{"id":13781,"date":"2025-02-13T18:20:56","date_gmt":"2025-02-13T21:20:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/site.claricelispector.ims.com.br\/?p=13781"},"modified":"2025-03-10T16:25:42","modified_gmt":"2025-03-10T19:25:42","slug":"in-the-name-of-my-father","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/site.claricelispector.ims.com.br\/en\/2025\/02\/13\/in-the-name-of-my-father\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;In the Name of My Father&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Clarice Lispector wrote deliberately political texts. To name a few, \u201cA Letter to the Minister of Education,\u201d<sup><a href=\"#footnote_1_13781\" id=\"identifier_1_13781\" class=\"footnote-link footnote-identifier-link\" title=\"&nbsp;[Translator&rsquo;s note: The original in Portuguese is titled &ldquo;Carta ao Ministro da Educa&ccedil;&atilde;o.&rdquo;]\">1<\/a><\/sup> in which she defends student access to vacancies at public universities; \u201cThe Killing of Human Beings: the Indians,\u201d<sup><a href=\"#footnote_2_13781\" id=\"identifier_2_13781\" class=\"footnote-link footnote-identifier-link\" title=\"&nbsp;[Translator&rsquo;s note: The original in Portuguese is titled &ldquo;A matan&ccedil;a de seres humanos: os &iacute;ndios.&rdquo;]\">2<\/a><\/sup> in which she repudiates the murder of indigenous people for the exploitation of natural resources and advocates for the demarcation of their territories; and \u201cMineirinho,\u201d in which she censors the action of the police in murdering a criminal with thirteen gunshots. Clarice also participated in a few gatherings against the dictatorship and was present at demonstrations, including the March of the One Hundred Thousand, which was recorded in photographs in which she appears in the middle of the crowd in front of the Rio de Janeiro City Council Building, or alongside Carlos Scliar, Glauce Rocha, Oscar Niemeyer, and Milton Nascimento, among other public cultural figures.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Despite this, Clarice was accused of being alienated by the patrol at <em>Pasquim<\/em>, a cultural tabloid formed by illustrious men from the upper-class areas of Rio de Janeiro, more specifically by the cartoonist Henfil. The spat had negative repercussions and the cartoonist, with caricatured reasoning, defended himself: \u201cI placed her in the Cemetery of the Living Dead because she places herself inside a Little Prince dome, to remain in a world of flowers and birds, while Christ is being nailed to the cross. In times like these, I only have one word to say about people who keep talking about flowers: they are alienated.\u201d<sup><a href=\"#footnote_3_13781\" id=\"identifier_3_13781\" class=\"footnote-link footnote-identifier-link\" title=\"[Translator&rsquo;s note: the original quote in Portuguese reads: &ldquo;Eu a coloquei no Cemit&eacute;rio dos Mortos-Vivos porque ela se coloca dentro de uma redoma de Pequeno Pr&iacute;ncipe, para ficar num mundo de flores e de passarinhos, enquanto Cristo est&aacute; sendo pregado na cruz. Num momento como o de hoje, s&oacute; tenho uma palavra a dizer de uma pessoa que continua falando de flores: &eacute; alienada.&rdquo;]\">3<\/a><\/sup> The writer\u2019s burial promoted by the cartoonist (in his column called \u201cCemetery of the Living Dead\u201d) happened in 1972, therefore a few years after the political texts published by Clarice during Institutional Act No. 5 (AI-5) and the March of the One Hundred Thousand. Teresa Montero shows in Clarice\u2019s biography that the writer was registered by the National Information Service (SNI), a spy agency of the dictatorial government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But the fact is that Clarice\u2019s 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\u2019s understanding of the rift between art and politics, which is addressed in two related texts, \u201cLiterature and Justice\u201d and \u201cWhat I Would Like to Have Been,\u201d in which she observes with disconcerting lucidity the uselessness of her literature as a political instrument. In the former, she says:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>[&#8230;] my tolerance in relation to myself, as someone who writes, is to forgive my inability to deal with the &#8220;social problem&#8221; in a &#8220;literary&#8221; vein (that is to say, by transforming it into the vehemence of art). Ever since I have come to know myself, the social problem has been more important to me than any other issue: in Recife the black shanty towns were the first truth I encountered. Long before I ever felt &#8220;art&#8221;, I felt the profound beauty of human conflict. I tend to be straightforward in my approach to any social problem: I wanted &#8220;to do&#8221; something, as if writing were not doing anything.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Clarice says that she would like to \u201cdeal with the \u2018social problem\u2019 in a \u2018literary\u2019 vein (that is to say, by transforming it into the vehemence of art).\u201d She therefore dissociates two dimensions, which are irreconcilable for her: the aesthetic and the social. She says that she wishes her literature could reach an expression \u2013 a \u201cvehemence\u201d \u2013 that would bring it closer to the truth with which she felt the \u201csocial problem,\u201d which was even prior to the truth with which she felt art. She declares the failure of her literature as a political instrument, which she rightly deems innocuous for the production of effective changes in the social reality, but she also hesitates regarding the aesthetic-formal strength of her literature in dealing with the social, since, according to her, the expression of her writing falls short of that of the \u201csocial problem.\u201d In other words, she would have wished to provoke in the reader a rapture similar to the one that she felt in the face of the blatant injustice of wretched families living in shacks built with scrap wood and floating precariously on sticks in the mangrove of her city, Recife; but she declares herself incapable of giving form to this feeling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Once literature and the \u201csocial problem\u201d have been dissociated, she confesses to feeling ashamed for <em>doing<\/em> nothing. Here, she is no longer speaking of literature and no longer addressing the desire for a vehement writing, but the desire for action: \u201cI wanted \u2018to do\u2019 something, as if writing were not doing anything.\u201d&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the second text, which is titled \u201cWhat I Would Like to Have Been,\u201d Clarice once again addresses the feeling of injustice that assailed her when she visited the slums of Recife and how, in the face of such injustice, she made a commitment to defend people\u2019s rights \u2013 \u201cAnd what I saw made me promise myself that I would not allow that to continue. I wanted to act.\u201d She also observes in this text that as a girl it is as if she had before her two paths to follow, two vocations, and asks herself: \u201cWhy did fate determine that I should write what I\u2019ve written, rather than developing in me the that fighting quality?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is important to note that in both texts, the word <em>fighting<\/em> appears repeatedly. She says \u201cprofound beauty of human conflict,\u201d in which, curiously, the attribute of beauty, as confronted as it is associated with the work of art, is transposed to qualify struggle and not literature, which is yet another indication of the co-movement that Clarice finds both in the \u201csocial problem\u201d and in art. And she ends the text by showing herself to be dissatisfied with the ineffectiveness of literature in the field of political transformations: \u201cWhat I would like to be is a fighter. I mean, someone who fights for the good of others. [&#8230;] I ended up being a person who seeks out her deepest feelings and finds words to express those feelings. That is very little, very little indeed.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The two astonishments of the young Clarice become manifest: the truth of the \u201csocial problem\u201d and the truth of art; two truths like two divergent paths to follow: one collective, the other individual; one exterior, the other interior; one concrete, the other abstract; one conscious, the other unconscious; one political, the other artistic; one of action, the other of imagination; one real, the other fictional. Two truths that create an unceasing tension in her work, the culmination of which will be the story \u2013 \u201cexterior and explicit\u201d \u2013 of Macab\u00e9a, in <em>The Hour of the Star<\/em>, which was published by Clarice shortly before her death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is important to emphasize that struggle, whose seed is revolt, will be the guide for Clarice\u2019s feeling of justice. Before choosing the truth of art and becoming a writer, between the two paths that moved her, she followed the path of struggle and entered the National School of Law. As she said in an interview: \u201cmy idea was to study law to reform the penitentiaries.\u201d<sup><a href=\"#footnote_4_13781\" id=\"identifier_4_13781\" class=\"footnote-link footnote-identifier-link\" title=\"&nbsp;[Translator&rsquo;s note: the original quote in Portuguese reads: &ldquo;minha ideia era estudar advocacia para reformar as penitenci&aacute;rias.&rdquo;]\">4<\/a><\/sup> During her undergraduate studies, she published an essay in the school journal called&nbsp; \u201cObserva\u00e7\u00f5es sobre o direito de punir\u201d [Observations on the Right to Punish], in which she traces the genesis of the emergence of law, the conclusion of which will be that law is born of revolt and institutionally guarantees its perpetuation:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>In the beginning, there were no rights but powers. Since man was able to avenge the offense directed at him and certified that such a revenge satisfied him and discouraged second offenses, he only stopped exercising his strength in the face of a greater force. [&#8230;] The weak united; and it was then that the plan properly began [&#8230;] the weak, the first clever and intelligent people in the history of humanity, sought to submit those relations that until then had been natural, biological, and necessary to the domain of thought. As a defense, the idea arose that despite not having power, they had rights. [&#8230;] <em>And in the mind of man what corresponded to that revolt was being formed<\/em>.<sup><a href=\"#footnote_5_13781\" id=\"identifier_5_13781\" class=\"footnote-link footnote-identifier-link\" title=\"&nbsp;[Translator&rsquo;s note: the original quote in Portuguese reads: &ldquo;De in&iacute;cio, n&atilde;o existiam direitos, mas poderes. Desde que o homem p&ocirc;de vingar a ofensa a ele dirigida e verificou que tal vingan&ccedil;a o satisfazia e atemorizava a reincid&ecirc;ncia, s&oacute; deixou de exercer sua for&ccedil;a perante uma for&ccedil;a maior. [&hellip;] Os fracos uniram-se; e &eacute; ent&atilde;o que come&ccedil;a propriamente o plano [&hellip;] os fracos, os primeiros ladinos e sofistas, os primeiros inteligentes da hist&oacute;ria da humanidade, procuraram submeter aquelas rela&ccedil;&otilde;es at&eacute; ent&atilde;o naturais, biol&oacute;gicas e necess&aacute;rias ao dom&iacute;nio do pensamento. Surgiu, como defesa, a ideia de que apesar de n&atilde;o terem for&ccedil;a, tinham direitos. [&hellip;] E no esp&iacute;rito do homem foi se formando a correspondente daquela revolta.&rdquo;]\">5<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Law is thus \u201cwhat corresponded,\u201d in its form, to \u201cthat revolt\u201d of the weakest against the strongest. Revolt, as the actual etymology of the word suggests, is at the beginning and end of law, never ceasing to return, to revolve; it is raw material and a work in progress. It is like lighting a fire in a fire, not to let it be extinguished once it is controlled. It is worth observing, in the story told by Clarice, the occurrence of a significant change between the first moment, when the revolt is individual (or transindividual), the ferment of law, and the second moment, when it is fixed in the impersonal form of law, which guarantees the right to fight, which then becomes political. Between one and the other, the status of the revolt changes, from individual to collective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nonetheless, Clarice ponders, the whim of judges can infiltrate the impersonal application of law, thus making it dysfunctional. This is where the snake bites its tail. Because, if law is impersonal, the application of law, which is in the power of people designated for such a purpose, is not. That being the case, revolt \u2013 we could also call it \u201ccivil disobedience\u201d with Thoreau \u2013 is the driving force of justice, that is, it renews, in a dynamic that successively goes from the individual to the collective and from the collective to the individual, the health of a political system. Such an individual dimension of revolt \u2013 against a dysfunctional justice system that oppresses, punishes, maintains the privileges of certain social strata, and, in short, eliminates the possibility of struggle \u2013 is ingrained, as we will see, in Clarice\u2019s work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\">*<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Let us look at individual revolt \u2013 or its annihilation \u2013 in two of Clarice\u2019s characters who are unexpectedly similar. The first, Joana, is from her debut novel <em>Near to the Wild Heart<\/em>, which was written when the author was 20 years old, and the second, Macab\u00e9a, is from <em>The Hour of the Star<\/em>, the last book published during her lifetime. Between the former and the latter books, the author\u2019s entire adult life passed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The character Joana, after her father\u2019s death, comes to live with her aunt. One day, when she was accompanying her shopping, while she was leaving the store she puts a book under her arm and leaves without paying. Her aunt turns pale and then they have the following conversation:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>\u201cDo you even know what you did?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cYes . . .\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cDo you know . . . do you know the word . . .?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI stole the book, isn\u2019t that it?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cBut, Dear Lord! Now I\u2019m at a complete loss, as she even confesses to it!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cYou made me confess, ma\u2019am.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cDo you think it\u2019s alright . . . it\u2019s alright to steal?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWell . . . maybe not.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWhy then . . .?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI can.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cYou?!\u201d shouted the aunt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cYes, I stole because I wanted to. I\u2019ll only steal when I want to. There\u2019s no<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>harm in that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cLord help me, when is there harm in it Joana?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWhen you steal and are afraid. I\u2019m neither happy nor sad.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Her aunt gazed at her in distress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cMy dear, you\u2019re almost a woman, soon you\u2019ll be all grown up . . . In no<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>time we\u2019re going to have to let down your dress . . . I beg you: swear you won\u2019t<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>do it again, swear, <em>swear for the love of our heavenly Father<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Joana looked at her curiously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cBut if I\u2019m saying that I can do anything, that . . .\u201d Explanations were<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>useless. \u201cYes, I swear. <em>For the love of my father<\/em>.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>The revolt here is a youthful experiment, a mere petulant exercise in disobedience, but I would like to retain its potency. The feeling of being able to say <em>no<\/em> to the law is equivalent to saying <em>yes<\/em> to oneself; a self-affirmation. In this sense, we will see how Joana is different from Macab\u00e9a, although both share some similarities in personality. I will take advantage of a detail in the dialogue to make a brief detour and discuss the importance of Clarice\u2019s father for her notion of justice, which is linked to the value of the human person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Although the standard translation into English reads \u201cfor the love of my father,\u201d the original phrase in Portuguese, \u201cem nome do pai,\u201d should rather read \u201cin the name of the father,\u201d a Christian formula that coincidentally served Jacques Lacan to forge his metaphor of the law \u2013 \u201cthe name of the father,\u201d whose sound, in French, is <em>le nom du p\u00e8re<\/em>, which also sounds like \u201cthe no of the father.\u201d For the French psychoanalyst, it is this <em>no<\/em> from adults that establishes in the child the <em>superego<\/em> with which its <em>self<\/em> will have to negotiate during group life. In the dialogue created by Clarice, the <em>superego<\/em>, which is embodied in the figure of her aunt, a follower of conventions, says that one can<em>not<\/em> steal, but Joana\u2019s unruly <em>self<\/em> disagrees and steals because she can and is not afraid. Once the girl realizes that her aunt would never understand her arguments, she cynically accepts her plea and promises not to steal anymore, \u201cin the name of my father.\u201d Joana\u2019s dead father, unlike her aunt, did not represent the figure of imposing law for the character; when he was alive, Joana, in reciting verses to him, received the answer yes: \u201cLovely, darling, lovely. How do you make such a beautiful poem?\u201d Thus, when she promises to no longer steal in \u201cthe name of my father,\u201d although she seems to cede to her aunt\u2019s request, she refuses and remains loyal to her paternal affiliation, in opposition to the Lacanian metaphor, that is, by singularizing the figure of her father.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Clarice\u2019s father was a Ukrainian immigrant with a penchant for the arts, mathematics, and spiritual things, but for being Jewish, when he was young he was rejected by the universities where he wanted to study. Once in Brazil, he worked in a soap factory and as a peddler. As Clarice wrote in the column \u201cPersona,\u201d the greatest compliment given to someone by her father was to say that he or she was \u201ca person;\u201d \u201cTo this day I still say it, as if it were a maxim to be applied to anyone who has won a fight, and I say it with a heart that is proud to belong to the human race: he or she is a person. I\u2019m grateful to my father for having taught me early on to distinguish between those who are truly born, live and die, from those who, as people, are not persons.\u201d Pedro Lispector died when Clarice was 18 years old. In a letter to her friend Fernando Sabino, she said that her father had once told her: \u201cif I wrote, I would write a book about a man who realized he had lost his way;\u201d and she concluded: \u201cI can\u2019t think about it without feeling unbearable physical pain.\u201d<sup><a href=\"#footnote_6_13781\" id=\"identifier_6_13781\" class=\"footnote-link footnote-identifier-link\" title=\"Translator&rsquo;s note: the original quotes in Portuguese read: &ldquo;se eu escrevesse, escreveria um livro sobre um homem que viu que se tinha perdido;&rdquo; &ldquo;n&atilde;o posso pensar nisso sem que sinta uma dor f&iacute;sica insuport&aacute;vel&rdquo;.\">6<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Pedro Lispector\u2019s life was not what one wished due to his situation, in this case, being Jewish in Ukraine, at a time when one\u2019s people were being persecuted. For someone like Clarice, who scrutinizes the materiality of life with such acuity that she dedicated all of her literature to trying to get closer to its mystery, this is the greatest injustice: a human being prevented, by social and material conditions, from being what one wants. Clarice\u2019s view coincides with that of another Jewish woman, Hannah Arendt, who pursues the value of the singularity of the human being based on the idea of \u200b\u200bnatality (an idea made philosophically important by Christianity). As Arendt says in <em>The Human Condition<\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>[&#8230;] the new beginning inherent in birth can make itself felt in the world only because the newcomer possesses the capacity of beginning something anew, that is, of acting. In this sense of initiative, an element of action, and therefore of natality, is inherent in all human activities.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>What social and material conditions can repress is precisely the possibility of action, necessarily political action; in other words, the flowering of revolt and of the possibility of struggle. In the case of an unjust society, the <em>no<\/em> of the capricious and personal law is a no to the political action of those in need. Macab\u00e9a, for example, a character in <em>The Hour of the Star<\/em>, had her life assailed by the impersonal machine of the economic and political system. Let us remember her story, which is narrated by another character, Rodrigo S.M. (actually Clarice Lispector); this is how, with her own name in parentheses, the writer introduces the author-narrator, thus confusing herself with him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Rodrigo S.M. is a middle-class intellectual (although he says that he does not belong to any class) and he tells the story of a northeastern girl (like him) whose \u201cfeeling of perdition\u201d on her face he caught at a glance on a street in Rio de Janeiro. He makes a point of emphasizing that she is a fictional creation of his, even though she looks like \u201call those northeastern girls out there.\u201d Macab\u00e9a is a disturbing character. She is dreamy, poetic, and sensual; nonetheless, these qualities do not germinate in her. As Clarice said in an interview, Macab\u00e9a has \u201ca trampled innocence.\u201d The narrator, at one point, says that the character \u201chad what\u2019s known as inner life and didn\u2019t know it.\u201d Mistreated by the author, even though he oscillates between hatred and love for his creation, Macab\u00e9a is massacred by the big city and humiliated by people close to her. She did not react to anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Joana, from <em>Near to the Wild Heart<\/em>, is also dreamy, poetic, and sensual. It is as if the material from which the two were made \u2013 manifested in the booming \u201cinner life\u201d \u2013 was the same, but, in Joana, this original material \u201ccould be perfected,\u201d the result of which will be a reflective, confident and active woman, while, in Macab\u00e9a, this same matter atrophied \u2013 like her \u201covaries shriveled as a cooked mushroom\u201d \u2013 and produced the deformed fruit \u201cof a cross between \u2018what\u2019 and \u2018what.\u2019\u201d The theme of perfecting and learning permeates many of Clarice\u2019s books; for her, this means the self-discovery of evil, of disobedience, of insubmission, of the affirmation of desires against the castrating and unjust superego. In other words, it means revolt against the law. And why do Macab\u00e9a and Joana, although made of the same material, become the opposite of each other?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>The Hour of the Star<\/em> begins with the phrase: \u201call the world began with a yes.\u201d This was Macab\u00e9a\u2019s first \u201cyes,\u201d her birth. After all, her life was conceived. With this yes of natality, the character introduces the germ of \u201cthe capacity of beginning something anew, that is, of acting,\u201d using the words of Hannah Arendt. But \u2013 and this is the consternation of the book \u2013 Macab\u00e9a, between the first yes, that of birth, and the second, that of her death, was riddled \u2013 as was the criminal Mineirinho with thirteen bullets \u2013 by noes: she did not have a father, she did not have a mother, she was not pretty, she was not intelligent, she was not attractive, she was not loved. On the contrary, she was only mistreated by her aunt, her work friend Gl\u00f3ria, her boyfriend Ol\u00edmpico, and the big, impersonal city. Macab\u00e9a was marked by the insignia of no. Like cattle, anonymous, among so many others, her destiny was the slaughterhouse; or like Clarice\u2019s chickens, the pan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What Clarice does in <em>The Hour of the Star<\/em> is install an inexorability regarding Macab\u00e9a\u2019s destiny, which founded on the immobilizing inequality of Brazilian society, whose slaveholding origin is permeated by an unequal and punishing economic system for the poorest. Macab\u00e9a does not have \u201cthe right to scream\u201d \u2013 this is one of the possible titles for the book, among the 13 that Clarice lists. A life born of <em>yes<\/em>, yet despoiled by <em>noes<\/em>. Any of Macab\u00e9a\u2019s desires, from the beginning, was reprehended and scorned. Even the ones that she allowed herself to nourish were not hers, but from advertisements heard on the radio, in the cinema, in store windows. In other words, the market even alienated her from what could have been most vital, her desires; \u201cshe like a stray dog was guided,\u201d a plaything of a logic that deindividuated her, thus making her one more of the servile masses \u2013 \u201cShe didn\u2019t even realize she lived in a technical society in which she was a dispensable cog.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Clarice, in her merciless and ironic text, emulates the oppression of the system and its noes, even taking common-sense phrases such as: \u201cShe wanted more because it really is true that when you give that sort an inch they want the whole mile, your average Joe dreams with hunger of everything. And he wants it but has no right to it, now does he?\u201d Her writing, in <em>The Hour of the Star<\/em>, seeks to exacerbate a discourse that already exists diffusely in society, thus triggering, without value judgment, from its overexposure, the sadism, oppression, and racism of the middle and upper classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>An exception should be made for the narrator (actually Clarice Lispector), who occupies an in-between space, and who, despite identifying and sympathizing with the life of that miserable woman, does not abandon his comfort nor can he do anything to save the life of his creation. Rodrigo S.M. spends a large part of the book not knowing how Macab\u00e9a\u2019s end will be, whether she dies or not, trying to save her, but without having control over her destiny. In the text, reality speaks louder than fiction. The creator having to kill his creature is a testament to the impotence of an apathetic middle class, but also a confession of class crime, since doing nothing (\u201cas if writing were not doing anything\u201d) is similar to becoming an accomplice of necropolitics; he did not kill her, but he let people kill her. An alternative title of <em>The Hour of the Star<\/em> is precisely \u201cIt\u2019s All My Fault.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While political struggle is, for the wronged people, a requirement, because life and death depend on it, for the intellectual middle class, which is represented by Rodrigo S.M., it is a choice, about which Clarice says she is ashamed of doing nothing (the privilege of being able to choose between fighting or paying for the service of private security, education, health services, etc.). The shame for doing nothing, in <em>The Hour of the Star<\/em>, turns into guilt. Despite the identification of Rodrigo S.M. with Macab\u00e9a \u2013 \u201cI just died with the girl,\u201d he says \u2013 this does not prevent him from thus ending the book and saying goodbye to the reader:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>And now \u2014 now all I can do is light a cigarette and go home. My God, I just remembered that we die. But \u2014 but me too?! Don\u2019t forget that for now it\u2019s strawberry season. Yes.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>The novella begins with a yes and ends with a yes. The final <em>yes<\/em> marks both the apotheotic death of Macab\u00e9a, who is run over by a luxury car, and the hedonism of the intellectual narrator: \u201cDon\u2019t forget that for now it\u2019s strawberry season.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\">*<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>In 2023, the writer Concei\u00e7\u00e3o Evaristo published the book <em>Macab\u00e9a: Flor de Mulungu<\/em> [Macab\u00e9a: Mulungu Flower], composed of a short story and illustrations (by Luciana Nabuco), in which the narrator, identifying herself with the character, saves her life: \u201cMacab\u00e9a was going to give birth to herself. A mulungu flower had the power of life. The driving force of a people who resiliently frame their scream.\u201d<sup><a href=\"#footnote_7_13781\" id=\"identifier_7_13781\" class=\"footnote-link footnote-identifier-link\" title=\"&nbsp;[Translator&rsquo;s note: the original quote in Portuguese reads: &ldquo;Macab&eacute;a ia se parir. Flor de Mulungu tinha a pot&ecirc;ncia da vida. For&ccedil;a motriz de um povo que resilientemente vai emoldurando o seu grito.&rdquo;\">7<\/a><\/sup> The word <em>scream<\/em> resonates here with one of the alternative titles of Clarice\u2019s novella, as we have already seen, which in this case was denied to Macab\u00e9a and is claimed by Evaristo. The choice of the author from Minas Gerais returns to us the question posed at the beginning of this text: the relationship between literature and politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Saving a fictional character\u2019s life or not will not, of course, have an effect on preserving the life of a real person. But Evaristo\u2019s intention seems to suggest something more: that the erasure of the original story, which is told by Rodrigo S.M., an author who, although driven by an avid and somewhat frustrated desire to identify with the character, is living in the bourgeois comfort of his home, could, by appropriating the narrative voice, promote effects in reality. In this regard, the title of one of her most discussed short stories, \u201cA gente combinamos de n\u00e3o morrer\u201d [\u201cWe Did Agreed To Not Die\u201d], published in the book <em>Olhos d\u2019\u00e1gua<\/em> [\u201cEyes of Water\u201d], is exemplary. <em>Macab\u00e9a<\/em>: <em>Flor de Mulungu<\/em> is also part of a writing project that somewhat seeks to unsay Clarice\u2019s formulations in \u201cLiterature and Justice,\u201d that is, it is marked by the porosity between fiction and reality, individuality and collectivity, poles that coexist in the concept of <em>escreviv\u00eancia<\/em> [\u201cwriting-living\u201d]. To quote Evaristo:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p><em>Escreviv\u00eancia<\/em> [\u201cwriting-living\u201d] can be as if the subject of writing were writing itself, it being the fictional reality, the very inventiveness of its writing, and it often is. But, in writing itself, its gesture expands and, without escaping itself, it collects lives and stories from its surroundings. And that is why it is a writing that does not exhaust itself, but deepens, expands, encompasses the history of a collective.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>The writing of Clarice Lispector in the voice of Rodrigo S.M. starts from a different place. There is also porosity between fiction and reality, but the two dimensions are entangled in the text and, supposedly, from there they do not escape. For Clarice, however, it is the transit between the individual and the collective, or between the work and its impact on the reader, that prevents literature from being a political instrument, since the writer writes from an isolated place, without the ballast of belonging to a collective, for its part replaced by the idea of \u200b\u200bthe citizen-consumer, a cog in the gears of the capitalist economic system and of minimalist democracy. Since the struggle can only be collective, the narrator\u2019s feeling of impotence is unavoidable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Evaristo, on the contrary, writes based on the experience of someone who had society and the state and police apparatus against her: she is black, she lived in a favela, she was a domestic worker. Just like the greater part of the Brazilian Afro-diasporic population, she was socialized in ways of life inherited from her African ancestry, in enclaves of counter-colonial resistance founded on bonds of affective and political belonging, which were carried out, for example, in <em>quilombos<\/em>, <em>terreiros<\/em>, and <em>favelas<\/em> (which were not incidentally called communities). Thus, to save Macab\u00e9a in fiction is related to the affirmation of her own existence and that of so many black women writers who today, as a result of a struggle waged collectively over many decades, enjoy a more systematic opening in the publishing market to tell their own stories, which were previously expropriated by writers from the ruling classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The appropriation of the self-narrative had a paradigmatic milestone in Brazilian literature with the publication, in 1960, of the book <em>Child of the Dark<\/em>, by Carolina Maria de Jesus, which was translated into 14 languages. There is a photo in which Carolina and Clarice appear side by side. On the occasion, they were autographing their respective books at a literary event. Carolina would have told Clarice that she wrote elegantly, and Clarice, that Carolina wrote truthfully. Somehow, truth for Clarice can be translated by her own desire to write with the vehemence of the \u201csocial problem.\u201d Vehemence should be understood as a writing pregnant with reality, a writing made of words at the same time extracted from the ground, from things, from bodies, with all of their harshness, as if they bore fragments of life that could hurt the reader; and enchanted, capable of making the physical property of their sounds resonate in the rib cage, thus (re)creating what is concrete in the world, that is, giving aesthetic form to revolt, to the \u201cbeauty of struggle.\u201d As Chico C\u00e9sar sings in \u201cB\u00e9rad\u00earo,\u201d they are words that \u201care sounds, are sounds that say yes, are sounds, are sounds that say yes, are sounds [\u2026.].\u201d<sup><a href=\"#footnote_8_13781\" id=\"identifier_8_13781\" class=\"footnote-link footnote-identifier-link\" title=\"&nbsp;[Translator&rsquo;s note: the original quote in Portugueses reads &ldquo;&ldquo;s&atilde;o sons, s&atilde;o sons de sim, s&atilde;o sons, s&atilde;o sons de sim, s&atilde;o sons (&hellip;.).&rdquo;]\">8<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But if Carolina in her time was a solitary trailblazer, a representative of the exceptional value of the poor black woman who managed to write against the grain of the city, today, the fact that Evaristo and other black women, as well as writers from other historically silenced representations, are able to write is due less to literature itself than to the struggle of black social movements for public State policies that created conditions for artistic singularities to flourish in the heart of the collective, public policies that were put into practice in more or less recent years, in any case, over thirty years after the publication of <em>The Hour of the Star<\/em>.&nbsp; This shows us that such changes, even though they suffer too much resistance from the ruling classes, occur as indispensable sutures in the Brazilian social fabric. To list a few: Bolsa Fam\u00edlia (Family Allowance), affirmative action in public universities, University For All (PROUNI), the creation of federal institutes, the substantial increase in the number of federal universities, and Law 10,639\/03, which regulates the teaching of Afro-Brazilian history and culture in elementary, middle, and high schools. These policies have had and still have an effective impact on people\u2019s lives; they are the ones that effectively save Macab\u00e9as, in fiction and in real life, as seems to have been the unattainable wish of the intellectual Rodrigo S.M.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thus, the fact that Evaristo was able to save the life of her Macab\u00e9a is proof, now yes, of a <em>writing<\/em> that is like a <em>doing<\/em>, since the act of writing or of making oneself heard literarily was achieved at the heart of collective and individual revolt, of the transformative power of natality, a driver of yeses, from which it is inseparable. But we can also think about Clarice\u2019s own life, at 18 years old, a poor immigrant orphan, seeing herself in the image of her father, \u201ca man who saw he had lost himself,\u201d<sup><a href=\"#footnote_9_13781\" id=\"identifier_9_13781\" class=\"footnote-link footnote-identifier-link\" title=\"&nbsp;[Translator&rsquo;s note: the original quote in Portuguese reads &ldquo;um homem que viu que se tinha perdido.&rdquo;]\">9<\/a><\/sup> prevented from being what he wished to be by the stigma of being Jewish. After all, she could have become Macab\u00e9a. We can even hear the words of Rodrigo S.M. (actually Clarice Lispector) resonating: \u201cWhen I think that I could have been born her [Macab\u00e9a] \u2014 and why not? \u2014 I shudder. And it seems to me a cowardly avoidance the fact that I am not, I feel guilty as I said in one of the titles.\u201d It is not a rhetorical question: how not to associate the \u201cwatery orangeade and stale bread,\u201d<sup><a href=\"#footnote_10_13781\" id=\"identifier_10_13781\" class=\"footnote-link footnote-identifier-link\" title=\"&nbsp;[Translator&rsquo;s note: the original quote in Portuguese reads: &ldquo;laranjada aguada e p&atilde;o amanhecido.&rdquo;]\">10<\/a><\/sup> which T\u00e2nia, Clarice\u2019s sister, said had been the family meal at their poorest moment, with the \u201chot dogs [\u2026.] and soft drinks,\u201d the basis of Macab\u00e9a\u2019s diet?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Clarice wrote her story at a mature age (she was 56 years old), a period in which she was still resented the accusation of being an alienated writer. Already far from the poverty of her childhood, living in her upper-middle-class apartment in the Leme neighborhood and having only writing as an instrument of action in the world, she felt politically powerless. The author\u2019s unsuccessful attempt to save Macab\u00e9a seems to be the result of a nihilistic disbelief in the possibility of achieving the radical otherness for which she yearned in the context of a society split by extreme injustice. Alone with her writing \u2013 and based on the understanding that political struggle is done collectively \u2013 she saw no other ethical solution for her literature than to kill her character: \u201cAnd the word can\u2019t be dressed up and artistically vain, it can only be itself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If Clarice, as we saw in the text \u201cWhat I Would Like to Have Been,\u201d having wished to be a fighter, finds that it is \u201cvery little, very little indeed\u201d to be someone \u201cwho seeks out her deepest feelings and finds words to express those feelings,\u201d in the same vein, as Jos\u00e9 Miguel Wisnik well disagrees, in the podcast <em>Clarice Lispector: vis\u00f5es do esplendor<\/em> (\u201cClarice Lispector: Visions of Splendor\u201d), it is necessary to understand that <\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>this writer who is so internalizing, so focused on issues of subjectivity, as we would say, actually does what literature does when it is powerful, which is in the same dimension as the subjective having an ontological survey of the world where the social appears with full force.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Somehow, Clarice made use of her right to scream, which is manifest in her writing, whose expressiveness originates in the vehemence of reality, the very one which she complained about not having attained, but which <em>The Hour of the Star <\/em>bears witness to the contrary. Art may not be political action itself, but it is a political object and source for an ethical apprenticeship that achieves consequential political actions which are pregnant with effects in reality. Furthermore, for Clarice, the true creator of Macab\u00e9a, \u201cany cat, any puppy is worth more than literature.\u201d<\/p>\n<ol class=\"footnotes\"><li id=\"footnote_1_13781\" class=\"footnote\">&nbsp;[Translator\u2019s note: The original in Portuguese is titled \u201cCarta ao Ministro da Educa\u00e7\u00e3o.\u201d] <span class=\"footnote-back-link-wrapper\">[<a href=\"#identifier_1_13781\" class=\"footnote-link footnote-back-link\">&#8617;<\/a>]<\/span><\/li><li id=\"footnote_2_13781\" class=\"footnote\">&nbsp;[Translator\u2019s note: The original in Portuguese is titled \u201cA matan\u00e7a de seres humanos: os \u00edndios.\u201d] <span class=\"footnote-back-link-wrapper\">[<a href=\"#identifier_2_13781\" class=\"footnote-link footnote-back-link\">&#8617;<\/a>]<\/span><\/li><li id=\"footnote_3_13781\" class=\"footnote\"> [Translator\u2019s note: the original quote in Portuguese reads: \u201cEu a coloquei no Cemit\u00e9rio dos Mortos-Vivos porque ela se coloca dentro de uma redoma de Pequeno Pr\u00edncipe, para ficar num mundo de flores e de passarinhos, enquanto Cristo est\u00e1 sendo pregado na cruz. Num momento como o de hoje, s\u00f3 tenho uma palavra a dizer de uma pessoa que continua falando de flores: \u00e9 alienada.\u201d] <span class=\"footnote-back-link-wrapper\">[<a href=\"#identifier_3_13781\" class=\"footnote-link footnote-back-link\">&#8617;<\/a>]<\/span><\/li><li id=\"footnote_4_13781\" class=\"footnote\">&nbsp;[Translator\u2019s note: the original quote in Portuguese reads: \u201cminha ideia era estudar advocacia para reformar as penitenci\u00e1rias.\u201d] <span class=\"footnote-back-link-wrapper\">[<a href=\"#identifier_4_13781\" class=\"footnote-link footnote-back-link\">&#8617;<\/a>]<\/span><\/li><li id=\"footnote_5_13781\" class=\"footnote\">&nbsp;[Translator\u2019s note: the original quote in Portuguese reads: \u201cDe in\u00edcio, n\u00e3o existiam direitos, mas poderes. Desde que o homem p\u00f4de vingar a ofensa a ele dirigida e verificou que tal vingan\u00e7a o satisfazia e atemorizava a reincid\u00eancia, s\u00f3 deixou de exercer sua for\u00e7a perante uma for\u00e7a maior. [&#8230;] Os fracos uniram-se; e \u00e9 ent\u00e3o que come\u00e7a propriamente o plano [&#8230;] os fracos, os primeiros ladinos e sofistas, os primeiros inteligentes da hist\u00f3ria da humanidade, procuraram submeter aquelas rela\u00e7\u00f5es at\u00e9 ent\u00e3o naturais, biol\u00f3gicas e necess\u00e1rias ao dom\u00ednio do pensamento. Surgiu, como defesa, a ideia de que apesar de n\u00e3o terem for\u00e7a, tinham direitos. [&#8230;] <em>E no esp\u00edrito do homem foi se formando a correspondente<\/em> daquela <em>revolta<\/em>.\u201d]<span class=\"footnote-back-link-wrapper\">[<a href=\"#identifier_5_13781\" class=\"footnote-link footnote-back-link\">&#8617;<\/a>]<\/span><\/li><li id=\"footnote_6_13781\" class=\"footnote\">Translator\u2019s note: the original quotes in Portuguese read: \u201cse eu escrevesse, escreveria um livro sobre um homem que viu que se tinha perdido;\u201d \u201cn\u00e3o posso pensar nisso sem que sinta uma dor f\u00edsica insuport\u00e1vel\u201d.<span class=\"footnote-back-link-wrapper\">[<a href=\"#identifier_6_13781\" class=\"footnote-link footnote-back-link\">&#8617;<\/a>]<\/span><\/li><li id=\"footnote_7_13781\" class=\"footnote\">&nbsp;[Translator\u2019s note: the original quote in Portuguese reads: \u201cMacab\u00e9a ia se parir. Flor de Mulungu tinha a pot\u00eancia da vida. For\u00e7a motriz de um povo que resilientemente vai emoldurando o seu grito.\u201d<span class=\"footnote-back-link-wrapper\">[<a href=\"#identifier_7_13781\" class=\"footnote-link footnote-back-link\">&#8617;<\/a>]<\/span><\/li><li id=\"footnote_8_13781\" class=\"footnote\">&nbsp;[Translator\u2019s note: the original quote in Portugueses reads \u201c\u201cs\u00e3o sons, s\u00e3o sons de sim, s\u00e3o sons, s\u00e3o sons de sim, s\u00e3o sons (\u2026.).\u201d] <span class=\"footnote-back-link-wrapper\">[<a href=\"#identifier_8_13781\" class=\"footnote-link footnote-back-link\">&#8617;<\/a>]<\/span><\/li><li id=\"footnote_9_13781\" class=\"footnote\">&nbsp;[Translator\u2019s note: the original quote in Portuguese reads \u201cum homem que viu que se tinha perdido.\u201d] <span class=\"footnote-back-link-wrapper\">[<a href=\"#identifier_9_13781\" class=\"footnote-link footnote-back-link\">&#8617;<\/a>]<\/span><\/li><li id=\"footnote_10_13781\" class=\"footnote\">&nbsp;[Translator\u2019s note: the original quote in Portuguese reads: \u201claranjada aguada e p\u00e3o amanhecido.\u201d] <span class=\"footnote-back-link-wrapper\">[<a href=\"#identifier_10_13781\" class=\"footnote-link footnote-back-link\">&#8617;<\/a>]<\/span><\/li><\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Clarice Lispector wrote deliberately political texts. To name a few, \u201cA Letter to the Minister of Education,\u201d1 in which she defends student access to vacancies at public universities; \u201cThe Killing of Human Beings: the Indians,\u201d2 in which she repudiates the murder of indigenous people for the exploitation of natural resources and advocates for the demarcation [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":13780,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[564,1],"tags":[565,558,756],"class_list":["post-13781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essays","category-uncategorized","tag-a-hora-da-estrela-en","tag-literatura-en","tag-perto-do-coracao-selvagem-en"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>&quot;In the Name of My Father&quot; - Clarice Lispector<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/site.claricelispector.ims.com.br\/2025\/02\/13\/in-the-name-of-my-father\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"&quot;In the Name of My Father&quot; - Clarice Lispector\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Clarice Lispector wrote deliberately political texts. To name a few, \u201cA Letter to the Minister of Education,\u201d1 in which she defends student access to vacancies at public universities; \u201cThe Killing of Human Beings: the Indians,\u201d2 in which she repudiates the murder of indigenous people for the exploitation of natural resources and advocates for the demarcation [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/site.claricelispector.ims.com.br\/2025\/02\/13\/in-the-name-of-my-father\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Clarice Lispector\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-02-13T21:20:56+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-03-10T19:25:42+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/site.claricelispector.ims.com.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/059563-3.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"785\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"768\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Bruno Cosentino\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Bruno Cosentino\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"30 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/site.claricelispector.ims.com.br\/2025\/02\/13\/in-the-name-of-my-father\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/site.claricelispector.ims.com.br\/2025\/02\/13\/in-the-name-of-my-father\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Bruno Cosentino\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/site.claricelispector.ims.com.br\/#\/schema\/person\/9b1f567463e919f007b85c81f58ab7d4\"},\"headline\":\"&#8220;In the Name of My Father&#8221;\",\"datePublished\":\"2025-02-13T21:20:56+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2025-03-10T19:25:42+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/site.claricelispector.ims.com.br\/2025\/02\/13\/in-the-name-of-my-father\/\"},\"wordCount\":5971,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/site.claricelispector.ims.com.br\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/site.claricelispector.ims.com.br\/2025\/02\/13\/in-the-name-of-my-father\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/site.claricelispector.ims.com.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/059563-3.png\",\"keywords\":[\"A hora da estrela\",\"Literatura\",\"Perto do cora\u00e7\u00e3o selvagem\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Essays\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/site.claricelispector.ims.com.br\/2025\/02\/13\/in-the-name-of-my-father\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/site.claricelispector.ims.com.br\/2025\/02\/13\/in-the-name-of-my-father\/\",\"name\":\"\\\"In the Name of My Father\\\" - 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