Clarice Lispector\u2019s notebook \u2013 measuring exactly 17 cm x 10,5 cm and 58 pages \u2013 is made available here in full, for the enjoyment of researchers and readers of her work. The logbook, as it came to be called by the Literature team at the Moreira Salles Institute, was donated by the son and heir of the author, Paulo Gurgel Valente, in January 2012. After going through the process that is common for all documents deposited under our care, such as cleaning and cataloging, the notebook was digitized in high resolution and its content transcribed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Throughout the reading, we will have countless moments of happiness to accompany, more than the recording of small details during the months of July and August 1944 during Clarice Lispector\u2019s journey to Naples with stops at Fisherman\u2019s Lake at Lisbon. One of the surprises is due to the passages, still in a rudimentary phase, from her second novel, O lustre<\/em> [The Chandelier<\/em>], which would be published in 1946, when the author was already in Switzerland, the country where she also wrote A cidade sitiada <\/em>[The Besieged City<\/em>]. We read in the notepad that working on the hitherto unnamed book was one of Clarice\u2019s daily activities until she reached her final destination. Some characters from The Chandelier<\/em>, such as Adriano and Vicente, are mentioned in the notebook \u2013 this can therefore be considered a valuable document for those dedicated to genetic literary criticism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another happy find in the yellowed but preserved pages is one of her notes that would echo in the short story \u201cThe Smallest Woman in the World\u201d, included in La\u00e7os de fam\u00edlia <\/em>[Family Ties<\/em>], of 1960. Clarice records on July 31, 1944 the mutual astonishment generated from the meeting between her and the \u201cbeautiful, clean\u201d black people of some villages in Liberia, \u201cwhere the missionaries did not arrive\u201d. It goes into the description of women and men, of the looks, of a small shop, and she confides: \u201cHow I liked those black people\u201d. The fact seems to have provided inspiration for the aforementioned story, and the annotation is an almost ready text that would unfold into two others: \u201cAfrica\u201d, included in Fundo de Gaveta<\/em>e [Back of the Drawer<\/em>], of 1964, and \u201cCor\u00e7as negras\u201d, published on April 5, 1969 in Jornal do Brasil<\/em> and later collected 1984 for the collection of chronicles A descoberta do mundo <\/em>[published as English as Selected Cr\u00f4nicas<\/em>].<\/p>\n\n\n\n