Introduction
There is no doubt that Clarice Lispector is one of the most difficult-to-read authors on the national scene. Perhaps because of her complexity and introspection, but as we delve into her works, her world and her well-crafted style, we do not hesitate to recognize that she is different, unique. I borrow an expression I heard some time ago, which says that to dive into her readings, a certain psychological preparation is necessary, to face the strangeness that her work causes us. It promotes a literary earthquake of indefinable levels in our being.
It is impossible to read Clarice unnoticed, as the intensity of her texts would not allow us to do such a feat. Her works require a perceptive and attentive reader, so as not to get lost in the disordered and vague feelings that characterize the author’s particular way of thinking about the world.
In this work, I seek to carry out a reading and, through a panoramic view, draw attention to some recurring characteristics in this work in particular, which can be considered as stylistic traits. I also try to observe, in accordance with the composition techniques explored in Clarice’s text, the relationship between form and effects of meaning.
“The Clay Dolls”
The labyrinths of meanings created by Clarice in the short story “The Clay Dolls” acquire meanings between the lines of the text. At the same time as he moves away from the character’s speech, the narrator moves towards his own literary discourse. A text that develops penetrating and engaging, its plot acquires less importance, used as a background, when the focus is actually on illustrating the character’s psychological aspects and also the author’s own impressions and feelings.
The tale is taken over by a narrator who flows between the thoughts of Virgínia, its only character, a sensitive and at times melancholy woman. With delicate desires and very particular pleasures, she dedicates herself to her greatest pleasure, that of creating. She sculpts different shapes in clay, children, horses, flowers, among others. In fact, it doesn’t matter much about the figure itself, but rather the expression and sensations it displays in each one.
“I made children, horses, a mother with a child, a mother alonea girl making things out of claya boy restinga girl happya girl seeing if it was going to raina flower, a comet with a tail sprinkled with washed and sparkling sand, a flower withers with the sun overhead, the Brejo Alto cemetery, a girl looking… Much more, much more., Small shapes that meant nothing but were in reality mysterious and calm. Sometimes tall like a tall tree, but they weren’t trees, they were nothing… Sometimes a small object with an almost starry shape, but serious and tired as a person.”
The characteristics given to the images she sculpted referred more to herself than to the figures, leaving in them the representation of her existential drama.
“Little figures that meant nothing…”
Virginia, a woman who, despite being alone, allowed herself to be permeated by everything around her, the clay, the water, the river sand… the subtlest detail awakens her senses.
“The river in small gestures wet her bare feet, and she moved her damp toes with excitement and clarity.”
We observe the character’s enchantment with the act of creation, she empties herself of everything, her pride, her ego, she gives herself completely to appreciate the almost frightening grandeur of the life extracted from her hands.
“I got a clear subject. and tender from which a world could be modeled. How, how to explain the miracle… She was frightened in thought. She said nothing, she didn’t move, but inwardly without any words she repeated: I am nothing, I have no pride, anything can happen to me; if you want, you will stop me from making the clay dough; If you want, you can step on me, ruin everything; I know I’m nothing. It was less than a vision, it was a sensation in the body, a frightened thought about what allowed her to get so much clay and water and before whom she should seriously humble herself. She thanked him with a difficult, fragile and tense joy; she felt something like something you can’t see with your eyes closed.
This moment of ecstasy in the act of creation, the magical, solemn moment, would allude to the author’s creative process. According to Clarice herself, she only felt alive when she wrote.
“I think that when I don’t write, I’m dead. “In each book I am reborn.” Clarice Lispector
The text is presented as an interior monologue, it is interspersed with momentary personal impressions (stream of consciousness), this technique used frequently by Clarice, is present numerous times throughout the text. Psychological time predominates, Virginia’s mental processes are mixed at all times, alternating between reality and daydreams, memories, internalization of feelings and her conception of the outside world.
The first and most important concrete fact that everyone will claim belongs to their inner experience is the fact that consciousness, in some way, flows. “Mental states” follow one another in it. If we could say “it is thought”, in the same way as “it rains” or “it winds”, we would be stating the fact in the simplest way and with the least presumption. Since we cannot, we must simply say that thought flows. (JAMES, William. The Stream of Consciousness. 1892)
The slow pace of the text matches the character’s anguish and introspection, his personal isolation indicates that time passes slowly, his private world is independent of everything around him. Clarice’s style reaches the deepest depths of the characters, probing their most psychological complex.
Just like time, space also remains in the background, the narrator only mentions parts of the house where Virgínia lives and creates her pieces (the courtyard used as a workplace and the river where she gets her raw material, clay). He does not describe any specific place, because her gaze is towards the interior of Virginia, her mental space, her hidden world.
The author uses resources to emphasize certain passages (reverberation), reinforcing some sensation or feelings.
“How, how to explain the miracle… She was frightened in thought.”
“— Beautiful… beautiful as a wet thing, she said, exuding herself with an imperceptible and sweet impulse.”
“I kneaded, kneaded, little by little I extracted shapes.”
“a girl looking…Much, much more.”
In “Os Bonecos de Barro”, the narrator evokes a primary receiver, the one whom this sender absorbs and entangles in the character’s deepest psychological universe. The narrator finds himself involved in the questions, anxieties and desires in which the plot unfolds. This close relationship, this intense dialogue is fundamental in the construction of the meaning of the story. This dialogue leads the reader, through the traps, in search of a truth hidden beneath the common accounts of everyday life.
“By mixing clay with earth, we obtained another material that was less plastic, but more severe and solemn. BUT HOW TO MAKE HEAVEN? I couldn’t even start! I didn’t want clouds — which I could get, at least roughly — but the sky, the sky itself, with its existence, loose color, absence of color.”
The narrative language of the story is intensely poetic, presenting several figures of speech, such as synesthesia, prosopopeia, comparisons and many metaphors. As in other texts by Clarice, it is common to construct inconclusive sentences, a substantial silence, something that was not said because it had meaning in itself.
“Sometimes as tall as a tall tree, but they weren’t trees, they were just nothing…”
The moment of the most striking epiphany occurs at the end of the text. The moment of reflection permeates the narrative completely, when the character makes a profound observation about the imperfections of the dolls, the dead pallor disturbing his soul. Overcoming her own limitations, Virgínia develops subtle alternatives to haunt them through form and by adding earth to the clay, she produces another material that gives them a vague color. “But how to make heaven?” Inner destabilization, agitation and anguish invade her at the climax of the story, but again she reinvents herself… And she recreates.
“She discovered that she needed to use a lighter material that couldn’t even be touched, felt, maybe just seen, who knows! She understood that she could achieve this with paints.”
The character concludes that in the most disturbing and absurd moments, where we find ourselves powerless or defeated, we can simply for a moment, emerge in another way, transform the obstacles by ourselves.
“And sometimes in a fall, as if everything was purified, she was content to create a smooth, serene, united surface, in a fine and peaceful simplicity”
Conclusion
In the short story “Os Bonecos de Barro”, we observe a deep awareness of the language in which the images and metaphors are deposited, we realize that the relevant factor is the character’s own being, characteristic of Clarice Lispector. We achieve who we are and recognize ourselves through Virgínia’s reflections and questions.
Between the lines and in the silences of the text, we find meanings and meanings in the speech of the character and the narrator, which lead us to some certainties. The Claritian way of dialoging with the most intimate part of the human being, its differentiated and disordered narrative, leads us to confront still dormant emotions and rethink our existence.
His questions, reflections and metaphors take shape in our minds, leaving the limits of words and manifesting themselves concretely in the way we think about our complex human condition.
Bibliographic references
– estacaodapalavra.blogspot.com/…/entrevista-exclusiva-com-clarice.html
– JAMES, William, The Stream of Consciousness. 1892 http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/James/jimmy11.htm
– The Chandelier. Rio de Janeiro: Rocco, 1999.