WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.080 Okay, I want you to picture something. Imagine 00:00:02.080 --> 00:00:04.580 a scene. It's straight out of an old black and 00:00:04.580 --> 00:00:07.759 white movie. We're in Washington, D .C., the 00:00:07.759 --> 00:00:11.140 late 1950s maybe. There's a diplomatic party 00:00:11.140 --> 00:00:13.099 going on. You know, the type of room thick with 00:00:13.099 --> 00:00:15.599 smoke, the sound of ice clinking in crystal glasses, 00:00:15.839 --> 00:00:18.079 all these men in tuxedos muttering about the 00:00:18.079 --> 00:00:20.059 Cold War. Right, the whole embassy circuit, very 00:00:20.059 --> 00:00:22.679 serious, very formal. Exactly. And right in the 00:00:22.679 --> 00:00:25.820 middle of it all, there's this woman. And she 00:00:25.820 --> 00:00:30.350 is just arresting. She stops traffic. She's got 00:00:30.350 --> 00:00:32.850 these incredible high cheekbones, these heavy 00:00:32.850 --> 00:00:36.109 lidded, intense eyes, a dress that's just perfectly 00:00:36.109 --> 00:00:38.530 tailored. She looks, and I mean this literally, 00:00:38.729 --> 00:00:40.770 she looks like Marlene Dietrich. The perfect 00:00:40.770 --> 00:00:43.329 hostess. The perfect hostess. Smiling, making 00:00:43.329 --> 00:00:45.369 the right conversation, passing the canapes. 00:00:46.990 --> 00:00:49.350 And this is the thing. If you could somehow peel 00:00:49.350 --> 00:00:51.530 back that mask, if you could just get a glimpse 00:00:51.530 --> 00:00:53.969 of what was actually happening inside her head 00:00:53.969 --> 00:00:55.210 at that moment. I don't know. It wouldn't be 00:00:55.210 --> 00:00:57.390 about the dinner party. Not even close. You'd 00:00:57.390 --> 00:00:59.450 find a mind that was just churning, churning 00:00:59.450 --> 00:01:03.049 with some of the most terrifying, strange and 00:01:03.049 --> 00:01:05.349 philosophically dense ideas of the entire 20th 00:01:05.349 --> 00:01:07.969 century. And that's it, isn't it? That's the 00:01:07.969 --> 00:01:10.810 whole story. That is the hook. That's the contradiction 00:01:10.810 --> 00:01:13.469 we're diving into today. The woman is Clarice 00:01:13.469 --> 00:01:16.760 Lispector. For a very long time, she was sort 00:01:16.760 --> 00:01:18.980 of the secret password among writers, you know, 00:01:19.000 --> 00:01:23.040 a kind of cult figure. But today she is seen 00:01:23.040 --> 00:01:26.640 as an absolute titan. And not just in Brazil, 00:01:26.760 --> 00:01:28.959 where she's from. We're talking about a giant 00:01:28.959 --> 00:01:32.000 of world literature, the American translator 00:01:32.000 --> 00:01:34.599 Gregory Rabassa. And this is the guy who brought 00:01:34.599 --> 00:01:36.719 100 years of solitude to the English speaking 00:01:36.719 --> 00:01:38.120 world. So he knows what he's talking about. He 00:01:38.120 --> 00:01:40.420 actually met her. Oh, wow. And he said he was 00:01:40.420 --> 00:01:43.280 just flabbergasted. That was his word. He gave 00:01:43.280 --> 00:01:45.099 us this amazing description and the one everyone 00:01:45.099 --> 00:01:48.180 quotes. He said she was that rare person who 00:01:48.180 --> 00:01:50.620 looked like Marlene Dietrich and wrote like Virginia 00:01:50.620 --> 00:01:53.739 Woolf. I love that quote. I mean, it just captures 00:01:53.739 --> 00:01:55.719 the dissonance so perfectly, doesn't it? It really 00:01:55.719 --> 00:01:58.260 does. And we have a pretty massive stack of sources 00:01:58.260 --> 00:02:01.299 to get through to try and understand her. We're 00:02:01.299 --> 00:02:03.840 leaning heavily on Benjamin Moser's biography. 00:02:03.859 --> 00:02:06.079 It's called Why This World. It's just fantastic. 00:02:06.280 --> 00:02:08.840 Really the definitive work. Absolutely essential 00:02:08.840 --> 00:02:11.360 reading. We're also looking directly at her major 00:02:11.360 --> 00:02:13.659 novels, things like The Passion, according to 00:02:13.659 --> 00:02:16.560 GH, and her last book, The Hour of the Star. 00:02:17.060 --> 00:02:19.379 And we've got a lot of the original criticism, 00:02:19.520 --> 00:02:21.060 you know, what people were saying about her when 00:02:21.060 --> 00:02:23.080 she was alive. And Moser, in that biography, 00:02:23.300 --> 00:02:25.539 he makes this incredibly bold claim, and I think 00:02:25.539 --> 00:02:27.599 it really sets the stakes for our deep dive today. 00:02:27.860 --> 00:02:30.280 What's the claim? He says that he considers Clarice 00:02:30.280 --> 00:02:33.039 Lispector to be the most important Jewish writer 00:02:33.039 --> 00:02:36.319 in the world since Franz Kafka. Whoa, okay. Kafka. 00:02:36.620 --> 00:02:40.280 Kafka. That's putting her in the absolute stratosphere. 00:02:40.360 --> 00:02:42.620 That's the highest possible praise. It is. It's 00:02:42.620 --> 00:02:45.780 a huge statement. But I think as we unpack her 00:02:45.780 --> 00:02:48.099 life and her work today, you'll start to see 00:02:48.099 --> 00:02:51.060 why he says that. Our mission really is to figure 00:02:51.060 --> 00:02:54.159 out how this refugee, a little girl fleeing the 00:02:54.159 --> 00:02:57.740 absolute chaos of the Russian Civil War, becomes, 00:02:58.060 --> 00:03:01.259 well, she becomes known as the Brazilian Sphinx. 00:03:01.360 --> 00:03:03.669 The Brazilian Sphinx. I like that. We're going 00:03:03.669 --> 00:03:05.930 to look at how she completely revolutionized 00:03:05.930 --> 00:03:07.669 the Portuguese language. And we're going to try 00:03:07.669 --> 00:03:09.830 to get our heads around a life that swung so 00:03:09.830 --> 00:03:13.810 wildly between, you know, this diplomatic luxury 00:03:13.810 --> 00:03:17.189 and this deep, almost mystical suffering. Okay, 00:03:17.270 --> 00:03:19.110 so let's do it. We have to start at the very, 00:03:19.150 --> 00:03:21.810 very beginning because her origins are, I mean, 00:03:21.830 --> 00:03:24.650 they're incredibly traumatic. She's known as 00:03:24.650 --> 00:03:27.830 this icon of Brazilian literature. But she wasn't 00:03:27.830 --> 00:03:30.530 born in Rio or even in Brazil. No, not at all. 00:03:30.610 --> 00:03:33.560 And you really can't understand Clarice. The 00:03:33.560 --> 00:03:35.419 writer, without understanding where Chaya the 00:03:35.419 --> 00:03:37.740 Child came from. Chaya. That was her birth name. 00:03:37.879 --> 00:03:40.659 Chaya Pinkasivna Lispector. Born on December 00:03:40.659 --> 00:03:44.039 10th, 1920. And the setting is a small Jewish 00:03:44.039 --> 00:03:46.979 town, a shtetl called Chechelnik, in a region 00:03:46.979 --> 00:03:49.460 called Podolia. Which today we'd say is in Ukraine. 00:03:49.800 --> 00:03:52.460 Correct. But in 1920, I mean, forget modern borders. 00:03:52.639 --> 00:03:55.060 The region was a complete disaster zone. The 00:03:55.060 --> 00:03:57.419 Russian Empire had collapsed. The Tsar was gone. 00:03:57.560 --> 00:03:59.960 And the Russian Civil War was raging. It was 00:03:59.960 --> 00:04:03.780 just absolute chaos. And when we say chaos, we're 00:04:03.780 --> 00:04:05.620 not just talking about, you know, a breakdown 00:04:05.620 --> 00:04:08.139 of government services. We're talking about brutal 00:04:08.139 --> 00:04:11.879 violence. Oh, extreme and very targeted violence. 00:04:12.680 --> 00:04:15.599 This was the era of the pogroms. For anyone who 00:04:15.599 --> 00:04:18.040 might not know the history, a pogrom is basically 00:04:18.040 --> 00:04:20.740 an organized massacre of an ethnic group. And 00:04:20.740 --> 00:04:23.339 in this case, in that region, it was aimed at 00:04:23.339 --> 00:04:25.779 the Jews. So the Lispector family, her father 00:04:25.779 --> 00:04:28.540 Pincus, her mother Mania and her two older sisters, 00:04:28.759 --> 00:04:30.779 they were living in the middle of a war zone. 00:04:31.100 --> 00:04:34.100 a nightmare the sources describe a landscape 00:04:34.100 --> 00:04:37.579 of just sheer terror armies the red army the 00:04:37.579 --> 00:04:40.439 white army ukrainian nationalists polish forces 00:04:40.439 --> 00:04:42.819 just freelance bandits they were all sweeping 00:04:42.819 --> 00:04:45.079 back and forth across the territory villages 00:04:45.079 --> 00:04:47.560 were burned there were mass executions starvation 00:04:47.560 --> 00:04:49.860 was everywhere it was hell on earth and there's 00:04:49.860 --> 00:04:52.079 a particularly dark shadow that hangs over this 00:04:52.079 --> 00:04:54.759 period specifically concerning her mother mania 00:04:55.100 --> 00:04:57.459 There is. And this is a very delicate subject, 00:04:57.540 --> 00:04:59.720 but it's absolutely crucial to the whole story 00:04:59.720 --> 00:05:01.740 of the mythology of Clarice Lispector. By the 00:05:01.740 --> 00:05:03.699 time the family finally escaped and made it to 00:05:03.699 --> 00:05:06.740 Brazil, Mania was paralyzed. Her health was just 00:05:06.740 --> 00:05:09.360 in a steep, rapid decline. And biographers have 00:05:09.360 --> 00:05:12.740 speculated about the cause. Yes. There's been 00:05:12.740 --> 00:05:15.000 significant and I think credible speculation 00:05:15.000 --> 00:05:18.120 that her health issues were trauma related, specifically 00:05:18.120 --> 00:05:20.819 that they were the result of sexual violence 00:05:20.819 --> 00:05:22.939 of rape during one of the pogroms in Ukraine. 00:05:22.939 --> 00:05:25.300 The sources are clear that this is unconcerned, 00:05:25.319 --> 00:05:28.170 but the weight of that possibility. Yeah. That 00:05:28.170 --> 00:05:30.629 is an incredibly heavy burden for a family to 00:05:30.629 --> 00:05:33.029 carry in silence. It's immense. And there's another 00:05:33.029 --> 00:05:35.610 layer to it, another piece of this family tragedy 00:05:35.610 --> 00:05:39.629 that directly involves Clarice. Clarice, or Chaya, 00:05:39.810 --> 00:05:42.449 as she was then, was conceived and born during 00:05:42.449 --> 00:05:44.889 this period of flight and terror. And there was 00:05:44.889 --> 00:05:47.370 an old folk belief, a superstition in Eastern 00:05:47.370 --> 00:05:50.170 Europe, that becoming pregnant could cure an 00:05:50.170 --> 00:05:53.689 illness. Oh, no. So there's a theory, which Moser 00:05:53.689 --> 00:05:56.129 discusses in his biography, that Clarice was 00:05:56.129 --> 00:05:58.699 conceived in a... desperate last -ditch attempt 00:05:58.699 --> 00:06:01.180 to cure her mother of this creeping paralysis. 00:06:01.540 --> 00:06:03.680 That's just heartbreaking. So she's literally 00:06:03.680 --> 00:06:06.279 born into the world with this impossible mission 00:06:06.279 --> 00:06:08.620 to save her mother, a mission that, of course, 00:06:08.639 --> 00:06:11.660 no baby could ever fulfill. Exactly. And so from 00:06:11.660 --> 00:06:14.000 the moment of her birth, she's tied to this tragedy 00:06:14.000 --> 00:06:16.339 and she carries the guilt of that failure for 00:06:16.339 --> 00:06:19.139 her entire life. It's a foundational wound. So 00:06:19.139 --> 00:06:20.879 they know they can't stay. They have to escape. 00:06:21.019 --> 00:06:23.600 They're desperate. In the dead of winter in 1921, 00:06:23.779 --> 00:06:26.699 they managed to cross a frozen river into Romania. 00:06:27.139 --> 00:06:30.199 From there, eventually, somehow they get to Hamburg 00:06:30.199 --> 00:06:33.199 in Germany and they get passage on a ship bound 00:06:33.199 --> 00:06:36.079 for Brazil. Why Brazil specifically? It was one 00:06:36.079 --> 00:06:38.339 of the very few countries that was still accepting 00:06:38.339 --> 00:06:40.910 Jewish immigrants at the time. A lot of doors 00:06:40.910 --> 00:06:44.009 in America and elsewhere were closing. So they 00:06:44.009 --> 00:06:47.290 arrived in early 1922. Clarice is just over a 00:06:47.290 --> 00:06:49.829 year old. And this is where the first great reinvention 00:06:49.829 --> 00:06:52.870 happens. To survive in this new world, they had 00:06:52.870 --> 00:06:55.470 to assimilate. They had to blend in. Right. They 00:06:55.470 --> 00:06:57.910 couldn't be the Lispectors from a Ukrainian shtetl 00:06:57.910 --> 00:07:00.430 anymore? No. They shed their old names like old 00:07:00.430 --> 00:07:04.029 skins. Pinkas became Pedro. Mania, the mother, 00:07:04.110 --> 00:07:07.790 became Marietta. And little Chaya. She was given 00:07:07.790 --> 00:07:09.709 the name Clarice. It's like a magic trick, isn't 00:07:09.709 --> 00:07:12.509 it? A new name for a new life. But they didn't 00:07:12.509 --> 00:07:14.709 land in the glamorous postcard -perfect Rio de 00:07:14.709 --> 00:07:17.250 Janeiro, did they? Not at all. They settled in 00:07:17.250 --> 00:07:19.430 the northeast of Brazil, which is a much poorer, 00:07:19.670 --> 00:07:22.670 much harsher region, first in a small city called 00:07:22.670 --> 00:07:25.410 Maceio, and then a bigger one, Recife, in the 00:07:25.410 --> 00:07:27.569 state of Pernambuco. And you just have to imagine 00:07:27.569 --> 00:07:29.910 the sensory shock of that. Oh, completely. I 00:07:29.910 --> 00:07:31.509 mean, think about it. You come from the freezing 00:07:31.509 --> 00:07:35.110 gray, muddy landscape of Eastern Europe to... 00:07:35.639 --> 00:07:38.319 the blinding oppressive tropical heat of the 00:07:38.319 --> 00:07:42.040 equator. It's a world of intense light, of vibrant, 00:07:42.180 --> 00:07:45.680 overwhelming colors, and also of... Really intense, 00:07:45.860 --> 00:07:48.759 grinding poverty. The family was poor. Very poor. 00:07:49.019 --> 00:07:51.920 Her father, Pedro, became a peddler. He sold 00:07:51.920 --> 00:07:54.199 whatever he could. The sources say he struggled 00:07:54.199 --> 00:07:57.100 constantly just to make ends meet. But the family's 00:07:57.100 --> 00:07:59.259 central tragedy, her mother's declining health, 00:07:59.420 --> 00:08:01.720 that continued to worsen. Which leads to the 00:08:01.720 --> 00:08:03.980 first great trauma of her life in Brazil. Yes. 00:08:04.300 --> 00:08:06.740 Her mother, Marietta, finally died on September 00:08:06.740 --> 00:08:10.199 21, 1930. Clarice was just nine years old. To 00:08:10.199 --> 00:08:12.459 lose your mother at nine, and a mother whose 00:08:12.459 --> 00:08:14.500 illness was so wrapped up in the family's secret 00:08:14.500 --> 00:08:17.800 history and your own birth. It leaves a void. 00:08:17.939 --> 00:08:20.279 And I use that word void very deliberately because 00:08:20.279 --> 00:08:23.439 that absence, that silence, that thing that isn't 00:08:23.439 --> 00:08:25.939 there, it becomes maybe the central character 00:08:25.939 --> 00:08:28.459 in all of her fiction. She's always writing into 00:08:28.459 --> 00:08:30.420 that void. But even with all this poverty and 00:08:30.420 --> 00:08:32.840 tragedy, you start to see the spark of the genius 00:08:32.840 --> 00:08:35.379 she would become. Absolutely. The sources mention 00:08:35.379 --> 00:08:38.120 one specific book that just blew her world open 00:08:38.120 --> 00:08:40.639 when she was about 13. Herman Hesse's Steppenwolf. 00:08:40.720 --> 00:08:43.100 Yes. And I mean, Steppenwolf is not exactly, 00:08:43.179 --> 00:08:45.519 you know, young adult fiction. No, it is not. 00:08:45.580 --> 00:08:48.840 It's a dense, philosophical, very strange novel 00:08:48.840 --> 00:08:52.500 about a man who feels he's split in two. He has 00:08:52.500 --> 00:08:55.360 his respectable human social self, and then he 00:08:55.360 --> 00:08:58.820 has this wild, lonely, wolf of the steps nature 00:08:58.820 --> 00:09:01.440 inside him. So why does a 13 -year -old girl 00:09:01.440 --> 00:09:04.559 in Recife, Brazil, connect so deeply with that? 00:09:04.740 --> 00:09:07.279 Because she felt that split in her own life. 00:09:07.669 --> 00:09:10.590 Think about it. She was a Jewish refugee in a 00:09:10.590 --> 00:09:13.289 deeply Catholic country. She was poor, but she 00:09:13.289 --> 00:09:16.070 knew she was brilliant. She was a girl who had 00:09:16.070 --> 00:09:19.289 what was then considered a man's mind for philosophy 00:09:19.289 --> 00:09:22.230 and big ideas. She saw herself in that book, 00:09:22.309 --> 00:09:24.549 and after reading it, she said she consciously 00:09:24.549 --> 00:09:27.129 claimed the desire to write. So it wasn't just 00:09:27.129 --> 00:09:29.850 a hobby for her. No, it was an existential necessity. 00:09:30.029 --> 00:09:31.470 It was the only way she could figure out how 00:09:31.470 --> 00:09:33.909 to integrate the wolf and the human inside her. 00:09:34.070 --> 00:09:37.049 So the family is in Recife, but eventually... 00:09:37.480 --> 00:09:39.679 Like so many people, the pull of the big city 00:09:39.679 --> 00:09:42.879 gets too strong. In 1935, her father moves the 00:09:42.879 --> 00:09:45.240 family Clarice and her two sisters down to Rio 00:09:45.240 --> 00:09:48.120 de Janeiro. He was hoping for better economic 00:09:48.120 --> 00:09:50.940 opportunities and also, frankly, as was the custom, 00:09:51.059 --> 00:09:53.059 he was hoping to find good Jewish husbands for 00:09:53.059 --> 00:09:55.379 his daughters. But Clarice had much bigger plans 00:09:55.379 --> 00:09:57.700 than just getting married. She enrolls in the 00:09:57.700 --> 00:09:59.960 law school, the University of Brazil, in 1937. 00:10:00.490 --> 00:10:02.149 Which we have to point out was an incredibly 00:10:02.149 --> 00:10:05.029 prestigious and almost exclusively male space 00:10:05.029 --> 00:10:07.029 at the time. This wasn't something young women, 00:10:07.190 --> 00:10:09.409 especially poor immigrant women, were expected 00:10:09.409 --> 00:10:11.889 to do. It puts her right at the center of the 00:10:11.889 --> 00:10:14.549 country's intellectual elite. And she's studying 00:10:14.549 --> 00:10:17.070 law, but she's also hustling to support herself. 00:10:17.330 --> 00:10:20.110 She gets into journalism. Right. First at the 00:10:20.110 --> 00:10:22.269 Agencia Nacional, which was the government press 00:10:22.269 --> 00:10:24.850 service, and then at a major newspaper called 00:10:24.850 --> 00:10:27.649 Anoite. She's working, she's studying, she's 00:10:27.649 --> 00:10:29.750 absorbing everything. And this is where she starts 00:10:29.750 --> 00:10:31.909 to find her people. She meets a writer named 00:10:31.909 --> 00:10:34.970 Lucio Cardoso. A fascinating character. Cardoso 00:10:34.970 --> 00:10:37.990 was a sort of cursed poet type. He was brilliant, 00:10:38.210 --> 00:10:40.769 openly gay, which was very brave for the time, 00:10:40.830 --> 00:10:44.889 and just a complete rebel. And Clarice fell madly 00:10:44.889 --> 00:10:47.009 in love with him. But it was a doomed romance 00:10:47.009 --> 00:10:49.799 from the start. Romantically, yes. A traditional 00:10:49.799 --> 00:10:52.340 relationship was never going to happen. But intellectually, 00:10:52.820 --> 00:10:55.159 they were absolute soulmates. He was part of 00:10:55.159 --> 00:10:57.360 this younger generation of artists who were trying 00:10:57.360 --> 00:10:59.779 to break away from the old, stiff, formal styles 00:10:59.779 --> 00:11:02.899 of Brazilian literature. He saw her talent immediately, 00:11:03.139 --> 00:11:05.779 and he encouraged her to be weird, to be different, 00:11:05.899 --> 00:11:08.519 to be herself. While she's navigating this complex, 00:11:08.740 --> 00:11:11.399 unrequited love with Cardoso, she also makes 00:11:11.399 --> 00:11:14.220 a very pragmatic choice. She starts dating a 00:11:14.220 --> 00:11:17.120 fellow law student named Mori Gergel Valente. 00:11:17.519 --> 00:11:20.440 Mari was the opposite of Lucio. He was the safe 00:11:20.440 --> 00:11:23.139 choice. He was solid, respectable, and he was 00:11:23.139 --> 00:11:25.620 about to enter a temerity, the Brazilian Foreign 00:11:25.620 --> 00:11:28.039 Service, the diplomatic corps. And there's a 00:11:28.039 --> 00:11:30.700 crucial detail here about her legal status. Yes, 00:11:30.799 --> 00:11:33.779 this is really important. Clarice was a naturalized 00:11:33.779 --> 00:11:35.899 citizen, but her citizenship had certain legal 00:11:35.899 --> 00:11:38.720 caveats. And to marry a diplomat and be able 00:11:38.720 --> 00:11:41.220 to leave the country with him, she needed full, 00:11:41.460 --> 00:11:44.200 unrestricted citizenship. So as soon as she turned 00:11:44.200 --> 00:11:46.879 21, she applied. It was granted in January of 00:11:46.879 --> 00:11:50.279 1943, and she married Maury just 11 days later. 00:11:50.440 --> 00:11:54.149 Wow. Talk about cutting it close. It almost feels 00:11:54.149 --> 00:11:56.590 less like a romance and more like she was securing 00:11:56.590 --> 00:11:58.950 her passport to the world. Or at least securing 00:11:58.950 --> 00:12:01.110 her safety. You have to remember the refugee 00:12:01.110 --> 00:12:04.169 child still inside her. Marriage to a diplomat 00:12:04.169 --> 00:12:06.990 meant protection. It meant status and meant she 00:12:06.990 --> 00:12:09.429 would never, ever be stateless again. So she's 00:12:09.429 --> 00:12:11.730 23 years old. She's a newlywed. She's a full 00:12:11.730 --> 00:12:14.730 citizen. And then in December of that same year, 00:12:14.830 --> 00:12:18.289 she drops an absolute nuclear bomb on the Brazilian 00:12:18.289 --> 00:12:20.750 literary scene. That is not an exaggeration. 00:12:20.789 --> 00:12:27.480 She publishes her debut novel. So what was the 00:12:27.480 --> 00:12:29.659 literary world like in Brazil at that moment? 00:12:29.799 --> 00:12:32.759 Why was this book such a profound shock? Well, 00:12:32.899 --> 00:12:34.759 the dominant style at the time was something 00:12:34.759 --> 00:12:37.759 called regionalism. Think of these big, serious, 00:12:37.779 --> 00:12:40.419 social realist novels. They were about the great 00:12:40.419 --> 00:12:43.019 drought in the Northeast or about class struggles 00:12:43.019 --> 00:12:45.620 on plantations or the lives of rural workers. 00:12:45.740 --> 00:12:48.100 It was all very external, very sociological, 00:12:48.220 --> 00:12:51.600 very... masculine in a way. And Clarice's book 00:12:51.600 --> 00:12:54.779 is not that. Not even remotely. Near to the Wild 00:12:54.779 --> 00:12:57.500 Heart has almost no plot in the way people thought 00:12:57.500 --> 00:13:00.139 of plot. It's the story of a young woman named 00:13:00.139 --> 00:13:02.379 Joanna, but it's not about what Joanna does. 00:13:02.580 --> 00:13:04.740 It's about the vibration of her thoughts. It's 00:13:04.740 --> 00:13:06.980 about the feeling of being alive from one moment 00:13:06.980 --> 00:13:10.279 to the next. It's pure interior monologue. And 00:13:10.279 --> 00:13:12.500 the critics just went absolutely ballistic. They'd 00:13:12.500 --> 00:13:15.120 never seen anything like it. We have a quote 00:13:15.120 --> 00:13:18.940 here from the poet Leto Ivo. He called it, and 00:13:18.940 --> 00:13:21.259 this is for a debut novel by a 23 -year -old 00:13:21.259 --> 00:13:24.149 woman. the greatest novel a woman has ever written 00:13:24.149 --> 00:13:26.029 in the portuguese language that's incredible 00:13:26.029 --> 00:13:29.129 and another major critic sergio milia said she 00:13:29.129 --> 00:13:31.389 had penetrated the depths of the psychological 00:13:31.389 --> 00:13:34.940 complexity of the modern soul Immediately, they 00:13:34.940 --> 00:13:36.539 all started scrambling for comparisons. They 00:13:36.539 --> 00:13:39.720 said, ah, this is the Brazilian Virginia Woolf. 00:13:39.740 --> 00:13:42.200 This is the female James Joyce. Because of that 00:13:42.200 --> 00:13:44.139 stream of consciousness style, obviously. Right. 00:13:44.299 --> 00:13:47.340 It looked and felt like European high modernism. 00:13:47.820 --> 00:13:50.340 And the title itself, Near to the Wild Heart, 00:13:50.460 --> 00:13:53.080 is a direct quote from Joyce's A Portrait of 00:13:53.080 --> 00:13:54.919 the Artist as a Young Man, so the connection 00:13:54.919 --> 00:13:57.960 seemed obvious. But here is the part of the story 00:13:57.960 --> 00:14:00.480 that I find just so amazing and honestly kind 00:14:00.480 --> 00:14:01.820 of hilarious. I know what you're going to say. 00:14:01.919 --> 00:14:04.220 She hadn't read them. It's true. True. She had 00:14:04.220 --> 00:14:06.720 never read James Joyce. She had never read Virginia 00:14:06.720 --> 00:14:09.519 Woolf. That title, that epigraph from Joyce, 00:14:09.740 --> 00:14:12.159 it was suggested to her by her friend, Lucio 00:14:12.159 --> 00:14:14.620 Cardoso, after he read her finished manuscript. 00:14:14.899 --> 00:14:16.960 So he saw the connection. He saw the similarity 00:14:16.960 --> 00:14:19.860 in spirit and said, here, use this. It fits perfectly. 00:14:20.059 --> 00:14:22.700 That is just mind blowing. It's like she invented 00:14:22.700 --> 00:14:25.460 the airplane in her garage without ever knowing 00:14:25.460 --> 00:14:27.789 the Wright brothers existed. It proves that her 00:14:27.789 --> 00:14:30.470 style wasn't some academic imitation of European 00:14:30.470 --> 00:14:33.309 trends. It was organic. It came directly from 00:14:33.309 --> 00:14:36.090 her own fractured experience, her own need to 00:14:36.090 --> 00:14:39.389 express the world in a new way. She was just 00:14:39.389 --> 00:14:42.090 tapping into the same modernist frequency completely 00:14:42.090 --> 00:14:46.009 on her own. So she's 23. She's beautiful. She's 00:14:46.009 --> 00:14:48.070 a genius. She's the toast of Rio's intellectual 00:14:48.070 --> 00:14:52.470 scene. And then she's gone. The duty of the diplomat's 00:14:52.470 --> 00:14:56.259 wife calls. In 1944, just a few months after 00:14:56.259 --> 00:14:59.539 her sensational debut, she leaves Brazil to follow 00:14:59.539 --> 00:15:02.940 her husband, Mari, on his first posting. And 00:15:02.940 --> 00:15:06.120 this begins a long, long period of exile for 00:15:06.120 --> 00:15:08.139 her. And her first stop is not exactly a romantic 00:15:08.139 --> 00:15:10.960 European capital. She lands in Naples, Italy. 00:15:11.480 --> 00:15:13.559 In the middle of World War II. I mean, what a 00:15:13.559 --> 00:15:16.299 jarring shift. Mari is posted to the Brazilian 00:15:16.299 --> 00:15:18.840 consulate there. Brazil had actually sent troops, 00:15:19.000 --> 00:15:21.500 the Brazilian Expeditionary Force, to fight with 00:15:21.500 --> 00:15:24.240 the Allies in the Italian campaign. So Clarice 00:15:24.240 --> 00:15:26.700 literally lands in a war zone. And she doesn't 00:15:26.700 --> 00:15:28.419 just, you know, sit in the consulate and arrange 00:15:28.419 --> 00:15:31.200 flowers. No, she volunteers. She gets a job working 00:15:31.200 --> 00:15:33.580 in a military hospital, caring for the wounded 00:15:33.580 --> 00:15:36.019 Brazilian soldiers. This image just fascinates 00:15:36.019 --> 00:15:38.529 me. The writer of the interior monologue, this 00:15:38.529 --> 00:15:40.549 woman obsessed with the abstract soul and the 00:15:40.549 --> 00:15:42.710 nuances of thought, is suddenly dealing with 00:15:42.710 --> 00:15:45.610 the most brutal physical realities, blood, bandages, 00:15:45.610 --> 00:15:48.090 amputations, death. I think it was a vital grounding 00:15:48.090 --> 00:15:51.049 for her. It proved that her obsession with the 00:15:51.049 --> 00:15:53.870 body, with suffering, with what she called the 00:15:53.870 --> 00:15:56.789 thingness of life, wasn't just some abstract 00:15:56.789 --> 00:16:00.210 philosophical game. She saw the absolute breakage 00:16:00.210 --> 00:16:02.870 of the human body up close. But she still managed 00:16:02.870 --> 00:16:05.980 to keep her artistic life going. She did. While 00:16:05.980 --> 00:16:09.720 in Italy, she met the great Italian poet Giuseppe 00:16:09.720 --> 00:16:12.620 Ungheretti, and she even had her portrait painted 00:16:12.620 --> 00:16:16.080 by the famous surrealist artist Giorgio de Chirico. 00:16:16.259 --> 00:16:18.000 And she was writing, she finished her second 00:16:18.000 --> 00:16:20.559 novel, The Chandelier, during this period. Yes, 00:16:20.600 --> 00:16:23.720 it was published in 1946. It's another very intense, 00:16:23.860 --> 00:16:26.840 very difficult book about the interior life of 00:16:26.840 --> 00:16:29.809 a girl named Virginia. The reception was respectful, 00:16:30.009 --> 00:16:32.230 but it wasn't the explosion that her debut had 00:16:32.230 --> 00:16:34.990 been. And one critic, a woman named Gilda de 00:16:34.990 --> 00:16:37.330 Mello Isusa, wrote something about it that was 00:16:37.330 --> 00:16:40.070 incredibly prophetic. What did she say? She said 00:16:40.070 --> 00:16:42.190 Clarice possessed an enormous talent, but that 00:16:42.190 --> 00:16:44.129 she would have to suffer the disadvantages of 00:16:44.129 --> 00:16:46.769 that talent. Meaning, when you write this way, 00:16:46.850 --> 00:16:48.730 when you're this original, it's a lonely path. 00:16:48.929 --> 00:16:50.850 You alienate people, you're out there on your 00:16:50.850 --> 00:16:53.549 own. After the noise and chaos of wartime Naples, 00:16:53.769 --> 00:16:55.970 the diplomatic service sends them somewhere. 00:16:56.470 --> 00:16:59.940 Different. Bern, Switzerland. And if Naples was 00:16:59.940 --> 00:17:03.100 too loud, too chaotic, Bern was the polar opposite. 00:17:03.179 --> 00:17:05.519 It was too quiet. She had a killer phrase for 00:17:05.519 --> 00:17:08.640 it. The cemetery of sensations. Ouch. That's 00:17:08.640 --> 00:17:10.380 how she described Switzerland in a letter to 00:17:10.380 --> 00:17:13.700 her sisters. She fell into a deep, profound depression 00:17:13.700 --> 00:17:16.940 there. Bern was clean, it was orderly, it was 00:17:16.940 --> 00:17:20.420 prosperous, and for her, it was utterly, soul 00:17:20.420 --> 00:17:23.039 -crushingly boring. There was no grit, no life. 00:17:23.200 --> 00:17:25.720 None of the intensity she craved. She wrote that 00:17:25.720 --> 00:17:27.759 she lived on a street called Gerechtigkeitsgasse, 00:17:27.960 --> 00:17:30.039 which means Justice Street, and she would just 00:17:30.039 --> 00:17:32.420 stare out her window at this old medieval statue 00:17:32.420 --> 00:17:34.759 of justice and feel like she's suffocating in 00:17:34.759 --> 00:17:36.839 a museum. She said it felt like living in the 00:17:36.839 --> 00:17:39.059 Middle Ages. The opposite of the chaos of Rio 00:17:39.059 --> 00:17:41.559 or Naples that she seemed to thrive on. Exactly. 00:17:42.079 --> 00:17:44.059 Switzerland was too sanitized for her. soul, 00:17:44.180 --> 00:17:47.119 but as always, she wrote to survive. She wrote 00:17:47.119 --> 00:17:49.640 an entire novel there called The Besieged City. 00:17:49.819 --> 00:17:52.579 A very fitting title for someone who felt besieged 00:17:52.579 --> 00:17:55.619 by silence. Completely. She later said it was 00:17:55.619 --> 00:17:57.859 her least liked book, but she was also grateful 00:17:57.859 --> 00:18:00.880 to it. She said the sheer effort of writing it, 00:18:00.880 --> 00:18:03.500 of creating a world on the page, was what saved 00:18:03.500 --> 00:18:06.359 her from the appalling silence of Bern. It was 00:18:06.359 --> 00:18:09.460 her lifeline. How did the critics in Brazil receive 00:18:09.460 --> 00:18:12.400 it? The reception was a bit tepid. They found 00:18:12.400 --> 00:18:14.380 it hermetic, you know, closed off, difficult 00:18:14.380 --> 00:18:17.460 to access. One critic described it as having 00:18:17.460 --> 00:18:20.460 the hermeticism of dreams, which is a beautiful 00:18:20.460 --> 00:18:23.000 phrase, but probably not a compliment in terms 00:18:23.000 --> 00:18:25.599 of sales. And her personal life was also developing 00:18:25.599 --> 00:18:27.900 during these years of exile. Yes, she was starting 00:18:27.900 --> 00:18:30.200 her family. Her first son, Pedro, was born in 00:18:30.200 --> 00:18:33.039 Bern. Then after Switzerland, they had a brief 00:18:33.039 --> 00:18:35.940 unhappy stint in Torquay in England, where she 00:18:35.940 --> 00:18:38.240 tragically suffered a miscarriage. And then in 00:18:38.240 --> 00:18:41.319 1952, they make the big move to the United States. 00:18:41.539 --> 00:18:44.220 Washington, D .C. The heart of the Cold War empire. 00:18:44.559 --> 00:18:46.859 They move into a house in the suburbs in Chevy 00:18:46.859 --> 00:18:49.200 Chase, Maryland. And this is the height of the 00:18:49.200 --> 00:18:52.220 1950s, the era of the perfect American housewife. 00:18:52.420 --> 00:18:54.700 And Clarice Lispector, the Ukrainian refugee, 00:18:54.900 --> 00:18:57.579 the Brazilian literary genius, is now expected 00:18:57.579 --> 00:18:59.819 to play that role. She's wearing the mask again. 00:19:00.140 --> 00:19:02.839 And this time, it's the mask of the diplomat's 00:19:02.839 --> 00:19:06.039 perfect wife. She wrote about it later with such 00:19:06.039 --> 00:19:08.259 bitterness. She said, I gave dinner parties. 00:19:08.420 --> 00:19:10.779 I did everything you're supposed to do, but with 00:19:10.779 --> 00:19:13.180 a disgust. You could just feel the suffocation. 00:19:13.180 --> 00:19:15.920 It was a total trap. She was raising her sons. 00:19:16.160 --> 00:19:18.500 Her second son, Paul Lowe, was born in Washington. 00:19:18.680 --> 00:19:21.440 But intellectually, spiritually, she was starving. 00:19:21.680 --> 00:19:25.099 She felt like her wild, wolf -like soul was being 00:19:25.099 --> 00:19:27.839 ironed flat by the suburban routine of cocktails 00:19:27.839 --> 00:19:30.059 and small talk. It's a classic pressure cooker 00:19:30.059 --> 00:19:33.839 situation. You have this wild, existential, philosophical 00:19:33.839 --> 00:19:37.140 intellect trapped inside a world of canapes and 00:19:37.140 --> 00:19:40.480 embassy gossip. And in 1959, that pressure cooker 00:19:40.480 --> 00:19:43.059 finally exploded. She just couldn't take it anymore. 00:19:43.339 --> 00:19:45.680 She did some Something incredibly brave and scandalous 00:19:45.680 --> 00:19:47.559 for a woman of her class at that time. She left 00:19:47.559 --> 00:19:49.359 her husband. And she went home. She took her 00:19:49.359 --> 00:19:51.160 two young sons and she returned to Rio de Janeiro. 00:19:51.359 --> 00:19:54.359 So the prodigal daughter returns. But she's coming 00:19:54.359 --> 00:19:57.059 back to a very difficult situation, right? She's 00:19:57.059 --> 00:19:59.599 a single mother now. She doesn't have the protection 00:19:59.599 --> 00:20:02.039 or the salary of the diplomatic service. She 00:20:02.039 --> 00:20:04.150 has to earn a living on her own. It was a huge 00:20:04.150 --> 00:20:06.569 risk, personally and financially. But creatively, 00:20:06.809 --> 00:20:08.549 it was the best thing that ever happened to her. 00:20:08.589 --> 00:20:11.690 It unleashed her. The 1960s, her first decade 00:20:11.690 --> 00:20:14.029 back in Brazil, became her great renaissance. 00:20:14.269 --> 00:20:16.450 She was back in the heat, back in the noise, 00:20:16.609 --> 00:20:18.809 back in the daily rhythms of the Portuguese language. 00:20:19.049 --> 00:20:21.269 She was home. Let's talk about the incredible 00:20:21.269 --> 00:20:24.089 work that came out of this return. First up is 00:20:24.089 --> 00:20:26.670 a collection of short stories, family ties in 00:20:26.670 --> 00:20:31.029 1960. And honestly, if any of our listeners are 00:20:31.029 --> 00:20:33.150 looking for a place to start with Clarice, this 00:20:33.150 --> 00:20:36.309 is it. These stories are masterpieces of quiet 00:20:36.309 --> 00:20:39.680 dread. How so? Well. They're often set in very 00:20:39.680 --> 00:20:42.299 normal domestic spaces, a family having a birthday 00:20:42.299 --> 00:20:44.839 dinner, a woman riding a bus through the city. 00:20:44.880 --> 00:20:47.480 But in every single story, there's a moment, 00:20:47.519 --> 00:20:49.519 a tiny crack in reality where everything just 00:20:49.519 --> 00:20:51.859 snaps. It's like she puts a mundane moment under 00:20:51.859 --> 00:20:54.440 a microscope until it becomes alien and terrifying. 00:20:54.700 --> 00:20:56.940 That's a perfect way to put it. There's a famous 00:20:56.940 --> 00:20:59.660 story called The Imitation of the Rose about 00:20:59.660 --> 00:21:02.319 a woman trying to be the perfect housewife after 00:21:02.319 --> 00:21:05.279 a stay in a mental institution. Or another, love, 00:21:05.519 --> 00:21:08.180 where a woman on a bus sees a blind man chewing 00:21:08.180 --> 00:21:11.460 gum. And this tiny, insignificant sight triggers 00:21:11.460 --> 00:21:13.599 a complete collapse of her entire worldview, 00:21:13.920 --> 00:21:16.660 her sense of compassion, her stable life. And 00:21:16.660 --> 00:21:18.740 the critics at the time, they recognized this 00:21:18.740 --> 00:21:21.380 as a major leap forward. They went wild for it. 00:21:21.480 --> 00:21:23.920 The great novelist Eric Overisimo said it was 00:21:23.920 --> 00:21:26.339 the most important story collection since Machado 00:21:26.339 --> 00:21:29.500 de Assis. And Machado de Assis is basically the 00:21:29.500 --> 00:21:31.420 Shakespeare of Brazilian literature. That's not 00:21:31.420 --> 00:21:34.259 a comparison you make lightly. Fernando Sabino, 00:21:34.279 --> 00:21:36.500 just told her flat out it was the best book of 00:21:36.500 --> 00:21:38.880 stories ever published in Brazil. So she's back. 00:21:39.019 --> 00:21:41.059 She's reestablished herself at the top of the 00:21:41.059 --> 00:21:44.059 literary world. Absolutely. And then in 1961, 00:21:44.180 --> 00:21:46.599 she publishes the novel The Apple in the Dark, 00:21:46.740 --> 00:21:49.660 which is this dense allegorical book she'd actually 00:21:49.660 --> 00:21:52.140 been working on for years in England and D .C. 00:21:52.440 --> 00:21:55.019 It's about a man who thinks he's killed his wife 00:21:55.019 --> 00:21:57.400 and flees into the wilderness. It's really a 00:21:57.400 --> 00:21:59.700 book about language and creation. It won a major 00:21:59.700 --> 00:22:02.990 prize. But we have to get to the big one. The 00:22:02.990 --> 00:22:06.230 one that really cements her reputation as this 00:22:06.230 --> 00:22:09.789 terrifyingly brilliant mystic. The book that 00:22:09.789 --> 00:22:12.329 shocks people the most, The Passion, according 00:22:12.329 --> 00:22:15.250 to GH, published in 1964. Okay, let's set the 00:22:15.250 --> 00:22:17.809 scene for this because the plot on the surface 00:22:17.809 --> 00:22:21.599 is incredibly, almost absurdly simple. Deceptively 00:22:21.599 --> 00:22:23.680 simple. There's a woman. We only know her by 00:22:23.680 --> 00:22:26.019 her initials, GH. She lives in a beautiful penthouse 00:22:26.019 --> 00:22:28.920 apartment in a wealthy part of Rio. She's a sculptor. 00:22:28.920 --> 00:22:31.099 She's cultured. She's idle. She's comfortable. 00:22:31.240 --> 00:22:33.880 Her maid has just quit. And GH decides to go 00:22:33.880 --> 00:22:35.819 into the now empty maid's room to clean it up. 00:22:35.920 --> 00:22:37.880 Right. And she's expecting it to be dirty, maybe 00:22:37.880 --> 00:22:40.480 a little squalid. But instead, she finds the 00:22:40.480 --> 00:22:43.180 room is starkly, strangely clean. It's like a 00:22:43.180 --> 00:22:46.359 desert. And in this clean, empty room, she opens 00:22:46.359 --> 00:22:49.240 the wardrobe. And she sees a cockroach. An ancient, 00:22:49.420 --> 00:22:52.680 slow -moving... Prehistoric looking cockroach. 00:22:52.680 --> 00:22:56.059 Now for 99 .9 % of humanity, the reaction is 00:22:56.059 --> 00:22:58.900 to scream, step on it, flush it, and run away. 00:22:59.200 --> 00:23:02.099 GH's reaction is different. She instinctively 00:23:02.099 --> 00:23:04.579 slams the wardrobe door on it and she crushes 00:23:04.579 --> 00:23:07.609 it. But she doesn't run away. She becomes mesmerized. 00:23:07.869 --> 00:23:10.789 She watches the thick, white paste, the matter 00:23:10.789 --> 00:23:13.009 of the cockroach, leaking out from its broken 00:23:13.009 --> 00:23:15.890 shell. And this sight triggers a complete philosophical 00:23:15.890 --> 00:23:18.849 and existential spiral. And this leads to the 00:23:18.849 --> 00:23:20.710 moment, the one moment from her work that everyone 00:23:20.710 --> 00:23:23.609 talks about. Yes, the climax of the book. In 00:23:23.609 --> 00:23:25.549 a gesture that she describes with the intensity 00:23:25.549 --> 00:23:27.750 and reverence of a religious sacrament like a 00:23:27.750 --> 00:23:30.109 priest taking the Eucharist, G .H., looks at 00:23:30.109 --> 00:23:32.730 the dying mass of the cockroach and she puts 00:23:32.730 --> 00:23:35.549 it in her mouth. She eats it. Every time I hear 00:23:35.549 --> 00:23:37.369 that, I have such a physical reaction. It's just 00:23:37.369 --> 00:23:40.029 viscerally shocking. What on earth does it mean? 00:23:40.269 --> 00:23:42.730 It is the ultimate act of dismantling the civilized 00:23:42.730 --> 00:23:46.190 self. In that moment, GH realizes that her entire 00:23:46.190 --> 00:23:49.529 identity, her social class, her art, her beauty, 00:23:49.609 --> 00:23:53.150 her very humanity, is just a construct, a flimsy 00:23:53.150 --> 00:23:56.819 shell. By eating the most repulsive, unclean 00:23:56.819 --> 00:23:59.299 thing she can imagine, she's trying to break 00:23:59.299 --> 00:24:02.240 down the barrier between herself and the raw, 00:24:02.240 --> 00:24:06.180 pre -human, living thingness of the world. She 00:24:06.180 --> 00:24:08.819 calls it the living neutral. So she's trying 00:24:08.819 --> 00:24:10.640 to get back to some kind of primordial state. 00:24:10.759 --> 00:24:13.039 Yeah. To become one with the raw matter of the 00:24:13.039 --> 00:24:14.920 universe. Exactly. It's a mystical experience, 00:24:15.099 --> 00:24:17.339 but it's a profane one. She isn't looking up 00:24:17.339 --> 00:24:19.140 to God in heaven. She's looking down into the 00:24:19.140 --> 00:24:21.839 guts of an insect to find the divine. She strips 00:24:21.839 --> 00:24:24.240 herself down to absolute zero. It is terrifying. 00:24:24.420 --> 00:24:27.380 But for Clarice, that's where truth lived. Not 00:24:27.380 --> 00:24:29.000 in the polite dinner parties in Washington, D 00:24:29.000 --> 00:24:31.539 .C., but in the raw, abject, sacred matter of 00:24:31.539 --> 00:24:34.180 a cockroach in a maid's room. It's just so ironic 00:24:34.180 --> 00:24:36.059 then that while she was writing about this total 00:24:36.059 --> 00:24:38.680 dismantling of the self, her own physical self 00:24:38.680 --> 00:24:40.440 suffered this catastrophic injury around the 00:24:40.440 --> 00:24:44.619 same time. This was in 1966. The fire. Yes, this 00:24:44.619 --> 00:24:46.539 is a tragedy that haunted her for the rest of 00:24:46.539 --> 00:24:50.059 her life. Clarice had terrible insomnia and often 00:24:50.059 --> 00:24:52.660 took sleeping pills. And one night, she took 00:24:52.660 --> 00:24:54.920 a pill and fell asleep in her bed while smoking 00:24:54.920 --> 00:24:57.339 a cigarette. It's the absolute nightmare scenario. 00:24:57.700 --> 00:24:59.680 Her mattress caught on fire while she slept. 00:24:59.880 --> 00:25:02.519 She was severely burned, especially on her legs 00:25:02.519 --> 00:25:05.599 and her right hand, her writing hand. It was 00:25:05.599 --> 00:25:08.799 so badly damaged that doctors considered amputating 00:25:08.799 --> 00:25:11.980 it. She spent months in the hospital in agony 00:25:11.980 --> 00:25:14.660 and was left with these deep, angry scars for 00:25:14.660 --> 00:25:16.759 the rest of her life. How does she describe it? 00:25:17.160 --> 00:25:18.799 She said the initial recovery period was like 00:25:18.799 --> 00:25:21.420 spending three days in hell while still being 00:25:21.420 --> 00:25:24.539 alive. And her hand. Did she ever fully recover 00:25:24.539 --> 00:25:27.079 the use of it? Only partially. It was always 00:25:27.079 --> 00:25:28.880 stiff and painful for her to write after that. 00:25:29.039 --> 00:25:30.880 She said it changed her writing, made her mood 00:25:30.880 --> 00:25:33.880 darker, heavier. But she didn't stop. In fact, 00:25:33.880 --> 00:25:36.599 in the late 60s, she made this pivot in her career 00:25:36.599 --> 00:25:39.420 that, in a way, made her more famous than ever 00:25:39.420 --> 00:25:42.500 before. She started writing chronicus. Exactly. 00:25:42.539 --> 00:25:44.480 These are short weekly columns for a newspaper. 00:25:44.799 --> 00:25:47.339 She started writing them for the journal do Brazil 00:25:47.339 --> 00:25:51.849 in 1967. Now, just trying to imagine this, the 00:25:51.849 --> 00:25:54.089 woman who wrote about eating a cockroach to find 00:25:54.089 --> 00:25:56.849 God is now writing a weekly column for a mass 00:25:56.849 --> 00:25:59.250 market newspaper right next to sports section 00:25:59.250 --> 00:26:01.710 and the society pages. So what was she writing 00:26:01.710 --> 00:26:03.710 about in these columns? Was it more philosophy? 00:26:04.009 --> 00:26:06.309 It was about everything. And that was the magic 00:26:06.309 --> 00:26:08.190 of it. She'd write about conversations she had 00:26:08.190 --> 00:26:10.650 with taxi drivers. She'd give parenting advice. 00:26:10.910 --> 00:26:13.170 She'd tell stories about her childhood. She would 00:26:13.170 --> 00:26:15.910 complain about her servants. It was this incredible 00:26:15.910 --> 00:26:18.470 mix of the profound and the completely mundane. 00:26:18.859 --> 00:26:20.859 This is how she became a household name. This 00:26:20.859 --> 00:26:22.940 is how she became a celebrity. Because this wasn't 00:26:22.940 --> 00:26:25.920 a major daily paper. Suddenly, Clarice Lispector 00:26:25.920 --> 00:26:27.940 wasn't just for the university professors and 00:26:27.940 --> 00:26:30.579 the intellectuals anymore. Housewives, students, 00:26:30.980 --> 00:26:33.660 taxi drivers, everyone was reading Clarice on 00:26:33.660 --> 00:26:35.660 the weekend. It made her a real public figure. 00:26:35.920 --> 00:26:39.440 Exactly. This mysterious, glamorous, Sphinx -like 00:26:39.440 --> 00:26:41.700 woman was now speaking directly to the people 00:26:41.700 --> 00:26:43.980 every Saturday. And she even started writing 00:26:43.980 --> 00:26:46.140 children's books around this time. Wait, really? 00:26:46.559 --> 00:26:48.680 The author of The Passion According to G .H. 00:26:48.740 --> 00:26:51.819 wrote children's books. She did. She wrote one 00:26:51.819 --> 00:26:54.539 called The Mystery of the Thinking Rabbit, which 00:26:54.539 --> 00:26:56.960 she'd actually first written in English for her 00:26:56.960 --> 00:26:59.799 son, Paolo, back when they lived in D .C. And 00:26:59.799 --> 00:27:02.680 my personal favorite title of all time, The Woman 00:27:02.680 --> 00:27:05.710 Who Killed the Fish. The woman who killed the 00:27:05.710 --> 00:27:08.009 fish. That sounds like a dark confession. It 00:27:08.009 --> 00:27:11.069 is. But it's this incredibly charming, apologetic 00:27:11.069 --> 00:27:14.430 book where the narrator confesses to the children 00:27:14.430 --> 00:27:17.569 of the world that she is a bad person because 00:27:17.569 --> 00:27:19.789 she forgot to feed her son's little fish and 00:27:19.789 --> 00:27:23.250 they died. It's so funny and strange and it just 00:27:23.250 --> 00:27:25.230 shows this whole other side of her. It completely 00:27:25.230 --> 00:27:27.710 humanized her for the public. But she hadn't 00:27:27.710 --> 00:27:29.950 given up on the difficult, high -concept literature. 00:27:30.730 --> 00:27:33.990 In 1973, she releases what many consider her 00:27:33.990 --> 00:27:37.150 other late masterpiece, Agua Viva. The Stream 00:27:37.150 --> 00:27:39.250 of Life. And this was a book she really struggled 00:27:39.250 --> 00:27:41.769 with. Her friend and assistant, Olga Borelli, 00:27:41.930 --> 00:27:44.529 said it was the only time she ever saw Clarice 00:27:44.529 --> 00:27:47.329 truly insecure, truly hesitate before handing 00:27:47.329 --> 00:27:49.470 a manuscript to her publisher. Why was she so 00:27:49.470 --> 00:27:51.809 insecure about it? Because it was so radical, 00:27:52.009 --> 00:27:54.490 it has no plot at all. There's no named narrator. 00:27:54.950 --> 00:27:58.269 It's written as a long, flowing interior monologue 00:27:58.269 --> 00:28:02.210 addressed to a mysterious you. It's pure sensation, 00:28:02.450 --> 00:28:04.990 pure flow. It's structured more like a piece 00:28:04.990 --> 00:28:07.509 of music than a novel. She was convinced it was 00:28:07.509 --> 00:28:09.509 too weird, that people would hate it and think 00:28:09.509 --> 00:28:12.230 she'd lost her mind. And was she right? Not even 00:28:12.230 --> 00:28:14.710 a little bit. It was instantly hailed as a masterpiece. 00:28:15.230 --> 00:28:18.230 The critics said it was the book that woke Brazilian 00:28:18.230 --> 00:28:21.289 literature from a long lethargy. It's a book 00:28:21.289 --> 00:28:23.690 you don't read for a story. You read it to feel 00:28:23.690 --> 00:28:25.710 the pulse of life itself, what she called the 00:28:25.710 --> 00:28:28.170 it. I have to ask about one of the absolute weirdest 00:28:28.170 --> 00:28:30.930 anecdotes in the source material, the Witchcraft 00:28:30.930 --> 00:28:34.589 Congress. Oh, yes. You absolutely cannot make 00:28:34.589 --> 00:28:37.329 this stuff up. In 1975, because of her reputation 00:28:37.329 --> 00:28:40.109 as this mystic, she gets an official invitation 00:28:40.109 --> 00:28:42.970 to attend the First World Congress of Sorcery 00:28:42.970 --> 00:28:45.190 in Mogota, Colombia. The First World Congress 00:28:45.190 --> 00:28:46.930 of Sorcery. That sounds like something out of 00:28:46.930 --> 00:28:49.940 Harry Potter. It got huge press coverage and 00:28:49.940 --> 00:28:52.779 they invited her as a special guest. They even 00:28:52.779 --> 00:28:55.579 read her famously strange short story, The Egg 00:28:55.579 --> 00:28:58.400 and the Hen, aloud at the Congress. It all just 00:28:58.400 --> 00:29:01.240 added to this public image of her as this kind 00:29:01.240 --> 00:29:03.700 of beautiful, glamorous witch. What did she think 00:29:03.700 --> 00:29:05.299 about all that? She was actually very grounded 00:29:05.299 --> 00:29:07.640 about it. She went, she was polite, but she publicly 00:29:07.640 --> 00:29:10.400 denied having any supernatural inspiration. She 00:29:10.400 --> 00:29:13.539 attributed all her work to unconscious elaboration, 00:29:13.539 --> 00:29:17.150 not to spirits or magic. She famously said, I 00:29:17.150 --> 00:29:19.289 don't write in order to gratify anybody else. 00:29:19.329 --> 00:29:21.609 She was writing for herself. We're getting close 00:29:21.609 --> 00:29:24.609 to the end of her life now, the mid -1970s. She 00:29:24.609 --> 00:29:28.529 produces two final major works that are almost 00:29:28.529 --> 00:29:30.789 like bookends to her career. One is published 00:29:30.789 --> 00:29:33.490 posthumously. A Breath of Life. Right, which 00:29:33.490 --> 00:29:36.210 is this fascinating dialogue between an author 00:29:36.210 --> 00:29:39.430 and his female creation, Angela Perlini. And 00:29:39.430 --> 00:29:41.910 as a recent essay by Grinter Silva -Pasuni points 00:29:41.910 --> 00:29:44.789 out, it's really a book about writing as a way 00:29:44.789 --> 00:29:47.529 of continuing to breathe, of staying alive even 00:29:47.529 --> 00:29:49.289 when you're facing death. But the other one, 00:29:49.349 --> 00:29:51.150 the last book published while she was alive, 00:29:51.309 --> 00:29:54.470 is The Hour of the Star. And this book is a monumental 00:29:54.470 --> 00:29:57.869 achievement. By this point, her hand was so damaged 00:29:57.869 --> 00:29:59.349 from the fire that she couldn't write easily. 00:29:59.710 --> 00:30:02.589 She pieced this book together from notes scrawled 00:30:02.589 --> 00:30:05.009 on loose scraps of paper with Olga Borrelli's 00:30:05.009 --> 00:30:08.210 help, and it marks this massive final shift in 00:30:08.210 --> 00:30:10.710 her work. How so? Well, throughout her career, 00:30:10.809 --> 00:30:12.690 the main criticism leveled against her is that 00:30:12.690 --> 00:30:15.849 she was too abstract, too philosophical, too 00:30:15.849 --> 00:30:19.210 removed from the social reality of Brazil. But 00:30:19.210 --> 00:30:22.630 The Hour of the Star is explicitly heartbreakingly 00:30:22.630 --> 00:30:25.210 about poverty and marginalization. It tells the 00:30:25.210 --> 00:30:28.430 story of Maccabea. Yes, Maccabea. She is a poor, 00:30:28.690 --> 00:30:31.799 uneducated... ugly typist from the northeastern 00:30:31.799 --> 00:30:34.319 state of Alagoas, which is right next to where 00:30:34.319 --> 00:30:36.259 Clarice's own family first arrived in Brazil. 00:30:37.039 --> 00:30:39.339 Maccabea is completely lost and invisible in 00:30:39.339 --> 00:30:42.299 the huge, cruel metropolis of Rio. She barely 00:30:42.299 --> 00:30:44.660 has an interior life to speak of because she's 00:30:44.660 --> 00:30:47.039 just consumed by hunger and survival. She eats 00:30:47.039 --> 00:30:49.079 hot dogs, she dreams of drinking Coca -Cola, 00:30:49.220 --> 00:30:51.200 she's a nobody. It feels like Clarice is looking 00:30:51.200 --> 00:30:53.980 at the ghost of a life she could have had. There 00:30:53.980 --> 00:30:56.359 but for the grace of God go I. That is precisely 00:30:56.359 --> 00:30:59.069 it. If her father hadn't been ambitious, if he 00:30:59.069 --> 00:31:01.089 hadn't moved them to Rio, if she hadn't fought 00:31:01.089 --> 00:31:03.869 her way into law school, she could have been 00:31:03.869 --> 00:31:06.549 Maccabea. And there's a Jewish element here, 00:31:06.609 --> 00:31:10.109 too, a final nod to her origins. The name Maccabea 00:31:10.109 --> 00:31:12.069 is a reference to the Maccabees, the ancient 00:31:12.069 --> 00:31:15.630 Jewish warriors. It's one of the very few times 00:31:15.630 --> 00:31:18.369 Clarice ever overtly referenced her Jewish heritage 00:31:18.369 --> 00:31:21.829 in her fiction. It's a devastating book. It's 00:31:21.829 --> 00:31:24.759 the author. a stand -in for Clarice, looking 00:31:24.759 --> 00:31:27.640 at this insignificant person and trying, through 00:31:27.640 --> 00:31:30.019 the act of writing, to give her existence meaning 00:31:30.019 --> 00:31:33.119 and weight. It's her final act of radical empathy. 00:31:33.460 --> 00:31:35.140 And very shortly after The Hour of the Star was 00:31:35.140 --> 00:31:37.660 published in 1977, Clarice was hospitalized. 00:31:38.099 --> 00:31:40.559 She had inoperable ovarian cancer. It was very 00:31:40.559 --> 00:31:43.160 advanced. The doctors didn't tell her the diagnosis, 00:31:43.539 --> 00:31:45.420 which was a common and cruel practice at the 00:31:45.420 --> 00:31:47.440 time, but she was in constant severe pain. She 00:31:47.440 --> 00:31:50.819 died on December 9th, 1977. It was the eve of 00:31:50.819 --> 00:31:54.230 her 57th birthday. 56 years old. It just seems 00:31:54.230 --> 00:31:56.089 so young for someone who lived so many different 00:31:56.089 --> 00:31:59.009 lives. The refugee, the law student, the diplomat's 00:31:59.009 --> 00:32:01.410 wife, the literary revolutionary, the public 00:32:01.410 --> 00:32:03.910 celebrity. She was buried at the Jewish cemetery 00:32:03.910 --> 00:32:06.869 of Caju in Rio de Janeiro, leaving behind this 00:32:06.869 --> 00:32:09.349 body of work that has only grown in stature and 00:32:09.349 --> 00:32:12.069 influence ever since. She's now a part of the 00:32:12.069 --> 00:32:14.769 Penguin Modern Classics series, the first Brazilian 00:32:14.769 --> 00:32:17.420 writer to be included. So let's try to bring 00:32:17.420 --> 00:32:19.420 this all together. Let's synthesize this incredible 00:32:19.420 --> 00:32:22.319 life. We started with that paradox, the Marlene 00:32:22.319 --> 00:32:25.380 Dietrich, who wrote like Virginia Woolf. And 00:32:25.380 --> 00:32:27.440 I think the power of Clarice Lispector, the reason 00:32:27.440 --> 00:32:29.759 she continues to fascinate us, is that she refused 00:32:29.759 --> 00:32:32.519 to choose between those two things. She insisted 00:32:32.519 --> 00:32:35.109 on being both. She lived the life of a woman 00:32:35.109 --> 00:32:37.910 of her time, the makeup, the fashion, the children, 00:32:38.009 --> 00:32:40.549 the dinner parties. But she used her writing 00:32:40.549 --> 00:32:43.069 to insist that the interior life of that woman 00:32:43.069 --> 00:32:46.670 was as vast, as dangerous, and as philosophically 00:32:46.670 --> 00:32:49.450 profound as any epic battlefield or grand adventure. 00:32:49.789 --> 00:32:52.490 She proved that the space inside a real apartment 00:32:52.940 --> 00:32:55.240 or even just inside a maid's room staring at 00:32:55.240 --> 00:32:58.420 a cockroach, is infinite. Exactly. She peeled 00:32:58.420 --> 00:33:01.059 back the mundane surface of reality to show the 00:33:01.059 --> 00:33:03.740 vibrating, terrifying, beautiful thingness of 00:33:03.740 --> 00:33:06.460 life underneath it all. She validated the chaos 00:33:06.460 --> 00:33:09.339 of the human soul. Okay, so here's a final provocative 00:33:09.339 --> 00:33:14.019 thought for you to chew on. Clarice herself said 00:33:14.019 --> 00:33:16.559 her writing wasn't magic, it was unconscious 00:33:16.559 --> 00:33:19.700 elaboration. That it came out of her almost like 00:33:19.700 --> 00:33:22.359 a scream from the soul. So if her most famous, 00:33:22.500 --> 00:33:25.299 most quintessential scene involves the intimate, 00:33:25.420 --> 00:33:28.240 mystical, and horrifying act of eating a cockroach, 00:33:28.299 --> 00:33:31.859 what does that scream say about the human condition? 00:33:32.380 --> 00:33:35.039 Maybe she's telling us that to truly find ourselves, 00:33:35.180 --> 00:33:37.500 to become whole, we can't just look at the beautiful, 00:33:37.599 --> 00:33:39.700 acceptable parts of life. We have to be willing 00:33:39.700 --> 00:33:42.500 to consume, to integrate, to become one with 00:33:42.500 --> 00:33:45.319 the very things we fear and despise the most 00:33:45.319 --> 00:33:48.660 in the world and in ourselves. That is a disturbing 00:33:48.660 --> 00:33:51.450 but also a strangely liberating thought. It suggests 00:33:51.450 --> 00:33:53.970 that nothing is truly outside of us. We contain 00:33:53.970 --> 00:33:56.269 it all. We are everything. We'd love to hear 00:33:56.269 --> 00:33:58.009 what stands out to you about Clarice's life. 00:33:58.250 --> 00:34:01.170 Is it the escape from Ukraine, the stifling mask 00:34:01.170 --> 00:34:03.990 of the diplomat's wife, or is it that unforgettable 00:34:03.990 --> 00:34:06.289 moment with the cockroach? It's a lot to process, 00:34:06.509 --> 00:34:08.650 but that's Clarice for you. It certainly is. 00:34:08.849 --> 00:34:10.909 Thanks for diving deep with us on this one. Until 00:34:10.909 --> 00:34:11.389 next time.