Glamour. Restlessness. Mysticism. Clarice Lispector’s reputation precedes her. Having risen through the ranks of Brazil’s literary elite at age twenty-three, she is coveted as one of the country’s most brilliant, prolific authors. Her stories are fierce, tender and haunting; her persona arresting.
In 2015, New Directions Publishing put out a beautiful, hefty collection of Lispector’s complete stories, translated from the original Portuguese by Katrina Dodson. This publication marks the first time, in any language, that all of Lispector’s stories have appeared in the same collection. The result is a spell-binding, gut-wrenching glimpse into the life of the modern woman in the latter half of the twentieth century.
Lispector’s women span from teenage girls bristling with youth to elderly matriarchs who simply want, more than anything, to be left the hell alone. Her women are not the “universal woman”; these women are, for the most part, firmly situated in Brazil’s upper middle class and beyond. However, each of the women in Lispector’s stories begets a similar, and painfully timeless, question: As a woman, as a mother, as a person, why do I want what I want? Are my desires truly my own?
None of her stories better encapsulates this line of questioning than “Amor,” published in 1960. In “Amor,” we follow Ana, a woman pacing: from the stifling apartment, to her “comprehensible, adult life,” to the “unstable hour” of the afternoon when there are no more chores to be done, to the growth of her children, and to the tram she boards with a knit-sack stretched with groceries. She cultivates an ordered life–within which she has purpose and boundaries–and has “taken such care for it not to explode.”
It’s aboard this tram that all of Ana’s work, the life that she had “wanted and chosen,” unravels. She sees a blind man chewing gum.
Her eyes locked on the blind man, Ana comes undone. A violent compassion rising to the surface. His lack dislodges something inside of Ana–suddenly she craves color, and texture, and movement; she’s overwhelmed by something forgotten: a youthful lust for the world.
Back on solid ground, Ana walks through a grotesquely vivid garden–both literally and figuratively–feeling nauseated and fascinated. Rotting fruit, a sleek, powerful cat. An instant of raw emotion sparked by a stranger had made her life of order, of duty, seem like a “morally insane way to live.” For a moment, she was plunged back into the sticky, hot reality of the world outside of her foyer, her children, her husband. For a moment, love flexed, expanded.
Re-connected to the world, Ana feels–desire, despair, fear, joy. After so many years of caution, Ana abandons herself to youth’s illness: she was filled with the “worst desire to live.” Fully awake, the bright cleanliness of her apartment burns her eyes. Why had she wanted this life? Why had she chosen it? This, the explosive, often unanswerable, query of the modern woman.
Her children return to the apartment, her friends seat themselves around the dinner table, her husband’s arms encircle her–slowly, the shock of the day recedes. Finally, Ana’s desire is laid to rest as her husband leads her to the bedroom, “removing her from the danger of living.”
In “Amor,” as in many of her other stories, Lispector touches a nerve–a woman pinched between chaos / order, desire / duty, choice / obligation. Ana is the incarnation of the status quo–acceptance without examination.
Until she sees the blind man. Until her guard is yanked down, unwillingly lowered. Until she allows herself to want.
In the end, Ana returns to the familiar; to a life without questions, only pre-ordained answers. In the span of a summer afternoon, she had “passed through love and its hell,” before settling back into her curated world. Love as presence, as compassion, as pain. That evening, Ana does what countless other women did, and to today, to continue the life she’s chosen: “as if putting out a candle, she blew out the little flame of the day.”
This story moved me greatly. I can’t exactly relate to a straight, married woman living in Brazil in the 60’s, but I can (and can’t help but to) connect with Lispector’s narrative, and style.
Lispector’s language is a bodily language–and one that is felt bodily upon reading. Her use of repetition, homemade grammar, and striking imagery all collaborate to unlock a character’s body, and mind. The unlocking of Ana–of her desires, fears, limitations–unlocks something in the reader, as well.
This story is a flame–a familiar one. And, fortunately, it’s getting harder and harder, at the end of the day, to put it out.
A Lighted Room 