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A review by exlibrisalex
Água Viva by Clarice Lispector
4.0
I can’t say that I entirely grasped what Lispector was saying in this novella, if it can indeed be called a novella, but it would seem that’s the (in?)conclusion most readers reach with this one.
“What am I doing in writing to you? trying to photograph perfume.”
Her main aim appears to be to paint in words the moments, feelings, and states of mind that one feels which are, ultimately, too fleeting (the “instant-now”) and abstract to capture and pin down with prose. While reading this I kept recalling moments in my own life, that while outwardly uneventful, elicited an intensely reflective or emotional inner experience that I personally would find impossible to put to pen and paper. So while I might not have been able to experience exactly what Lispector desired the reader to experience, it was a wholly worthwhile and personal read.
“It’s so hard to speak and say things that can’t be said. It’s so silent. How to translate the silence of the real encounter between the two of us? So hard to explain: I looked straight at you for a few instants. Such moments are my secret. There was what’s called perfect communion.”
In many passages she seemed to play with the sounds of words and sentences as opposed to the literal meaning, so don’t be too frustrated if you don’t understand what is going on. She often refers to music and painting and how those arts convey what they do without the use of words. I found Água Viva to be highly quotable which is a bit ironic since I just said large portions are non-sensical. I had previously read one of her short stories and thought it was a bad translation but the intro of this explains that her writing is odd in her native language as well and that it was an intentional choice on her part.
“I’ve spoken a lot about death. But I’m going to speak to you about the breath of life. When a person is already no longer breathing you give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation: you place your mouth upon the other person’s and breathe. And the other starts to breathe again. This exchange of breaths is one of the most beautiful things that I’ve ever heard about life. In fact the beauty of this mouth-to-mouth is dazzling me.”
As for brief, concise plot summary… it’s a reflection on time, life, death, art, and… the human experience?
“What am I doing in writing to you? trying to photograph perfume.”
Her main aim appears to be to paint in words the moments, feelings, and states of mind that one feels which are, ultimately, too fleeting (the “instant-now”) and abstract to capture and pin down with prose. While reading this I kept recalling moments in my own life, that while outwardly uneventful, elicited an intensely reflective or emotional inner experience that I personally would find impossible to put to pen and paper. So while I might not have been able to experience exactly what Lispector desired the reader to experience, it was a wholly worthwhile and personal read.
“It’s so hard to speak and say things that can’t be said. It’s so silent. How to translate the silence of the real encounter between the two of us? So hard to explain: I looked straight at you for a few instants. Such moments are my secret. There was what’s called perfect communion.”
In many passages she seemed to play with the sounds of words and sentences as opposed to the literal meaning, so don’t be too frustrated if you don’t understand what is going on. She often refers to music and painting and how those arts convey what they do without the use of words. I found Água Viva to be highly quotable which is a bit ironic since I just said large portions are non-sensical. I had previously read one of her short stories and thought it was a bad translation but the intro of this explains that her writing is odd in her native language as well and that it was an intentional choice on her part.
“I’ve spoken a lot about death. But I’m going to speak to you about the breath of life. When a person is already no longer breathing you give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation: you place your mouth upon the other person’s and breathe. And the other starts to breathe again. This exchange of breaths is one of the most beautiful things that I’ve ever heard about life. In fact the beauty of this mouth-to-mouth is dazzling me.”
As for brief, concise plot summary… it’s a reflection on time, life, death, art, and… the human experience?