The Hour of the Star (11 page)

Giovanni Pontiero Manchester, June 1985

Afterword

Clarice Lispector died of cancer at the age of fifty-six on 9 December 1977.
The Hour of the Star
was published that same year and acclaimed by the critics as 'a regional allegory' of extraordinary awareness and insight. The tale of Macabéa, however, can be read at different levels and lends itself to various interpretations. The book's subtle interplay of fiction and philosophy sums up Clarice Lispector's unique talent as a writer and her lasting influence on contemporary Brazilian writing.

Shortly before she became seriously ill, Clarice Lispector began to experience an almost obsessive nostalgia for Recife in the North-eastern State of Pernambuco, where she had spent her childhood. This nostalgia resulted in a sentimental journey to renew contact with scenes and locations associated with her earliest perceptions. Back in Rio, she also began to make regular trips to the street market specializing in crafts and wares from North-eastern Brazil, that takes place every Sunday in the Sao Cristovao district of the city. It was here that the author could observe at her leisure the lowly immigrants from the North-east who came to buy and sell or simply to watch, re-enacting for a day the customs and traditions of their native region. The Sao Cristovao market evoked the sights and sounds Clarice Lispector had savoured as a child and the unmistakable physical traits of the North-easterners who gathered there provided her with mental sketches for the principal characters in
The Hour of the Star.

The nucleus of the narrative centres on the misfortunes of Macabéa, a humble girl from a region plagued by drought and poverty, whose future is determined by her inexperience, her ugliness and her total anonymity. Macabéa's speech and dress betray her origins. An orphaned child from the backwoods of Alagoas, who was brought up by a forbidding aunt in Maceió before making her way to the slums of Acre Street in the heart of Rio de Janeiro's red-light district. Gauche and rachitic, Macabéa has poverty and ill-health written all over her: a creature conditioned from birth and already singled out as one of the world's inevitable losers.

Her humdrum existence can be summarized in few words: Macabéa is an appallingly bad typist, she is a virgin, and her favourite drink is Coca-Cola. She is the perfect foil for a bullying employer, a philandering boy friend, and her workmate Glória, who has all the attributes Macabéa sadly lacks.

Macabéa's abrupt exit under the front wheels of a yellow Mercedes is as absurd and inevitable as all the other disasters that befall this hopeless misfit.

The grim social factors governing her bleak existence are all too familiar in the lower strata of Brazilian society. Factually summarized, Macabéa's history suggests a stereotype from a sociological survey. But the magic begins when Clarice Lispector starts to investigate the psychological consequences of poverty. The compounded effects of ignorance, fear, and privation result in perverse twists of fortune. Yet behind this unpromising facade there remain traces of resilience and the will to survive. Macabéa's faltering moments of self-recognition are registered by a series of explosions — both psychological and emotional. There is nothing forced or deliberate in Macabéa's aimless progress through life. Physically and emotionally stunted, this anti-heroine holds her breath and waits for destiny to do its worst. The girl's puzzled response to her alien surroundings reveals unexpected strengths: the brash metropolis and its pressures fail to diminish her will to live. Deprived of any material expectations, Macabéa makes a virtue of her emptiness by settling for the vagaries of faith. Judged objectively, faith in her situation seems unjustified and even perverse. Viewed subjectively, however, faith bestows a singular state of grace.

Macabéa's inner being is jolted by momentary perceptions — by sudden discoveries that outweigh her understanding and leave her perplexed and disorientated. First there is the shattering awareness of her own body, a discovery that aptly coincides with May — the month of love and nuptials. Then comes a short-lived romance followed by betrayal and rejection.

As Macabéa stumbles from one embarrassing exposure to another, one can virtually hear the author muse: 'there but for the grace of God go I'. This diary of a nobody gains in strength and meaning as a game of counter-reflections develops between the author and her protagonist. For, while it is true that Lispector would have us believe in a male narrator, she does not relinquish involvement. The advantage she claims to derive from this masculine alias is one of emotional detachment. Its validity and necessity, however, is debatable.

As in all her previous narratives, Clarice Lispector narrates
from within
. In
The Hour of the Star
her own unmistakable presence often merges with that of Macabéa. From the outset, she draws an interesting comparison between herself as the writer and the character she is creating, between reason and instinct, between knowledge and innocence, between the powers of imagination and unadorned reality. The creative writer is able to transform reality. Hence Clarice Lispector's compassionate attitude towards her unresourceful heroine 'who did not know how to adorn reality'. Macabéa is puzzled and frustrated by the enormity of the external world, but she enjoys one considerable privilege: inner freedom.

The Hour of the Star
is comparable with Clarice Lispector's earlier work insofar as the central character provides a nucleus for a wider exploration of existential problems. Basic assumptions about human responses to truth, happiness, and integrity are challenged and reassessed. The traumas of the women — adolescent, mature, innocent, and experienced — that dominated the stories of
Family Ties
are resurrected in
The Hour of the Star
. Here, too, we find the same lucid perceptions about the perils of human existence: the same relentless thirst for 'spiritual catharsis'. Macabéa's 'inviolable secret' reflects the drama of every sentient creature. The frequent references to God and the supernatural attest to the mystical dimension here as in most of Clarice Lispector's narratives. Her Jewish-Slavonic ancestry is important in this context. A bond has crystallized between the presence of a divine spirit exacting justice and the creative process itself. Salvation ultimately comes in the form of self-discovery and authentic self-expression.

The aphorisms woven into the text are beguiling, and more beguiling still is the manner in which the author works from a reduction and even an absence of anything concrete. Her dazzling insights are extracted from the most opaque abstractions, above all the human mind when clouded by emotions. The rare moment of ecstasy is sparked off by the most fragile aspect of every living creature, namely his aspirations. Apparent contradictions in Macabéa's faulty reasoning are somehow made to sound convincing. The mental gyrations unfailingly spiral from a principle of order: 'before the prehistory there was the prehistory of the prehistory and there was the never and the yes'; philosophical probings that remain beyond the reach of Macabéa's understanding yet, in her own spontaneous way, she perceives their significance. Macabéa's tragic question: 'Who am I?' unwittingly echoes the major preoccupation of every mortal. No less tragic or familiar is the question that follows on: 'Am I monster or is this what it means to be a person?' When the author intervenes in the narrative to remind the reader that 'he who probes is incomplete', she is simply reaffirming our spiritual and emotional fragmentation. The human being who fails to question his or her mortal state is merely vegetating and never likely to transgress his own limitations. Lacking her creator's intellectual powers, Macabéa moves to much the same conlcusions by purely intuitive means. Instinctive desires and aspirations draw her into the same rich labyrinth of unresolved enigmas. Both writer and character know that existence can appear to be both absurd and illogical, yet ironically it is the simple-witted Macabéa who seems better equipped to cope with life's reversals. While Clarice Lispector battles with concepts, Macabéa tries to penetrate a web of superstitions and fantasies. Macabéa's fears are instinctive and irrational. Clarice Lispector's apprehensions are the fruit of scrupulous introspection. Yet the roots of this spiritual crisis are basically the same. Their tragic perceptions of life are ultimately indistinguishable. Both writer and character find themselves on the margin of society, for both of them respond to an inner law that means nothing to the world.

Macabéa's two attempts to be positive are significant. First, her visit to a third-rate doctor in the hope of healing her body. Second, her visit to the clairvoyante Madame Carlota, in the hope of healing her soul. These constitute two of the wittiest and most moving episodes Lispector ever wrote. The doctor, who has lost any sense of vocation after a lifetime of treating impoverished patients, dreams of getting rich so that he can do exactly as he pleases: nothing. The confrontation between the ingenuous Macabéa and the cynical practitioner is strangely revealing.

Macabéa's ineffectual attempts to explain her needs only provoke hostility and misunderstanding: her seemingly passive acceptance of disaster and misfortune arouse puzzlement and exasperation. She seems incapable of meeting the real world on its own terms. The society in which she finds herself has little use for 'the pure happiness of idiots'. Hence the gulf between Macabéa and her rival Glória, who has all the right credentials for material success; between Macabéa and her worthless boyfriend Olímpico; between Macabéa and the absurd Madame Carlota, who has more faces than Janus (clairvoyante/fan of Jesus/prostitute/brothel keeper). Macabéa's goal is much more modest yet at the same time much more difficult to achieve, namely, to establish her own identity. Macabéa's heroism consists in not being heroic. Her struggle has been notable for its reticence. A lifetime of anonymity decreed and endured.

The closing reflections on death carry a poignant note. Macabéa's premonitions are shared by Lispector. What Macabéa perceives, Lispector has always known, namely that: 'Death is an encounter with self. A brief, ecstatic moment of transition as corporeal form is miraculously transformed into 'vigorous air'. The promise of sudden release is inviting, but life demands the greater courage. The
carpe diem
sentiments of the book's closing sentence remind us that Lispector's heroines never withdraw from the struggle until summoned. One proves oneself in life rather than in death.

The Hour of the Star
is not Clarice Inspector's first serious attempt to clarify her approach to the craft of fiction. Many of the concepts expressed here have been voiced before in works like
The Foreign Legion
and
Family Ties
. There is, nevertheless, a bolder attempt in this last book to analyse in greater detail the mysterious nature of inspiration and the elusive process of growth and enhancement. In
The Hour of the Star
, Clarice Lispector is intent upon linking the structure of the narrative with a subtle exploration of the creative process as seen by the artist.

The metaphors the author derives from parable, legend, and anecdote are effective because they are used sparingly and ingeniously slanted. The author prefers sparseness to accumulation, just as she finds prophecy infinitely more suggestive than the definition. As in all her writing, the dimension of mystery is sacrosanct. Mystical forces are ever present. There is always a note of divination, however serious or humorous, however formal or colloquial the prose. Things intimate and remote frequently overlap. Her asides to the reader, as distractions, uncertainties, and obstacles interrupt the creative process, underline the attendant problems as the writer struggles for direction and clarification. They also show how a writer may question the validity of the characters in a narrative even after those characters have assumed an independent existence. On occasion, their development may even run at a tangent to the author's original intentions. For, once the creative process is under way, new forces mysteriously exert their influence. The author sometimes tries to retreat, only to discover that it is much too late. The writer may grow tired of the characters to whom she has given birth, but they resist dismissal.

Meditation has always outweighed mere description in Clarice Inspector's writing. Characters and situations are rapidly sketched in with a few bare essentials. The characterization of Macabéa is centred on the girl's delicate and vague existence. Doubt outweighs certainty in the author's analysis of the human psyche. Even the aphorisms in the book invite discussion rather than bland approval. The cliche is reconstituted into some riveting new insight. The author reminds us of the hidden power of words. Macabéa's whole existence is changed by words capable of banishing her sterility: 'the fruit of the word' transforms her into a woman.

In the next breath Clarice Lispector defines
The Hour of the Star
as a book 'made without words ... a mute photograph ... a silence ... a question'. For in all her narratives she treats silence like sorrow, and transforms it into a fount of eternal truths.

Giovanni Pontiero