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
Clarice Lispector and the Invention of Judeity
Benjamin Moser, one of the most significant biographers of Clarice Lispector, said in an interview that one of his goals in writing Why This World, published in the United States and translated into Portuguese as Clarice, uma biografia, was to make space for a theme rarely explored by literary critics, commentators, and biographers: the writer’s “Judeity.” Most tend to limit themselves to reflecting on her “Brazilianness,” “as if one had to choose between being Jewish and being Brazilian.”
Exhibition at the Paris Book Fair
At the 35th edition of the Paris Book Fair, Brazil was the country of honor. The program was marked by an exhibition dedicated to Clarice Lispector at Éditions des Femmes,
Clarice in France
In launching in 2015, in the United States, the unprecedented collection in one book of all the short stories by Clarice Lispector, the researcher Benjamin Moser...
Clarice Lispector’s hour and turn
The year 2017 marked the 40th anniversary of The Hour of the Star, the last book written by Clarice Lispector, which was published in the year of her death.
LispectorFest at the University of Tennessee
Every year the University of Tennessee prepares AuthorFest, a series of activities to celebrate the work of a single author. In its second edition, AuthorFest paid tribute to Clarice Lispector.
“In the Name of My Father”
Clarice’s connection with politics does not take place on the surface of public life, or in the texts that directly address the issue. This is due to the writer’s understanding of the rift between art and politics, which is addressed in two related texts, “Literature and Justice” and “What I Would Like to Have Been,” in which she observes with disconcerting lucidity the uselessness of her literature as a political instrument.