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A review by rodrovich
Água Viva by Clarice Lispector
4.0
I’m lost... WHAT IS THIS?!?!?!
This book is only 88 pages but it’s one of the densest and oddest books I have read this year. It’s one monologue by a woman who seems to be obsessed with “is” - the instant, the present - to an insane degree, and has a poetic quality in its prose that kind of reminded me of Hesse’s way of writing in Siddhartha. Lispector’s writing style has this one-of-a-kind hypnotic and meditative charm. So even though I found two-fifths of the text pretty much indecipherable, I was kind of entranced glazing over her describing mutating into a different form of existence at light speed and then changing once again. Reading most of this felt like being stuck in a serene sleep paralysis (if such a thing existed), where I just wait for it to be over but I don’t want it to because my brain is still not sure whether I’ll wake up and exist when it’s over. That said, on p.41, Lispector says “I notice that I’m writing as I were between sleep and wakefulness”... and yeah, that’s exactly how I felt reading this monologue. Lispector’s view on mortality really moved me near the end, on how our mortality means it will all end and there’s no continuation but she explores this sobering view in a celebration of the “instant”. It’s a really sincere book despite its structure coming off as pretentious and unnecessarily experimental on the surface level, which didn't turn out to be the case at all after the first 10 pages or so. Although I have to say, for a short book like this, there were some big passages that just escaped me completely, even on re-reading… maybe I should come back to this later, or maybe I'll never "get" them. There’s so much more to talk about, like how Lispector compares her writing in the monologue to painting and music but I’ll stop here.
8/10
This book is only 88 pages but it’s one of the densest and oddest books I have read this year. It’s one monologue by a woman who seems to be obsessed with “is” - the instant, the present - to an insane degree, and has a poetic quality in its prose that kind of reminded me of Hesse’s way of writing in Siddhartha. Lispector’s writing style has this one-of-a-kind hypnotic and meditative charm. So even though I found two-fifths of the text pretty much indecipherable, I was kind of entranced glazing over her describing mutating into a different form of existence at light speed and then changing once again. Reading most of this felt like being stuck in a serene sleep paralysis (if such a thing existed), where I just wait for it to be over but I don’t want it to because my brain is still not sure whether I’ll wake up and exist when it’s over. That said, on p.41, Lispector says “I notice that I’m writing as I were between sleep and wakefulness”... and yeah, that’s exactly how I felt reading this monologue. Lispector’s view on mortality really moved me near the end, on how our mortality means it will all end and there’s no continuation but she explores this sobering view in a celebration of the “instant”. It’s a really sincere book despite its structure coming off as pretentious and unnecessarily experimental on the surface level, which didn't turn out to be the case at all after the first 10 pages or so. Although I have to say, for a short book like this, there were some big passages that just escaped me completely, even on re-reading… maybe I should come back to this later, or maybe I'll never "get" them. There’s so much more to talk about, like how Lispector compares her writing in the monologue to painting and music but I’ll stop here.
8/10