THE PASSION
ACCORDING TO G. H.
Clarice Lispector
Translated from the Portuguese, with a note, by Idra Novey
Introduction by Caetano Veloso
Edited by Benjamin Moser
A NEW DIRECTIONS BOOK
Contents
Introduction by Caetano Veloso
To Possible Readers
The Passion According to G. H.
Translator’s Note
Introduction
I read The Passion According to G. H. as soon as the book came out, in 1964. I was in my early twenties. Clarice had been an illumination when I was seventeen. The story “The Imitation of the Rose,” which I read in a magazine, had fascinated and frightened me. My older brother started buying all of her previously published books for me. I discovered in her other stories the same thing I had seen in “The Imitation of the Rose”: a language that transformed itself in order to allow an event to emerge with the power of an epiphany, amidst the humdrum concerns of a normal life (usually a woman’s life).
That transformation of language created a kind of lyrical prose that I had never before encountered. That lyricization erased the text — which nonetheless is always a narrative, never a poem — in order to allow some nearly unspeakable thing to appear. The thing.
In “The Imitation of the Rose,” a woman, after a successful psychiatric treatment, goes mad once again at the sight of a bunch of roses. Daily happiness, so harshly reconquered, cannot resist the direct experience of something like an impersonal God, and the experience makes her housewifely existence impossible.
All the other stories I read of Clarice’s at that time had the same basic power, and pointed in the same direction. Their elegance made them perfect objects: each was a dangerous adventure, a miracle of composition. While reading them, the aesthetic experience itself spurred me to think about the experience of being. When I read The Apple in the Dark, it seemed to me that the novel was not ideally suited to Clarice’s inspiration (I still hadn’t read Near to the Wild Heart).
But The Passion According to G. H. remade — and radicalized — her most beautiful stories. Unlike them, however, it itself wasn’t beautiful. Or maybe it was even more beautiful — but that beauty was hard for me to perceive. In the middle of the book, the narrator says that she had never before had so little fear of bad taste. She had written “billows of muteness” to refer to the content that forced her to use words like a life raft, clinging to them in order to float atop the muteness that fell upon her in successive waves. She would never before have used that expression because she respected “beauty and its intrinsic moderation.”
Well, I missed that moderation, which made her short stories read like perfect songs. But I had already been ensnared by the immoderate reflexive disorder of this new beginning of Clarice’s. Here, the characteristics of two extreme and perhaps non-narrative texts come together. These are among the finest texts she produced: the dirge for the murdered gangster Mineirinho, in which her observations on the yawning divisions of Brazilian society emerge so pungently, and the interminable and labyrinthine meditations on “The Egg and the Hen.”
And then G. H. appears as a novel above and beyond perfection. It’s not a story that leads the reader to philosophical thoughts. And it’s not a philosophical treatise that needs a story to convey them. Instead, it is a vivifying experience that leads a person to the most ambitious philosophical discoveries. An experience transformed into literary art, in which harmony and disorder are the price of the revelation.
A younger friend said, back in the Bahia of my early twenties: “I don’t like it much: it’s pantheism.” We were crazy kids. Now I think that this novel of Clarice´s (for me the most beautiful of them all) tells us more about the possibility that Spinoza wrote his Ethics in Portuguese than about the dispute between immanentists and transcendentalists.
Caetano Veloso
To Possible Readers
This book is like any other book. But I would be happy if it were only read by people whose souls are already formed. Those who know that the approach, of whatever it may be, happens gradually and painstakingly — even passing through the opposite of what it approaches. They who, only they, will slowly come to understand that this book takes nothing from no one. To me, for example, the character G. H. gave bit by bit a difficult joy; but it is called joy.
C. L.
“A complete life may be one ending in so full identification with the non-self that there is no self to die.”
––Bernard Benson
The Passion According to G. H.
—————— I’m searching, I’m searching. I’m trying to understand. Trying to give what I’ve lived to somebody else and I don’t know to whom, but I don’t want to keep what I lived. I don’t know what to do with what I lived, I’m afraid of that profound disorder. I don’t trust what happened to me. Did something happen to me that I, because I didn’t know how to live it, lived as something else? That’s what I’d like to call disorganization, and I’d have the confidence to venture on, because I would know where to return afterward: to the previous organization. I’d rather call it disorganization because I don’t want to confirm myself in what I lived — in the confirmation of me I would lose the world as I had it, and I know I don’t have the fortitude for another.
If I confirm my self and consider myself truthful, I’ll be lost because I won’t know where to inlay my new way of being — if I go ahead with my fragmentary visions, the whole world will have to be transformed in order for me to fit within it.
I lost something that was essential to me, and that no longer is. I no longer need it, as if I’d lost a third leg that up till then made it impossible for me to walk but that turned me into a stable tripod. I lost that third leg. And I went back to being a person I never was. I went back to having something I never had: just two legs. I know I can only walk with two legs. But I feel the useless absence of that third leg and it scares me, it was the leg that made me something findable by myself, and without even having to look for myself.
Am I disorganized because I lost something I didn’t need? In this new cowardice of mine — cowardice is the newest thing to happen to me, it’s my greatest adventure, this cowardice of mine is a field so wide that only the great courage leads me to accept it — in my new cowardice, which is like waking one morning in a foreigner’s house, I don’t know if I’ll have the courage just to go. It’s hard to get lost. It’s so hard that I’ll probably quickly figure out some way to find myself, even if finding myself is once again my vital lie. Until now finding myself was already having an idea of a person and fitting myself into it: I’d incarnate myself into this organized person, and didn’t even feel the great effort of construction that is living. The idea I had of what a person is came from my third leg, the one that pinned me to the ground. But, and now? will I be freer?
No. I know I’m still not feeling freely, that once again I’m thinking because I have the objective of finding— and for safety’s sake I’ll call finding the moment I discover a way out. Why don’t I have the courage just to discover a way in? Oh, I know I went in, oh yes. But I got scared because I don’t know what that entrance opens onto. And I’d never let myself be carried off, unless I knew where to.
Yesterday, however, I lost my human setup for hours and hours. If I have the courage, I’ll let myself stay lost. But I’m afraid of newness and I’m afraid of living whatever I don’t understand — I always want to be sure to at least think I understand, I don’t know how to give myself over to disorientation. How could I explain that my greatest fear is precisely of: being? and yet there is no other way. How can I explain that my greatest fear is livi
ng whatever comes? how to explain that I can’t stand seeing, just because life isn’t what I thought but something else — as if I knew what! Why is seeing such disorganization?
And a disappointment. But disappointment with what? if, without even feeling it, I must have hardly been able to stand my barely constructed organization? Maybe disappointment is the fear of no longer belonging to a system. So I could put it like this: he is very happy because he was finally disappointed. What I used to be, was no good for me. But it was from that not-good that I’d organized the best thing of all: hope. From my own flaw I had created a future good. Am I afraid now that my new way of being doesn’t make sense? But why not let myself be carried away by whatever happens? I would have to take the holy risk of chance. And I will substitute fate for probability.
But will the discoveries of childhood have been like in a laboratory where you find whatever you find? So it was only as an adult that I grew scared and created the third leg? But as an adult can I find the childish courage to get lost? getting lost means finding things without any idea of what to do with what you’re finding. The two legs walking, without the third that holds you back. And I want to be held back. I don’t know what to do with the terrifying freedom that could destroy me. But was I happy while imprisoned? or was there, and there was, something restless and sly in my happy jailhouse routine? or was there, and there was, that throbbing thing I was so used to that I thought that throbbing was being a person. Is that right? that too, that too.
I get so scared when I realize I lost my human form for several hours. I don’t know if I’ll have another form to replace the one I lost. I know I’ll need to be careful not to use furtively a new third leg that from me sprouts swiftly as weeds, and to call this protective leg “a truth.”
But I also don’t know what form to give what happened to me. And without giving it a form, nothing can exist for me. And — and if it’s really true that nothing existed?! maybe nothing happened to me? I can only understand what happens to me but things only happen that I understand — what do I know of the rest? the rest didn’t exist. Maybe nothing ever existed! Maybe all that happened to me was a slow and great dissolution? And that this is my struggle against that disintegration: trying now to give it a form? A form shapes the chaos, a form gives construction to the amorphous substance — the vision of an infinite piece of meat is the vision of the mad, but if I cut that meat into pieces and parcel them out over days and over hungers — then it would no longer be perdition and madness: it would once again be humanized life.
Humanized life. I had humanized life too much.
But what do I do now? Should I cling to the whole vision, even if that means having an incomprehensible truth? or do I give a form to the nothing, and that would be my attempt to integrate within me my own disintegration? But I’m so little prepared to understand. Before, whenever I tried, my limitations gave me a physical sensation of discomfort, any beginning of thought immediately banged into my forehead. Early on I had to recognize, without complaint, the limits of my small intelligence, and I strayed from the path. I knew I was destined to think little, reasoning kept me confined inside my own skin. So how was I supposed to inaugurate thinking within me now? and maybe only thought can save me, I’m afraid of passion.
Since I must save the day of tomorrow, since I must have a form because I don’t feel strong enough to stay disorganized, since I inevitably must slice off the infinite monstrous meat and cut it into pieces the size of my mouth and the size of the vision of my eyes, since I’ll inevitably succumb to the need for form that comes from my terror of remaining undelimited — then may I at least have the courage to let this shape form by itself like a scab that hardens by itself, like the fiery nebula that cools into earth. And may I have the great courage to resist the temptation of to invent a form.
This effort I’m making now to let a meaning surface, any meaning, this effort would be easier if I pretended to write to someone.
But I’m afraid to begin composing in order to be understood by the imaginary someone, I’m afraid to start to “make” a meaning, with the same tame madness that till yesterday was my healthy way of fitting into a system. Will I need the courage to use an unprotected heart and keep talking to the nothing and the no one? as a child thinks about the nothing. And run the risk of being crushed by chance.
I don’t understand what I saw. And I don’t even know if I saw it, since my eyes can’t differentiate themselves from the things they see. Only an unexpected tremor of lines, only an anomaly in the uninterrupted continuity of my civilization, made me experience for an instant vitalizing death. The fine death that let me brush up against the forbidden fabric of life. It’s forbidden to say the name of life. And I almost said it. I almost couldn’t untangle myself from its fabric, which would be the destruction of my age within me.
Perhaps what happened to me was an understanding — and for me to be true, I have to keep on being unable to grasp it, keep on not understanding it. All sudden understanding closely resembles an acute incomprehension.
No. All sudden understanding is finally the revelation of an acute incomprehension. Each moment of finding is a getting lost. Maybe what happened to me was an understanding as complete as an ignorance, and from it I shall emerge as untouched and innocent as before. No understanding of mine will ever reach that knowledge, since living is the only height within my grasp — I am only on the level of life. Except now, now I know a secret. Which I am already forgetting, ah I feel that I am already forgetting. . . .
To learn it again, I would now have to re-die. And knowing might be the murder of my human soul. And I don’t want that, I don’t. Handing myself over to a new ignorance could save me, possibly. Since as I struggle to know, my new ignorance, which is forgetting, became sacred. I’m the vestal priestess of a secret I have forgotten. And I serve the forgotten danger. I found out something I could not understand, my lips were sealed, and all I’ve got are the incomprehensible fragments of a ritual. Yet for the first time I feel that my forgetting is finally on a level with the world. Ah, and I don’t even want anything explained to me that in order to be explained would have to be removed from itself. I don’t want anything explained to me that once again needs human validation to be interpreted.
Life and death were mine, and I was monstrous. I was courageous like a sleepwalker who simply goes. During the hours of perdition I had the courage not to compose or organize. And above all not to look ahead. I’d never before had the courage to let myself be guided by the unknown and toward the unknown: my expectations preconditioned what I would see. They weren’t previsions of a vision: they were already the size of my concerns. My expectations closed the world to me.
Until for several hours I gave up. And, my God, I got what I didn’t want. I didn’t wander through a river valley — I had always thought that finding would be fertile and moist as a river valley. I didn’t realize it was the great un-finding.
To continue being human will my sacrifice be forgetting? Now I’ll know how to recognize in the common faces of a few people that — that they forgot. And no longer know that they forgot what they forgot.
I saw. I know I saw because I didn’t give my meaning to what I saw. I know I saw — because I don’t understand. I know I saw — because there’s no point to what I saw. Listen, I’m going to have to speak because I don’t know what to do with having lived. Even worse: I don’t want what I saw. What I saw smashes my daily life. Sorry for giving you this, I’d much rather have seen something better. Take what I saw, deliver me from my useless vision, and from my useless sin.
I am so afraid that I can only accept that I got lost if I imagine that someone is holding my hand.
Holding someone’s hand was always my idea of joy. Often before falling asleep — in that small struggle not to lose consciousness and enter the greater world — often, before having the courage to go toward the greatness of sleep, I pretend that someone is holding my hand and I go, go toward the enormous absence
of form that is sleep. And when even then I can’t find the courage, then I dream.
Going to sleep so closely resembles the way I now must go toward my freedom. Handing myself over to what I don’t understand would be placing myself at the edge of the nothing. It will be just going, and like a blind woman lost in a field. That supernatural thing which is life. Life that I had tamed to make it familiar. That brave thing that will be handing myself over, and which is like grasping the haunted hand of the God, and entering that formless thing that is a paradise. A paradise that I don’t want!
While writing and speaking I will have to pretend that someone is holding my hand.
Oh, at least at the beginning, just at the beginning. As soon as I can let go, I will go alone. In the meantime I must hold this hand of yours — though I can’t invent your face and your eyes and your mouth. Yet even amputated, that hand doesn’t scare me. Its invention comes from such an idea of love as if the hand really were attached to a body that I don’t see only because I can’t love enough. I cannot imagine a whole person because I am not a whole person. And how can I imagine a face without knowing what expression I need? As soon as I can release your warm hand, I’ll go alone and with horror. The horror will be my responsibility until the metamorphosis is complete and the horror becomes light. Not the light born of a desire for beauty and moralism, as before without realizing I intended; but the natural light of whatever exists, and it is that natural light that terrorizes me. Though I know that the horror — I am the horror in the face of things.
For now I am inventing your presence, just as one day I won’t know how to risk dying alone, dying is the greatest risk of all, I won’t know how to enter death and take the first step into the first absence of me — just as in this last and so primary hour I shall invent your unknown presence and with you shall begin to die until I learn all by myself not to exist, and then I shall let you go. For now I cling to you, and your unknown and warm life is my only intimate organization, I who without your hand would feel set loose into the enormous vastness I discovered. Into the vastness of the truth?