I live in the Washington, D.C. area, and it’s difficult to imagine iconic Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector here. Irrepressible and charismatic, Lispector and her depictions of Rio seem as out of place in the D.C. suburbs as a bird of paradise stifled in a temperate climate. Yet she spent much of the 1950s in Chevy Chase, Maryland as the (mostly unhappy) wife of a Brazilian diplomat. Her D.C. years were just one chapter of a restless life; the daughter of Jewish Ukrainian immigrants to Brazil, she also resided in Italy, England, and Switzerland.
Though she’s widely considered Brazil’s greatest modern writer, reading Lispector is no simple task. Her stream-of-consciousness style is reminiscent of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. Her translator and biographer, Benjamin Moser, insists she isn’t any easier in the original: “Paradoxically, the better one’s Portuguese, the more difficult it is to read Clarice Lispector…her subtle rearrangements of everyday language are so surprising that they often baffle the reader.” An unusual narrator and heroine in Moser’s translation of her short final novel, The Hour of the Star, provide a taste of Lispector’s quirky style.
The Hour of the Star’s narrative style is leisurely. For a story about a typist in Rio, its starting point feels off-base: “All the world began with a yes. One molecule said yes to another molecule and life was born.” The reader seems to be in for a tedious ride, but not so. This odd statement introduces the novel’s manic narrator: writer Rodrigo S.M. His story about a poor girl is supposedly best told by a “male writer,” because a woman would make it “weepy” and “maudlin.” His narration feels neither macho nor removed, though. He admits that he’s “put[ting] off the poverty of the story” because he’s “scared,” but this character demands to be heard: “She’s accusing me and the way to defend myself is to write about her.” As he assures us that “a plangent violin played by a thin man right on the street corner” accompanies this narrative, his detours take on a humorous, whimsical quality. This Russian doll nesting—Clarice Lispector channeling a male writer channeling a Brazilian woman—turns readers into detectives, peeling back layers of language to find meaning.
When she finally appears, protagonist Macabéa defies explanation. Her life may be dogged by unrelenting poverty, but she isn’t a tragic figure. She lives in Rio on “rough Acre Street amongst the prostitutes who served sailors, coal and cement warehouses.” However, circumstances don’t define her. Rodrigo reflects that “she had what’s known as inner life and didn’t know it…when she went to work she looked like a gentle lunatic because as the bus went along she daydreamed in loud and dazzling dreams.” Her first boyfriend proves an ominous man who has committed murder “since killing made him a Man with a capital M,” and Macabéa’s story seems recognizable again; a poor girl with a rural background encounters danger in the city. But even when she meets a sudden fate, she is not a little girl lost, but “finally free of herself.” She never conforms to any expectations of genre fiction, even when it clouds her identity.
Why read this cryptic work? Beyond the refreshing prospect of a young woman who eludes stereotypes, The Hour of the Star forces us to confront our limits as readers. We may want to know more, but the chaotic narrative prevents a full picture of Macabéa’s life and motives. Rodrigo struggles to understand her, and Lispector had thirteen alternate titles for this novel. Though it creates more questions than answers, this winding tale welcomes us to face uncertainty with humor and exuberance.
Photo Credit: David Mark, “Rio De Janeiro Brazil City,” on Pixabay.
