Existentialism, Ontology, and Mysticism in Clarice Lispector’s A descoberta do mundo

Luiza Lobo

doi:10.21471/jls.v4i2.335

Abstract

This article aims to place Clarice Lispector as the inventor of a new type of newspaper chronicle. The style of her 468 chronicles published weekly in Jornal do Brasil, from 1967 to 1973, and collected in the book A descoberta do mundo (1984), differs from that of her contemporary male chroniclers, such as Rubem Braga, Paulo Mendes Campos, Fernando Sabino, and Otto Lara Resende, or even women chroniclers, such as Rachel de Queiroz and Dinah Silveira de Queiroz. Mingling Sartre’s existentialism and Heidegger’s phenomenology with the Jewish mysticism learned as a child enabled Lispector to write in a style that pioneered modern women’s prose fiction in Brazil after 1970. This article argues that fragmentation and hybridization are the marks of her “discovery” of a new world as a woman writer, making her crônicas predecessors of today’s women’s blogs.

Highlights

This article aims to place Clarice Lispector as the inventor of a new type of newspaper chronicle
This article examines the chronicles Clarice Lispector published in the newspaper Jornal do Brasil between the years 1967 and 1973
My aim is to establish how existentialism and phenomenology were for Lispector a form of questioning life rather than a theoretical reading on her part

Summary

Mysticism and the Discovery of the Sacred World

Even though we see traces of existential and ontological thought in Lispector’s chronicles and fiction, she repeatedly denied being an intellectual: “Sou feliz de pertencer à literatura brasileira por motivos que nada têm a ver com literatura, pois nem ao menos sou uma literata ou uma intelectual” (“Pertencer,” June 15, 1968, 151-53, 152). Lispector’s knowledge of Judaism almost certainly came from her father, who had studied the Talmud, and from the year she spent in a Jewish school while the family lived in Recife She was aware of the religious significance of numbers in the Kabbalah, and as a girl she taught private arithmetic classes.. Many mystical references may give her chronicles and writings a certain resemblance to what would be later called self-help books Her mixed appeals either to the Christian God, to Jewish or even to Greek values, stand as evidence of her religious hybridization—that many would call assimilation—as in “Como uma corça” (Jan. 27, 1968, 84), or calling “o deus,” in A paixão segundo G.H. 20 Lispector’s family emigrated from a Jewish community near Sawranh (Ukraine) to Maceió (AL) in 1922 and later to Recife. Não tento sequer explicar o que aconteceu: tudo se queimou, mas o missal ficou intato, apenas com um leve chamuscado na capa” (234)

Conclusion

Works Cited