Read Online The Stream of Life by Clarice Lispector - Free Book Online
Authors: Clarice Lispector
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days now: the time for me to give is close at hand.
Don't you see that this is like a child being born? It hurts. Pain is exacerbated life. The process hurts. Coming- into-being is a slow, slow, good pain. It's a full stretching to the point where the person can stretch no more. And the blood is thankful. I breathe, I breathe. The air is it . Air with wind is already a he or a she. If I had to force myself to write to you I would become very sad. Sometimes I can't stand the force of inspiration. Then I paint oppressed. It's very good that things don't depend on me.
I've talked a lot about death. But I'm going to tell you about the breath of life. When a person has stopped breathing he's given mouth-to-mouth resuscitation: one mouth glues itself onto the mouth of another and breaths. And then the other begins to breathe again. This exchange of breath is one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard tell about life. Truthfully, the beauty of this mouth-to-mouth is overwhelming to me.
Oh, how uncertain everything is. And yet its within the Order. I don't even know what I'm going to write you in my next sentence. People never speak the ultimate truth. Whoever knows the truth, step forward. And speak. Contrite, we'll listen.
... I noticed him suddenly and he was so extraordinarily beautiful and virile a man that I felt a joy of creation. It's not that I wanted him for myself, just as I don't want for myself the little boy with the hair of an archangel I saw running after the ball. I just wanted to look. The man looked at me for an instant and smiled calmly: he knew how beautiful he was and I know that he knew I didn't want him for myself. He smiled because he didn't feel at all threatened. It's just that beings who are exceptional in any sense are subject to more danger than normal people. I crossed the street and hailed a cab. The breeze ruffled the hairs on the back of my neck. And I was so happy that I curled up out of fear in a corner of the cab, because happiness hurts. And all this caused by the sight of a beautiful man. I continued not to want him for myself—what I like are people who are a little ugly and at the same time in harmony, but in a certain way he'd given me a lot with that smile of complicity between people who understand each other. I didn't understand any of that.
The courage to live: I leave hidden what needs to be hidden and what needs to spread out in secret.
I fall silent.
Because I don't know what my secret is. Tell me yours, teach me about the secret of each one of us. It's not a defamatory secret. It's simply that: secret.
And there are no formulas for it.
I think that now I'll have to ask permission to die a little. Excuse me, will you? I won't be long. Thanks.
. . . No. I couldn't die. Will I end here this "thing- word" by my own voluntary act? Not yet.
I'm transfiguring reality—what is it that escapes me? why don't I stretch out my hand and grab? It's because I've only dreamed the world but have never seen it.
What I'm writing you is in contralto. It's a negro spiritual. It has a chorus and lighted candles. I'm feeling dizzy now. I'm a little frightened. To what end will my freedom lead me? What is this I'm writing you? It leaves me alone. But I go on and pray and my freedom is ruled by the Order—I'm no longer afraid. What guides me is simply a sense of discovery. Behind what's behind thinking.
What I really do when I write you is follow myself, and I'm doing it right now: I'm following myself without knowing what it will lead me to. Sometimes following myself is so hard. Because of following something that's still so nebulous. Sometimes I end up stopping.
Now I'm frightened. Because I'm going to tell you something. Wait for the fear to pass.
It passed. It's the following: to me, dissonance is harmony. Melody often bores me. So does the so-called leitmotif. What I want in music and in what I write you and in what I paint are geometrical lines that cross in space and form a
Don't you see that this is like a child being born? It hurts. Pain is exacerbated life. The process hurts. Coming- into-being is a slow, slow, good pain. It's a full stretching to the point where the person can stretch no more. And the blood is thankful. I breathe, I breathe. The air is it . Air with wind is already a he or a she. If I had to force myself to write to you I would become very sad. Sometimes I can't stand the force of inspiration. Then I paint oppressed. It's very good that things don't depend on me.
I've talked a lot about death. But I'm going to tell you about the breath of life. When a person has stopped breathing he's given mouth-to-mouth resuscitation: one mouth glues itself onto the mouth of another and breaths. And then the other begins to breathe again. This exchange of breath is one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard tell about life. Truthfully, the beauty of this mouth-to-mouth is overwhelming to me.
Oh, how uncertain everything is. And yet its within the Order. I don't even know what I'm going to write you in my next sentence. People never speak the ultimate truth. Whoever knows the truth, step forward. And speak. Contrite, we'll listen.
... I noticed him suddenly and he was so extraordinarily beautiful and virile a man that I felt a joy of creation. It's not that I wanted him for myself, just as I don't want for myself the little boy with the hair of an archangel I saw running after the ball. I just wanted to look. The man looked at me for an instant and smiled calmly: he knew how beautiful he was and I know that he knew I didn't want him for myself. He smiled because he didn't feel at all threatened. It's just that beings who are exceptional in any sense are subject to more danger than normal people. I crossed the street and hailed a cab. The breeze ruffled the hairs on the back of my neck. And I was so happy that I curled up out of fear in a corner of the cab, because happiness hurts. And all this caused by the sight of a beautiful man. I continued not to want him for myself—what I like are people who are a little ugly and at the same time in harmony, but in a certain way he'd given me a lot with that smile of complicity between people who understand each other. I didn't understand any of that.
The courage to live: I leave hidden what needs to be hidden and what needs to spread out in secret.
I fall silent.
Because I don't know what my secret is. Tell me yours, teach me about the secret of each one of us. It's not a defamatory secret. It's simply that: secret.
And there are no formulas for it.
I think that now I'll have to ask permission to die a little. Excuse me, will you? I won't be long. Thanks.
. . . No. I couldn't die. Will I end here this "thing- word" by my own voluntary act? Not yet.
I'm transfiguring reality—what is it that escapes me? why don't I stretch out my hand and grab? It's because I've only dreamed the world but have never seen it.
What I'm writing you is in contralto. It's a negro spiritual. It has a chorus and lighted candles. I'm feeling dizzy now. I'm a little frightened. To what end will my freedom lead me? What is this I'm writing you? It leaves me alone. But I go on and pray and my freedom is ruled by the Order—I'm no longer afraid. What guides me is simply a sense of discovery. Behind what's behind thinking.
What I really do when I write you is follow myself, and I'm doing it right now: I'm following myself without knowing what it will lead me to. Sometimes following myself is so hard. Because of following something that's still so nebulous. Sometimes I end up stopping.
Now I'm frightened. Because I'm going to tell you something. Wait for the fear to pass.
It passed. It's the following: to me, dissonance is harmony. Melody often bores me. So does the so-called leitmotif. What I want in music and in what I write you and in what I paint are geometrical lines that cross in space and form a
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