, “Clarice’s Hour” at the IMS Paulista. IMS Clarice Lispector, 2017. Disponível em: https://site.claricelispector.ims.com.br/en/2017/12/15/hora-de-clarice-no-ims-paulista/. Acesso em: 28 April 2025.
In this edition of “Clarice’s Hour,” the IMS Paulista hosted a conversation with Idra Novey, mediated by the poet and editor Alberto Martins. Novey spoke about the experience of translating The Passion According to G.H. to English and about her new novel published in Brazil, Ways to Disappear (2017), which is marked by the mysterious disappearance of a writer who may or may not be Clarice Lispector.
Above is a passage in Portuguese and in English from The Passion According to G.H. that moved the public. Below is the video of the meeting.
I died. I found out when, one day, on the sidewalk of Praça Maciel Pinheiro, I lifted my head, opened my eyes, and saw myself dead, there on the plaza’s sidewalk, the two-story house on the other side of the street. My broken heart inside my chest, the two-story house on Rua do Aragão, 387, where, on the second floor, Clarice Lispector lived a happy childhood here in Recife, despite the pains of the world and experiencing and feeling, mainly, the pains of an implacable disease that would one day take Mania, her mother, away from her. I found out when, laid out on the sidewalk there under the scorching Sunday sun, I turned my head to the right and saw a man beside me, who was also looking at the house.
Caetano Veloso says that when he showed the acoustic version of his song “Odeio” (I hate), which would be included on the Cê album, to his friend and composer Jorge Mautner, the latter cried and told him that it was the most beautiful love song that he had ever heard.
It has become commonplace to say that Clarice Lispector’s writing seeks to overcome the limits of language which the author names “it,” “nucleus,” “thing,” “unsayable,” “silence.”
In the book Rio de Clarice, the author's pleasure in wandering the streets, forests, parks, and beaches of Rio de Janeiro, where she arrived as a 15-year-old, is evident.
