, Fragments of Stars. IMS Clarice Lispector, 2021. Disponível em: https://site.claricelispector.ims.com.br/en/2021/12/01/fragments-of-stars/. Acesso em: 15 April 2026.
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. At the end of the day, after some tension-filled twists and turns, the young Ana Maria went to visit the admired Clarice Lispector, of whom she was a fan. She returned home stunned by the encounter and wrote, in the heat of the moment, the draft of a text that would be kept for more than 40 years. The text was finally published in 2020, with minor changes, in Serrote magazine. In this video, produced by the IMS Literature Coordinator’s Office, the story of this encounter – and its outcome – is told by Ana Maria Machado herself, who reconstructs that “strange” day and makes emotional comments about the meeting between the two. Finally, she visits the Clarice Lispector collection, held by the Moreira Salles Institute (IMS), and reviews the manuscripts of The Hour of the Star, the same ones that decades earlier Clarice herself had shown her, scattered in a box, in supplication.
Ana Maria Machado recounts her emotional encounter with Clarice Lispector in 1975.
On December 10th, IMS Rio celebrates Clarice Lispector’s birthday. This year, we will present, in a single screening, the short film Perto de Clarice (Close to Clarice), by João Carlos Horta, from 1982, in a new digital version based on the 35mm original preserved by the Audiovisual Technical Center (CTAv). After the film screening, there will be a conversation between the writer Heloisa Buarque de Holanda, who was involved in the making of the film and is the director's widow, and Teresa Montero, author of the most recent biography of the writer, À procura da própria coisa (In Search of the Thing Itself – Rocco, 2021), mediated by the IMS literature consultant, the poet Eucanaã Ferraz.
The second part of the original manuscripts of Um sopro de vida (A Breath of Life) was delivered by the writer's son, Paulo Gurgel Valente, to be incorporated into the Clarice Lispector Collection
Acclaimed by critics and a popular phenomenon on the internet, Clarice Lispector is considered, internationally, one of the great names in 20th century literature. Mysterious, obscure, revealing, experimental, strangely mystical, or philosophical – how to define the writing of the author of The Hour of the Star? This podcast, conceived and presented by Bruno Cosentino and Eucanaã Ferraz, covers Clarice’s life and work in five episodes, in which they talk to great specialists, professors, and researchers.
