0 reactions
hClarice Lispector and the art of letting go
To preface I'm not from a literature background, simply someone who enjoys reading and I'm attempting to engage more deeply with what I read.
Clarice Lispector's writing and her basic approach to the unknowability of our inner self fascinates me, I'm trying to pen down some details I have gathered and want to solicit more perspective, am I in the right direction?
So far, as I work through her works, I have read the Hour of the Star, the Passion According to GH, Near to the Wild Heart, and 3 short stories from her collection "Family Ties".
A common thread in her work is this turmoil of the narrator or character - almost a sense of claustrophobia being in a body they don't clearly understand. They want to fully discover themselves. They want to define themselves. But simultaneously are crippled with the fear that, "to define, is to limit" and the realisation of an identity means they are stuck in that identity.
To contrast this awareness and anxiety, she presents elements that represent innocence, that represent existence that isn't fully aware of their inner world or aren't concerned with deciphering it. The main two examples I can think of is Macabéa (the Hour of the Star) and the cockroach (the Passion According to GH).
However both the works take two different directions:
Macabéa becomes aware and >!this awareness leads to her death, physically and spiritual. She was content, not because she had a lot but because she didn't know what she didn't have. What you don't know can't kill you, right? But that visit to the astrologer changed this. The acute awareness makes her run away, makes her question. And once you start questioning, you never stop because you never will have the answer.!<
G.H., owever, embraces the innocence exuded by the pest. She decides to surrender to the unknowability. She sees in front herself a creature that represents the rawest manifestation of life. She drops her cloak and mask and embraces it, not with passivity but with action of tasting the life. And in the process she becomes one with life.
In letting go, you become yourself. Hence, when you blur the boundaries between the physical and divine, between past and future, between human and animal, between silence and language, you find yourself.
You cannot know yourself, you can only experience.
#entertainment
To preface I'm not from a literature background, simply someone who enjoys reading and I'm attempting to engage more deeply with what I read.
Clarice Lispector's writing and her basic approach to the unknowability of our inner self fascinates me, I'm trying to pen down some details I have gathered and want to solicit more perspective, am I in the right direction?
So far, as I work through her works, I have read the Hour of the Star, the Passion According to GH, Near to the Wild Heart, and 3 short stories from her collection "Family Ties".
A common thread in her work is this turmoil of the narrator or character - almost a sense of claustrophobia being in a body they don't clearly understand. They want to fully discover themselves. They want to define themselves. But simultaneously are crippled with the fear that, "to define, is to limit" and the realisation of an identity means they are stuck in that identity.
To contrast this awareness and anxiety, she presents elements that represent innocence, that represent existence that isn't fully aware of their inner world or aren't concerned with deciphering it. The main two examples I can think of is Macabéa (the Hour of the Star) and the cockroach (the Passion According to GH).
However both the works take two different directions:
Macabéa becomes aware and >!this awareness leads to her death, physically and spiritual. She was content, not because she had a lot but because she didn't know what she didn't have. What you don't know can't kill you, right? But that visit to the astrologer changed this. The acute awareness makes her run away, makes her question. And once you start questioning, you never stop because you never will have the answer.!<
G.H., owever, embraces the innocence exuded by the pest. She decides to surrender to the unknowability. She sees in front herself a creature that represents the rawest manifestation of life. She drops her cloak and mask and embraces it, not with passivity but with action of tasting the life. And in the process she becomes one with life.
In letting go, you become yourself. Hence, when you blur the boundaries between the physical and divine, between past and future, between human and animal, between silence and language, you find yourself.
You cannot know yourself, you can only experience.
#entertainment
| 7,000 mlx | |
| 7 | |
| 0 |