Near the Wild Heart

The appearance of Close to the Wild Heart, in 1943, caused a great impact on the Brazilian literary scene, providing the author with immediate acclaim from critics and her fellow writers. There were those who found the influence of Virginia Woolf in the book, while others believed in Joyce , following the false lead of the epigraph from which Clarice drew her title: “He was alone. I was abandoned, happy, close to the wild heart of life.” Both groups were wrong, despite the debut writer's use of stream of consciousness to justify such correlations. It turns out, however, that this had been a natural and spontaneous finding for Clarice Lispector, who admitted The Steppe Wolf, by Hermann Hesse, as the only influence in this case. Not in stylistic terms nor because he identifies with the character of the protagonist, but rather because he shares with him and, above all, with Hesse, the imperative desire to break all barriers and surpass all limits in the search for his own inner truth. A desire personified by the central character, Joana, with an expression that became famous: “Freedom is little. What I desire still has no name.” Intimate and universal, fearless and secret, Joana “felt the world throb sweetly in her chest, her body ached as if she supported the femininity of all women” and she was out of step with the patriarchal system. in which she found herself inserted in the same way that Clarice distanced herself from the literature of her time, still dominated by regionalism and realism. Both author and protagonist were divergent forces, but not dissonant, as they introduced a new musicality, their own poetic and triumphant harmony, into the surrounding harshness, while seeking “the luminous center of things” without hesitating to “plunge into unknown waters”. ”, leaving the silence and going to fight. From this clash on the edge of the intimate abyss, Joana becomes a complete woman and Clarice, a singular and inimitable writer.