One Day Less... One More Day.... Regenerative Death in Clarice Lispector’s Fiction

• In Event: The other Fridas: Women, art and feminism in 20th-century Latin America

Abstract

A Breath of Life, left incomplete and in fragments at the time of Lispector’s death in November, 1977, was published posthumously with the help of the author’s closest friend, Olga Borelli. In the plot of these “pulsations,” as Lispector defined her work, narrator and protagonist come to the scene in a desperate search for a way to better understand death and its influence on life. In this communication, I examine the relationship between imminent death and an individual’s construction of her present and the future. I describe how, in this pulsative novel, death is portrayed not as a mere end, but as a productive tool that shapes how individuals conceive their life plan. With the help of references to a number of Lispector’s short-stories, my goal is to better understand the relationship between the consciousness of death and ethical responsibility in the Brazilian author’s work.

Author

• Luciana C Namorato, Indiana University/Bloomington