THE BESIEGED CITY 10Th DECEMBER 2020, 18.30-21.00 2020 the Year of #Afeastofbrazilianliterarydelights

Home , Old City (Bern)

2020 – A Feast of Brazilian Literary Delights Celebrating the birth centenary of CLARICE LISPECTOR (1920-1977), JOÃO CABRAL DE MELO NETO (1920-1999) and JOSÉ MAURO DE VASCONCELOS (1920-1984) #aFeastofBrazilianLiteraryDelights

VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB |CLARICE LISPECTOR |A CIDADE SITIADA | THE BESIEGED CITY 10th DECEMBER 2020, 18.30-21.00 2020 the year of #aFeastofBrazilianLiteraryDelights

A Cidade Sitiada (1948/9) by

CLARICE LISPECTOR (1920-1977)

The Besieged City (1994/5,1997, 2019)

Page ©VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB –EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON All rights reserved - Creator & Convenor -©Nadia Kerecuk http://londres.itamaraty.gov.br/en-us/book_club.xml 14-16 Cockspur Street London SW11Y 5BL

@BrazilEmbassyUK

Has Lucrecia’s quest to find true happiness in love come too late? Does she reveal her regret through a subtle inclusion of A reference to E. Toselli’s Serenata 'Rimpianto'?

How believable is the claim that Lucrecia in The Besieged City is ‘unremarkable, neither intelligent nor imaginative’? Have the critics fallen in the trap of Clarice Lispector’s self-deprecating humour and idiosyncratic disguise?

Think of Lucrecias/Lucreces you may know: Geoffrey Chaucer's The Legend of Good Women, Saint Augustine of Hippo in City of God, Dante’s Canto IV Inferno, Christine de Pizan in The treasure of City of Ladies, or in Machado de Assis’s unique cast of female characters. In this novel, you will meet Lucrecia in the imaginary hamlet of São Geraldo amid festivities celebrating the eleventh century Saint Gerald of Braga.

The fictional setting, a hamlet São Geraldo, exists in multiple shifting geographic sites, construed on metaphorical bathymetric layers,

simultaneously located between a rural and urban

Swiss ‘Orbe’, in the totus (or Theatrum?) Orbis Terrarum, and in Rio de 2

Janeiro, the vibrant capital of Brazil in 1920s, with its architectural Page ©VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB –EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON All rights reserved - Creator & Convenor -©Nadia Kerecuk http://londres.itamaraty.gov.br/en-us/book_club.xml 14-16 Cockspur Street London SW11Y 5BL

@BrazilEmbassyUK

transformation which razed past city landscapes much as wars did it in Europe making way for new ‘Graecian’ landscapes.

Our book club members, who have been reading Clarice Lispector for the past six years since February 2015, will certainly spot references to her other novels in this apparently plain narrative – a true gem!

DETAILS OF AVAILABLE PUBLICATIONS:

ENGLISH

1994/5, 1997,1999- The Besieged City translated by Giovanni Pontiero (1932-1996) published by Carcanet Press ISBN10: 1857540611 ISBN13: 9781857540611

A retranslation/ new translation 2019 - The Besieged City translated by Johnny Lorenz; Ed. B. Moser, published by New Directions, W. W. Norton & Company ISBN-10: 0811226719 ISBN-13: 978-0811226714

Reprinted by Penguin in 2019: ISBN-10: 0241371376 ISBN-13: 978-0241371374 ASIN B07NW16LH7

PORTUGUESE

1948/9 -A Cidade Sitiada published by Editora A Noite, cover by Santa Rosa (1909-1956).

Various editions in Brazil, e.g. in the 2019 edition published by Rocco ISBN- 10: 853253161X ISBN-13: 978-8532531612

Free download in Portuguese from: http://lelivros.love/book/baixar-livro-a-cidade-sitiada-clarice-lispector-em-pdf-epub-e- mobi-ou-ler-online/ https://farofafilosofica.com/2018/01/10/clarice-lispector-19-livros-para-download-em- pdf/

SHORT HISTORY OF THE BOOK AND TRANSLATION

@BrazilEmbassyUK

Clarice Lispector started writing her third novel A Cidade Sitiada in Bern in 1946. She was a young diplomatic wife of Maury Gurgel Valente (1921-1959), who was posted to that city following his term in Italy as the ravages of WWII were poignantly present in the lives of all. She would write to her sisters sharing impressions about living in Bern, Switzerland often missing her homeland Brazil. Bern was a quiet grey place, still under food rationing and shaking off WWII. She was able to pursue the benefits of diplomatic life whilst exploring her world of ideas. Nádia Battella Gotlib in her biographies (1995, 2008, and reprints) and her Instituto Moreira Salles timeline on Clarice Lispector provides us with numerous illustrated details of how the writing of the novel proceeded. Often boththe author and her early biographers highlighted how she felt about the challenges of living in the gilded diplomatic cage. However, her writing never was straightforward. Equally, we need to take Clarice Lipsector’s self-deprecatory comments on her works with a grain of salt.

Clarice Lispector could afford the time to explore the medieval old city of Bern, its monuments, the clocktower, its past and contemporary state. The medieval period greatly appealed to her. She read a great deal and pursued various intellectual and spiritual interests. For example, she refers to reading the late medieval The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis (c. 1380 – 25 July 1471). In Bern, she went to the cinema, visited the library to study differential calculus, attended sculpting classes, and read about buildings in specialised publications.

She also corresponded with various Brazilian authors; this correspondence has been gradually published with the latest batch of three hundred letters published recently. In the letters she exchanged with another young writer, Fernando Sabino (1923-2004), published as Cartas perto do coração in 2001, we find insights into her aspirations, and impressions as well as her ‘writer’s block’ in that Bern period. They are particularly relevant to gauge details regarding the writing she did in the Swiss capital.

Clarice Lispector would use various diversions or deviations as well as subterfuges both in her fiction and life. Her seemingly plain texts end up unravelling multiple layers with intertextual references both within and outside her oeuvre. She wrote another one-act play in Bern - A Pecadora Queimada e os Anjos Harmoniosos, which dates back from the same Bern period and published in 1948 illustrates this. In the letters exchanged with Fernando

Sabino, she tells him about how much she enjoyed writing the one-act play, or ‘scene’:

(...)... ‘o verdadeiro título dessa grande tragédia em um ato seria para mim 4

“divertimento”, no sentido mais velhinho dessa palavra...’ Page ©VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB –EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON All rights reserved - Creator & Convenor -©Nadia Kerecuk http://londres.itamaraty.gov.br/en-us/book_club.xml 14-16 Cockspur Street London SW11Y 5BL

@BrazilEmbassyUK

(...)... the true title of this big one-act tragedy would be ‘divertimento’, in the rather older sense of this word’ (N.K. in the letter dated 16th October 1946).

The older sense of divertimento, from the early 15th century diversioun, ‘process of diverting’ ; in the Medieval Latin diversionem (nominative diversio, from divertere), meant diversion, ‘turning aside from a course of action’ in c.1600, an act of ‘diverting something from its due or ordinary course’ from 1620. By 1640, it acquired a military meaning an ‘act of drawing the attention and force of the enemy from the point where the principal attack is to be made’. Its sense of ‘amusement or entertainment’ in 1640s referred to something, which ‘diverts the mind’. In Italian, it becomes divertimento, originally denoting ‘a musical composition designed primarily for entertainment’ (use first recorded in1823).

This one-act play was presented on 10th December 2005 as an open-air performance in the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Gardens. Giovanni Pontiero, who translated it first as The Sinner Burnt at the Stake and The Choir of Angels (1990, Carcanet), commented that it is ‘about adultery and reminds us of the 15th century morality plays. The symbols and dialogues evoke the Middle Ages, but moral implications are analysed in accordance with the contemporary thought on amorous affairs.’ I mention this play as there are thematic confluences between this short allegorical play and The Besieged City and they are not only limited to the role women have played in society. (details of the performance: http://www.todoteatrocarioca.com.br/espetaculo/10974/a- pecadora-queimada-e-os-anjos-harmoniosos )

Over three years, Clarice Lispector ‘copied’, that is, rewrote her third novel A Cidade Sitiada over twenty times, as she would do with most of her works. She completed it as she was expecting her first child. In addition to writing short stories, learning how to knit she performed the duties of a diplomatic wife.

5 Page ©VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB –EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON All rights reserved - Creator & Convenor -©Nadia Kerecuk http://londres.itamaraty.gov.br/en-us/book_club.xml 14-16 Cockspur Street London SW11Y 5BL

@BrazilEmbassyUK

She sent the manuscript of the novel to her sister Tania and her friend fellow writer Lúcio Cardoso (1912-1968). She would often describe the novel as tiresome, boring at the time, a mistress of disguise early in her writing career. The publishing house Editora A Noite published it in 1948. Her firstborn son came to bring her much joy. A second corrected version was reprinted the following year. The cover was by the notable book illustrator, visual artist, scenographer Santa Rosa (Tomás Santa Rosa Junior, 1909 - 1956).

The novel contains twelve relatively short chapters. The choice of epigraph is thought-provoking. It is one of the gnomai (wisdom sayings, pithy maxims) from the ancient lyrical poet Pindar (c. 518 – 438 BC): ‘ No Céu, aprender é ver, Na Terra, é lembrar-se.’ ‘In heaven, learning is seeing, On earth, remembering.’

The extant fragments of Pindar, usually described as narrator-poet, feature the role of the wisdom of his forebears, handed down through sayings and poems: Centaur Chiron as educator, man and family ties and his clan, the kinsmen and their clan, the victor (olympian, general) and his fellow citizens, noble deeds and what fate evildoers can expect, a chariot race with its horses in the Olympian odes, the city of fellow citizens and the foreigner, abundant plant and animal imagery which exemplifies man’s integration in the cycle of nature or life, symbolic meaning of flowers (roses and other blossoms), nature performing aggressive acts, father to son advice as a testament, grappling with the spiritual life, and a cosmology. The question is whether Clarice Lispector chose the epigraph to illustrate how we develop knowledge and wisdom or/and what happens when our minds/spirits embark on a quest to cognise the timeless essence of life.

Another essential notion which permeates the novel is the perpetual (re)construction of human dwelling places: hamlets, parishes, villages, boroughs, towns, cities. Clarice Lispector refers to the mastery of carpenters, bricklayers, constructors of various kinds. Echoes of old medieval Bern reconstructed in the Middle Ages are weaved in the imaginary São Geraldo hamlet rebuilt in the ‘192..’s’ Rio de Janeiro.

@BrazilEmbassyUK

The various covert allusions to the reforms of the capital city of Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, the Federal District, as Brazil prepared to celebrate the first centenary of the independence offer an opportunity to track various developments which changed the urban aspect of the Brazilian capital at the time. Proposals to modernise that capital date back to the times of Dom João VI in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Piecemeal urban reforms happened in various areas of Rio from 1870s onwards. It was also in the nineteenth century that the idea of moving the federal capital of Brazil to the geographic centre of Brazil was first debated with masterplans being put forward, which meant building a totally new planned city in the middle of nowhere. It was a civilising endeavour to modernise Brazil. By the turn of the century the reforming civilising impetus was embodied in the transformations enabled by urban modernisation along with a ruthless destruction of historic sites in Rio as the world changed vertiginously as uniquely talented João do Rio (1881-1921) aptly described (see our book club posts), an intellectual continuity from Machado de Assis (1839- 1908), Coelho Neto (1864-1934), Euclides da Cunha (1866-1909).

In 1902, the President of Brazil, Francisco de Paula Rodrigues Alves (1848-1919) appointed Francisco Pereira Passos (1836-1913) as the mayor of the Federal District; from 1906 he was succeeded by Francisco Marcelino de Sousa Aguiar (1855-1935) and later by Carlos César de Oliveira Sampaio (1861-1930). The latter ordered the demolition of the Morro do Castelo to make way for the independence centenary exhibition. Justifications to do it included matters of public health. Historic building and sites were lost. Brazilian authors grieved over the loss. Machado de Assis, referred to the Morro do Castelo and mapped various old Rio de Janeiro sites and walks in his novels, for example, Esau and Jacob (1904), and Counsellor Ayres Memorial (1908).

@BrazilEmbassyUK

Another hypothesis which could be raised is that Clarice Lispector was well acquainted with new town planning pursed in Italy, Russia, and Germany in the interwar period. Acquaintance with those urban planning may have led to consider the urbanisation reforms in Rio de Janeiro and perhaps masterplans for the building a new Brazilian capital. For example, in a well-known painting by G. de Chirico (1888-1978) we find aspects of a square in B. Mussolini’s new town Sabaudia. European Modernism was manifested in architectural masterplans in various European cities old and new. G. de Chirico was the artist who made a portrait of Clarice Lispector. Would the narrator in The Besieged City be hinting at the scores of new towns built by forced slave labour?

Giorgio de Chirico / De Chirico - Piazza d'Italia 1948

Another inescapable fact to be considered is that after World War II, various European cities had to be rebuilt, which would be in Clarice Lispector’s awareness maximised by the circulation in diplomatic circles. Thus, the shifting locus of the imaginary hamlet of São Geraldo in The Besieged City. It becomes a representation of the new civilising destruction of the old towns and the advance of progress in transport and way of living in large cities. Metaphorically, this could be stretched to the concept of the construction of an ideal New Jerusalem. The concept of building a New Jerusalem was revisited over and over in the antiquity, medieval, renaissance periods generating a number of alternative names such as Tabernacle of God, Holy City, City of God, Celestial City, Heavenly Jerusalem, Jerusalem above, Zion, and Shining City on a Hill. We should also be mindful that it is hight time to stop referring to the Middle Ages as ‘dark’ ages, in fact they were truly enlightened ages.

A set of details regarding the architecture of the ‘New Jerusalem’ feature in the prophecies in the Old and New Testaments. They include detailed measurements and proportions, including gates, therefore walls which surrounded the city, meaning that it could be defended if besieged. Readers acquainted with the Biblical texts will find biblical echoes in The Besieged City. In the Book of Ezekiel in the Old Testament, Ezekiel's prophetic vision of a city tells us about the rebuilt Holy Temple, the Third Temple, to be established in Jerusalem, which would be the capital of the Messianic Kingdom, the meeting place of the twelve tribes of Israel. Ezekiel’s New Jerusalem is expanded in the prophecies of Zachariah in the Book of Zechariah. In the Book of Revelation in the New Testament, John of Patmos or John the

Theologian ( c. 6-c.100 AD), the city is named as the Heavenly Jerusalem, as well as being

called Zion in other books of the Christian Bible. It contains two main parts: the first 8

(chapters 2–3) contains moral admonitions set out in individual letters addressed to the seven Page ©VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB –EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON All rights reserved - Creator & Convenor -©Nadia Kerecuk http://londres.itamaraty.gov.br/en-us/book_club.xml 14-16 Cockspur Street London SW11Y 5BL

@BrazilEmbassyUK

Christian churches of Asia Minor and the second part (chapters 4–22:5), contains the revelation - visions, allegories, and symbols. Apropos, in John’s revelation, horses play a key role in the Book of Revelation – the four horses of the Apocalypse: the first horseman is on a white horse, carrying a bow, and given a crown, riding forward as a figure of Conquest, perhaps invoking Pestilence, Christ, or the Antichrist. The second carries a sword and rides a red horse and is the creator of War. The third is a food merchant riding upon a black horse, symbolizing Famine. The fourth and final horse is pale green, and upon it rides Death accompanied by Hades. In Ezekiel and Zachariah, the horses are named as punishment from God. Horses feature in The Besieged City in condensed passages with subtle allusions, at times evoking the metaphorical form poets apply to refer to ideas or texts. They are representative of the Claricean prose-poetry. The surface layer of this novel appears to be an account of a dreamy girl who becomes a wife and appears to be content to play her role in a patriarchal society. Here and there, though, the reader finds flashes of her autonomous and rebellious self and often associated with rich imagery including horses. However, not only horses feature in the narrative. Various other animals make an appearance in her tripartite natural world of mineral, vegetable, and animal realms, which she included in this novel. Later, it would be part of the concept underpinning her novel The Apple in the Dark. The same applies to cockroaches which play a key role in The Passion According to G.H. One could also speculate that Clarice Lispector has succeeded in creating a dialogue with religious and mythical narratives about the role of horses in human history in this short novel. As mentioned above, horses appear both in Pindar and the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. Cave paintings attest to the ancient partnership between man and horse. The Uffington White Horse, an enigmatic chalk hill figure on ancient rolling downland, continues to puzzle us to this date. It is a 110 m long prehistoric figure, formed from deep trenches filled with crushed white chalk on the upper slopes of the White Horse Hill in the English civil parish of Uffington. Archaeological sites also provide evidence of the man-horse kinship in the very ancient times. Bones of early horses were found in the first digs of the burial sites of the fourth millennium BC Trypillian Culture, in a large area which is geographically mainly in today’s Ukraine and in part of Central Europe. Additionally, the ceramic Trypillian artifacts and pysanky (decorated Ukrainian Easter eggs) contain numerous horse symbols. Clarice Lispector would have knowledge of such myths and traditions. In early Ukrainian myths, horses were associated with humans; they were represented as loyal friends or siblings, almost next of kin, and as such the symbolism extended to man’s fate. The white horses, emblematic of the sun, continue to be regarded as symbolic of the sun, with its life-giving power, to this day. People have traditionally decorated the eaves and other external walls of homes with small horses or horse heads which symbolise ‘unconscious strength’. The Zaporizhian Kozaky were so amalgamated with their horses that a ubiquitous

mythical hero, Kozak Mamay, a kozak and bard playing his bandura has been depicted in

countless paintings, oral literature, embroidery, fiction, proverbs, and numerous forms of art 9 Page ©VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB –EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON All rights reserved - Creator & Convenor -©Nadia Kerecuk http://londres.itamaraty.gov.br/en-us/book_club.xml 14-16 Cockspur Street London SW11Y 5BL

@BrazilEmbassyUK

for many centuries. In 2001, a sculpture of Kozak Mamay with his horse and bandura was placed in the Independence Square in Kyiv. In The Besieged City, the narrator references the long history of man melded with the horse including Ancient Cretan (Minoan), and Greek mythology which created the idea of Centaur. The Centaur Chiron is the symbol of the Zodiac sign Sagittarius, under which Clarice Lispector was born. Translations The Besieged City was first translated by Giovanni Pontiero (1932-1996) published by Carcanet in at least three editions in 1994, 1997 and 1999. The Carcanet Press continues to list it – see Carcanet Press - Giovanni Pontiero and Carcanet Press - The Besieged City as a 1997 edition, The G. Pontiero papers archive lists it as published in 1994( Papers of Giovanni Pontiero - Archives Hub (jisc.ac.uk). We also find it listed in The Besieged City - Clarice Lispector - Google Books.

In 2019, another translation appeared - The Besieged City translated by Johnny Lorenz published by W. W. Norton & Company. The hard copy was published in May 2019. A paperback version was reprinted by Penguin in August 2019. The hard copy has an introduction by the editor, Benjamin Moser (1976-). Both editions erroneously claim that this is the first translation in English.

Johnny Lorenz, son of Brazilian immigrants, received his doctorate in English from the University of Texas at Austin in 2000. He is a Full Professor at Montclair State University. In 2003, he was awarded a Fulbright grant to conduct research in Brazil. He has published scholarly articles, poetry, and translations. His book of poetry, Education By Windows, was published by Poets & Traitors Press (2018). His translations of Clarice Lispector's A Breath Of Life (2012), finalist for the Best Translated Book Award, and The Besieged City (2019), listed as one of the best books of 2019 by Vanity Fair, were published by New Directions. He has published articles on Brazilian literature in journals such as Modern Fiction Studies and Luso-Brazilian Review. He recently received a PEN grant in support of his translation of Notebook of Return by Edimilson de Almeida Pereira. (From the university/publisher blurbs)

10 Page ©VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB –EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON All rights reserved - Creator & Convenor -©Nadia Kerecuk http://londres.itamaraty.gov.br/en-us/book_club.xml 14-16 Cockspur Street London SW11Y 5BL

@BrazilEmbassyUK

The introduction in the hard copy comes under a rather odd title - a transliterated Russian word ‘Obyezloshadenie’ from a text by Isaac Babel. Our regular book club members will recall that we discussed the novel partly about I. Babel - Vastas Emoções e Pensamentos Imperfeitos (1988) by Rubem Fonseca (1925-2020), The Lost Manuscript (1997) and Vast Emotions and Imperfect Thoughts (1998) in September. Please refer to the post to find more details: https://sistemas.mre.gov.br/kitweb/datafiles/Londres/en-us/file/cul-bookclub-54-fonseca.pdf

Obyezloshadenie is a rather odd transliteration of a word, which is derived from безлошадный, without a horse, deprived of a horse (in Russian: м. разг. То же, что: безлошадник, прил. Не имеющий лошади, транслитерация: bezloshadnyiy). It is not listed in both earlier and current dictionaries. It seems that the term has been in circulation in the West since the publication of U. Raulff (1950-) Farewell to the Horse in 2018, who may have used a non-standard form of transliteration.

The only illustration that appears in the hardcopy is the Errata included in the 1964 revised edition of A Cidade Sitiada (in the series Colecã̧ o “O Velho Graca̧ ”. no. 2.). The British Library holds a copy of this ‘second’ revised edition. That was the year that Clarice Lispector published the short story collection A legião estrangeira and the novel A paixão segundo G.H. so an updated or revised edition made sense. The editor seems to claim that he made substantial changes to the Johnny Lorenz due to the pressure to finish and takes credit.

Mariana Valente, Clarice Lispector’s granddaughter, created a doodle for Google in 2018 and it has a short video, a lovely homage to the grandmother-author.

@BrazilEmbassyUK

Clarice Lispector’s 98th Birthday (google.com)

SHORT BIOGRAPHY

CLARICE LISPECTOR

(10 Dec 1920 – 9 Dec 1977)

Sculpture of Clarice Lispector – 2013 in Recife, Pernambuco| Sculpture of Clarice Lispector with her dog Ulisses, 2016 Near her house, Demetrio Albuquerque, photo by A. Júnior|by Edgar Duvivier (1955-) Pedra do Leme, Rio de Janeiro.

Clarice Lispector has been granted the accolade of the most notable Brazilian woman writer. Her oeuvre offers a multiplicity of legacies, many of which have yet to be unveiled. Without any doubt, she is one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. Her standing is generally compared to that of Virginia Wolf, Katherine Mansfield, Franz Kafka and many

other men and women of genius. 12

@BrazilEmbassyUK

Furthermore, her life story is truly fascinating and illustrative of the history of countless immigrants in Brazil, who eventually become Brazilian nationals: mothers and fathers with their children born abroad or in Brazil, who have been coming to Brazil to find shelter from multiple world wars, persecutions and other international cataclysms especially from 19th century onwards. These immigrants have come and contributed to forging a new life for their families and making invaluable contributions to a wealth of Brazilian culture, life, and institutions.

Haia Lispector, the third child of Pinkouss and Mania Lispector was born on 10th December 1920 in the town of Chechelnyk, in the Vynnytsia Oblast, Ukraine (which had come into Russian rule at the time). Her father changed the names of the family: Haia became Clarice, her parents, became Marieta and Pedro Lispector. Her family fled the persecutions in their homeland and arrived in Maceió, Brazil when she two months old in 1921 and, then moved to Recife in 1924, where her mother’s sister, Zaina lived with her husband José Rabin, a prosperous local businessman. She spent her childhood in Recife at Maciel Pinheiro Square and attended João Barbalho Primary School and, subsequently, the traditional Ginásio Pernambucano (founded in 1825). She also studied piano, Yiddish, and Hebrew from 1930.

At an early age, she began to write. Once after going to the theatre, she wrote a short three-act play Pobre menina rica (Poor Rich Girl). She would go to a friend’s father’s bookshop to borrow books (her family could not afford them!) where she discovered Reinações de Narizinho (‘Reignings’ of Little Nose Girl) by Monteiro Lobato (1882-1948). She began to write stories at this early age, which from the outset portrayed feelings and sensations.

Her mother died in 1930 and, in 1933, her father moved with the family to Rio de Janeiro, where Clarice continued her studies at the Sílvio Leite High School. She read a great deal from the usual romantics such as M. Delly who teenage girls read but also classics such as Machado de Assis, José de Alencar, Júlio Dinis, Eça de Queirós, Fiodor Dostoyevsky and 20th century writers such as Graciliano Ramos, Jorge Amado, Rachel de Queiros, to mention but a few. Her book collection (now at the Instituto Moreira Salles) contains many books on art and even mathematics. A bit later, she discovered Katherine Mansfield’s works at a small private lending library at Rua Rodrigo Silva.

As she prepared herself at Colégio Andrews (1938) to read law, she would also make ends meet by providing private tuition in Math and Portuguese. She learned how to type and studied English at the Sociedade Brasileira de Cultura Inglesa. In 1939, she started her Law studies at the Rio de Janeiro Federal University (at the time, the National University) and worked – translating scientific texts for a lab and as a secretary for a law firm. Her father died in 1940. And in 1941 she became an editor of Agência Nacional working with author Lúcio Cardoso (1912-1968), who would become one of her best friends. Whilst at university she began to write her first novel Perto do Coração Selvagem (Near the Wild Heart). In 1943, she worked as editor for A Noite and Diário da Tarde, writing a ladies’ column signed by llka Soares, as her ghost writer. In that year, she became a Brazilian citizen and married the diplomat Mauri Gurgel Valente.

13 Page ©VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB –EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON All rights reserved - Creator & Convenor -©Nadia Kerecuk http://londres.itamaraty.gov.br/en-us/book_club.xml 14-16 Cockspur Street London SW11Y 5BL

@BrazilEmbassyUK

The following year she accompanied her husband to his post in Rome; she volunteered as a nurse at the hospital for Brazilian FEB soldiers in Naples. She began to write O Lustre (The Chandelier) in Rio and completed it in Naples in 1944, published in 1946. In the same year, her first novel was awarded the Graça Aranha Literature Prize. She lived in Bern and visited Spain and other countries. In Bern, she wrote the one-act play A Pecadora Queimada e os Anjos Harmoniosos published in 1948. In the same year she published A Cidade Sitiada, and short stories which later appeared in Laços de Família. In 1949, she was in France and Italy and met the Italian modernist poet Giuseppe Ungaretti (1888-1970) and Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978), who painted her portrait (oil).

Her first son, Pedro was born in Bern in September and she continued writing with her little son on her lap until she would return with her husband to Rio de Janeiro. There, she mingled with her fellow writers and friends (Fernando Sabino and others).

In 1951, Clarice Lispector spent six months in Torquay in England, where she drafted her first notes for Maçã no Escuro (Apple in the Dark). She had a miscarriage then, and the Brazilian Vice-Consul, the poet João Cabral de Melo Neto (1920-1999), offered her the necessary assistance. She returned to Brazil. In 1952, she published six short stories in Cadernos de cultura and a chronicle Entre Mulheres (Among Women) under the pen name Teresa Quadros at the request of her friend and fellow author Rubem Braga (1913- 1990).

Next, she travelled to Washington with her husband where her second son, Paulo, was born. In 1953, she met the acclaimed Brazilian writer Érico Veríssimo (1905-1975) and his wife Mafalda; they became good friends. In the same year, she was also delighted that her book Perto do coração selvagem was published in a French translation by Plon with a cover).

14 Page ©VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB –EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON All rights reserved - Creator & Convenor -©Nadia Kerecuk http://londres.itamaraty.gov.br/en-us/book_club.xml 14-16 Cockspur Street London SW11Y 5BL

@BrazilEmbassyUK

Cover by Henri Matisse (1869-1954)

She divorced in 1959, as life of the wife of a diplomat presents various challenges at any time. She returned to live in Rio de Janeiro with her children. She was a very caring mother. To complement her income, she wrote a column under the pen name Helen Palmer, ‘Feira de Utilidades’, in the newspaper Correio da Manhã (1959-60). She also did literary translations.

In 1962, she was awarded the Carmen Dolores Prize for her novel A Maçã no Escuro. She gave a lecture on Contemporary Brazilian Literature in Austin, Texas, USA in 1963. In 1964, she published a collection of short stories A legião estrangeira and her novel A Paixão Segundo G. H. and moved to her new flat. International acclaim was finally forthcoming. In 1965, a selection of excerpts from Perto do coração selvagem by the playwright and actor Fauzi Arap (1938-2013), was presented at La Maison du Théâtre, Paris, featuring Glauce Rocha, Dirce Migliaccio and the beginner José Wilker. This was a first adaptation of her work to the theatre.

After this, she dedicated herself to her children as her son Peter needed special care. She lived a life of much financial hardship despite the publication of various books and translations. In 1966, disaster struck as she fell asleep with a cigarette that caused a fire in her flat, she had rather serious burns, which left her scarred.

Subsequently, she would write a weekly column for Jornal do Brasil (1967-1973), publishing short stories, children stories and much more. Gradually, she came to be regarded as the great writer that she was. She died in Rio de Janeiro in December 1977.

In this year of the centenary of her birth, Clarice Lispector is recognised in Brazil and everywhere as the Brazilian grande dame of letters, one of the world’s most extraordinary authors of unique talent. It is high time all usual comparisons to other world authors be cast away for good. Such comparisons are vacuous and redundant. Even the odd-sounding supernatural appellation of ‘witch’ in Clarice Lispector’s case and ‘wizard’ in Machado de Assis’s case can only serve to corroborate the fact that the unique talent of these very Brazilian authors is of the highest order. This practice represents a failure to acknowledge the reality that great world authors do not require any supernatural help – the power of their 15

imagination result in marvellously alluring fiction. Machado de Assis was a reliable civil Page ©VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB –EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON All rights reserved - Creator & Convenor -©Nadia Kerecuk http://londres.itamaraty.gov.br/en-us/book_club.xml 14-16 Cockspur Street London SW11Y 5BL

@BrazilEmbassyUK

servant, a working life, and wrote in his own time. Clarice Lispector worked to study, worked to support herself adopting pseudonyms, gave up the glamorous life of a diplomat’s wife, looked after her two sons and produced works of rare imagination. Let us celebrate her by reading her works and sharing our discoveries of her fictional universes.

1945 Portrait de Clarice Lispector | 1972 portrait by Carlos Scliar (1920-2001) by Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978)

For further details:

Our Book Club has read and discussed Clarice Lispector since February 2015 and we have many Claricean devotees:

❖ The Passion according to G.H. in February 2015 – the post is no longer available but published in the book How to Run a Bilingual Book Club Featuring the First Year of the BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB at the Embassy of Brazil in London, by Nadia Kerecuk ISBN 978-1-5272-3265-5 (Oct 2019)

❖ The Hour of the Star in January 2016 and our CineClub showed Suzana Amaral’s film. Please see the post at http://londres.itamaraty.gov.br/en-us/book_club.xml ❖ The Apple in the Dark in April 2017, please see post at https://sistemas.mre.gov.br/kitweb/datafiles/Londres/en-us/file/cul-bookclub- 17-maca.pdf ❖ The Chandelier in June 2018, Please see the post for

https://sistemas.mre.gov.br/kitweb/datafiles/Londres/en-us/file/cul-bookclub-

31-lispector.pdf

16 Page ©VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB –EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON All rights reserved - Creator & Convenor -©Nadia Kerecuk http://londres.itamaraty.gov.br/en-us/book_club.xml 14-16 Cockspur Street London SW11Y 5BL

@BrazilEmbassyUK

❖ Near to the Wild Heart in April 2019 , Please see the post for https://sistemas.mre.gov.br/kitweb/datafiles/Londres/en-us/file/cul-bookclub- 41-lispector.pdf ❖ Family Ties February 2020 https://sistemas.mre.gov.br/kitweb/datafiles/Londres/en-us/file/cul-bookclub- 50-lispector.pdf

References and sources:

❖ The Instituto Moreira Salles has created an excellent comprehensive site for Clarice Lispector at https://claricelispectorims.com.br/ ❖ Timeline in Portuguese - https://claricelispectorims.com.br/vida/ ❖ Paulo Gurgel Valente, the youngest son of the author, started to deposit her manuscripts at the Instituto Moreira Salles (IMS) in 2004. The first set contained the original manuscripts of A hora da estrela (1977) and Um sopro de vida (1978), which were typed manuscripts in bound format with signed notes and amendments. In addition, the first lot also included the short story ‘A bela e a fera’ (1979); her letters and 896 books on a wide range of topics from magic tricks to astronomy, mathematics, philosophy, psychology, and literature. Further comprehensive details, available at the IMS site. ❖ Visit CASA RUI BARBOSA for Clarice Lispector’s archives: http://www.casaruibarbosa.gov.br/dados/DOC/literatura/clarice_lispector/biblio grafia_sobre.html http://www.casaruibarbosa.gov.br/dados/DOC/literatura/clarice_lispector/arqui vosliterarios_clarice_Lispector.html

❖ CLAIRE VARIN - Quebecois author Claire Varin that has nurtured a passion for Portuguese, and discovered Clarice Lispector writing her doctoral thesis on Clarice Lispector. She visited Brazil six times and her research resulted in two books Rencontres Brésiliennes (1987, revised & enlarged edition 2007) and Langues de Feu!, (1990, translated into Portuguese: Línguas de Fogo, 2002). She also produced an interesting video on Clarice Lispector (http://clairevarin.com/) .

❖ The MUSEUM OF SOUND AND IMAGE produced a booklet about the interview Clarice Lispector gave in 20 October 1976 - Collection ‘Depoimentos no. 7’ (1991)

❖ CLARICE LISPECTOR GAVE A SINGLE TV INTERVIEW in February 1977 (TV Cultura, São Paulo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aP4qgyu2o0 )

❖ In 1994, Jesse Larsen and Erica Bauermeister included The Hour of the Star in her 500 Great Books by Women, stating, ‘In less than one hundred pages, Clarice Lispector tells a brilliantly multi-faceted and searing story.’

❖ Biographies/biographical precis about Clarice Lispector, listed here in chronological

order: 17

@BrazilEmbassyUK

BRASIL, Assis. (1969) Clarice Lispector. Ensaio. Rio de Janeiro: Simões. BORELLI, Olga. (1981) Clarice Lispector. Esboço para um possível retrato. Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira FITZ, Earl E. (1985) Clarice Lispector (biography) Twayne Publishers Inc., U.S. NUNES, B. (1989) O drama da linguagem - Uma leitura de Clarice Lispector. Ática. CIXOUS, H. (1989) L'heure de Clarice Lispector, précédé de Vivre l'Orange. Des femmes. MARTING, D.E. (1993) – Clarice Lispector – A Bio-Bibliography. Greenwood Press. GOTLIB, Nádia B. (1995) Clarice -Uma Vida Que Se Conta, Ática. GOTLIB, Nádia B. (2008) CLARICE FOTOBIOGRAFIA (EDUSP| Imprensa Oficial) FERREIRA, Teresa C. M. (1999)Eu Sou uma Pergunta: uma Biografia de Clarice Lispector. Rocco. VARIN, Claire (1990) Langues de feu (Éd. Trois, 1990) traduit au Brésil en 2002 (Línguas de Fogo, Ed. Limiar, São Paulo). MOSER, B. (2009) WHY THIS WORLD A Biography of Clarice Lispector. Oxford University Press.

❖ A relevant 2010 review by Benjamin Abdala Junior, Professor of comparative literature at the São Paulo University in which he compares and finds confluences with Nádia B Gotlib’s biography is worth reading - ‘Biografia de Clarice, por Benjamin Moser: coincidências e equívocos’ in Estudos Avançados vol.24 no.70 São Paulo 2010 versão impressa ISSN 0103-4014 downloadable from http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S0103-40142010000300020

❖ See also a critical essay by Thiago Cavalcante Jeronimo (2018) Benjamin Moser: quando a luz dos holofotes interessa mais que a ética acadêmica at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330922175_Benjamin_Moser_quando_a_luz_dos_holof otes_interessa_mais_que_a_etica_academica

❖ ROCCO is the current publisher of Clarice Lispector’s works in Brazil – they reprinted her main works http://www.rocco.com.br/especial/claricelispector/

❖ LISPECTOR, C. (2020) Todas as cartas – 300 letters annotated by Teresa Montero ❖ LISPECTOR, Clarice. A pecadora queimada e os anjos harmoniosos. In MONTERO, Teresa; MANZO, Lícia. (ORGs) Clarice Lispector – outros escritos. Rio de Janeiro: Rocco, 2005.

❖ FITZ, Earl E. “A pecadora queimada e os anjos harmoniosos:” Clarice Lispector as Dramatist. Luso-Brasilian Review 34/2, by the Board of Regents of the University of

Winsconsin System, 1997. 18

@BrazilEmbassyUK

❖ On Bern during the first half of 20th century and wars:

https://www.archives.gov/research/holocaust/finding-aid/civilian/rg-84-switzerland.html https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/switzerland-neutral-wwii.html https://www.eda.admin.ch/dam/PRS-Web/en/dokumente/die-schweiz-in-der-zeit-der- weltkriege_EN.pdf

❖ Literary Agency: Clarice Lispector: Agencia Literaria Carmen Balcells (agenciabalcells.com)

The Brazilian Post Office issued commemorative stamps for Clarice Lispector’s birth centenary in September 2020.

HAPPY READING!

2020: #aFeastofBrazilianLiteraryDelights

Attendance is free, but booking is essential: [email protected] ©Nadia Kerecuk Creator and Convenor of the ©Virtual Brazilian Bilingual Book Club at the Embassy of Brazil in London

19 Page ©VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB –EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON All rights reserved - Creator & Convenor -©Nadia Kerecuk http://londres.itamaraty.gov.br/en-us/book_club.xml 14-16 Cockspur Street London SW11Y 5BL

@BrazilEmbassyUK