The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector - Book Summary, Analysis, Review
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- čas přidán 10. 06. 2024
- Welcome to the CodeX Cantina where our mission is to get more people talking about books! We continue our celebration of Women in Translation this month by heading to Brazil. Clarice Lispector writes the final novel of her life with "The Hour of the Star." Some argue it's the peak of her career. It's hard to deny the power this story can deliver. With a heavy theme rooted in class and poverty, there are many other elements such as knowledge and connections with others that leave readers speechless in a profundity that is rarely reached in books. Our copy was translated by Ben Moser.
Clarice Lispector Playlist: • The Crime of the Mathe...
We will start with a Spoiler-Free chat and move into an Analysis/Discussion Section. Please see the chapters for quick links.
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@EveryoneWhoReadsitMustConverse video on musical instruments and The Hour of the Star: • The Hour of the Star b...
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TABLE OF CONTENTS:
0:00 Spoiler Free
8:29 Spoiler Chat
30:39 Wrap Up and Ratings
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Thanks for spreading our culture! Unfortunately our authors are not recognized as they should. Indications of other great women in our literature: Lygya Fagundes Telles, Rachel de Queiroz, Hilda Hilst, Cecília Meireles, Carolina de Jesus, Adélia Prado...
Pleasure was all ours. Thanks for sharing some other authors to check out.
Great recommendations. Thank you Matheus.
Realmente ótimas indicações! Pena que muitos livros dessas autoras não tem tradução...
@@henriqueoliveira2291 Eu concordo. Procurei por alguns deles. Estarei lendo Hilda em breve.
I agree. I have looked for some of these. I will be reading Hilda soon.
@@TheCodeXCantina Great! You will like her books!
Good to know you guys enjoyed Clarice's work! This is definitely one of her most famous books in Brazil. I had to read it for my University admission exam, it was one of the mandatory readings. I have only read Clarice's works in Portuguese, kinda crazy to imagine how to translate it, since she utilizes such intricate/refined language and metaphors. Amazing analysis as always btw!
Thanks. I'm clearly a consumer here as I can't speak Portuguese. I know Moser shared that when he translates her, as well as some others have as well, the task is hard as it may be strange when translated in English but they've shared it's equally strange in native Portuguese. Perhaps that leaves room for multiple translations and obviously, you'll never get it right unless you just read it natively.
You guys have convinced me to pick up Lispector!! She sounds amazing
Do it
This is a great video on a fantastic book! A wonderfully insignificant main character. Exploration of meaning and life. Clarice is so unique and intellectually stunning 💪💪
Thanks so much!
Finally read this and something I really liked was how in my translation afterward they mentioned how intentional her use of punctuation and breaking syntax was and I did notice that the writing was a very different almost fragmented flow and I really liked it cause it meshed with how my brain would creatively be trying to accomplish a task, if that at all makes sense.
Ben Moser has been working on a project of retranslating her work and translating for the first time some of her others works and is trying to bring together some of that voicing. So glad you enjoyed it
_aHa!_ I've been awaiting this (now, I can do my review of it, too). It was a pleasure reading this w you, Una. I _loved_ how this story is actually retold by Rodrigo! And, so many great, funny lines, in here: "Hey girl, havent you any face?" "Of course I have a face. It's just that my nose is flat. After all, I'm from Alagoas." Also, as a tarot reader myself, I loved how it closes w a Tarot Reader 🔮🃏🧙♂️ Great analysis, as per usual. BTW the Pontiero translation has (Bang!) in lieu of (Explosion!)
It was a quick one! We basically pounded through it in a few sittings :D
Reading it now. Definitely will be picking up the rest of her books. Thank you guys!
Awesome. I hope you enjoy
ok I actually own this book so this is a sign that I just need to read it so I can watch this video!
Spoiler Free discussion alone is enough for the hype
That’s hilarious you talked to me about buddy reading this one last week and it’s their next video!! I watched the spoiler section too - definitely in for this one with you Angela!!
Oh yes, I remember you mentioning this book a long time ago now that you bring that up! I hope you enjoy.
Exceptional video guys. Really engaging and curiosity rousing. Thoroughly enjoyable. Loved the Google maps analogy contra experiential.👍
Excellent! I was hoping that would resonate with someone besides me 😂
How did you two know I needed this today?!? 😁🤩 What a literary rule breaker! Great analysis, and I loved the comparison of the bombs or explosions to “so it goes.”
Being a friend means being there when they need it
34:23 Ahhhhhh, great reference to Episode 11, "Sirens," in _Ulysses_ at the Ormond hotel: the musical chapter! IMA reread _The Hour of the Star_ w this in mind . . . 🎉
One of my favorite books by Clarice. However, my favorite is one that is never as much mentioned as the most famous ones: The Apple in the Dark, which strangely, gives us a male protagonist, which is not the most common for Clarice. A man being reborn after comitting a crime. I love it. When in Crime and Punishment, by Dostoievski, we have some analysis of the conflict going on in someone's most intimate thoughts when engaging in something so dark and challenging as a crime, we have it here too, but through a different perspective. Clarice's perspective. A woman, watching on the outside, the conflicts of a man. The images of the dark, of the womb, of life and death, that moment where Martin walks so deeply in the dark, he can't see a thing, everything is so unaccessible to consciousness, he decides to close his eyes while walking, cause that would NOT even make any difference, because after dark, there would never come any thing other than more dark. That image of surrender, well, it's beautiful.
They announced a new English translation of Apple in the Dark soon. I hope to get it!
@@TheCodeXCantina hope you guys do. I mean, the english speaking community of readers
Clarice is definitely my favorite writer and this one is just as deep, but not nearly as much passion according to GH. Renata from 🇧🇷
obrigada! She’s amazing! I hope to read Passion According to GH soon!
Just another author to get to. Thanks for sharing!
Clarice is Clarice.
Great video. Clarice sounds just sooo powerful. I definitely need to read more of her. If a story can touch me in some way--even if it makes me mad or whatever 😂--I think it’s more valuable to me than a book that is just straight dull. Thats how I generally have to look at modern works of literary fiction 😂 Usually I'm not a big fan, but hey. At least they make me think and feel something.
I support this statement
No argument from me about her status. I have got to get the Portuguese way to pronounce her name into my head.
I had not really thought about how this one is about how can we ever really know someone, whilst some of her others are more about how can we know ourselves. Thank you for that insight.
It took me a while to reconfigure the pronunciation in my head too. Still working on it as I'll still slip.
I have been wanting to pick this up for a bit now, but haven't had a real reason to (simply, not knowing too much about it). After this video, I will definitely be picking it up this week. Did I miss hear something, or did you mention Bergson? As in Henri Bergson? (I would just go back, but on my phone, it is difficult haha 😅) I don't usually hear him being brought up, but if so, I am sold! Haha
You heard correctly, sir. I was drawing a reference to his Introduction to Metaphysics and what it means to have knowledge of something. Not that she was specifically writing to it, so much as intuition plays a role for her.
Pae yes yes yes please read this.
⭐️
💥
Also, NOVELLAS! I kinda love them!
Like Lezlie says about a short story, they're like a taste test of an author's style.
Agree. It’s like the sampler pack
💫🌟⭐💫🌟⭐💫🌟⭐
⌛⭐
I don’t think she actually peed her pants. Notice the huge difference between the things M says and the things R attributes to her. Of the two characters, M is more reliable. If she says she sat on a wet beach, I believe her over him. He is always associating her with excretions-stains, blood, pee, entrails… I think this is a book that’s about literary misogyny. Notes from Pontiero trans:
RODRIGO’s Construction of Macabea (pontiero trans )-stained, virgin-whore, empty-headed, inferior to Rodrigo/Olimpico
- first ref not too cruel; sanctity in her poverty of body and soul, 21
- clings to Rodrigos skin like viscous glue or contaminating mud; also Macabea stands in for poverty, where poverty is “ugly and promiscuous“ 21
- “this girl who slept in cheap cotton underwear with faint but rather suspicious blood stains“ 23
- Inept for living, 24; clownish nose, young and tarnished, 25
- Cello, then enough the doctor thinks she has anorexia, blotchy as if with a liver problem
- “lightheaded as an idiot“ 25, almost unconscious, 33
- Doesn’t question or need answers, 26
- Stale body odor, 26, peculiar body odor, 63
- Lacks charm yet “I am the only one who finds her charming. As the author, I alone love her”, 27
- Rhetoric at verse (look this up), from the backwoods, an orphan whose mother and father died and who lives with the only surviving relative, an aunt who thrashes her, may be to protect her virginity, 27; she is without origin, 29
- From acre Street, a red light District, a slum with rats, “I am terrified of that dark hole and its depraved inhabitants, 30
- She is ill, with a diseased body, 35; besides having a cough that is later diagnosed as tuberculosis, she is portrayed as crazy, 32, infertile, 33
- Paralyzed by introspection, 32
- Waste money on a rose, 32, whereas Rodrigo pays bills
- Has hopelessly shriveled tiny ovules 33
- Doesn’t know how to embellish reality, 33, and reality is out of her grasp, 33
- Portrayed as enjoying sadness or self-pitting twice, a misfit, 34, like the man who wants everything but has no right to anything, 35
- “she was nourished by her own entity, as if she were feeding off her own entrails,“ 37
- Her life is “one long meditation about nothing“ 37
- She revels in solitude, dancing in her apartment 41
- Early in the book she is referred to as a “near accident of nature“ where is Olympico’s killed someone so is not a mirror accident of nature, 58 note change our spellings of Olimpico
- Rodrigo claims she laughs at his break up only because “she had forgotten how to weep” 61
- She asks for a favor, a cup of coffee, on her day off; Rodrigo says, “perhaps she needs special conditions in order to become more appealing” 41
- After Macabea laughs when he breaks up with her, He begins to desire her, thinking of her as sensual, 60, and speaks about her as if with longing, 69, and mentions revenge again
- He describes her red lipstick: “looked like blood spurting from a nasty gash“ 62
- See strange random dwarf comment 79
- she is Damned and doesn’t know it, 83
Apologies for many typos and spellcheck blips…transcribed digitally and badly from audio and I haven’t edited it yet.
Beginning could be an ideal example for Derrida’s critique of the transcendental signified and logocentrism. His philosophical statements are bs.
He mentions a few times he’s getting revenge. He is also trying to write a pop culture book, sponsored by Coca Cola, and using heavy handed pathos, though by her own account she’s quite happy. He’s certainly not doing her a favor as he claims. He is not revealing her but cruelly interpreting/constructing her. He is so much like Olimpico-petty, cruel, temperamental, self-aggrandizing…a possible interpretation is that Olimpico is Rodrigo himself-she laughed at him. She tested his knowledge-he was defensive and had no answers, just cruel dodges. Most revealing, she asks him about mimesis. Omg I can’t believe you’re believing is awful unreliable narrator who thinks he can mind-read. Anything he reports by reading her mind is suspect. It’s about his process for constructing females. He also treated his last girlfriend badly and, if he is Olimpico, he is also reductive to Gloria. This is a roadmap for literary misogyny.
Yeah, he refers to myth and biblical texts…so do most writers making claims to authority…he does such a sloppy job of incorporating stories from both the old and New Testament-not because he has any understanding but in the way he claims transparency (despite his heavily filtered perspective and highly affected language).
Everything you’re saying about Olimpico could be said about Rodrigo. Note too that Olimpico’s gf Gloria sent her to this fortune teller. Possibly Olimpico set it up. After she laughs at him, he starts getting horny for her…about her pubes, her sensuality. I think if there was a Madame Carlotta and she’s not just an operator who’s written in a completely different style, then Mme Carlota appears to be trying to recruit her first into prostitution then into having sex. It’s a setup-I don’t believe a fortune teller correctly guessed her life. A story isn’t just about what’s reported (esp by unreliable narrator), but the elisions, the manipulations, the over-interpretations… For all we know (bang) is a gun and Olimpico feels guilty for the death because he murdered her. Would a self aggrandizing prick who’s using aesthetic nervousness to exploit a woman for a pop tear-jerker book for sponsorship and success and money…would he admit he killed her not just figuratively but literally? The coolest thing about this book is it could be interpreted as poly spent in possible interpretations…like life itself.