Near to the Wild Heart

by Clarice Lispector

  Once more, she slipped to the window, breathing cautiously. Plunged into a happiness so perfect and intense almost like the chill of ice, almost like the perception of music. Her lips began to tremble, made her look serious. Eternal, eternal. Brilliant and confused, broad tracts of land the colour of chestnuts were succeeded by green, sparkling rivers, coursing with fury and melody. Liquids glowing like flames pouring into her transparent body as if it were an enormous vessel... She herself growing on the smothered earth, dividing into thousands of living particles, filled with her thoughts, her strength, her unawareness...Smoothly crossing the cloudless sky, travelling, flying...

  A bird flew slanting into the distance!

  It penetrated the clear atmosphere and disappeared into the dense foliage of a tree.

  Silence was left behind, palpitating in tiny whispers. How long had she been observing it, without feeling anything?

  Ah, so she would die.

  Yes, she would die. As simply as the bird had flown. She tilted her head to one side, gently like a harmless madwoman: but it's easy, so easy...not even intelligent... it's death that will come, that will come... How many seconds had passed? Several. Or more. Cold. She perceived that by some miracle she had now become conscious of those thoughts, that they were so deep that they had passed beneath others that were material and easy, simultaneously ... While she had lived the dream, she had observed the things around her, she had used them mentally, nervously, like someone pulling back the curtain to look at the view. She closed her eyes, pleasantly serene and weary, enshrouded in long, grey veils. For yet another moment, she sensed the threat of incomprehension rising from the remote interior of her body like a flux of blood. Eternity is non-being, death is immortality — they were still floating, the scattered remains after the storm. And she no longer knew where she might secure them, she felt so weary.

  Now the certainty of immortality had vanished forever. Perhaps once or twice more in life — perhaps one late afternoon, in a moment of love, at the moment of dying — she would achieve sublime creative unconsciousness, the acute and blind intuition that she was truly immortal for evermore.

  The Journey

  Impossible to explain. She gradually withdrew from that zone where things have a set form and edges, where everything has a solid and immutable name. Increasingly, she sank into that fluid region, quiescent and unfathomable, where clouds hovered, indistinct and fresh like those of dawn. Dawn breaking over the countryside. On her uncle's farm she had woken up in the middle of the night. The floorboards in the old house were creaking. From up there on the first floor, free in that dark space, she had looked out at the land, searching for those plants that were writhing, coiled up like snakes. Something blinked in the night, looking, looking, the eyes of an outstretched dog on guard. The silence throbbed in her blood and she gasped to its rhythm. The dawn broke over the fields, rosy and moist. The plants were once more green and ingenuous, their stems quivering, sensitive to the breeze, emerging from death. There was no longer any dog guarding the farm. Everything was now one, light, unconscious. At that moment there was a horse running free through the silent countryside, the movement of its legs barely visible. Everything was imprecise, but suddenly in that imprecision she had found a lucidity which she had scarcely perceived and hadn't been able to possess entirely. Perturbed, she had thought: everything, everything. The words are pebbles rolling in the river. That wasn't happiness she had felt just then, but what she had felt had been fluid, pleasantly amorphous, a shining moment, a sombre moment. As sombre as the house that stood on the road covered by dense trees and dust from the road. Inside lived a barefooted old man and his two sons, big and handsome breeders. The younger son had eyes, above all eyes. He had once given her a kiss, one of the most satisfying kisses she had ever experienced, and something rose from the bottom of those eyes when she stretched out her hand. This same hand, which was now resting on the back of the chair, like some tiny separate body, satisfied, languid. As a child, she used to make her hand dance, as if it were a delicate little girl. She had made it dance even for the man who fled or who had been caught, for her lover — and he, fascinated and anguished, had ended up by squeezing it, by kissing it as if that hand itself were a woman. Ah, she had experienced so much, the farm, the man, the hours of waiting. Entire summers, when she spent sleepless nights, which left her pale, her eyes dark. Within her insomnia, other insomnias. She had known certain odours. The smell of damp vegetation, trees and plants illuminated by lights, where? In those days she had trodden on the moist soil of flowerbeds, while the attendant wasn't looking. Lights hanging from wires, swaying, like this, meditating indifferently, music coming from the band-stand, the black musicians sweating in their uniforms. The trees lit up, the chilly, unreal atmosphere of prostitutes. And above all, there was what cannot be expressed: eyes and a mouth spying from behind the curtain, the eyes of a dog blinking from time to time, a river rolling in silence and not knowing. Also: the plants growing from seeds and dying. Also: in some remote place, a sparrow perched on a branch and someone sleeping. Everything dissolved. The farm, too, existed at that same moment and at that same moment the hand of the clock moved forward while her feeling of bewilderment found itself overtaken by the clock.

  Within herself she could feel the time she had lived accumulating. It was an uncertain feeling like the memory of some house in which she had lived. Not exactly of the house, but of its location inside her, in relation to her father beating on his typewriter, in relation to their neighbour's backyard and the waning sunlight in the late afternoon. Obscure, remote and silent. An instant... expired. And she was incapable of knowing whether after this time she had lived there would be continuation, renewal or nothing, like some barrier. No one was preventing her from doing exactly the opposite of any of the things that she might be about to do: no one, nothing... she was not obliged to follow her own beginning... Did it bring pain or pleasure? Meanwhile she felt that this strange freedom which had been her downfall, which she had never linked even to herself, that it was this freedom which was illuminating her body. And she knew that it gave her life and her moments of glory as the creative source of every future moment.

  She had survived like an embryo that remained moist amidst the parched and burning rocks, Joana mused. On that evening, now grown old — a closed circle of life, a task completed — on that evening when she had received the man's note, she had chosen a new path. She mustn't escape, but go on. She must use the money her father left behind and which had never been touched, the inheritance she had so far disregarded, she must go, go, be humble, suffer, totter on weak foundations, lose any hopes. Above all, lose any hopes.

  She loved her choice, and serenity now caressed her face, allowing moments that were dead and gone to come to mind. She must become one of those people without pride or shame who confide in strangers at any time. And in this way, she would link herself to infancy before death, by means of nakedness. She must finally abase herself. How can I humiliate myself sufficiently, how can I expose myself to the world and death?

  The ship swayed gently on the sea as if on gentle open hands. She leaned over the deck-rail and felt tenderness rise slowly to the surface, enveloping her in sadness.

  On deck, the passengers strolled up and down, impatiently waiting for tea to be served, anxious to reunite time with time. Someone said, in a pained voice: look at the rain! A grey mist was, in fact, encroaching, eyes closed. Very soon, large raindrops could be seen falling on the wooden planks of the deck, the noise of pins dropping as they hit the water, imperceptibly piercing the surface. The wind grew cold, people were raising the collars of their jackets, suddenly looking anxious, fleeing from melancholy like Otávio with his fear of suffering. De profundis...

  De profundis?

  Something was trying to speak... De profundis... To hear itself! to take the fleeting opportunity that danced with agile feet on the edge of the abyss. De profundis. To shut the doors of consciousness. At first, to perceive corrupt
ed water, foolish phrases, but then amidst the confusion the thread of pure water shimmering on the rough wall. De profundis. She must approach with care, allow the first waves to trickle. De profundis... She closed her eyes, but barely saw the penumbra. She sank more deeply into thought, she saw a thin, immobile figure outlined in bright red, the drawing she had made with her blood-stained finger on a sheet of paper, when she had scratched herself and her father went off to fetch the iodine. In the darkness of those pupils, her thoughts aligned in geometrical form, the one super-imposing itself on the other as in a honeycomb, some empty cocoons, amorphous, without any place for reflection. Soft, grey forms, like a cerebrum. But she didn't really see this, she tried to imagine it perhaps. De profundis. I can see a dream I once had: a dark, empty stage behind a staircase. But the moment I think of 'dark stage' in words, the dream evaporates and all that remains is the empty cocoon. The sensation has faded and is purely mental. Until the words 'dark stage' come to life inside me, in my darkness, in my fragrance, to the point of becoming a shadowy vision, frayed and intangible, but behind the staircase. Then once more I shall possess a truth, my dream. De profundis. Why does that voice wishing to speak not come? I am ready. I close my eyes. Full of flowers that transform themselves into roses while the insect quivers and advances in the direction of the sun just as the vision is much more rapid than the word. I choose the birth of the earth in order to... Meaningless. De profundis, then the thread of pure water will come. I watched the snow tremble full of rose-tinted clouds. To close one's eyes and feel inspiration come tumbling down like a white cascade. De profundis. My God, I await You. God, come to me, God, burgeon in my breast. I am nothing and misfortune rains upon my head. I only know how to use words and words are treacherous and I continue to suffer, nothing in the end but the thread on the dark wall. God, come to me for I have no happiness and my life is as dark as a night without stars, and God, why do You not exist inside me? Why did You make me separate from You? God, come to me, I am nothing, I am less than dust and I await You each day and night. Help me, I only have one life and that life is trickling through my fingers and serenely heading towards death and I can do nothing except watch my life ebb away with each passing moment, I am alone in the world, those who love me do not know me, those who know me fear me and I am miserable and impoverished and very soon I shall no longer know that I ever existed. I have not much time left to live and what time is left will meantime go on being untouched and useless. Take pity on me, for I am nothing, give me what I need. God, give me what I need whatever that may be, my desolation is as deep as a well and I do not deceive myself before myself and others. Come to me in my misfortune and that misfortune is today, that misfortune is always, I kiss Your feet and the dust on Your feet, I long to dissolve into tears, I call to You from the depths, come to my assistance for I have committed no sins, from the depths I call to You and no answer comes and my despair is as arid as the desert sands and doubts stifle and humiliate me. God, this vanity of living silences me, I am nothing, from the depths I call to You, from the depths I call to You from the depths I call to You from the depths I call to You...

  Her thoughts were now becoming coherent and she was breathing like an invalid who had survived moments of crisis. Something was still rumbling inside her, but she was quite exhausted, and her face relaxed into a smooth mask with vacant eyes. From the depths the final surrender. The end...

  But first from the depths as a response, yes as a response, enlivened by the air that was still penetrating her body, the flame shot up, burning bright and pure... From the sombre depths the inclement impulse burning, life rising anew, formless, audacious, pitiful. A dry sob as if they had shaken her, happiness shining in her breast, intense and unbearable, ah, such turmoil. Above all, that constant stirring in the depths of her being became clear... it was now growing and throbbing. That stirring of some live thing trying to release itself from the water in order to breathe. And how was she to fly, yes, how was she to fly... walk along the shore and feel the wind on her face, her hair blowing, glory on the mountain... Rising, rising, her body opening itself to the atmosphere, surrendering to the blind pulsation of her own blood, crystalline notes, tintillating, glistening in her soul... There was still no disenchantment before her own mysteries, oh God, God, God, come to me, not to save me, salvation should be in me, but to smother me with Your heavy hand, with punishment, with death, because I am powerless and afraid of dealing that tiny blow which will transform my whole body in this centre which longs to breathe and which is rising, rising... the same impulse as that of the tide and genesis, genesis! The tiny blow which only allows mad thoughts to exist in the madman, the luminous wound growing, hovering, overpowering. Oh, how she harmonized with what she thought and how what she thought was gloriously, oppressively fatal. I only want You God so that You may take me in like a dog when everything may be once more simply solid and complete, when the moment of bringing one's head out of the waters might be nothing but a memory and when inside me there might be nothing but knowledge, which has been used and is used and by means of which things are once more received and given, oh God.

  What dominated in her was not courage, she was only substance, less than human. How could she be a hero and want to vanquish things? She was not woman, she existed, and what was inside her were movements lifting her in constant transition. Perhaps at some time she might have altered with her savage strength the atmosphere around her and no one had noticed, perhaps she had invented a new substance with her breathing and she did not know, she merely sensed what her tiny woman's head could never understand. Endless, feverish thoughts sprang up and pervaded her startled body and they were important in so far as they concealed a vital impulse, they were important in so far as at the very moment of their conception there was that blind and authentic substance creating itself, rising and bulging out like a bubble of air on the water's surface, almost breaking it... She was aware that she still hadn't slept, she thought that she would still be forced to burst into flames. That she would terminate once and for all the prolonged gestation of childhood and that from her painful immaturity her own being would explode, free at last, at long last! No, no, no God, I want to be alone. And one day there will appear, yes, one day there will appear in me, the capacity, as red and affirmative as it is clear and sweet, one day whatever I may do will be blindly securely unconsciously, treading inside me, on my truth, so completely immersed in whatever I might be doing that I shall be unable to speak; above all, the day will come when my every movement will be creation, birth, I shall break all the negations that exist within me, I shall prove to myself that there is nothing to fear, that everything that I might be will always be wherever there is a woman who shares my origins. I shall raise within myself what I am — one day, at a gesture from me, my mighty waves will soar, pure water submerging my doubt, my conscience, I shall be as strong as the soul of an animal and whenever I might speak they will be slow, unthought words, not felt lightly, not full of a desire for humanity, not the past consuming the future! whatever I might say will sound preordained and complete! there will be no space inside me for me to know that time exists, that men and dimensions exist, there will be no space inside me even to notice that I shall be creating instant by instant, no, not instant by instant: forever fused, for then I shall live, only then shall I live more fully than in childhood, I shall be as brutal and misshapen as a stone, I shall be as light and vague as something felt rather than understood, I shall transcend myself in waves, oh, God, and may everything come and fall on me, even the incomprehension of myself at certain blank moments, for I need only fulfil myself and then nothing will impede my path until death-without-fear; from whatever struggle or truce, I shall arise as strong and comely as a young colt.

  AFTERWORD

  Believe me, the thing I like most of all in the world... is what I feel deep inside me, opening out as it were... I could almost tell you what it is, yet I cannot...

  Near to the Wild Heart [The original title in
Portuguese is Perto do coração selvagem. First published in Rio de Janeiro, A Noite, 1944. Subsequent editions published by Editora Nova Fronteira.] was published in Brazil in 1944. It was Clarice Inspector's first novel and she was nineteen years of age. Throughout her childhood and adolescence, she had amused herself writing stories and short plays. For one reason or another, these were never published. She worked on the manuscript of Near to the Wild Heart for several years, a task she combined with her career as a journalist for a prestigious Rio newspaper, A Noite. Lispector was one of the first women to be employed there as a journalist. She found the work congenial and became friendly with other talented young writers. The most significant friendship of all was that with Lucio Cardoso, a writer of considerable experience who read and criticized draft chapters of her novel in manuscript form. Cardoso also suggested the lines from James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as a suitable title.

  The reviews commented on the book's striking innovations and welcomed its publication as 'the most serious attempt in Brazil to date to write a truly introspective novel'. But no critic could possibly have foreseen the influence Lispector would exert on feminist literature at home and abroad in years to come. Near to the Wild Heart focuses on psychological and philosophical problems in its portrayal of Joana, a young woman in search of an authentic existence. Joana's confidences echo those of Lispector herself. For here is a writer who claimed to be 'affected by everything', who saw and heard too much, who was constantly struggling against the tide of her own self. The traumas experienced by Joana foreshadow most of the preoccupations voiced by woman writers everywhere from the 1960s onwards.