Book Review - Clarice Lispector's A Breath of Life
Published by: New Directions
Publication Date: 1978
Format: Paperback, 167 Pages
Rating: ★★
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Angela Pralini has been given life by her creator, a God-like auteur with whom she holds a dialogue. Breath, words, life, death. Because once created there is only one outcome for Angela, and that is death. As Angela writes, she grapples with what she is and what her purpose is and whether there is a God and is her God everyone's God or is her creator, much like Victor Frankenstein, her God as he was to his creation. Or is her "God" her master? A philosophical monologue envelopes her. But it is a monologue where she knows who she is talking to. She is talking to her creator. And she needs answers to this life, to this strange feeling of being alive with blood flowing like lava. Why was she created? Why is anyone created? And why create when the only outcome is death? Angela's stream of consciousness washes over you. Yet is the dialogue really between Angela and her creator or is it between Clarice Lispector and her authorial voice as embodied by Angela trying to come to terms with her own impending death? Because as Clarice Lispector wrote this fragmented and existential piece that is almost more poetry than prose she lay dying. She would never see this book published. The heights of joy that Angela reaches are that which Clarice Lispector will miss the most, as the depths of Angela's despair are what she herself is grappling with. This is a transcendental meditation on what it means to be human. The small joys, staircases and music, the fact Angela feels herself nothing more than a mirage. Life is brutal but it is filled with miracles. This is the human experience hitting you full in the face while at the very end of the journey. But in the end, do we know anything? Do we know why we were here, why we experienced joy or sorrow? Did the weight of one make the other worth it? Or was life just in the living? In the emotion? In the feelings like lava through the veins, the absurdities or what it is to be alive. If nothing more can be said of Angela and her author, at least they both lived. Angela lived because Clarice Lispector lived. A fictional person can be real because they help the reader understand what it is, what it was, to be alive when the end comes.
I don't think I'm alone in thinking that books should, for the most part, have cogent sentences. That the words and meaning should form to be something legible. There are people who just like the cascade of words flowing over them, and that's fine. It's just not my thing. I don't like word salad. I don't like stream of consciousness. I like to pick up a book and know that it's going somewhere. That wasn't A Breath of Life. But I don't think I can judge Clarice Lispector as an author by this, her final book. Because the truth is this book wasn't just her coming to terms with her end and railing against the God who had created her, it was also unfinished. Olga Borelli, her assistant and friend, took writing fragments and structured them into a book. So who knows if this is what Clarice Lispector would have wanted. Did she desire these half-finished thoughts to be put out in the world? Did she want the final memory of her work to be this weak? That's why there's this part of me that agrees with Terry Pratchett whose unfinished work and hard drives were steamrolled into oblivion at his request. He didn't want anyone else tinkering with his work after he was dead and gone. He didn't want what happened to Truman Capote to happen to him, where Capote's Answered Prayers was just thrown out into the world to harsh criticism due to it's unfinished state. And here's the thing, there's a big difference between assembling unfinished material and hiring someone to finish it. This was an assemblage, which, when you think of the nature of the book, an author bringing life to "his" creation, there's a very Frankensteinian vibe which makes sense. The creature in Mary Shelley's tale was an assemblage. Fragments from different places. So while Frankenstein is a modern prometheus, this is a post-modern prometheus, and with all due respect to The X-Files, this book was written first and that episode is about a rapist. I guess what I'm trying to say is that this is a book that can be studied and taken apart but as a reading experience it's far from enjoyable. You shouldn't take great pleasure in random asides like Angela declaring "I like staircases." You should enjoy the whole thing. Not plan to sit in a chair and plough through until the end. And maybe that's not the way to read this book, maybe it should be taken slower, like poetry, allowing the words to wash over you. But as I've said before, that's just not me.
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