In the 1960s, the Spaniard Jaime Vilaseca was a carpenter in Rio de Janeiro until a fateful encounter with Clarice Lispector, for whom he had gone to make a bookcase in her apartment in the Leme neighborhood. The writer had silently watched him working during those days, and when the furniture was finished, she looked at him and said: “You’re going to be a framer.” Faced with the man’s hesitation, she completed the prediction: “You won’t escape your destiny!” Since then, for over fifty years, Jaime Vilaseca has lived off this profession, for which he is renowned, besides having become a curator and owner of an art gallery. In this conversation with the poet Eucanaã Ferraz, the framer talks about his friendship with Clarice Lispector and tells his stories that served as a source of inspiration for texts by the writer, such as the famous short story “The First Kiss,” from the book Covert Joy.
A frame for Clarice Lispector
See also
Cazuza to the sound of Lispector
“I wanted to announce the following: the person I love most in life is named Clarice Lispector.” This affirmation was made by Cazuza.
“Triumph,” Clarice’s Press Debut
Issue 227, from May 25, 1940, contains the three-page story “Triunfo” – Clarice Lispector’s first registered collaboration with the press.
Paulo Gurgel Valente Remembers His Mother, Clarice Lispector
Paulo Gurgel Valente, Clarice's son, spoke with Eucanaã Ferraz and Elizama Almeida and recalls, for example, the personalities who frequented his home.
Clarice’s Days in Washington
The film Clarice's Days in Washington captures a very different and decisive moment in the life and work of the writer, when she lived in the American capital with her family, between 1952 and 1959. In addition to a significant number of unpublished photographs – which record her domestic environment and interactions with friends – there are precious images filmed during a public event, in which the writer, her husband Maury Gurgel Valente, their son Paulo, in addition to friends of the couple appear.
On a Reading, the Secret Happiness
In a small, vast, and brilliant book called Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing, by Hélène Cixous (1993), the author is taken to three schools by writers that she loves: the School of the Dead, the School of Dreams, and the School of Roots. One of the books that transport Cixous to the School of Dreams is Clarice Lispector’s second published novel, The Chandelier.
Fragments of Stars
The writer Ana Maria Machado had an unusual and emotional episode with Clarice Lispector. This happened in 1975. After having read an article by Ana Maria, published that very day in the Jornal do Brasil, about the birthday of the writer Roland Barthes, Clarice, who did not know her personally, insistently asked her for help to organize what in two years would be the book The Hour of the Star.