The Imitation of the Rose

The Imitation of the Rose is a short story collection of 13 stories Lispector wrote between the years 1951 and 1973. These stories were the first Lispector work I've experienced, and the first thing I noticed, as will anyone when they start getting into her work, is Lispector’s unique and idiosyncratic voice. Perhaps more so than other authors she is concerned with total interiority; most of the space in her short stories are dedicated to the thoughts of a character, and whether there is action or external events happening in a story, these only serve, so it seems, to prompt further thought and introspection.

Her interest in thought and language seems almost psychological, and so this strength of hers, this focus on interiority, comes through the most when she writes about disordered thought—either nightmarish recurring thought-loop thoughts, high-strung anxious thoughts, or the confused thoughts of an aged, degenerating memory, which are all reflected in characters which appear throughout this collection. There is, perhaps, an element of psychoanalytical inspiration with this focus, a lot of sentences seem to string together subconscious word associations—it’s much more than a simple stream-of-consciousness as there is no feeling, visual or tactile, other than thought and the memories of feelings—it is because of this singular obsession that Lispector’s associations in her work either ‘hit’ or are (to me at least, a non-creative person) completely incomprehensible.

But when they hit, god. Because of her unique style, she has a way of cutting through right down to the core of the human experience, of our observation of the world, that every few pages there will be something written that you would put on typewriter paper and post it on social media. I called her one of the most quotable authors I’ve ever read. This isn’t an incidental quality but a clear consequence of the way she chooses to write about people and the world. In her associative musings you’ll read a sentence that seems to sum up an experience in a way so accurate that you’d wonder whether the thought had always been there in your head, just waiting to be expressed. And in these associative games there’s a playful quality: sometimes it feels you’re just along for the ride around her brilliant mind and, beyond everything, you can clearly tell that she’s having fun when she’s writing.

Beyond just the style there are themes of love, grief, age, time, and fate. In one word, ‘purpose’, and in this aspect Lispector is not didactic in assigning a responsibility for people. In fact, it’s rather the opposite: Lispector celebrates life, whether that life is bounding towards opportunities or, having reflected on one’s past and future, whether life’s greatest pleasure is to just lie down, enjoy the bliss of monotony. The humanistic impulse reflects a semi-religious soul of her stories, which is mostly Christian in its treating every human as beings separated only by circumstance, but doesn’t commit deeply to the rigid Catholicism of Brazil. It’s an agnostic optimistic view of people, people (and animals) being loved for the sake of them Being—an optimistic view in a world that needs optimism.

I’m not sure if this is the best place to start with Lispector, I’ll have to read more to find out. But her praise is well warranted, and I will definitely read more of her.