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.
In partnership with the Department of Humanities at Columbia University, the IMS presents the international seminar The Clarice Factor: Aesthetics, Gender, and Diaspora in Brazil.
In this video lesson, Mell Brites, author of the book As Crianças de Clarice: Narrativas da Infância e Outras Revelações (The Children of Clarice: Narratives of Childhood and Other Revelations), addresses the theme of childhood in Clarice Lispector’s literature, both in her children's books and in those aimed at an adult audience.
At the center of the short story “The Smallest Woman in the World,” there is a reference to a photograph that was allegedly published in a report about an explorer’s expedition to Equatorial Africa in the “Sunday papers.” This information could be taken as a fictional invention, but the existence of a supposed report is reinforced by “The Useless Explanation,” a text published in the “Back of the Drawer” of The Foreign Legion (1964) about the genesis of the stories that make up Family Ties (1960), the author’s previous volume.
The word “unfamiliar” is used by Clarice Lispector in several of her works. To be precise, in the original Portuguese, Clarice employed the neologism infamiliar, which is not in the dictionary, though it cannot be affirmed that the author is the source of this term in Brazilian literature. Nonetheless, by mentioning the word “unfamiliar” at least sixteen times, whether in novels, short stories, or chronicles, the author makes this unique signifier an object of greater attention.
I spent an unforgettable weekend in Cabo Frio, hosted by Scliar who painted two portraits of me. Scliar’s house is very beautiful. Cabo Frio inspires Scliar. I asked him about so much creativity.
