Clarice Lispector

This new translation of Clarice Lispector's sensational first book tells the story of a middle class woman's life from childhood through an unhappy marriage and its dissolution to transcendence. Near to the Wild Heart, published in Rio de Janeiro in 1943, introduced Brazil to what one writer called “Hurricane Clarice”: a twenty-three-year-old girl who wrote her first book in a tiny rented room and then baptized it with a title taken from Joyce: “He was alone, unheeded, near to the wild heart of life.” The book was an unprecedented sensation — the discovery of a genius. Narrative epiphanies and interior monologue frame the life of Joana, from her middle-class childhood through her unhappy marriage and its dissolution to transcendence, when she proclaims: “I shall arise as strong and comely as a young colt.”

Near to the Wild Heart

Nathan Johnson

the awakening of feminine rage in Joana: indicating how at peace she feels towards her husband's absence, making her feel guilty and evil for feeling that way, but yet it calms her as she realises the evil inside of her relishes her truest form.

comparing the pleasure of lust with the pleasure of evil, it awakens her, the adoration of finding yourself in particular moments in life where you shouldn't and comparing that to the pleasure both people would feel in an intercourse, it reflects how she's prioritising her feeling of being free rather how she feels in that intoxicated relationship.

The certainty that evil is my calling, thought Joana.

What else was that feeling of contained force, ready to burst forth in violence, that longing to apply it with her eyes closed, all of it, with the rash confidence of a wild beast? Wasn't it in evil alone that you could breathe fearlessly, accepting the air and your lungs? Not even pleasure would give me such pleasure as evil, she thought surprised.

Near to the Wild Heart quotes

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