Agua Viva (11 page)

Authors: Clarice Lispector

BOOK: Agua Viva

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Sleeping brings us very close to this empty and yet full
thought. I’m not talking about the dream, which, in this case, would be a
primary thought. I’m talking about sleeping. Sleeping is abstracting yourself
and scattering into the nothingness.

I also want to tell you that after the freedom of the
state of grace also comes the freedom of the imagination also happens. At this
very moment I am free.

And beyond the freedom, beyond the certain void I create
the calmest of repeating musical waves. The madness of free invention. Do you
want to see it with me? Landscape where this music happens? air, green stems,
the spread-out sea, silence of a Sunday morning. A slender man with only one
foot has one great transparent eye in the middle of his forehead. A feminine
entity slinks up on all fours, says in a voice that seems to come from another
space, voice that sounds not like the first voice but in echo of a primary voice
that was never heard. The voice is awkward, euphoric and says by force of the
habit of a past life: would you like some tea? And doesn’t wait for a reply. She
grabs a slim ear of golden wheat, and puts it between her toothless gums and
pads away on all fours with her eyes open. Eyes immobile as the nose. She needs
to move her whole boneless head to look at an object. But what object? The
slender man meanwhile has fallen asleep on his foot and let his eye fall asleep
without however closing it. Letting your eye fall asleep is about not wanting to
see. When it doesn’t see, it sleeps. In the silent eye the plain is reflected in
a rainbow. The air is marvellous. The musical waves start again. Someone looks
at their nails. There’s a sound in the distance going: psst, psst! . . . But the
man-with-just-one-foot could never imagine that they are calling him. A sound
starts up from the side, like the flute that always seems to play from the side
—a sound starts up from the side that crosses the musical waves without a
tremor, and repeats so long that it ends up carving out the rock with its
uninterrupted dripping. It’s a highly elevated sound, without friezes. A lament
that’s happy and measured and sharp like the non-strident and sweet sharpness of
a flute. It’s the highest and happiest note that a vibration can give. No man on
earth could hear it without going mad and starting to smile forever. But the man
standing on his only foot—sleeps upright. And the feminine being stretched out
on the beach isn’t thinking. A new character crosses the deserted plain and
disappears limping. You hear: psst; psst! And no one is called.

Now the scene my freedom created is over.

I’m sad. An uneasiness that comes because the ecstasy
doesn’t fit into the life of the days. Sleep should follow the ecstasy to
attenuate its vibration of echoing crystal. The ecstasy must be forgotten.

The days. I got sad because of the diurnal light of steel
in which I live. I breathe the smell of steel in the world of the objects.

But now I want to say things that comfort me and that are
a little free. For example: Thursday is a day transparent as an insect’s wing in
the light. Just as Monday is a compact day. Ultimately, far beyond thought, I
live from these ideas, if ideas is what they are. They are sensations that
transform into ideas because I must use words. Even just using them mentally.
The primary thought thinks with words. The “freedom” frees itself from the
slavery of the word.

And God is a monstrous creation. I fear God because he is
too total for my size. And I also feel a kind of modesty toward Him: there are
things of mine that not even He knows. Fear? I know a she who is terrified by
butterflies as if they were supernatural. And the divine part of butterflies is
terrifying indeed. And I know a he who shivers in horror before flowers—he
thinks that flowers are hauntingly delicate like a sigh of nobody in the
dark.

I am the one listening to the whistling in the dark. I
who am sick with the human condition. I revolt: I no longer want to be a person.
Who? who has mercy on us who know about life and death where an animal I envy
profoundly—is unconscious of its condition? Who takes pity on us? Are we
abandoned? given over to despair? No, there must be a possible consolation. I
swear: there must be. What I don’t have is the courage to say the truth that we
know. These are forbidden words.

But I denounce. I denounce our weakness, I denounce the
maddening horror of dying—and I respond to all this infamy with—exactly this
that now will be written—and I respond to all this infamy with joy. Purest and
lightest joy. My only salvation is joy. An atonal joy inside the essential
it
. Doesn’t that make sense? Well it must. Because it’s too cruel
to know that life is just one time and that we have no guarantee outside our
faith in shadows—because it’s too cruel, so I respond with the purity of an
untamable happiness. I refuse to be sad. Let us be joyful. Whoever isn’t afraid
to be joyful and to experience even a single time the mad and profound joy will
have the best part of our truth. I am—despite everything oh despite everything—am being joyful in this instant-now that passes if I don’t capture it in
words. I am being joyful in this very instant because I refuse to be defeated:
so I love. As an answer. Impersonal love,
it
love, is joy: even the
love that doesn’t work out, even the love that ends. And my own death and that
of those we love must be joyful, I don’t yet know how, but they must be. That is
living: the joy of the
it
. And to settle for that not as one defeated
but in an allegro con brio.

As a matter of fact I don’t want to die. I rebel against
“God.” Let’s not die as a dare?

I’m not going to die, you hear, God? I don’t have the
courage, you hear? Don’t kill me, you hear? Because it’s a disgrace to be born
in order to die without knowing when or where. I’m going to stay very happy, you
hear? As a reply, as an insult. I guarantee one thing: we are not guilty. And I
have to understand while I’m alive, you hear? because afterwards it will be too
late.

Ah this flash of instants never ends. My chant of the
it
never ends? I’ll finish it deliberately by a
voluntary act. But it will keep going in constant improvisation, always and
always creating the present that is future.

This improvisation is.

Do you want to see how it goes on? Last night—it’s hard
to explain to you—last night I dreamed that I was dreaming. Could it be like
that after death? the dream of a dream of a dream of a dream?

I’m a heretic. No, that’s not true. Or am I? But
something exists.

Ah living is so uncomfortable. Everything pinches: the
body demands, the spirit doesn’t stop, living is like being tired and not being
able to sleep—living is bothersome. You can’t walk naked either in body or in
spirit.

Didn’t I tell you that living pinches? Well, I went to
sleep and dreamed that I was writing you a majestic largo and it was even more
true than what I’m writing to you: it was without fear. I forgot what I wrote in
the dream, everything returned to the nothing, returned to the Force of what
Exists and that is sometimes called God.

Everything comes to an end but what I’m writing to you
goes on. Which is good, very good. The best is not yet written. The best is
between the lines.

Today is Saturday and is made of the purest air, just
air. I speak to you as a profound exercise, and paint as a profound exercise of
me. What do I want to write now? I want something calm and without fashions.
Something like the memory of a tall monument that seems taller because it is a
memory. But I want to have really touched the monument along the way. I’m going
to stop because it’s Saturday.

It’s still Saturday.

Whatever will still be later—is now. Now is the domain
of now. And as long as the improvisation lasts I am born.

And now suddenly after an evening of “who am I” and of
waking at one in the morning still in despair—now suddenly at three in the
morning I woke and met myself. I went to meet myself. Calm, joyful, fullness
without fulmination. Simply I am I. And you are you. It is vast, and will
endure.

What I’m writing you is a “this.” It won’t stop: it goes
on.

Look at me and love me. No: you look at yourself and love
yourself. That’s right.

What I’m writing to you goes on and I am bewitched.

A New Directions
Book

Originally published as
Água
Viva
. Published by arrangement with the Heirs of Clarice Lispector and
Agencia Literaria Carmen Balcells, Barcelona.

All rights reserved. Except for
brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website
review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any
information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
Publisher.

The translator would like to
thank Claire Williams and Benjamin Moser for their help and suggestions.

First published by New Directions
as
NDP
1223 in 2012

Published simultaneously in Canada by Penguin Books
Canada Limited

Manufactured in the United States of America

New Directions Books are printed on acid-free
paper.

Design by Erik Rieselbach

Library of Congress
Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lispector, Clarice.

[Água viva. English]

Água viva / Clarice Lispector ;
translated by Stefan Tobler ; edited by
Benjamin Moser.

p. cm.

eISBN 978-0-8112-2072-9