Clarice Lispector and the avant-garde of women’s writing

Abstract

How should Clarice Lispector’s literary production be considered in relation to the concept of “avant-garde”, as it is problematized by Clarice Lispector herself, in the sense of renovation, research and self-knowledge? The way she was read by one of her first critics, Antonio Candido, is here considered, in a first topic, favoring the character of “renovation” and the concept of “novel of approximation” in the reading done by the critic of Near to the Wild Heart, Clarice Lispector’s debut novel. The second topic brings considerations on Clarice’s renovating spirit in relation to some of the novelists who preceded her. The third topic establishes a relation between the narrative structure of the novel “The Passion According to G.H.” and Fernando Pessoa’s poem “Chuva Oblíqua-III”, both centered around the path of unceasing search for self-knowledge of a “self” towards an “other”, in which the potentiality of language is tested to its utmost limit by a creative repertoire of literary-poetic figurations.