The Hour of the Star, by Clarice Lispector
I can remember a time when I used to pray in order to kindle my spirit: movement is spirit. Prayer was a means of confronting myself away from the gaze of others. As I prayed I emptied my soul- and this emptiness is everything that I can ever hope to possess. Apart from this, there is nothing. But emptiness, too, has its value and somehow resembles abundance. One way of obtaining is not to search, one way of possessing is not to ask; simply to believe that my inner silence is the solution to my- to my mystery. (p.14)
Meantime, I want to walk naked or in rags; I want to experience at least once the insipid flavour of the Host. To eat communion bread will be to taste the world's indifference, and to immerse myself in nothingness. This will be my courage: to abandon comforting sentiments from the past. (p.19)
Most of the time, she possessed, without knowing it, the emptiness that replenishes the souls of saints. Was she a saint? It would seem so. The girl didn't know that she was meditating, for the word meditation was unknown to her. I get the impression that her life was one long meditation on nothingness. (p. 37)
I shall miss myself so much when I die. (p. 53)
Salvation ultimately comes in the form of self-discovery and authentic self-expression. (Afterword, p. 92, Giovanni Pontiero)
Interesting. Reminds me of Kafka's beautiful nightmares, and Kopf's liminality, where you are never quite sure what is dream and what is real or what the difference is. Maybe a bit of Gogol's sense of humor.
Clarice Lispector was an acclaimed Brazilian author; this was her last novel. I shall have to find the others! (This one was picked up on impulse at a thrift store. I'm having the best impulses at thrift stores lately.)
No comments:
Post a Comment