Clarice Lispector

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Clarice Lispector bigraphy, stories - Brazilian writer

Clarice Lispector : biography

December 10, 1920 – December 9, 1977

Clarice Lispector (December 10, 1920December 9, 1977) was a Brazilian writer who has been described as the most important Jewish writer since Franz Kafka. Acclaimed internationally for her innovative novels and short stories, she was also a journalist. Born to a Jewish family in Podolia in Western Ukraine, she was brought to Brazil as an infant (less than 1 year old), amidst the disasters engulfing her native land following the First World War.

She grew up in northeastern Brazil, where her mother died when she was nine. The family moved to Rio de Janeiro when she was in her teens. While in law school in Rio, she began publishing her first journalistic work and short stories, catapulting to fame at age 23 with the publication of her first novel, Near to the Wild Heart (Perto do Coração Selvagem), written as an interior monologue in a style and language that was considered revolutionary in Brazil.

She left Brazil in 1944, following her marriage to a Brazilian diplomat, and spent the next decade and a half in Europe and the United States. Upon return to Rio de Janeiro in 1959, she began producing her most famous works, including the stories of Family Ties (Laços de Família), the great mystic novel The Passion According to G.H. (A Paixão Segundo G.H.), and what is arguably her masterpiece, Água Viva. Injured in an accident in 1966, she spent the last decade of her life in frequent pain, steadily writing and publishing novels and stories until her premature death in 1977.

She has been the subject of numerous books, and references to her and her work are common in Brazilian literature and music. Several of her works have been turned into films and she was the subject of several studies and biographies, such as Clarice Lispector: esboço para um possível retrato, by Olga Borelli (1981), Clarice Lispector: a paixão segundo C.L., by Berta Walman (1983), L’heure de Clarice Lispector, by Hélène Cixous (1989), Clarice: uma vida que se conta, by Nádia Gotlib (1995), Eu sou uma pergunta: uma biografia de Clarice Lispector, by Teresa Montero (1999), and Why this world: a biography of Clarice Lispector, by Benjamin Moser (2009).

Europe and the United States

On July 29, 1944, Clarice left Brazil for the first time since she had arrived as a child, destined for Naples, where Maury was posted to the Brazilian Consulate.Gotlib, p. 172 Naples was the staging ground for the Brazilian troops of the Brazilian Expeditionary Force whose soldiers were fighting on the Allied side against the Nazis. She worked at the military hospital in Naples taking care of wounded Brazilian troops3rd paragraph, page 146 of Benjamin Moser’s "Why this World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector" ISBN 0-19-538556-X ISBN 13: 978-0195385564, Oxford University Press. 2009 In Rome, she met the Italian poet Giuseppe Ungaretti, who translated parts of Near to the Wild Heart, and had her portrait painted by Giorgio de Chirico. In Naples she completed her second novel, O Lustre (The Chandelier, 1946), which like the first focused on the interior life of a girl, this time one named Virgínia. This longer and more difficult book also met with an enthusiastic critical reception, though its impact was less sensational than Near to the Wild Heart. “Possessed of an enormous talent and a rare personality, she will have to suffer, fatally, the disadvantages of both, since she so amply enjoys their benefits”, wrote Gilda de Souza e Mello.De Mello e Souza, Gilda. "O lustre," Estado de S. Paulo, July 14, 1946 After a short visit to Brazil in 1946, Clarice and Maury returned to Europe in April 1946, where Maury was posted to the embassy in Bern, Switzerland. This was a time of considerable boredom and frustration for Lispector, who was often depressed. “This Switzerland,” she wrote her sister Tania, “is a cemetery of sensations.”Olga Borelli, Clarice Lispector: esboço para um possível retrato, 114 Her son Pedro Gurgel Valente was born in Bern on September 10, 1948, and in the city she wrote her third novel, A cidade sitiada (The Besieged City, 1946).