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A review by emilyconstance
Água Viva by Clarice Lispector
5.0
Lispector just compared me to a wardrobe—and she's so right. When someone looks up the definition of incantation, this book should come up. This has totally altered the way I view writing, existing, living, thinking; being a woman, being human—earthly, celestial. I drunkenly read so many of these passages to my friend a couple of nights ago and kept getting chills. Really wish the original title, "Beyond Thought" was kept because that really captures the essence of what this disordered, disarticulate, elusive, promiscuous—as she would call it—piece of writing is.
/some/ memorable quotes:
"This is life seen by life. I may not have meaning but it is the same lack of meaning that the pulsing vein has."
"Sunday is a day of echoes—hot, dry, and everywhere buzzings of bees and wasps, cries of birds and the distance of paced hammer blows—where do the echoes of Sunday come from? I who loathe Sunday because it's hollow. I, who want the most primary thing because it's the source of generation—I who am all of this, must by fate and tragic destiny only know and taste the echoes of me, because I cannot capture the me itself."
"And madly I take control of the recesses of myself, my ravings suffocate me with so much beauty. I am before, I am almost, I am never."
"I go too far and only then do I exist and in a feverish way. What a fever—will I one day manage to stop living? woe is me, who dies so much. I follow the torturous path of roots bursting the earth. I have a gift for passion, in the bonfire of a dry trunk I contort in the blaze...I'm a concomitant being: I gather in me time past, the present, and the future."
"I, anonymous work of an anonymous reality only justifiable as long as my life lasts."
"I'm restless and harsh and hopeless. Though I have love inside myself. It's just that I don't know how to use love. Sometimes it scratches like barbs."
"Inside each little ant fits a whole world that will escape me if I'm not careful."
"Sometimes I can't stand the strength of inspiration. Then I paint with a heavy heart."
"And each little thing that happens to me I live it here by noting it down. Because I want to feel in my probing hands the living and quivering nerve of the today...is not using words to lose your identity?...I lose the identity of the world inside myself and exist without guarantees. I achieve whatever is achievable but I live the unachievable and the meaning of me and the world and you isn't obvious. It's fantastic..."
"I'm alone. I and my freedom that I don't know how to use. Great responsibility of solitude. Whoever isn't lost doesn't know freedom and love it. As for me, I own up to my solitude that sometimes falls into ecstasy as before fireworks. I am alone and must live a certain intimate glory that in solitude can become pain. And the pain, silence. I keep its name secret. I need secrets in order to live."
"Ah if I had known that it were like that I wouldn't have been born. Ah if I had known I wouldn't have been born. Madness borders the cruellest good sense."
"I am finding myself: it's deadly because only death concludes me. But I bear it until the end. I'll tell you a secret: life is deadly. I'll have to interrupt everything to tell you this: death is the impossible and intangible...It's as if life said the following: and there simply was no following. Only the waiting colon."
/some/ memorable quotes:
"This is life seen by life. I may not have meaning but it is the same lack of meaning that the pulsing vein has."
"Sunday is a day of echoes—hot, dry, and everywhere buzzings of bees and wasps, cries of birds and the distance of paced hammer blows—where do the echoes of Sunday come from? I who loathe Sunday because it's hollow. I, who want the most primary thing because it's the source of generation—I who am all of this, must by fate and tragic destiny only know and taste the echoes of me, because I cannot capture the me itself."
"And madly I take control of the recesses of myself, my ravings suffocate me with so much beauty. I am before, I am almost, I am never."
"I go too far and only then do I exist and in a feverish way. What a fever—will I one day manage to stop living? woe is me, who dies so much. I follow the torturous path of roots bursting the earth. I have a gift for passion, in the bonfire of a dry trunk I contort in the blaze...I'm a concomitant being: I gather in me time past, the present, and the future."
"I, anonymous work of an anonymous reality only justifiable as long as my life lasts."
"I'm restless and harsh and hopeless. Though I have love inside myself. It's just that I don't know how to use love. Sometimes it scratches like barbs."
"Inside each little ant fits a whole world that will escape me if I'm not careful."
"Sometimes I can't stand the strength of inspiration. Then I paint with a heavy heart."
"And each little thing that happens to me I live it here by noting it down. Because I want to feel in my probing hands the living and quivering nerve of the today...is not using words to lose your identity?...I lose the identity of the world inside myself and exist without guarantees. I achieve whatever is achievable but I live the unachievable and the meaning of me and the world and you isn't obvious. It's fantastic..."
"I'm alone. I and my freedom that I don't know how to use. Great responsibility of solitude. Whoever isn't lost doesn't know freedom and love it. As for me, I own up to my solitude that sometimes falls into ecstasy as before fireworks. I am alone and must live a certain intimate glory that in solitude can become pain. And the pain, silence. I keep its name secret. I need secrets in order to live."
"Ah if I had known that it were like that I wouldn't have been born. Ah if I had known I wouldn't have been born. Madness borders the cruellest good sense."
"I am finding myself: it's deadly because only death concludes me. But I bear it until the end. I'll tell you a secret: life is deadly. I'll have to interrupt everything to tell you this: death is the impossible and intangible...It's as if life said the following: and there simply was no following. Only the waiting colon."