#clarice lispector
“.. Ella respondió que no era nada físico. Entonces él dijo: -Lori, dijo Ulises, y de repente pareció grave aunque hablase tranquilo, Lori: una de las cosas que aprendí es que se debe vivir a pesar de. A pesar de, se debe comer. A pesar de, se debe amar. A pesar de, se debe morir. Inclusive, muchas veces el propio a pesar de nos empuja hacia adelante. Fue a pesar de que me dio una angustia que insatisfecha fue la creadora de mi propia vida. Fue a pesar de que paré en la calle y me quedé mirándote mientras esperabas un taxi. Y desde luego deseándote, ese cuerpo tuyo que ni siquiera es lindo, pero es el cuerpo que quiero. Pero te quiero entera, con el alma también. Por eso, no importa que no vengas, esperaré cuanto sea necesario…“
.- Clarice Lispector - Un aprendizaje o el libro de los placeres
She’d be flowing all her life. But what had dominated her edges and attracted them toward a center, what had illuminated her against the world and given her intimate power was the secret. She’d never known how to think of it in clear terms afraid to invade and dissolve its image. Yet it had formed in her interior a far-off and living nucleus and had never lost the magic — it sustained her in her unsolvable vagueness like the single reality that for her should always be the lost one.
Clarice Lispector,The Chandelier (trans. Benjamin Moser and Magdalena Edwards).
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Because I imagined myself stronger. Because I was making an incorrect mathematical calculation about love: I thought that, in adding up everything I understood, I loved. I didn’t know that, adding up everything you don’t understand is the way to truly love. Because I, just from having felt affection, thought that loving is easy. It’s because I didn’t want solemn love, not understanding that solemnity ritualizes incomprehension and transforms it into an offering. And also because I always try to handle things my way, it’s because I still don’t know how to give in. It’s because deep down I want to love the thing I would love—and not what is. It’s because I’m still not myself, and so the punishment is loving a world that’s not itself.
—Clarice Lispector, Forgiving God
I was conscious, aware that I laughed, that I suffered…
Clarice Lispector, Another Couple of Drunks
“Who has not asked himself at some time or other; am I a monster or is this what it means to be a person?”
fromA Hora Da Estrela Clarice Lispector
Ya escondí un amor por miedo de perderlo. Ya perdí un amor por esconderlo. Ya me aseguré en las manos de alguien por miedo. Ya he sentido tanto miedo, hasta el punto de no sentir mis manos. Ya expulsé a personas que amaba de mi vida, ya me arrepentí por eso. Ya pasé noches llorando hasta quedarme dormida. Ya me fui a dormir tan feliz, hasta el punto de no poder cerrar los ojos. Ya creí en amores perfectos, ya descubrí que ellos no existen. Ya amé a personas que me decepcionaron, ya decepcioné a personas que me amaron.
Pensamientos, Clarice Lispector
“They misunderstood each other permanently, but as a new kind of square dance: even when misunderstanding each other, he felt they were beholden to the rules of a game, as if they’d agreed to misunderstand.”
Clarice Lispector, “Evolution of a Myopia” (trans. Katarina Dodson)
Tenho medo de perder teu cais e essa espera rotineira que me alenta. E acabar me entregando ao caos completo, que eu de fato sou quando tua ausência me desespera.
Eu nunca tive problemas em me comunicar com você, inclusive em alguns momentos eu sentia no fundo da minha alma que você me entendia como ninguém, ou pelo menos era assim que eu me forçava a pensar.
O fato, é que minha alma é antiga para o amor e eu não consigo transcender ao desapego. Me machuca te querer e me machuca mais ainda te querer do jeito que talvez não seja o certo.
Eu luto diariamente por você, vivo em uma guerra fria em me aceitar com meu jeito errôneo de amar te deixando ir, ou lutar mais um pouco e fingir que o fato de você ser desapegado não me abala tanto. Eu sempre fico com a segunda opção.
A verdade, é que eu não sei desistir de você. Eu não sei não pensar em você, não sei ficar um minuto do meu dia sem rebobinar as nossas transas, conversas, olhares. É mais forte do que eu, a sua pele me puxa, seu jeito me confunde e eu tento acreditar naquilo que não me machuca na esperança de um dia se tornar real.
Eu não te quero só para mais uma daquelas transas loucas, transcendentais. Eu quero ouvir suas verdades, seus sonhos, inteiro, entregue. Uma vida inteira como aquelas conversas aleatórias que a gente tem jogados na cama, enlaçados, se olhando.
Você sempre achou que a felicidade estivesse nessa liberdade libertina que você alimentou para satisfazer o ego que você luta para não ter.
Você vai me perder, eu não sei quando serei forte o suficiente para ter coragem de encarar tua ausência, mas nesse momento talvez, você compreenda que os outros casos não te dão o que eu te dava.
Mas a sua saída vai ser fingir que a sua felicidade é real com seus vários depósitos de gozo e o eterno vazio existencial que você carinhosamente batizou de evolução para se enganar.
Eu te amo, mas a ansiedade, a degradação de auto estima e a percepção de que você não é pronto para esse amor joga na minha cara diariamente que talvez você não me mereça.
Eu achei que conseguiria largar o cigarro, mas já to querendo um, talvez a minha sina seja sempre ceder as fraquezas que me puxam para esse naufrágio pessoal.
Boa sorte, para mim.
— Clarice Lispector, tr. by Johnny Lorenz, Um Sopro de Vida
Let me tell you: I’m trying to seize the fourth dimension of this instant-now so fleeting that it’s already gone because it’s already become a new instant-now that’s also already gone. Every thing has an instant in which it is. I want to grab hold of the is of the thing. 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 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. And in the instant is the is of the instant. I want to seize my is. And like a bird I sing hallelujah into the air and my song belongs to no one. But no passion suffered in pain and love is not followed by a hallelujah.
—Clarice Lispector, Água Viva
“But she was not afraid of the moon because she was better adapted to the moon than to the sun and in the darkest dawns, with her eyes wide open, she would see the mysterious moon in the sky. Then, like people who take sunbaths, she would bathe herself completely in the moonlight. And she would feel thoroughly cleansed.”— Clarice Lispector, from An Apprenticeship, or The Book of Delights
“I have struggled all my life to cure this tendency to daydream, lest it should carry me into remote waters. But the effort of swimming against this gentle current takes away some of my vital strength. And if, in fighting off daydreams, I gain in terms of action, I inwardly lose something very precious which can never be replaced. But one of these days I shall have to go, without worrying where I might end up.”
— Clarice Lispector, “Swimming Against the Tide,” in Selected Cronicas(trans. Giovanni Pontiero)
“The mystery of human destiny is that we are fated, but that we have the freedom to fulfill or not fulfill our fate: realization of our fated destiny depends on us. While inhuman beings like the cockroach realize the entire cycle without going astray because they make no choices.”— Clarice Lispector, The Passion According to G.H. (trans. Idra Novey)
“Poisoned flowers in a vase. Red, blue, pink, they carpet the air. How they transform a hospital ward. I have never seen such beautiful and dangerous flowers. So this is your secret. Your secret resembles you so closely that it tells me nothing beyond what I already know. And I know so little, as if I were your enigma. Just as you are mine.”
— Clarice Lispector, “Your Secret,” in Selected Cronicas(trans. Giovanni Pontiero)
“Brasilia is built on the line of the horizon.—Brasilia is artificial. As artificial as the world must have been when it was created. When the world was created, it was necessary to create a human being especially for that world. We are all deformed through adapting to God’s freedom. We cannot say how we might have turned out if we had been created first, and the world deformed afterwards to meet our needs.”
— Clarice Lispector, from “Creating Brasilia,” in Selected Cronicas(trans. Giovanni Pontiero)
“He-she was already there atop the mountain, and she was personalized in the he and he was personalized in the she. The androgynous mixture created a being so terribly beautiful, so horrifically stupefying that the participants couldn’t take it all in at once: as a person adjusts little by little to the dark and gradually starts to discern things. Gradually they discerned the She-he and when the He-she appeared before them in a brightness that emanated from him-her, they paralyzed by the Beautiful would say: ‘Ah, ah.’”— Clarice Lispector, from “Where Were You at Night” in Where Were You at Night (trans. Katrina Dodson)
