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) 1 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 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 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 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 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 3 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 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 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 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 (...)... 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 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 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.