Lispector - The passion according to G.H

ALSO BY CLARICE LISPECTOR

AVAILABLE FROM NEW DIRECTIONS

gua Viva

A Breath of Life

The Foreign Legion

The Hour of the Star

Near to the Wild Heart

Selected Crnicas

Soulstorm

THE PASSION
ACCORDING TO G. H.

Clarice Lispector

Translated from the Portuguese, with a note, by Idra Novey

Introduction by Caetano Veloso

Edited by Benjamin Moser

A NEW DIRECTIONS BOOK

Copyright 1964 by t h e Heirs of Clarice Lispector

Translation copyright 2012 by Idra Novey

Introduction copyright 2012 by Caetano Veloso

Originally published as A Paixo segundo G. H . Published by arrangement with the Heirs of Clarice Lispector and Agencia Literaria Carmen Balcells,
Barcelona.

All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

First published by New Directions as ndp 1224 in 2012

Published simultaneously in Canada by Penguin Books Canada Limited

Design by Erik Rieselbach

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lispector, Clarice.

[Paixo segundo G. H. English]

Th e passion according to G. H. / Clarice Lispector ; translated by Idra Novey ; edited by Benjamin Moser ; introduction by Caetano Veloso.

p. cm.

eISBN 978-0-8112-2069-9

I. Novey, Idra. II. Moser, Benjamin. III. Title.

PQ9697.L585P313 2012

869.342dc23

2012005502

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin

by New Directions Publishing Corporation

80 Eighth Avenue. New York 10011

Contents

A complete life may be one ending in so full identification with the non-self that there is no self to die.

Bernard Benson

Im searching, Im searching. Im trying to understand. Trying to give what Ive lived to somebody else and I dont know to whom, but I dont want to keep what I lived. I dont know what to do with what I lived, Im afraid of that profound disorder. I dont trust what happened to me. Did something happen to me that I, because I didnt know how to live it, lived as something else? Thats what Id like to call disorganization, and Id have the confidence to venture on, because I would know where to return afterward: to the previous organization. Id rather call it disorganization because I dont want to confirm myself in what I lived in the confirmation of me I would lose the world as I had it, and I know I dont have the fortitude for another.

If I confirm my self and consider myself truthful, Ill be lost because I wont know where to inlay my new way of being if I go ahead with my fragmentary visions, the whole world will have to be transformed in order for me to fit within it.

I lost something that was essential to me, and that no longer is. I no longer need it, as if Id lost a third leg that up till then made it impossible for me to walk but that turned me into a stable tripod. I lost that third leg. And I went back to being a person I never was. I went back to having something I never had: just two legs. I know I can only walk with two legs. But I feel the useless absence of that third leg and it scares me, it was the leg that made me something findable by myself, and without even having to look for myself.

Am I disorganized because I lost something I didnt need? In this new cowardice of mine cowardice is the newest thing to happen to me, its my greatest adventure, this cowardice of mine is a field so wide that only the great courage leads me to accept it in my new cowardice, which is like waking one morning in a foreigners house, I dont know if Ill have the courage just to go. Its hard to get lost. Its so hard that Ill probably quickly figure out some way to find myself, even if finding myself is once again my vital lie. Until now finding myself was already having an idea of a person and fitting myself into it: Id incarnate myself into this organized person, and didnt even feel the great effort of construction that is living. The idea I had of what a person is came from my third leg, the one that pinned me to the ground. But, and now? will I be freer?

No. I know Im still not feeling freely, that once again Im thinking because I have the objective of finding and for safetys sake Ill call finding the moment I discover a way out. Why dont I have the courage just to discover a way in? Oh, I know I went in, oh yes. But I got scared because I dont know what that entrance opens onto. And Id never let myself be carried off, unless I knew where to.

Yesterday, however, I lost my human setup for hours and hours. If I have the courage, Ill let myself stay lost. But Im afraid of newness and Im afraid of living whatever I dont understand I always want to be sure to at least think I understand, I dont know how to give myself over to disorientation. How could I explain that my greatest fear is precisely of: being? and yet there is no other way. How can I explain that my greatest fear is living whatever comes? how to explain that I cant stand seeing, just because life isnt what I thought but something else as if I knew what! Why is seeing such disorganization?

And a disappointment. But disappointment with what? if, without even feeling it, I must have hardly been able to stand my barely constructed organization? Maybe disappointment is the fear of no longer belonging to a system. So I could put it like this: he is very happy because he was finally disappointed. What I used to be, was no good for me. But it was from that not-good that Id organized the best thing of all: hope. From my own flaw I had created a future good. Am I afraid now that my new way of being doesnt make sense? But why not let myself be carried away by whatever happens? I would have to take the holy risk of chance. And I will substitute fate for probability.

But will the discoveries of childhood have been like in a laboratory where you find whatever you find? So it was only as an adult that I grew scared and created the third leg? But as an adult can I find the childish courage to get lost? getting lost means finding things without any idea of what to do with what youre finding. The two legs walking, without the third that holds you back. And I want to be held back. I dont know what to do with the terrifying freedom that could destroy me. But was I happy while imprisoned? or was there, and there was, something restless and sly in my happy jailhouse routine? or was there, and there was, that throbbing thing I was so used to that I thought that throbbing was being a person. Is that right? that too, that too.

I get so scared when I realize I lost my human form for several hours. I dont know if Ill have another form to replace the one I lost. I know Ill need to be careful not to use furtively a new third leg that from me sprouts swiftly as weeds, and to call this protective leg a truth.

But I also dont know what form to give what happened to me. And without giving it a form, nothing can exist for me. And and if its really true that nothing existed?! maybe nothing happened to me? I can only understand what happens to me but things only happen that I understand what do I know of the rest? the rest didnt exist. Maybe nothing ever existed! Maybe all that happened to me was a slow and great dissolution? And that this is my struggle against that disintegration: trying now to give it a form? A form shapes the chaos, a form gives construction to the amorphous substance the vision of an infinite piece of meat is the vision of the mad, but if I cut that meat into pieces and parcel them out over days and over hungers then it would no longer be perdition and madness: it would once again be humanized life.