Clarice Lispector - Too Much of Life: The Complete Crônicas

Translated by MARGARET JULL COSTA & ROBIN PATTERSON
Afterword by PAULO GURGEL VALENTE

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First published as a New Directions Paperbook Original in 2022
First published in Penguin Classics 2022

Published by arrangement with the Heirs of Clarice Lispector and Agencia Literaria Carmen Balcells, Barcelona

Text copyright Todas as Crnicas, 2018; Paulo Gurgel Valente, 2022
Translation copyright Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson, 2022
Afterword copyright Paulo Gurgel Valente, 2022

Passages from Thomas Mertons No Man Is an Island copyright 1955 by Thomas Merton, renewed.
Reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd.

The moral rights of the author and translators have been asserted

Cover photograph by an unknown photographer / Clarice Lispector Collection / Instituto Moreira Salles

ISBN: 978-1-802-06112-3

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August 19, 1967

No, I cant. I simply cant bring myself to think about the scene I imaginedits all too real. The child is lying awake in bed with hunger pangs, and he says to his mother: Im hungry, Mama. She very gently says: Go to sleep. He says: But Im hungry. She says again: Go to sleep. He says: I cant, Im hungry. Exasperated, she repeats: Go to sleep. He says again that he is hungry. Out of her own pain, she yells: Shut up, you little brat, and go to sleep! They both lie in the darkness, silent, not moving. Is he asleep?she wonders, as she lies there, wide awake. And he is too terrified to make so much as a sound. Both are awake in the black night. Until, out of pain and weariness, they eventually drift off into the cozy nest of resignation. And I simply cannot bear resignation. Ah, with what ravenous pleasure I devour rebellion.

Looking in the mirror and thinking in amazement: How mysterious I am. How delicate and strong. And how the curve of my lips has retained its innocence.

Who among us has not, by chance, looked in the mirror and felt surprised? For a fraction of a second we see ourselves as an object to be looked at. Some might call this narcissism, but I would call it: the joy of being. The joy of finding in our external face echoes of our internal face: ah, so its true, I didnt just imagine myself, I actually exist.

The art of risk-free thinking. If thought did not always lead us down certain emotional paths, thinking would long ago have been categorized as a way of having fun. One doesnt invite friends to join in the game because of the whole ceremony that thinking entails. The best way is to invite them just to visit, and then nonchalantly think together in the guise of words.

Thats fine as long as youre not playing seriously. However, in order to think deeplywhich is the main aim of this new hobbyyou need to be alone, because surrendering yourself to thinking involves great emotion, and you would only dare to think in the presence of someone else if you trusted that person so much that you would feel no embarrassment in applying that term, someone else, to them. Besides, it would be asking an awful lot of someone else to be there, watching us think: it requires a big heart, love, affection, as well as personal experience of surrendering to thought. It demands as much of someone listening to the words and silences as it would for them to feel them. No, thats not true. Feeling is far more demanding.

Anyway, when it comes to thinking as an amusement, the absence of risks puts it within the grasp of everyone. There are, of course, some hazards. Even playing at thinking can occasionally leave you with a heavy heart. Generally speaking, though, there are no dangers as long as you take the necessary intuitive precautions.

As a hobby, it has the advantage of being eminently transportable, although, in my view, its best done in the bosom of the air. At certain hours of the afternoon, for example, when the light filling the apartment seems to empty it out completely, while the whole city is atremble with work, and only we, unbeknownst to anyone, are working at homeat those moments when dignity would be restored to us if we had, say, a garage or a sewing workshopthose are the moments when you can think. That way you start from wherever you happen to be, even if its not in the afternoon; although I would advise against thinking at night.

Once, for examplein the days when we used to send our clothes out to be launderedI was drawing up the laundry list. Perhaps because Im in the habit of naming things or out of a sudden desire to have an unblotted exercise book as I did at school, I wrote: list of. And it was then that the desire to be frivolous arrived. That is the first sign of the animus brincandi if you take up thinking as a hobby. And so I blithely wrote: list of feelings. Precisely what I meant by this I had to wait and seeanother sign that youre on the right track is not worrying if you dont understand; your attitude should be: you lose nothing by waiting, you lose nothing by not understanding.

Then I began to draw up a brief list of feelings for which I have no name. If I receive a present given affectionately by someone I dont likewhat name do I give to how I feel about that? The nostalgia you feel for someone you no longer like, that bitterness and rancorwhat is it called? Being busyand stopping because youre seized by a sudden blissful vacancy of mind, a lifting of the clouds, as if a miraculous light had just entered the room: what would you call that?

A word of warning. Sometimes, we start to play with thinking and, quite unexpectedly, the plaything begins to play with us. This is not good. But it is fruitful.

I have, very belatedly, been reflecting on cosmonauts. Or, rather, on the very first cosmonaut. Even just a day after Gagarin, our feelings were already lagging way behind compared with the speed with which that event had been overtaking us. Now, even more belatedly, here I am reconsidering the whole subject. Such a very difficult subject to grasp.

One day, when warned that the ball he was playing with might drop to the floor and annoy the downstairs neighbors, the boy responded: the world is automatic now, and when one hand throws the ball in the air, the other automatically catches it, so it wont fall.

The problem is that our hand has not yet become automatic enough. It was alarming when Gagarin went up into space, because if the automatic world had failed to work, the ball would have done far more than upset the downstairs neighbors. And my not-very-automatic hand trembled with fear at the possibility that it would not be quick enough and would let that cosmonautical event escape me. Having to feel was a big responsibilitynot dropping the ball being thrown at us.