it, I really felt like Agua Viva's actual form 

 the way Lispector's words & sensation-thoughts meander, hopping and jumping from one topic to another, & then suddenly becomes self-conscious of itself & what it is doing, is how my perception works as someone with aphantasia (no inner-monologue specifically). i go through experiencing life just absorbing and drinking from the world & then there comes a criticality where my consciousness contracts -- & yet inevitably, so seamlessly, after the recognition & addressing of that Instant-Now, I sublimate off and disappear from my own mind. Until this constriction, this awareness, pins me to the ground again: a butterfly in examination of its own body.

cracked this open, finally!!!, at ritual kopi sanur. (this was such a long overdue read - first encounter was through sfpc spring 2024 class wayward sentences: "What is a window if not air framed by right angles?" "So writing is the method of using the word as bait: the word fishing for whatever is not word.") that night felt mundane but I knew i was transforming & am transformed by reading this - I was given a language that enriched the vocabulary to explain the interiority of my own self. 

outside of the actual wondrous ideas enraptured within it, I really felt like Agua Viva's actual form is the instante-já. the way Lispector's words & sensation-thoughts meander, hopping and jumping from one topic to another, & then suddenly becomes self-conscious of itself & what it is doing, is how my perception works as someone with aphantasia (no inner-monologue specifically). i go through experiencing life just absorbing and drinking from the world & then there comes a criticality where my consciousness contracts -- & yet inevitably, so seamlessly, after the recognition & addressing of that Instant-Now, I sublimate off and disappear from my own mind. Until this constriction, this awareness, pins me to the ground again: a butterfly in examination of its own body.

o que ela escreve não é para ler, mas para sentir.

¿Dónde están los límites del lenguaje? Agua viva es una vivencia 'no una reflexión' sobre esos límites. Para avanzar más allá, en busca de la «entrelínea», la voz femenina que nos habla deberá pedir auxilio a la música y sobre todo a la pintura para acercarse al it, ese punto central de lo vivo que Clarice Lispector persiguió en todas sus obras. Vaga epístola a un destinatario mudo, Agua viva supera en todo momento las fronteras de esa amplia familia de las cartas de desamor a la que en parte pertenece. Más allá de la pasión, el texto apunta - con todas las armas; palabra, color y nota - al centro de la vida y desafía a la muerte con su defensa de la alegría, 'respondo a toda esa infamia con la alegría'. Ni novela, ni carta, ni diario, aunque sea también todo eso, Agua viva es un catálogo de las angustias de la modernidad y también de su superación a través de ese 'renacimiento' que implica necesariamente la reinserción de lo humano en esa «agua viva» que fue el núcleo esencial del que surgió la vida.

Agua viva

Cada párrafo es un pozo de agua fresca, o tibia, o hirviente, según se antoje. Nos comparte su presente, su voz, sus palabras, las reflexiones más internas sobre si misma, sobre la vida, el silencio, la música, su pintura, su arte, las flores, los limites... el ser. Nos acerca al núcleo de un algo a veces hetéreo, a veces poético, a veces ácido. Nos hace partícipes de sus reflexiones epistolares. Escribe a alguien -al lector destino y al lector in situ quizás- al otro nuestro al que le escribiríamos si lográsemos hacerlo. ¿O es a Dios, al todo? Apunta pensamientos esporádicos y catárticos pero al mismo tiempo bien definidos. 

Conocerla aquí me deja asombrada. Cautivada incluso. Confusa hasta el grado de releerla, para poder deshebrarla. De querer volver a ella y conocerla por vez primera, una vez más. O todas las que se puedan. 

«Pero si espero a comprender para aceptar las cosas nunca se producirá el acto de entrega. Tengo que dar el salto de una sola vez, un salto que abarca la comprensión y sobre todo la incomprensión. ¿Y quién soy yo para atreverme a pensar? Lo que debo hacer es entregarme. ¿Cómo se hace? Sé, no obstante, que sólo andando se sabe andar y –milagro– se anda».

O fluxo de consciência foi quase demais, mas o jeito que a Clarice Lispector constrói as frases realmente é sensacional e incomparável. Escrita impecável.

César Steven Toribio

O meus conhecimentos de português (e provavelmente de qualquer outra língua) não são de maneira nenhuma suficientes para traduzir em palavras o efeito que este livro tem na mente e nos sentidos. É uma viagem. As palavras vêm e vão, passam por no meio de você, e elas nunca param, então você só tem que recebê-las.

Eu vou ter que relê-lo, mas eu vou precisar de uma cópia física para isso.

Agua Viva

Reviews

Highlights