Fitz LISPECTOR

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Point of View in Clarice Lispector's "A Hora da Estrela"Author(s): Earl E. FitzSource: Luso-Brazilian Review, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Winter, 1982), pp. 195-208Published by: University of Wisconsin PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3513128 .

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P o i n t o f V i e w i nC l a r i c e Lispector's A H o r a d a E s t r e l aEarl E. Fitz

Eduardo Portella has asked if, in A Hora da Estrela (1977),we are seeing a new or different Clarice Lispector.1 Portella,himself a critic intimately aware of Lispector's steady develop-ment as an artist, answers his own question with both a "yes" anda "no." What he means is, that, "yes," there are certain new ele-ments present in this final novel, but that, "no," Clarice has notreally changed all that much. But while Portella, a long-timefriend of Clarice Lispector, does take note of the three differentlevels of meaning, or significance, that bind this work together,he does not elaborate on what turns out to be the most salientfeature of the entire novel, its sustained and carefully orches-trated experimentation with the issue of point of view. The emi-nent Brazilian critic is quite correct in observing that themanner in which a story is told, the way it moves from thecreativity of the author, through the actions of the characters,and into the mind of the reader, has always been of concern toClarice Lispector, a writer widely renowned for her style andtechnical brilliance. But given the truth of this, there remainsthe need for a more detailed examination of exactly how this lastwork, published just a little more than a month before theauthor's death from cancer, deals with the workings of the com-plex, multi-faceted system of structural inter-relationships thatwe know as point of view.Long and justly famous throughout Latin America for her sensi-tive, penetrating explorations of human consciousness, ClariceLispector created a series of stylistically rigorous, hermetic,and often enigmatic novels and short stories that dealt, charac-teristically, with the workings of the mind. Physical objects,such as those encountered in 0 Lustre (1946), or the presence ofan external milieu, such as that depicted in A Cidade Sitiada(1949) or A Maca no Escuro (1961), function within her fictiveuniverse in a way that reminds us of T. S. Eliot's understandingof the "objective correlative," that is, an object, situation, oraction that, visibly and concretely, conveys the mood or state ofmind that the author wishes to evoke in the reader. For Eliot,

Luso-Brazilian Review XIX, 2 0024-7413/82/0195 $1.50? 1982 by the Board of Regentsof the University of Wisconsin System

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Luso-Brazilian Review 19:2as for Lispector, the "objective correlative" is the vehicle bymeans of which emotion can be expressed in the objectivity of theart form, the only way the author can conjure up and express theproper emotional response in the reader without having to resortto a direct statement of that response. In this sense, a numberof Clarice's characters, including the protagonist of A Hora daEstreZa, show themselves to be rather like J. Alfred Prufrock orRilke's Malte Laurids Brigge, hypersensitive beings in whose mindsthe outer world of objects and actions sets off a series of os-tensibly uncontrolled flashes of silent, anxious speculation aboutthe twin problems of identity and being. However, we should notforget, in view of the author's well-known ontological concerns,that Clarice Lispector never ignored the three dimensional world.To the contrary, she made use of it in a constant and unique way,one that would link together objects, our perceptions of them, andthe impressions they make on our conscious and unconscious minds.This, as Lispector understood it, was at the heart of the processby which a human identity is formed, and it represents the all im-portant bridge between much of what is "new" in A Hora da EstreZaand that which we have grown accustomed to seeing in her earlierwork. Her fascination with the always changing relationship be-tween the inner and outer world also explains, in part, why we arereminded so strongly, at times, of the French "nouveau roman,"especially as practiced by Robbe-Grillet and Nathalie Sarraute,the latter being especially close to Lispector in terms of hermanner of characterization.But Clarice's abiding interest in the objects of the externalworld and the effect they have upon our sentient minds also re-calls for us the nature and function of phenomenology in Lispec-tor's fictional world. Her distinctly phenomenological orienta-tion towards life and literature involves a synthesis of objectand one's awareness of it, a process in which a single human mind,usually that of her protagonist, becomes both the subject and theobject of the act of cognition, of understanding. But while thiskind of preoccupation has always been a vital element in her work,it must be noted that the novel in question here, A Hora daEstreZa, focuses on some overt social issues as well, specifical-ly, on the chronic plight of a certain type of Brazilian north-easterner who undertakes a journey to the great cities of thesouth in search of a better life. But in this particular novel,and in typical Lispectorian fashion, we are led, additionally,into the mind of a realistically described young "nordestina," awoman who represents for us and for the author the continuedpresence of the "two Brazils," one rich and healthy, the otherpoor and sickly. In this double role, that of protagonist andsymbol, Clarice's main character in this novel reminds us of theinnumerable ways the harsh, tragic realities of the Northeastblight not only the land but the people as well. The image of thewasteland, geographically and psychologically, is thus constantlyexpressed, becoming, finally, the central or controlling image ofthe entire work. We can see, then, that, in a certain sense, AHora da Estrela shows itself to be more of a shift of emphasis for

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Clarice Lispector, a different approach to get at an old concern,the tenuous relationship between language, existence, and con-sciousness, than it is any radically new tack or development.And yet, as we shall see, the openly ironic function of the nar-rator, and his dual relationship with the protagonist and thereader, adds a startlingly new element of narrative complexity tothis work. Clarice elects here to deal directly with one of themost singular features of modern narrative: the unreliable, orfallible, narrator. In looking at how well she succeeded with herpoint of view experiments, we are able to get a better perspectiveon how she was growing, and maturing, as an artist, somethingwhich is crucial to our appreciation of this last work.The style of A Hora de EstreZa is less unabashedly lyrical thanits immediate predecessor, Agua Viva (1973), but it does continuewith Clarice's penchant for extracting every bit of connotativeand denotative meaning out of apparently simple verbal icons.Lispector, a writer who, like Guimaraes Rosa, always understoodboth the mystery of language and its pivotal importance for liter-ature, especially the novel form, creates in this work a kind ofallegorical regionalism, a mimetic tale of a certain place andtime but one that turns in on itself. But in addition to thisfascinating literary hybridism, Lispector links the structure ofthe entire novel to an ongoing discussion of what the creative actmeans to the artist, this being a theme first discussed at lengthby the author in Agua VivaA Hora da EstreZa is, therefore, on one level the story of thewriting, the creation, of a novel. As with Machado de Assis'Dom Casmurro (1900), or Graciliano Ramos' Sao Berardo (1934), thedevelopment of the text itself becomes, to a large extent, whatthe narrative is about, its most compelling aspect. One is re-minded, in fact, of both Bento Santiago and Paulo Honorio in read-ing A Hora da Estrela, although in the latter work the theme ofthe expiation of guilt, personal and national, through the writingof a book is not the primary concern so much as a discussion ofwhat it means for a literary artist to create a character who ex-presses particular attitudes and concerns, many of which may ormay not coincide with those of the implied author or the realauthor. Keeping in mind Wayne Booth's observations about thenature of the unreliable narrator, we meet the person who tellsthe story in our novel, a man whose presence in the story is cen-tral to its structuring and, consequently, to its meaning. As hehimself tells us:

Proponho-me a que nao seja complexo o que escreverei, emboraobrigado a usar as palavras que vos sustentam. A hist6ria-determino com falso livre arb'trio-vai ter uns sete personagense eu sou um dos mais importantes deles, e claro. Eu, RodrigoS. M. Relato antigo, este, pois nao quero ser modernoso einventar modismos a guisa de originalidade.2

This type of direct but self-effacing authorial commentary be-comes a leitmotif of the novel, and its extensive implementation,

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Luso-BraziZian Review 19:2along with its ironic function within the context of the storyitself, marks an interesting stylistic development for ClariceLispector. Indeed, for the first time, in any systematic fashion,Clarice has begun to deal with the delicate though critical rela-tionship between narrator, author, and reader, or, to express itmore precisely, between the real author, the implied author, theother characters, and the reader. As the narrator, addressinghimself to this very issue, informs us, in fact:

(Se estou demorando um pouco em fazer acontecer o que Japrevejo vagamente, e porque preciso tirar vgrios retratos dessaalagoana. E tambem porque se houver algum leitor para estahist6ria quero que ele se embeba da jovem assim como un pano dechdo todo encharcado. A moga e' uma verdade da qual eu naoquero saber. Nao sei a quem acusar mas deve haver um reu.)3So the question of the narrator's reliability or unreliability is,as we can readily see, one that is going to pervade the entirework, one that will affect the manner in which all the other ele-ments in the story fit together. For example, we also read:

Sera que eu enriqueceria este relato se usasse alguns diflceistermos tecnicos? Mas af que esta: esta hist6ria nao temnenhuma tecnica, nem de estilo, ela e ao deus-dara. Eu quetambem nao mancharia por nada deste mundo com palavras bril-hantes e falsas uma vida parca como a da datil6grafa.4But the narrator, we discover, is quite capable of lying to us, ofopenly distorting "the truth" of his own story:

Fago aqui o papel de vossa valvula de escape e da vida mas-sacrante da media burguesia. Bem sei que e assustador sair desi mesmo, mas tudo o que e novo assusta. Embora a moga an6nimada hist6ria seja tao antiga que podia ser uma figura blblica.Ela era subterranea e nunca tinha tido floragao. Minto: elaera capim.5And later, but continuing in this same mendacious vein, and there-by undercutting our confidence in what he tells us, the narratordeclares:

Para que eu escrevo? E eu sei? Sei nao. Sim, e verdade, asvezes tambem penso que eu nao sou eu, parego pertencer a umagalaxia longlnqua de tao estranho que sou de mim. Sou eu?Espanto-me corn o meu encontro.6We are even permitted to "listen in" as the narrator mulls over"what has happened" to the characters he himself has created:

Mas eu nao sei se eles sabiam disso. Casariam ou nao? Aindanao sei, s6 sei que eram de algum modo inocentes e pouca sombrafaziam no chao.

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Nao, menti, agora vi tudo: ele nao era inocente coisaalguma, apesar de ser uma vltima geral do mundo.7With the narrator's ruminations and interpolations omnipresentin the story, the point of view fluctuates constantly betweenfirst-person, either that of our struggling narrator or that ofone of the characters most involved; second-person, which isgenerally reserved for the illuminating and often funny exchangesof dialogue between characters but which is also occasionally usedby the narrator in direct discourse with the reader; and third-person, the omniscient, traditional mode of story-telling and onewith which Clarice Lispector has been able to produce a very tell-ing kind of psychological realism, one reminiscent, in its owninimitable way, of that of Machado de Assis. We read, forexample:Macabea gostava de filme de terror ou de musicals. Tinhapredilegco por mulher enforcada ou que levava um tiro nocoragco. Nao sabia que ela pr6pria era uma suicida emboranunca lhe tivesse ocorrido se matar. E que a vida lhe era taoinsossa que nem pao velho sem manteiga.8

The overall effect of this frequently fable-like tone, which isstrongly reminiscent of Lispector's earlier work, is to draw thereader closer to the perspective of the narrator, a sensitive manwho, like Clarice herself, was reared in the Northeast but wholater on came to live in Rio de Janeiro. The narrator, as wehave seen, seems to be talking with us directly as he ponders thehow and why of fiction writing and, in a related issue, what itmeans to create something out of words:

E eis que fiquei agora receoso quando pus palavras sobre anordestina. E a pergunta e: como escrevo? Verifico queescrevo de ouvido assim como aprendi ingles e frances deouvido. Antecedentes meus do escrever? sou um homem que temmais dinheiro do que os que passam fome, o que faz de mim dealgum modo um desonesto. E s6 minto na hora exata da mentira.Mas quando escrevo nao minto. . . .Nao, nao e facil escrever. E duro como quebrar rochas. Masvoam falscas y lascas como agos espelhados. . . .De uma coisa tenho certeza: essa narrativa mexera com umacoisa delicada: a criacao de uma pessoa inteira que na certaesta tdo viva quanto eu.9So as the reader becomes privy to these types of concerns, whichare simultaneously germane to the characters in the story and tothe formulation of the story itself, he becomes an active andwilling accomplice in the organic, but also ironic, process ofthe narrative's artistic functioning, its structuring. Thus, weare not at all surprised when, late in the novel, the narratorsuddenly bursts in and declares, after a desultory conversationinvolving the protagonist, Macabea, and a doctor:

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Luso-BraziZian Review 19:2Sim, estou apaixonado por Macabea, a minha querida Maca,apaixonado pela sua feiura e anonimato total pois ela nao epara ninguem. Apaixonado por seus pulm6es frageis, amagricela. 10

By this point, Clarice's deft handling of point of view has deeplyinvolved the reader as well as the narrator in Macabea's empty,wasted existence. But the author has also succeeded in spinning aweb of empathy and social awareness between all parties involvedin the story, Clarice Lispector herself, Rodrigues S. M. Relato,the narrator, Macabea, and the reader. The result of all this isthat we plunge down into the mind of the main character, Macabea,at the same time that we are drawn out into the realm of socialcommentary, into an examination of a specific social problem.Closely linked to this structural inventiveness are the threemajor themes dealt with in A Hora da Estrela, the various ways weextrapolate from Lispector's artificial world to the realities ofour own, the one inhabited by real men and women, the ones whogive rise to books like this and who give it a significance thatgoes beyond its value as art. This is really the area in whichthe "newness" of the novel lies and the one which psychologicalanalysis relates most closely to a concern over social types andsociologically pertinent issues. It is intriguing to note that inher portrayal of Macabea, the nineteen year old girl from Alagoaswho makes a pilgrimage to Rio de Janeiro in hopes of finding a joband beginning a new life, Clarice Lispector has placed A Hora daEstrela thematically well within the tradition of regionalistical-ly oriented literature and cultural conflict so brilliantly de-picted by Euclides da Cunha in Os Sertees (1902), a classic andseminal work that has influenced countless other stories, novels,plays, and poems written in Brazil.11 And although, of course,Lispector is by no means the only Brazilian author to deal withthe socio-economic problems endemic to the northeasterner's cyclichegira from his drought and poverty plagued homeland, it is herspecial genius to have added to the external story, the one thatrecounts what happens to an unskilled and unwanted northeasternwaif in the big city, an inner drama, the disintegration of acrippled personality, one pathetically incapable of any kind ofmeaningful self-realization or fulfillment. The narrator informsus in no uncertain terms of his intentions in this regard:

. . . limito-me a contar as fracas aventuras de uma moga numacidade toda feita contra ela. Ela que deveria ter ficado nosertao de Alagoas . . . Quero antes afiangar que essa moga naose conhece senao atraves de ir vivendo a toa. Se tivesse atolice de se perguntar "que sou eu?" cairia estatelada e emcheio no chao . . . A pessoa de quem vou falar e tao tola queas vezes sorri para os outros na rua.12And, at a later point, he says to us, "Ha milhares como ela? Sim,e que sao apenas um acaso."13 We see, then, that Macabea is anindividualized character, one whose psychological portraiture,

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like that of Clarice's other protagonists, quickly becomes the viacrucis of the entire work. But, at the same time, Macabea is por-trayed as a distinct social type, as a symbol of sorts, a painfulreminder of how the poverty of life in the Northeast stunts one'sphysical and intellectual development and how it effectivelyblunts a person, rendering him useless as a contributing member ofsociety and hollow as an individual. Macabea's story, then, aspresented in this novel, is a kind of updated and urbanized ver-sion of what might have been Vit6ria's story, in Graciliano Ramos'Vidas Socas (1938), or what actually was Guta's story, in Rachelde Queiroz's As Trgs Marias (1943). But operating in close con-sort with the two more obvious themes in this novel, the ruinousand as yet unresolved human tragedy of Brazil's northeastern re-gion, and the attempt of an essentially philosophical and lyricalwriter to show a barren, blighted personality struggling, blindlyand futilely, to develop into something more satisfying, thereexists a subtle yet powerful third theme. This tertiary though noless vital impulse of A Hora da Estrela comes to grips with theimplications inherent in being an artist, the ethical, humanistic,and philosophic meaning of creativity, what it really means to con-nect words with reality and then to give them form, to turn theminto art, into literature. At the conclusion of the novel, justafter Macabea's thoroughly stupid death, the rather mysteriouslymotivated narrator, in an ironic and somewhat contrary way thatillustrates the extent to which his own creative energies havegotten wrapped-up in his formation of Macabea, declares:Mas ndo sei por que nao rio. A morte e um encontro consigo.. Macabea me matou.Ela estava enfim livre de si e de n6s. Nao vos assusteis,morrer e um instante, passa logo, eu sei porque acabo de morrercom a moga.1The "death" of the narrator, supposedly the imaginative force

behind the writing of the novel, also highlights an aspect ofClarice's fiction that has been a constant in her work, thoughoften in an elusive, suggestive fashion. It is one, moreover,which places her, autogenerically, it would seem, in the main-stream of one of Western literature's most dominant themes-theisolation of the artist. In all of Clarice's fiction, butespecially in her novels, art, or artistic sensibility, has beenadvanced, often symbolically, as the only possible antidote to therandomness and flux of existence. In Lispector's world, the ar-tist, as seen in Agua Viva, or an artistically receptive "commonperson," like Joana, of Perto do CoraEqo Selvagem (1944), reactsto the baseness of quotidian reality by turning, often unconscious-ly, to the salvation and sense of worth found in the process ofself-discovery and authentic self-expression. Typically, thisprocess results in the attempted linkage of a person's private,personal sense of being and identity to what Clarice suggests arethe eternal and timeless life forces at work in the universe, thisbeing an impulse that is especially apparent in A Paixdo Segundo

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Luso-BraziZian Review 19:2G. H. (1964). Clarice's characters tend to rely on actual artisticcreativity, as in Agua Viva, the urge to create, as in A Maqa noEscuro, or on the liberating power of un-premeditated action, asin A Paixlo Segundo G. H., in an attempt to impose form, and conse-quently meaning, on their fragmented existences. In A Hora daEstreZa, however, the narrator's own relation to life and death isinextricably bound up on the creation of his protagonist, Macabea,and of "life" in literature. It is through art, Clarice is tell-ing us, through imagination, selection, and ordering, that theartist-and the person who appreciates art-overcomes the form-lessness and chaos of existence, succeeds in being constantly re-born, and achieves immortality. The cyclical, archetypal movementof birth, death, and rebirth has become the means by which Lispec-tor's characters, from Joana to Rodrigo S. M. Relato, gain in self-awareness and in a consciousness of where they fit into the generalscheme of things.So, in A Hora da EstreZa, the death of Macabea, an eventparalleled by the narrator's statement that he, the protagonist'screator, "has just died with the girl," underscores the extent towhich Clarice has, in the course of this book, artfully manipu-lated the view-point, the relationship bewteen reader, character,and author. But in so doing, it also hearkens up important ques-tions about the degree to which there are autobiographical ele-ments in this story, about the degree to which Clarice chose toproject herself into the action. There are numerous referenceswhich, given what we already know about Clarice's life, open thedoor to more speculation on this point. For example, Clarice,like Macabea, knew what it meant to be a young girl obliged tomove from her home in a small northeastern city and go to a hugesouthern metropolis. She knew, too, what it meant to be imme-diately bombarded with a plethora of utterly new sights, sounds,and ideas. She knew what it meant to find herself suddenly amongstrangers and to have to make up her life as she went along. Buteven more suggestive of Clarice's personal involvement in thestory are some of the narrator's lines within the course of thetext itself:

Escrevo por nao ter nada a fazer no mundo: sobrei e nao halugar para mim na terra dos homens. Escrevo porque sou umdesesperado e estou cansado, nao suporto mais a rotina de meser e se nao fosse a sempre novidade que e escrever, eu memorreria simbolicamente todos os dias. Mas preparado estoupara sair discretamente pela salda da porta dos fundos.Experimentei quase tudo, inclusive a paixao e o seu desespero.E agora s6 quereria ter o que eu tivesse sido e nao fui.15And, continuing along this same line, he adds:

Estou absolutamente cansado de literatura; so a mudez me fazcompanhia. Se ainda escrevo e porque nada mais tenho a fazerno mundo enquanto espero a morte. . . . Quanto a mim, estoucansado. Talvez da companhia de Macabea, Gl6ria, Olfmpico. 0

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medico me enjoou com sua cerveja. Tenho que interromper estahistoria por uns tres dias.Nestes ultimos tres dias, sozinho, sem personagens,despersonalizo-me e tiro-me de mim como quem tira uma roupa.Despersonalizo-me a ponto de adormecer.16In "depersonalizing" himself, the narrator would have us be-lieve that he has disassociated himself from the story he has beentelling us, that with his departure the narrative will come to anend. The narrator is, of course, self-conscious in doing this, ashe has been from the very beginning of the novel, but in this in-stance he is not being unreliable or fallible. His interpretationand evaluation of the events he describes to us, including his ownpart in them, do, in fact, coincide with the beliefs and attitudesheld by Clarice Lispector; indeed, there is a strong sense thatthese are the very ones she wants to impress upon us most. Butour narrator, Rodrigo S. M. Relato, is, as we can now see, quiteaware of who he is and why he says what he does. He is fullyaware of creating a work of art that, to borrow Booth's terminol-ogy, includes him as a partially dramatized narrator and allowshim the freedom to discuss with the reader the various problemshe has encountered in its writing. The book's creator, Relato,therefore becomes a kind of "intrusive narrator," a character who,

although not a central participant in the action, assumes completeauthorial control over the events he describes, thus giving him-self free rein to comment at will, both about the characters inhis story, including himself, and about the nature of fiction writ-ing in general.But although the nature and function of the narrator is of con-siderable interest in A Hora da Estrela, there is another issuethat needs to be studied in relation to it, an issue that speaksdirectly to the already alluded to autobiographical aspects of thenovel. I refer to those sections of the work in which the nar-rator discusses his private feelings about life and its relationto literature, in which he indulges in some highly personalizeddigressions about his own troubled existence and the various waysit can, or cannot, be transformed into literature. Apropos ofthis, the narrative voice, late in the novel, makes a commentthat, though applicable, in context, to Macabea's story, is ofspecial interest to those of us who have watched Lispector sharpen,focus, and refine her unmistakable style through so many novels,"cronicas," and stories:

(Como e chato lidar com fatos, o cotidiano me aniquila, estoucom preguiga de escrever esta hist6ria que e um desabafoapenas. Vejo que escrevo aquem e alem de mim. N3o meresponsabilizo pelo que agora escrevo.) . . . (Vejo que naoda para aprofundar esta hist6ria. Descrever me cansa.)17

And later, in a scene which seems ineluctably to lead us tovisualize Clarice herself, Clarice the isolated artist, confront-ing, at the very end of her life, the meaning of her own existence,

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Luso-BraziZian Review 19:2her art, and her impending death, we learn:

S6 agora entendo e s6 agora brotou-se-me o sentido secreto: oviolino e um aviso. Sei que quando eu morrer vou ouvir oviolino do homem e pedirei musica, musica, musica.Macabea, Ave Maria, cheia de graca, terra serena dapromissao, terra do perdao, ter que chegar o tempo, ora pron6bis, e eu me uso como forma de conhecimento. Eu te conhecoate o osso por intermedio de uma encantacao que vem de mim parati. . . . Mas quem sabe se ela nao estaria precisando demorrer? Pois ha momentos em que a pessoa esta precisando deuma pequena mortezinha e sem nem ao menos saber. Quanto a mim,substituo o ato da morte por um seu s?mbolo. S?mbolo este quepode se resumir num profundo beijo mas nao na parede aspera esim boca-a-boca na agonia do prazer que e morte. Eu, quesimbolicamente morro varias vezes so para experimentar aressurreicao. . . . Eu poderia resolver pelo caminho maisfacil, matar a menina-infante, mas quero o pior: a vida. Osque me lerem, assim, levem um soco no estomago para ver se ebom. A vida e um soco no estomago.18The attitudes and themes touched upon and alluded to here, al-most as if in a literary summing up and farewell address, do notseem appropriate for Rodrigo S. M. Relato; they do, however, seemperfectly appropriate for Clarice Lispector, the artist who knewshe was dying. It is as if Clarice slips, very unobtrusively, in-to Rodrigo's character and, with only a faintly discernible shiftin tone to mark it, then proceeds to make her final accounting tous, as a writer and as a human being. The poignancy of this finalrealization and declaration of self, plus the concomitant explana-tion of what this story "is about," cannot be missed. Transmitted

by a typically Lispectorian image involving sight, sound, a senseof anticipation, and the epiphany-like instant of cognition, thetext, hauntingly ambiguous, carries us into the mind of the story'screator:Eu estive na terra dos mortos e depois do terror tao negroressurgi em perdao. Sou inocente! Nao me consumam! Nao souvendavel! . . . Estou agora me esforcando para rir em grandegargalhada. Mas nao sei por que nao rio. A morte e um encontroconsigo . . . Mas eis que de repente sinto o meu ultimo esgarde revolta e uivo: o morticlnio dos pombos'!! Viver e luxo.Pronto, passou.Morta, os sinos badalavam mas sem seus bronzes lhes dessemsom. Agora entendo esta historia. Ela e a iminencia que hanos sinos que quase-quase badalam.A grandeza de cada um.

Silencio.Se um dia Deus vier a terra havera silencio grande.0 silencio e tal que nem o pensamento pensa.19

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But, in an expression of what could easily be construed either asbitter irony or as a reproach to those who have refused to acceptwhat Lispector has always done with her fiction, we read:0 final foi bastante grandiloqiiente para a vossanecessidade? Morrendo ela virou ar. Ar energetico? Nao sei.Morreu em um instante. 0 instante e aquele atimo de tempo emque o pneu do carro correndo em alta velocidade toca no chao edepois nao toca mais e depois toca de novo. Etc., etc., etc.No fundo ela nao passara de uma caixinha de musica meiodesafinada.E vos pergunto:-Qual e o peso da luz?20

Because in them the real narrative voice can be interpreted as be-ing that of either Relato or Lispector herself, the final lines ofthis novel establish the famous sense of ambiguity and suggestive-ness that has made Clarice famous. Although we still stronglyfeel her presence in the concluding passage, there is simul-taneously reintroduced into the text the distinct possibility thatthe narrative voice is-and has been all along-that of RodrigoS. M. Relato. We read:E agora-agora so me resta acender um cigarro e ir para casa.Meu Deus, s6 agora me lembrei que a gente morre. Mas-mas eutambem?!Nao esquecer que por enquanto e tempo de morangos.Sim.21

The studied ambiguity of this last scene illustrates rather wellthe control Clarice is exerting over the structuring of her nar-rative. It is, moreover, an ambiguity that admits of more thanone logical interpretation, something that it must do if it is tobe done well and avoid simply being vague and imprecise. But, inthe final analysis, it is the author's deft management of point ofview, especially as this key issue relates to the relationship be-tween the real author and the implied author, that allows her toutilize this textual ambiguity as effectively as she does.In conclusion, we can say that, in A Hora da EstreZa, ClariceLispector continues to work with certain of the major themes thathad held her interest, and ours, ever since her first publishednovel in 1944. But it also seems abundantly clear that there arepresent in this final, partially autobiographical work severalelements that, if not wholly new, were certainly undeveloped pre-viously. Among these, we should take special note of the author'scontrolled use of verbal and dramatic irony, her development ofsardonic, even absurdist humor, her extended experiment with anintrusive narrator, and, most notable of all, the attention andstress she gives to the novel's sociologically related questions.Stylistically, however, and this does not surprise us sinceClarice has always been a consummate stylist, she succeeds inblending all of these disparate elements, the old and the new, by

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Luso-Brazitian Review 19:2means of a skillfully controlled perspective, one that allows herto merge her own comments about life, literature, and art with anarrative web that is based on the machinations of a fully self-conscious narrator, a man who, in many ways, is like Lispector her-self. In addressing herself, then, through the text itself, tothe unique experience that is the writing and reading of a novel,while, at the same time, plumbing the depths of an isolated humanconsciousness, Clarice Lispector has taken another important steptoward legitimizing the place of Brazilian literature in thelarger context of contemporary Western literature. Without beingartistically perfect, A Hora da EstreZa is a worthy addition toits author's lifetime of labor devoted to the creation of litera-ture. In her penult effort as a novelist, Clarice Lispector suc-ceeded in drawing together all of the themes that had preoccupiedher throughout her illustrious career and in introducing some newones as well. The organic, interconnected nature of her fictionand her concern over questions involving style and technique havenever been more evident than they are here.True to the poetic aspect of her earlier style, Clarice's con-cept of point of view here is closely linked to her special modeof characterization. Her characters, including the narrator ofA Hora da Estrela, have tended to turn their eyes inward in orderto give us an emotional, subjective and highly charged account oftheir relationship with themselves and with their world. But, inaddition, this novel shows how Lispector had, with this short, in-tense work, become acutely aware of what she could do with pointof view, of how she could have it vacillate between the totalsubjectivity of a first-person poem and the sharply delineatedobjectivity of a drama. For Lispector, the various points of viewutilized in this book, those established by the real author, hernarrator, the other characters, and the reader, all coalesce inthe act of reading the work to supply material for psychologicalanalysis, elements of humor and irony, a disparity of understand-ing or interpretation, and social commentary. At times, Clarice,like the poet, relies on paradoxical language, ambiguous phras-ings, and ironic symbolism to amplify the diversity of theknowledge that her radical shifts in perspective engender. As wehave seen, Lispector's first-person narrator even varies his ownposition in relation to the narrative: he participates, to someextent, in the action, comments upon it, ponders his own de-velopment as an artist, and yet combines all these functions withvoiced concern over the other characters, about who they are, howthey came to be, and what they should mean to us. His success inthis novel, however, depends chiefly on two things: the implica-tions inherent in his reliability, or unreliability, and thevalidity of his own sense of the connection between life andliterature. This is more evident when Clarice shifts to anomniscient third-person point of view and, in so doing, opens upthe characters' minds so that we know what everyone is thinking.These thoughts, in a way typical of all Lispector has done before,are revealed to us as unspoken speech patterns, or internalizeddialogues. They play a crucial role in A Hora da Estreta because,

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more than any of the other perspectives struck in this story,these thoughts and musings provide the link between the inner andouter worlds, between that telling dissection of human conscious-ness for which Clarice has become so well known and the depictionof a physical world full of tangible objects, intense human en-tanglements, and, now, sociological strife.So while it can be said that A Hora da Estrela does containmuch that is vintage Clarice Lispector, we should not let thisblind us to the new material that the author works with in thisnovel, particularly her attempt to merge social criticism withwhat remains basically stream-of-consciousness subject matter.But in all of this, it is Lispector's careful and coordinatedshifting of perspective that establishes itself as the most out-standing feature of the entire work. Clearly aware of what shewanted to say, and of how she wanted it said, Clarice controls ourresponse to A Hora da EstreZa through her variations in point ofview. Given the vigor and innovativeness of what we see here, onemust wonder about the wonderful stories we could have expectedfrom Clarice Lispector had she not died so prematurely. With heruntimely passing, one of Latin America's most original and power-ful voices has been stilled. Though her presence is already beingsorely missed, her inspiration and example remain very much alivefor us. While A Hora da Estrela may not be Lispector's bestnovel, its daring experimentalism tantalizes us with visions ofwhat might have followed if she had been able to develop further.

NOTES1Clarice Lispector, A Hora da Estrela, 3* edigao (Rio deJaneiro: Livraria Jose' Olympio Editora, 1977), pp. 9-12.2Ibid., p. 17.3Ibid., p. 48.4Ibid., p. 45.5Ibid., p. 38.6Ibid., p. 45.7Ibid., p. 58.8Ibid., p. 71.9Ibid., p. 24.10Ibid., p. 82.11This is not to suggest, of course, that A Hora da EstreZa inany way resembles Os Serties; only that Lispector's novel can besaid to fit into a special category, or sub-category, of Brazilianliterature at the same time that it remains faithful to itsauthor's more traditional concerns.12Lispector, pp. 19-20.13Ibid., p. 45.14Ibid., p. 103.15Ibid., p. 27.16Ibid., pp. 84-85.17Ibid., p. 87.18Ibid., pp. 99-100.

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208 Luso-BraziliZan Review 19:219Ibid , pp. 102-103.20Ibid., p. 104.21 Ibid.

Fitz LISPECTOR

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