Written in the 1950s, during the period in which she lived in Washington, The Mystery of the Thinking Rabbit was the first children’s book written by Clarice Lispector. After a question by her son Paulo– “Why do you only write books for adults? Not for children?” – the text, initially not intended for release, was written in English and shelved until 1967, when it was published by José Álvaro.
The narrator in The Mystery of the Thinking Rabbit is named Paulo, which evokes the name of Clarice’s son and will strengthen the close ties with the reader, since the narrative is constructed like an intimate conversation, where the one who listens/reads is constantly engaged.
The plot focuses on Joãozinho the rabbit, who smelled of ideas, and invents a way to leave his cage when there is no food. The humans notice and do not forget to feed him. Nonetheless, the rabbit wants much more than what the humans offer him, and his life comes to be “eat well and escape, and always with a beating heart.” More than for the adventure, the rabbit had acquired a taste for freedom, and it is outside the cage that he really manages to be a thinking rabbit.
According to Rosa Gens, “Lispector’s poetics is evident in the fluid plot, in the doubts and inquiries, in the presence of a narrator who is always together with the reader and does not know all the answers, allowing the doubt to be prolonged. Mystery narratives commonly lead the reader to investigate clues, elaborate solutions, solve enigmas. In Clarice Lispector’s writing, the mystery is different. It does not concern an enigma related to facts, only the possibility of pretending to be a rabbit, of climbing into someone else’s skin, of thinking from different angles. In the text, which emphasizes fantasy and imagination, playing and thinking provide the tone, and the contamination between rabbit and human, emphasized at the end of the narrative, makes way for the marvelous.”
A book only for those who like rabbits, according to Clarice Lispector, who moreover asks adults for a little patience and understanding for the many questions that cannot be answered in rabbit terms.
Original cover for The Mystery of the Thinking Rabbit, 1st edition
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 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.
The critic José Castello will teach new classes for Grupo Clarice, a group dedicated to the reading and study of the works of Clarice Lispector. Among the works discussed are...
I believe that Clarice and I shared a common feeling: objects are not inanimate, on the contrary, they have a secret life. I do not know if the reader has already tried turning off the lights at night in your room and, little by little, noticed that your eyes adapt to the dark and finally you can perceive the living presence of things.
