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A Breath of Life: Pulsations by Clarice Lispector
A moment of the violation of the text's logic makes this clear (a violation Lispector is so fond of, as in the Hour of the Star where, in The Author's Dedication prefacing The Hour of the Star, Lispector lists her alias as Clarice Lispector, rendering her real name as psuedonymous as a pen name. Because, of course, we are other to ourselves when and as we write) when Angela refers to the book she has written entitled The Besieged City. This claim of authorship is strange because this is of course one of Lispector's own books. This is what makes the shroud of fictive pretense in this book (is this a book, or is this text a volume of books?) so wispish and thin, because even it's author delights in tearing through it in moments like these, making her presence - her name, her authorship - so terribly clear, imposing her overwhelming presence on the reader. However, this presence is not only overwhelming (for what reason would it be? merely because she is this text's author?). It is also humble, and so too is it quiet. Unassuming. Modest. Fearful. As if her voice were at times shaking.
There on the last page we see the final words in which we see Angela asserting her being while in the very throes of dying. "As for me, I am. Yes. 'I...I...no. I cannot end.' I think that...". That last breath of life, extinguished in the midst of speaking, in the middle of writing, perishing in the heart of the matter's articulation, leaves only this precipice whose heights and depths are as astounding as they are terrifying. This, or it reveals this precipice in, on, before and over which Lispector has perhaps trembled for all of her life, until she was finally read to ascend downward into them, nearer to heaven, carried by the pulsations of this same breath until it gave out.
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
"I asked God to give Angela a cancer that she can't get rid of." This is the only line left out of the manuscript for A Breath of Life by Lispector's friend who compiled her paper's after her death. This absent line, though, haunts the text from outside. It's something like a key, or kernel of truth, or at least some spectral voice whispering something 'real' in this strange, elusive text. What to call this book? The character of 'the Author' calls this The Book of Angela at one point. We might similarly call this a book of mysteries.
In any case, however, this breath of life implicated by the book's title is the last breath of life before death - the point at which, in the end, the author and Angela die together. "Death is a biblical demeanor. And it has no discursive history: it is an instant. To die once and for all. The stopping of the heart takes no time. It's the tiniest fraction of a second." It's apropos that this text was left incomplete. It could be no other way; in some sense because it is death which closed the book - A Breath of Life, the Book of Angela, and, ultimately, the Book of Lispector.
It's from this book that we get the familiar quote, "I write as if to save somebody's life. Probably my own." This comes earlier in the text. Near the end, so close to death, the character of the Author writes, "I am looking for somebody whose life I can save. The only one who allows me to do that is Angela. And as I save her life, I save my own." Angela is, of course, a character in the book the Author has written - his creation, the character he has breathed life into. What we see unravel near the end is the author of the Author (Lispector, the author for whom the Author is a fictive character) coming to terms, in some sense, with the failure of her project, of her aim. Has she saved her own life, or has she willed it to end? We see all of the emotions attending to the confusion of living and dying all at once: joy, fear, confusion, anxiety, comfort. She trembles despite reconciliation; Angela writes, "A place in the world is waiting for me to inhabit it. I was made for no one to need me.
And yet Angela, like the Author and like Lispector, remains in some sense placeless. She was made for no one to need her, and as swiftly it seems as she was created, she is so soon to die - character and author alike. This fictional pretense of 'character and author,' even given that the Author is male, is a thin veneer. We know this is Lispector, though we often (not only) hear her through these figures who are other. This is because writing, for Lispector (and of course in general), is this strange hall of mirrors refracting the author into a plurality of selves, all of which are other to the self viewing them (which, then, is the *true* self; the one looking, or the one looked upon? Impossible to tell). It signals to the split at the heart of Lispector's soul, a rupture she has always suffered.
These characters keep her company - as they do for us - and yet they are so distant, so close to absent, because, much like Lispector who might have always felt apart from inhabiting any place, her characters can only retain that same sense of exile within them. Disregarding Lispector from consideration to focus only on the Author and Angela, their voices are so similar, if not at turns identical, that if we don't pay close attention to the dialogue tags, we often won't know who is speaking (neither do we always need to know. If this book imparts any lesson, it might be to allow ourselves to know less, to forget more - to ask and inquire into those things with which we took familiarity for granted; to treat nearly everything as participating in the same perpetual mystery of creation whose manifold depths we ourselves are lost within).
The Author is behind Angela's lines, despite his claims that she is autonomous. We know she is not. The Author won't allow her to be. Because Lispector won't allow for the character of the Author to be autonomous from her. He must speak her truth. He must as well speak her untruth. He speaks her confusion, her joy, her troubles, her eagerness for and unconquerable fear of death. Her utter and irresolvable fear of the burden of creation - of enduring it as well as condemning her characters to bear this same traumatic wound.
The Author is behind Angela's lines, despite his claims that she is autonomous. We know she is not. The Author won't allow her to be. Because Lispector won't allow for the character of the Author to be autonomous from her. He must speak her truth. He must as well speak her untruth. He speaks her confusion, her joy, her troubles, her eagerness for and unconquerable fear of death. Her utter and irresolvable fear of the burden of creation - of enduring it as well as condemning her characters to bear this same traumatic wound.
A moment of the violation of the text's logic makes this clear (a violation Lispector is so fond of, as in the Hour of the Star where, in The Author's Dedication prefacing The Hour of the Star, Lispector lists her alias as Clarice Lispector, rendering her real name as psuedonymous as a pen name. Because, of course, we are other to ourselves when and as we write) when Angela refers to the book she has written entitled The Besieged City. This claim of authorship is strange because this is of course one of Lispector's own books. This is what makes the shroud of fictive pretense in this book (is this a book, or is this text a volume of books?) so wispish and thin, because even it's author delights in tearing through it in moments like these, making her presence - her name, her authorship - so terribly clear, imposing her overwhelming presence on the reader. However, this presence is not only overwhelming (for what reason would it be? merely because she is this text's author?). It is also humble, and so too is it quiet. Unassuming. Modest. Fearful. As if her voice were at times shaking.
We don't see an author in control when we see Lispector appear in her own text (as she arguably does in the heart of every word trembling in the body of every delicate and crystalline sentence). We see an author contending with her own authority, or lack thereof. An author struggling with the guilt of repeating the trauma of her own creation on her characters, marking them to a lifelong spell of exile and wandering similar to hers, and condemning them to death. She writes as if to save somebody's life, though she succeeds, in the end, in writing to end them all. Because in her final days, in the hour when her star grew dim and fell from the sky, she succeeded in writing to end her own life.
Her friend Olga Borelli, in writing on her work, states that Lispector stated that everyone chooses the way they die. Here we must remind ourselves of that absented line: "I asked God to give Angela a cancer that she can't get rid of." It was in the midst of writing this book that Lispector died of ovarian cancer.
Her friend Olga Borelli, in writing on her work, states that Lispector stated that everyone chooses the way they die. Here we must remind ourselves of that absented line: "I asked God to give Angela a cancer that she can't get rid of." It was in the midst of writing this book that Lispector died of ovarian cancer.
There on the last page we see the final words in which we see Angela asserting her being while in the very throes of dying. "As for me, I am. Yes. 'I...I...no. I cannot end.' I think that...". That last breath of life, extinguished in the midst of speaking, in the middle of writing, perishing in the heart of the matter's articulation, leaves only this precipice whose heights and depths are as astounding as they are terrifying. This, or it reveals this precipice in, on, before and over which Lispector has perhaps trembled for all of her life, until she was finally read to ascend downward into them, nearer to heaven, carried by the pulsations of this same breath until it gave out.
Cosmos by Witold Gombrowicz
funny
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
There's the typical strain of thought that thinks of the cosmos as this frame in which everything's connected in some beautiful, profound relation. Gombrowicz' novel makes clear how completely idiotic this line of logic really is (while still, in a sense, nevertheless true). Logic *is* operative in this text, but it's utterly illogical. A hanged sparrow leads two characters (as if it were a signpost), Witold and Fuks, to a pension house where they board with a family for god knows how long. Within this house, they find markings on surfaces, walls and ceilings that, to them, are etched like arrows. They are pointing to something, but what?
This novel is, ultimately, a detective novel for fucking imbeciles and for idiots. What is being solved here is so insubstantial, so moronic and so stupid that anyone who follows along with any interest is as stupid as the characters. But this is the important function of this, among Gombrowicz' other texts - it disarms us of our seriousness and our search for certainty. It cleaves us clean from desiring something like development or things like meaning, character arcs, or closure. Gombrowicz, with all of his words and pages, encounters us with hands empty of anything, giving us - if he gives anything at all - a slap across the face; one whose sting we nevertheless enjoy. Because in this senseless pain we maybe learn something like humility; learning, maybe, with any luck, not to make demands on the text, letting it, instead, make its demands on us. Because this is the only way Cosmos can be read, by letting Witold and Fuks' idiocy demand that we follow along, demanding that we be duped. Tricked, leashed and led along down paths that lead nowhere and to nothing worthwhile.
In this novel, these arcane symbols - the hanged bird, the arrows - compel Witold at some point to strangle and hang a cat. He doesn't know why, and this question becomes one he must figure out, making him a detective tasked with solving his own crime, in a way, although, more broadly, what he wishes is to finally piece together this system of symbols in a way that allows them and their places and relations with one another finally make sense.
Witold of course participates in this system of symbols, producing his own by strangling then hanging the household cat, producing this symbol which is related to the hanged sparrow, although he cannot make sense of his own production, and must go on finding its relation to the symbols in the broader system. Later, one of the boarders hangs themselves - again, for no discernible reasons, especially because they were not aware of this 'cosmos' of symbols that Witold and Fuks are entangled in. Witold feels nothing for the hanged man with whom he dined every day. Because this is a piece in the puzzle he hopes to solve. While inspecting the body, he places his finger into the man's mouth, and all at once, this incomprehensible, senseless and absurd gesture that should not mean anything at all suddenly shifts the symbolic system to a tectonic degree, bringing everything into relation. Or, "a stupid corpse was becoming a logical corpse."
Because before this, there were the hangings, the arrows, as well as the mouths of the women who lived in the house (elaboration not needed for this third point because there is no possibility to make sense of this). Where before we had these loose, unconnected constellations of symbols - of hangings, of mouths - placing Witold's finger into the hanged man's mouth brings these pieces together, relating the hangings to the mouths. With all of this accomplished, after all of this searching, what does it all mean in the very end? Fuck if we know, and fuck if Witold has any hope of knowing, either.
From this encounter with the hanged man, Witold encounters an older boarder who is the most outwardly peculiar and strange, although, next to Fuks and Witold's idiot delusions, is no less odd than they are. This man, Leon's, peculiarity is with language, however, where Witold and Fuks' is with events and appearances. Leon's repeated exclamations of "Berg!" and its (de)formations function as infinitives, commands, actions, or descriptions. For example, during Witold and Leon's last conversations, Witold turns Leon's "Berg" against him, to which Leon (in surprise? defiance? anger? joy?) replies, "Bemberging with bemberg into berg!"
What does any of this mean? For us, absolutely nothing. The events and appearances Fuks and Witold are fixated on are idiotic. Similarly, Leon's language show the idiocy of language. There's a subversion happening here; one which, if you allow yourself to stoop to their dogged level and make a moron out of yourself - as we should when we buy into any text, any film, any work of art - differs vastly from most novels. So many 'high-minded' or 'deep' novels will ruminate on the failure of language to get at the 'true heart of things in the world,' conceiving of the things themselves as real and language as so skeletal and paltry. On the other hand, we have similarly stupid strains of reasoning where these worldly things are illusory, and, if language for it's part is not identically illusory, then it alone allows us access to something 'real.'
Gombrowicz here shows us that both camps are full of idiots. Both language and these worldly things/appearances are so inordinately stupid and senseless to a baffling degree. We need only look around at what orders and arranges the coordinates of our existence on the symbolic level to see the utter idiocy with which they are imputed (that is, *forced*) into relation. These symbols are, in a sense, as utterly stupid as anything we encounter in Cosmos - the novel only makes this stupidity clear, whereas we make ourselves miss this in our own lives (as we should - the point is not to wake up to the 'reality' behind the symbol, but to let ourselves be duped and buy into the symbolic perhaps more deeply. One should not abandon fiction for reality, but instead see the ways in which both are, in many segues, twists and turns, often so stupidly if not unbearably the same).
If we’re to bother ourselves with a lesson, it should be to strive to be more stupid. This intellectual urge to 'see past or through things' is an idiocy of another kind - a more debilitating kind of stupidity, one that is not the least bit productive. We should (when it matters), allow ourselves to see the symbol itself, not whatever maybe lies beyond or behind it, so as to allow the artifice its proper place and importance.
This novel is, ultimately, a detective novel for fucking imbeciles and for idiots. What is being solved here is so insubstantial, so moronic and so stupid that anyone who follows along with any interest is as stupid as the characters. But this is the important function of this, among Gombrowicz' other texts - it disarms us of our seriousness and our search for certainty. It cleaves us clean from desiring something like development or things like meaning, character arcs, or closure. Gombrowicz, with all of his words and pages, encounters us with hands empty of anything, giving us - if he gives anything at all - a slap across the face; one whose sting we nevertheless enjoy. Because in this senseless pain we maybe learn something like humility; learning, maybe, with any luck, not to make demands on the text, letting it, instead, make its demands on us. Because this is the only way Cosmos can be read, by letting Witold and Fuks' idiocy demand that we follow along, demanding that we be duped. Tricked, leashed and led along down paths that lead nowhere and to nothing worthwhile.
In this novel, these arcane symbols - the hanged bird, the arrows - compel Witold at some point to strangle and hang a cat. He doesn't know why, and this question becomes one he must figure out, making him a detective tasked with solving his own crime, in a way, although, more broadly, what he wishes is to finally piece together this system of symbols in a way that allows them and their places and relations with one another finally make sense.
Witold of course participates in this system of symbols, producing his own by strangling then hanging the household cat, producing this symbol which is related to the hanged sparrow, although he cannot make sense of his own production, and must go on finding its relation to the symbols in the broader system. Later, one of the boarders hangs themselves - again, for no discernible reasons, especially because they were not aware of this 'cosmos' of symbols that Witold and Fuks are entangled in. Witold feels nothing for the hanged man with whom he dined every day. Because this is a piece in the puzzle he hopes to solve. While inspecting the body, he places his finger into the man's mouth, and all at once, this incomprehensible, senseless and absurd gesture that should not mean anything at all suddenly shifts the symbolic system to a tectonic degree, bringing everything into relation. Or, "a stupid corpse was becoming a logical corpse."
Because before this, there were the hangings, the arrows, as well as the mouths of the women who lived in the house (elaboration not needed for this third point because there is no possibility to make sense of this). Where before we had these loose, unconnected constellations of symbols - of hangings, of mouths - placing Witold's finger into the hanged man's mouth brings these pieces together, relating the hangings to the mouths. With all of this accomplished, after all of this searching, what does it all mean in the very end? Fuck if we know, and fuck if Witold has any hope of knowing, either.
From this encounter with the hanged man, Witold encounters an older boarder who is the most outwardly peculiar and strange, although, next to Fuks and Witold's idiot delusions, is no less odd than they are. This man, Leon's, peculiarity is with language, however, where Witold and Fuks' is with events and appearances. Leon's repeated exclamations of "Berg!" and its (de)formations function as infinitives, commands, actions, or descriptions. For example, during Witold and Leon's last conversations, Witold turns Leon's "Berg" against him, to which Leon (in surprise? defiance? anger? joy?) replies, "Bemberging with bemberg into berg!"
What does any of this mean? For us, absolutely nothing. The events and appearances Fuks and Witold are fixated on are idiotic. Similarly, Leon's language show the idiocy of language. There's a subversion happening here; one which, if you allow yourself to stoop to their dogged level and make a moron out of yourself - as we should when we buy into any text, any film, any work of art - differs vastly from most novels. So many 'high-minded' or 'deep' novels will ruminate on the failure of language to get at the 'true heart of things in the world,' conceiving of the things themselves as real and language as so skeletal and paltry. On the other hand, we have similarly stupid strains of reasoning where these worldly things are illusory, and, if language for it's part is not identically illusory, then it alone allows us access to something 'real.'
Gombrowicz here shows us that both camps are full of idiots. Both language and these worldly things/appearances are so inordinately stupid and senseless to a baffling degree. We need only look around at what orders and arranges the coordinates of our existence on the symbolic level to see the utter idiocy with which they are imputed (that is, *forced*) into relation. These symbols are, in a sense, as utterly stupid as anything we encounter in Cosmos - the novel only makes this stupidity clear, whereas we make ourselves miss this in our own lives (as we should - the point is not to wake up to the 'reality' behind the symbol, but to let ourselves be duped and buy into the symbolic perhaps more deeply. One should not abandon fiction for reality, but instead see the ways in which both are, in many segues, twists and turns, often so stupidly if not unbearably the same).
If we’re to bother ourselves with a lesson, it should be to strive to be more stupid. This intellectual urge to 'see past or through things' is an idiocy of another kind - a more debilitating kind of stupidity, one that is not the least bit productive. We should (when it matters), allow ourselves to see the symbol itself, not whatever maybe lies beyond or behind it, so as to allow the artifice its proper place and importance.