Why This World
Page 60
Chapter 43
1. Lispector and Montero, letter to Mafalda Verissimo, November 28, 1975, Correspondências, 310.
2. Interview with Alberto Dines, São Paulo, July 22, 2006.
3. Quoted in Gotlib, Clarice, 436–37.
4. Borelli, Esboço, 47–48; Manzo, Era uma vez, 190.
5. Juan Cruz, “Carmen Balcells: Autorretrato de una dama,” El País, March 11, 2007.
6. Borelli, Esboço, 58.
7. Ibid., 25, 26.
8. Gotlib, Clarice, 443–44.
9. Interview with Rosa Cass, Rio de Janeiro, July 29, 2006.
10. This account is a bit suspect: Elisa, after all, had never liked the idea of Clarice’s marrying a Gentile.
11. Coutinho, Criaturas, 170.
12. Gotlib, Clarice, 438–39.
13. Ibid., 479–80.
14. Interview, Rosa Lispector, Recife, August 18, 2005.
15. Gotlib, Clarice, 480.
16. Ferreira, Eu sou, 283.
17. Coutinho, Criaturas, 155–56.
18. Untitled clipping [Brasília?], CLA.
19. Untitled clipping [Porto Alegre?], CLA.
20. “Entrevista com Caio Fernando Abreu,” Estado de São Paulo, December 9, 1995.
21. Gotlib, Clarice, 293.
22. Ferreira, Eu sou, 275. Gilles probably inspired the story of a makeup artist in A via crucis do corpo, “Ele me bebeu.”
Chapter 44
1. This interview is widely available on the Internet.
2. Lerner, “Última entrevista.”
Chapter 45
1. Lispector, Aprendizagem, 136.
2. Jacinto Rego de Almeida, “Um encontro com Clarice Lispector,” Jornal de Letras (Lisbon), April 14, 1992.
3. Quoted in Manzo, Era uma vez, 206–7.
4. Quoted in ibid., 209.
5. Interview with Norma Couri, São Paulo, July 22, 2006. There is another reference to this habit in Varin, Langues, 95.
6. Resende, “Mãe, filha, amiga.”
7. Lerner, “Última entrevista.”
8. Lispector, A vida íntima de Laura.
9. Lispector, Hora, 59–60.
10. 1 Maccabees 1:18–21.
11. Franco Júnior, “Clarice, segundo Olga Borelli.”
12. Lispector, Hora, 26.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid., 27–28.
15. Franco Júnior, “Clarice, segundo Olga Borelli.”
16. Lispector, Hora, 36.
17. Ibid., 39, 40.
18. Ibid., 42, 44, 43.
19. Ibid., 55, 54.
20. Ibid., 52, 53.
21. Ibid., 54.
22. Ibid., 59.
23. 2 Maccabees 6:2. For this reference, see Nelson Vieira, “A expressão judaica na obra de Clarice Lispector,” in Clarice Lispector: Remate de Males: Revista do Departamento de Teoria Literária, ed. Vilma Arêas and Berta Waldman (Campinas: Universidade Estadual de Campinas, 1989), 209.
24. Lispector, Hora, 60.
25. Castello, Inventário das sombras, 26.
26. Lispector, Hora, 54.
27. Ibid., 76.
28. Ibid., 88.
29. Ibid., 90, 92.
30. Ibid., 95–96.
31. Ibid., 98.
32. Quoted in Ferreira, Eu sou, 286.
33. Lerner, “Última entrevista.”
34. Lispector, Hora, 22.
35. Ibid., 25.
36. Ibid., 34, 35, 32, 28.
37. Ibid., 50.
38. Published under his pseudonym: Tristão de Athayde, “Requiem para Clarice,” Jornal do Brasil, January 12, 1978.
39. Lispector et al., Outros escritos, 139.
40. Lispector, Perto, 13 (1980 ed.).
41. Lispector, Hora, 99.
42. Ibid., 100, 101.
43. Ibid., 102.
44. Ibid., 103.
45. Ibid., 104.
46. “Sepultamento de Clarice será simples e discreto.” See also Olga Borelli, interviewed in Manchete, 1981, quoted in Gotlib, Clarice, 481.
47. “Sepultamento de Clarice será simples e discreto.”
48. Quoted in Gotlib, Clarice, 481–82.
49. Interview with Rosa Cass, Rio de Janeiro, July 29, 2006.
50. Ferreira, Eu sou, 291.
51. Quoted in Gotlib, Clarice, 483.
52. Borelli, Esboço, 60–62.
53. Quoted in Gotlib, Clarice, 484.
54. Francis, “Clarice: Impressões de uma mulher que lutou sozinha.”
Acknowledgments
This book would have been much the poorer without the help of people all around the world who gave of their time, their archives, their memories, their knowledge, and their friendship.
I owe a special debt to Clarice Lispector’s relatives. Over the years, Paulo Gurgel Valente has done so much—from creating the archives of her papers to ensuring the continued publication of materials relating to her life—to preserve and perpetuate his mother’s great legacy. He was helpful and encouraging from the start, offering many valuable suggestions in the manuscript and generously providing many of the illustrations. And to my irrepressible honorary vovó, Ambassadress Eliane Weil Gurgel Valente. Getting to know the warm, entertaining, and unstintingly supportive Eliane was in itself reward enough for writing this book. I have spent many happy hours with Clarice’s cousin, the prima ballerina Cecília Wainstok Lipka, who offered me hard-to-find documents, as well as her kindness and friendship. Clarice’s grandniece, the filmmaker Nicole Algranti, has been extremely liberal with her private archive and with her memories of her aunt Elisa Lispector. I am grateful to Bertha Lispector Cohen in Rio, her brother, Samuel Lispector, and her sister, Vera Lispector Choze, in Recife, for sharing their memories of Clarice’s early years. Thanks also to Ambassadress Marilu de Seixas Corrêa, Minister Mitzi Gurgel Valente da Costa, and Isaac Chut.
To Alberto Dines, great biographer and journalist, scholar of Jewish Brazil, and friend of Clarice Lispector, who despite his many commitments always found time to reply to even my most trivial questions; and to Humberto Werneck, a one-man encyclopedia of Brazilian life, whose inexhaustible erudition and unfailing flair for anecdote allowed me to create a much richer picture of the literary culture around Clarice Lispector.
To the journalist Rosa Cass, who spent hours recalling her long friendship with Clarice Lispector in her apartment in Flamengo; and to the distinguished writer Renard Perez, as gracious to me as he had been to Clarice and Elisa Lispector.
To the librarians and archivists who smoothed my path: Eliane Vasconcellos, Deborah Roditi, and Leonardo Pereira da Cunha at the Arquivo-Museu de Literatura Brasileira at the Fundação Casa de Rui Barbosa, Rio de Janeiro; Cristina Zappa and Manoela Purcell Daudt d’Oliveira at the Instituto Moreira Salles, Rio; Cristina Antunes and José Mindlin, who allowed me to examine the manuscript of Near to the Wild Heart preserved in Mr. Mindlin’s legendary library in São Paulo; Maria Manuela Vasconcelos, who helped me locate Clarice Lispector materials in the Biblioteca Nacional in Lisbon and shared her own memories of the writer; and Dr. Tânia Neumann Kaufman of the Arquivo Histórico Judaico de Pernambuco, whose own writings on Jewish Recife were such a rich historical source. In Kahal zur Israel, the oldest synagogue in the New World, Dr. Kaufman introduced me to Beatriz Schnaider Schvartz, whose tour of Boa Vista, where she and Clarice Lispector grew up, was one of the most memorable days in the research and writing of this book.
To my fellow claricianos, whose enthusiasm for our common subject made the solitary work of writing a biography much more collegial: Claire Varin, the pioneer Canadian researcher whose books and conversation were such a bountiful source of inspiration; Nádia Battella Gotlib, Brazil’s greatest authority on Clarice Lispector, whose biographical research uncovered so many essential facts about Clarice’s life, and whose help with the photographs saved me many headaches; Teresa Cristina Montero Ferreira, whose own biography is packed with the fruits of her exhaustive research; Sonia Roncador, who shared her rare copy of the
second draft of Água viva; and Earl E. Fitz, who helped put me in touch with Sonia Roncador and shared his own thoughts and writings on Clarice Lispector. A special word is due Nelson Vieira, brilliant teacher and scholar, who first fired my enthusiasm for Clarice when I was an undergraduate and who was among the first to understand Clarice as a Jewish writer.
To Juan Sager of the University of Manchester, who provided my research with an unexpected boost by giving me the Clarice materials collected by his late partner, Giovanni Pontiero, her English translator, who was working on his own biography at the time of his death; and to Ann Mackenzie of the University of Glasgow, who led me to Professor Sager.
To Minister Carlos Alberto Asfora of the Brazilian embassy in The Hague, who familiarized me with the ways of Itamaraty. His tireless dedication to promoting Brazilian culture abroad has been an inspiration to me and so many others, and his introduction to Ambassador Gilberto Saboia put me in touch with Clarice’s diplomatic circle.
To Nachman and Shulamit Falbel, who have been my home away from home in São Paulo ever since they unexpectedly entered my life during my first semester in college.
To Denise Milfont, whose beautiful house overlooking the Bay of Guanabara, like Denise herself, is an isle of repose during my often hectic stays in Rio de Janeiro.
To “The Group” from Paraty—Paul Finlay, Ravi Mirchandani, Amy Tabor, Jocasta Hamilton, João Crespo, Fiona Smith, Raffaella de Angelis, Fiona McMorrough, and Diane Gray-Smith—who have so consistently provided comic relief on my research trips to Brazil. Among them, I owe a special debt to Alison Entrekin, who has so cheerfully placed her vast knowledge of the Portuguese language at my disposal; to Matthew Hamilton, agent, editor, and co-conspirator; and of course to the unremittingly glamorous Sheila O’Shea, who, Group or no Group, has been, for more than a decade, one of the best things in my life.
To the biographers who offered a novice guidance and encouragement: Judith Thurman’s biography of Colette helped inspire this one, and her early insistence that organization is the key to biography spared me many headaches. Frederick Brown’s Flaubert and Zola offered models of integrating literary criticism with life narrative, and his admonition to rely primarily on my own readings of Clarice’s work helped focus this book. Edmund White warned me of what I was in for, in person and in the chapter of My Lives about his own adventures writing Genet.
My visit to Ukraine would have been much less rewarding without Santiago Eder’s suggestion that I get in touch with Kate Brown, whose Biography of No Place did so much to illuminate the mysterious world Clarice Lispector came from. Kate, in turn, put me in touch with Mary Mycio. Some of my favorite memories of writing this book involve eating pizza in Kiev, Mary’s Geiger counter at the ready, and staying up into the wee hours watching dressage videos in her apartment. Mary led me to Victoria Butenko, who helped with Ukrainian translation. Daniel Mendelsohn recommended Alexander Dunai as a guide through the wilds of Podolia. Alex’s vast knowledge of Jewish and Ukrainian culture immeasurably enriched, and indeed made possible my fascinating expedition to Clarice Lispector’s birthplace. I am also grateful to Ambassador Renato L. R. Marques and his auxiliaries at the Brazilian embassy in Kiev.
To all those who helped this project with kindnesses great and small: Jeferson Masson, who shared with me his extensive research into the life and work of Elisa Lispector; Ana Luisa Chafir, who spent an unforgettable evening telling me about her great-aunt Bluma Chafir Wainer; Muniz Sodré Cabral, who remembered Clarice’s psychoanalyst Inês Besouchet; Joel Silveira, the journalist who knew Clarice Lispector in wartime Italy; Ambassadress Isabel Gurgel Valente, who offered valuable information about her late husband, Ambassador Maury Gurgel Valente; Sábato Magaldi and Edla van Steen, who spent an evening in São Paulo telling me about Lúcio Cardoso and the Brazilian theater; Ambassadress Sara Escorel de Moraes, who shared her memories of Clarice in Rio and Washington; Major Elza Cansanção Medeiros, veteran of the Brazilian Expeditionary Force, for her memories of Brazil’s involvement in World War II, and her fellow field-nurse, Virgínia Portocarrero; the director Luiz Carlos Lacerda, who recalled the dazzling impression Lúcio Cardoso and Clarice Lispector made on him as a young man; the outstanding novelist Autran Dourado and his wife, Lucia, who remembered Clarice inside and outside the literary milieu of Rio de Janeiro; Marina Colasanti, who told me about her experience reading Clarice’s crônicas in the palace where she lived as a refugee from Italian Africa; Gilda Murray, who remembered her experiences as a young woman with Clarice and her great friend Olga Borelli; Antonio Olinto, who welcomed me in a Copacabana apartment filled with an astonishing collection of African art; Álvaro Pacheco, who described publishing some of Clarice’s last works; Ilka Soares, who spoke to me about her collaboration in Clarice’s journalism; Helena Valladares, Fernando Sabino’s first wife, who remembered the impression Clarice made as a young woman in Rio; Lygia Marina de Moraes, Fernando Sabino’s third wife, who told me about the memorable day she met Tom Jobim and Clarice Lispector; Maria Alice Barroso, the novelist who so fondly remembered her friend Elisa Lispector; Moacir Werneck de Castro, who helped me understand Bluma Wainer and the Brazilian journalists of the 1940s; Marlos Nobre, one of the musicians to whom The Hour of the Star is dedicated; Ivan Lessa, whose vivid and hilarious memories of Senhor magazine and of Rio de Janeiro in the early 1960s made one want to be there; the dazzling Maria Bonomi, who (with Lena Peres) spent a morning in Amsterdam telling me about going to the White House “dressed as Clarice”; the essayist José Castello, who sent me his own writings about Clarice; Clarissa Verissimo Jaffe, who talked about Clarice during her Washington years; Caetano Veloso, who encouraged this project; Ana Paula Hisayama, who provided me with the Brazilian books I could not find closer to home; Magdalena Edwards, who pointed me to Elizabeth Bishop’s letters about Clarice in the Harvard and Princeton libraries; the great translator Gregory Rabassa, who recalled meeting Clarice in Austin; Richard Zenith, the leading authority on Fernando Pessoa, who helped me navigate the archives of Portugal; Danuza Leão, who talked to me about her late husband, Samuel Wainer; George Andreou, who provided a welcome impulse at a moment when this project most needed it; Dorothea Severino, who offered me her rare typescript of Água viva; Paulo Rocco, who told me about publishing Clarice; Eva Lieblich Fernandes, who recounted her own fraught experience of wartime immigration to Brazil; Joëlle Rouchou, who provided me with her remarkable book about Samuel Wainer and the Jewish world around him; the actress Marilena Ansaldi, who shared her warm memories of Olga Borelli; Klara Główczewska, who helped me with the finer points of Polish spelling; the outstanding novelist Bernardo Carvalho, who dug a rare item out of the archives of the Folha de S. Paulo; Jonathan Milder of the Food Network, who was intrigued as I was by recipes involving blood sauces; my old friend Jeremy Wright, who found Clarice materials in Austin; the gorgeous Norma Couri, who shared her memories of Clarice and her own impressive archive; Paulo de Medeiros, whose early reading offered many valuable suggestions; Želimir Galjanic´, who read the manuscript in an early phase; Amber Qureshi, a friend I can always count on; Yuko Miki, my cúmplice in Brazilian studies for so many years; Jerome Charyn, a Clarice enthusiast who put me in touch with Michel Martens, who met her in Rio; and Luciane Moritz Sommer, Portuguese teacher turned friend.
To my literary agent, Jim Rutman, distant compatriot of Clarice Lispector, who took on a complex project and saw it through many nail-biting moments with his dry wit and inimitable tact.
To my editor, Cybele Tom of Oxford University Press, whose willingness to grapple with difficult intellectual issues helped me think them through and clarify them. Also at Oxford, I am grateful to Christine Dahlin, who shepherded a complex manuscript through production; to Sarah Russo, a publicist who gets up early; and to Samara Stob, who directed the marketing effort.
To the team at Haus Publishing in London: Harry Hall, Claire Palmer, Robert Pritchard, and most especially the delectable Barabara Schwepcke, who has built from scr
atch one of Britain’s most welcoming homes for international literature.
To my dear friend Carol Devine Carson, who designed the beautiful jacket; and to Reginald Piggott, who designed the family tree and maps.
To my parents, Jane and Bertrand C. Moser, who always encouraged even my most recondite enthusiasms.
Finally, to those friends and collaborators who did not live to see the publication of this book: Gibson Barbosa, former minister of foreign relations; Marly de Oliveira, distinguished Brazilian poet; and Rosa Lispector, wife of Clarice’s cousin Samuel.
When I met him, Marco Antonio de Carvalho was completing his biography of Rubem Braga, a labor of love of many years. His untimely death on June 25, 2007, deprived him of the pleasure of seeing the publication of his admirable book.
And to the last of the brilliant Lispector girls, Tania Lispector Kaufmann, who passed away on November 15, 2007. From the moment she first opened the door to her Copacabana apartment, I fell for Tania: ninety years old, hardly able to walk but always dressed to the nines, her hair and makeup flawless, her mind perfectly sharp, and her spirit as warm and generous as the day, all those years before, when she “adopted” the little sister grieving for her mother.
Marie-Claude de Brunhoff, in memoriam.
Aan Arthur Japin en Lex Jansen is dit boek, met liefde en vriendschap, opgedragen.
THE BEGINNING
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