Clarice Lispector - Agua Viva

ALSO BY CLARICELISPECTOR

AVAILABLE FROM NEWDIRECTIONS

A Breath of Life

The Foreign Legion

The Hour of the Star

Near to the Wild Heart

The Passion According to G. H.

Selected Crnicas

Soulstorm

GUA VIVA

Clarice Lispector

Translated from the Portuguese by Stefan Tobler

Introduction by Benjamin Moser

Edited by Benjamin Moser

Contents

A New DirectionsBook

Copyright 1973 by the Heirs of Clarice Lispector

Translation copyright 2012 by Stefan Tobler

Introduction copyright 2012 by Benjamin Moser

Originally published as guaViva. Published by arrangement with the Heirs of Clarice Lispector andAgencia Literaria Carmen Balcells, Barcelona.

All rights reserved. Except forbrief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or websitereview, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means,electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by anyinformation storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from thePublisher.

The translator would like tothank Claire Williams and Benjamin Moser for their help and suggestions.

First published by New Directionsas NDP1223 in 2012

Published simultaneously in Canada by Penguin BooksCanada Limited

Manufactured in the United States of America

New Directions Books are printed on acid-freepaper.

Design by Erik Rieselbach

Library of CongressCataloging-in-Publication Data

Lispector, Clarice.

[gua viva. English]

gua viva / Clarice Lispector ;translated by Stefan Tobler ; edited by
Benjamin Moser.

p. cm.

eISBN 978-0-8112-2072-9

I. Tobler, Stefan. II. Moser, Benjamin. III. Title.

PQ9697.L585A7813 2012

869.3'42dc23

2012005503

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

New Directions Books are published for JamesLaughlin

by New Directions Publishing Corporation

80 Eighth Avenue. New York 10011

Its with such profound happiness. Such a hallelujah.Hallelujah, I shout, hallelujah merging with the darkest human howl of the painof separation but a shout of diabolic joy. Because no one can hold me back now.I can still reasonI studied mathematics, which is the madness of reasonbutnow I want the plasmaI want to eat straight from the placenta. I am a littlescared: scared of surrendering completely because the next instant is theunknown. The next instant, do I make it? or does it make itself? We make ittogether with our breath. And with the flair of the bullfighter in the ring.

Let me tell you: Im trying to seize the fourth dimensionof this instant-now so fleeting that its already gone because its alreadybecome a new instant-now thats also already gone. Every thing has an instant inwhich it is. I want to grab hold of the is of the thing. These instantspassing through the air I breathe: in fireworks they explode silently in space.I want to possess the atoms of time. And to capture the present, forbidden byits very nature: the present slips away and the instant too, I am this verysecond forever in the now. Only the act of lovethe limpid star-likeabstraction of feelingcaptures the unknown moment, the instant hard ascrystal and vibrating in the air and life is this untellable instant, largerthan the event itself: during love the impersonal jewel of the moment shines inthe air, the strange glory of the body, matter made feeling in the trembling ofthe instantsand the feeling is both immaterial and so objective that it seemsto happen outside your body, sparkling on high, joy, joy is times material andthe essence of the instant. And in the instant is the is of theinstant. I want to seize my is. And like a bird I sing hallelujah intothe air. And my song belongs to no one. But no passion suffered in pain and loveis not followed by a hallelujah.

Is my theme the instant? the theme of my life. I try tokeep up with it, I divide thousands of times into as many times as the number ofinstants running by, fragmented as I am and the moments so fragilemy only vowis to life born with time and growing along with it: only in time itself isthere room enough for me.

All of me is writing to you and I feel the taste of beingand the taste-of-you is as abstract as the instant. I also use my whole bodywhen I paint and set the bodiless upon the canvas, my whole body wrestling withmyself. You dont understand music: you hear it. So hear me with your wholebody. When you come to read me you will ask why I dont keep to painting and myexhibitions, since I write so rough and disorderly. Its because now I feel theneed for wordsand what Im writing is new to me because until now my trueword has never been touched. The word is my fourth dimension.

Today I finished the canvas I told you about: curves thatintersect in fine black lines, and you, with your habit of wanting to know whyIm not interested in that, the cause is past matterwill ask me why the fineblack lines? because of the same secret that now makes me write as if to you,writing something round and rolled up and warm, but sometimes cold as the freshinstants, the water of an ever-trembling stream. Can what I painted on thiscanvas be put into words? Just as the silent word can be suggested by a musicalsound.

I see that Ive never told you how I listen to musicIgently rest my hand on the record player and my hand vibrates, sending wavesthrough my whole body: and so I listen to the electricity of the vibrations, thelast substratum of realitys realm, and the world trembles inside my hands.

And so I realize that I want the vibrating substratum ofthe repeated word sung in Gregorian chant. Im aware that I cant say everythingI know, I only know when painting or pronouncing, syllables blind of meaning.And if here I must use words, they must bear an almost merely bodily meaning.Im struggling with the last vibration. To tell you of my substratum I make asentence of words made only from instants-now. Read, therefore, my invention aspure vibration with no meaning beyond each whistling syllable, read this: withthe passing of the centuries I lost the secret of Egypt, when I moved inlongitudes, latitudes, and altitudes with the energetic action of electrons,protons, and neutrons, under the spell of the word and its shadow. What I wroteyou here is an electronic drawing without past or future: it is simply now.

I must also write to you because you harvestdiscursive words and not the directness of my painting. I know that my phrasesare crude, I write them with too much love, and that love makes up for theirfaults, but too much love is bad for the work. This isnt a book because thisisnt how anyone writes. Is what I write a single climax? My days are a singleclimax: I live on the edge.

In writing I cant manufacture something as in painting,when I use my craft to mix a color. But Im trying to write to you with my wholebody, loosing an arrow that will sink into the tender and neuralgic centre ofthe word. My secret body tells you: dinosaurs, ichthyosaurs, and plesiosaurs,meaning nothing but their sound, though this doesnt dry them out like straw butmoistens them instead. I dont paint ideas, I paint the unattainable forever.Or for never, it amounts to the same. More than anything else, I paintpainting. And more than anything else, I write you hard writing. I want to grabthe word in my hand. Is the word an object? And from the instants I extract thejuice of their fruits. I must deprive myself to reach the core and seed of life.The instant is living seed.

The secret harmony of disharmony: I dont want somethingalready made but something still being tortuously made. My unbalanced words arethe wealth of my silence. I write in acrobatics and pirouettes in the airIwrite because I so deeply want to speak. Though writing only gives me the fullmeasure of silence.

And if I say I its because I dare not say you, orwe or one. Im forced to the humility of personalizing myself belittlingmyself but I am the are-you.