Before it was published in Portuguese in 1973, Clarice Lispector’s Água Viva had gone through several iterations, varying in length. The final product is a novel that trades plot and setting for a meditation on the ineffable nature of time and existence, and whose structure abandons any adherence to traditional narration. Instead, it mirrors the organic flow of a thinking mind attempting to comprehend its existence through language. This experimental approach is woven into Lispector’s many novels and short stories, making it crucial to her voice as an author.
Clarice Lispector (1920-1977) was a Brazilian author born to Ukrainian parents in the small village of Chechelnyk. Fleeing conflict, the Lispector family made their home in Recife, Brazil. After the publication of her first novel Perto do Coração Selvagem (“Near to the Wild Heart”) in 1943, she married a diplomat and lived abroad for sixteen years. She eventually returned and settled permanently in Rio de Janeiro. There, she was met with praise and a positive reception of her debut by Brazilian critics and readers. They were instantly captivated by the profundity and experimentation of the novel which explores a young woman’s life and inner monologue as she attempts to reckon with her existence among nature and humanity. Her subsequent novels and stories would expand on these themes, retaining stylistic connections to each other while continuing to take refreshing and surprising routes. In 1973 came Água Viva. In part, it was consistent with Lispector’s venture into the problems of language and existence. Yet it possesses a uniqueness that distinguishes it from the rest of her oeuvre—while her other novels and stories abide by a loose set of parameters that provide some foundation, Água Viva possesses almost none. It lacks plot, characters, and setting. Its only semblance of structure is a double paragraph break between sections, a fragmented style that reflects the process of its composition.
The conception of Água Viva and of many of Lispector’s later works were somewhat collaborative. In 1970, four years after a terrible fire that left her writing hand permanently disfigured, Lispector met Olga Borelli. A “sensitive, well-educated reader with a refined sense of language” (Moser, 280), Borelli helped transcribe, edit, and structure much of Lispector’s writing from then on. With Água Viva, she organized the novel from a collection of fragments, working somewhat intuitively to help Lispector arrange them in a way that made sense to her. In Lispector’s later period, Borelli was in many ways a co-editor, directly involved in the construction of Lispector’s works. Of their collaboration, Borelli writes that she “took all the fragments and collected them, kept them in an envelope…on the back of a check, a piece of paper, a napkin…I still have some of those things at home, and some of them still even smell like her lipstick. She would wipe her lips and then stick it in her purse…I started to note, to number them” (xii).
Borelli’s insight nourishes the aphoristic yet focused quality of the text, each fragment its own idea, yet none of them vastly disconnected from the other. In his 2012 English retranslation of Água Viva, Stefan Tobler illuminates the original’s experimentation with form and language while aiding the continuous flow of the text with his intuitive lexical choices. Towards the beginning of Água Viva, the narration winds towards one of its central ideas — that its language is in part a sonic tool to move closer to an organic, incommunicable way of being. Tobler’s English rendering of Lispector’s sonorous vocabulary is at once simple and evocative, allowing the reading eye and the listening ear to engage with the passage:
Here is another now.
And another. My effort: to bring now the future to here. I move inside my deep instincts which carry themselves out blindly. I feel then that I’m near springs, pools and waterfalls, all with abundant waters. And I free.
Hear me, hear my silence. What I say is never what I say but instead something else. When I say “abundant waters” I’m speaking of the force of body in the waters of the world. It captures that other thing that I’m really saying because I myself cannot. Read the energy that is in my silence. Ah I fear God and his silence. (23)
This excerpt exemplifies a paradox explored throughout Água Viva: to communicate the complexity of existence, one must use the most straightforward tools — words. Despite the caveat of simplicity, those words can be chosen and arranged in a way that gets at the very thing they fail to describe. Água Viva approaches this by way of existential and contemplative aphorisms rich with imagery. These aphorisms are not rooted in one place or time, directing attention to the language rather than a consistent interpretive thread. At one point, the narrator instructs readers how to interpret her writing: “You don’t understand music: you hear it. So hear me with your whole body” (4). The words convey not just meaning but feeling, something more bodily.
The sounds of the words and how they flow together contribute to the movement of the text. As the reader moves along, they are guided by the narrator in her intention: “Listen only superficially to what I say and from the lack of meaning a meaning will be born as from me a high and light life is inexplicably born” (18). More and more, the text reveals itself as something not just to be interpreted with the rational mind but with the organic and primal. Words have an almost musical quality that allows them to have textual space, but when read without their semantic attachments, they take on only their sound. The words become notes, the sentences and punctuations the rhythm, and Água Viva acts as less of a book and more as a piece of music or painting, to be experienced with the senses.
Lispector’s preoccupation with the sensual, primal side of her self is conveyed extensively in Água Viva. There is an idea that she articulates, in this novel and throughout her other works, of the thing itself. This “thing” is the essence of something that words attempt to describe but ultimately dilute because of their simplicity. She tries to articulate the thing, to resist the separation that occurs when a word names it, but never succeeds. The primal predates the word; it is a connection to our earliest ancestors and, even before, a connection to the larger natural world that is not governed by human consciousness. Therefore, with the primal, there is no need to separate “form” and “content.” A thing does not need to be rendered into language to exist within nature; it simply is. That is a large part of what makes Água Viva so unique and this translation so astounding: by trying not to use words to delineate and categorize, using them instead as sound and feeling — animal senses — Lispector and the reader can operate on a level that is closer to a primal experience.
Lispector’s proximity to the primal extends directly to her writing process. She shares a closeness between herself and this text, which is made clear by her method. In a recently recovered interview from 1976, she offers a glimpse into how her ideas manifest:
I had to discover my method all by myself. I didn’t have any writer friends, I didn’t have anything. For example, in the afternoon, at work or in college, ideas popped into my mind, and I’d say, “Fine, I’ll write that down in the morning.” Without yet realizing that, for me, form and meaning are one single thing. The phrase arrives already made. (tr. Moser)
Since the form and content of what she wants to write already appear before it is written, she does not experience the same separation that authors may face when trying to articulate themselves. The unity between the idea and how it manifests exemplifies a more instinctual way of communicating; it does not easily involve rational thought and trial-and-error processes to articulate ideas. Retaining this element is integral to the translation; the primal is entwined with how the text is written. By preserving the content-form and author-text unity, Tobler stays true to Lispector’s method.
In Lispector’s work, syntax, diction, punctuation, and grammar are equally important in imparting a unified message. As a result, translating her work has proven difficult, and is made even more challenging by its experimental use of these elements. Lispector has stressed the importance of retaining these uses, even telling a translator that he was “not to budge so much as a single comma” (vii). Tobler’s English translation retains most of her grammatical and syntactical choices. The rhythm is mostly the same. This allows for the unique power of Lispector’s voice to stay intact and preserves her innovative approach to writing, albeit in a language that abides by different lexical rules.
Here are the first lines of Água Viva, in its original Portuguese:
E com uma alegria tão profunda. É uma tal aleluia. Aleluia, grito eu, aleluia que se funde com o mais escuro uivo humano da dor de separação mas é grito de felicidade diabólica. (Lispector, 4)
Tobler’s English translation:
It’s with such profound happiness. Such a hallelujah. Hallelujah, I shout, hallelujah merging with the darkest human howl of the pain of separation but a shout of diabolic joy. (3)
As we can see, Tobler retains all of Lispector’s punctuation. Even the syntax remains relatively intact, save for a few changes that would trespass English grammar. The diction is chosen intuitively, preserving the rhythm integral to Lispector’s philosophy without altering the direct meaning of the Portuguese words. Tobler’s first sentence indicates the care put into the entirety of the translation. In English, readers can see Lispector drawing directly from her inner world. The seemingly incomplete nature of the first sentences gives the impression of an idea already in motion. Now, Lispector can grab the English reader by the hand and pull them into the current of a language that does not stop or make compromises for the sake of meaning—giving them no other choice but to experience the text primally, moment by moment.
In an article about his translation published on the website of And Other Stories, Tobler remarks on his attention to her punctuation, sometimes differing in opinion with the editor, Benjamin Moser. However, his adherence to Lispector’s preferences and his informed approach to punctuation in her work accentuate the power of English. Tobler’s method is empathetic and respectful. Daring, even, considering the sheer abandon with which Lispector approaches language. Even writing this review was a struggle, as this book resists intellectual parsing at every turn.
Água Viva is an astounding exploration of language’s limitations and potential to communicate the ineffable. Via the experimental, stream-of-consciousness flow of the novel, Lispector reaches for the raw experience of existence beyond traditional storytelling, unifying form and content to affect not just the mind but the body. Água Viva skirts rational comprehension, instead welcoming readers to engage with their entire being. Stefan Tobler’s English translation keeps this intimate and visceral quality intact, preserving Lispector’s distinctive voice. His careful translation of the punctuation, rhythm, diction, and syntax affords English readers a mirrored experience of the original Portuguese. The novel teems with life, maintaining an impressively delicate balance between fidelity to Lispector’s method and Tobler’s lexical intuition. Água Viva in English approximates how Lispector wrote it: a novel that transcends rationality, working towards a sensory experience of life itself.
Lispector, Clarice. Água Viva. Translated by Stefan Tobler. New Directions, 2012.
Max Schiewe-Weliky studies comparative literature and literary translation at Oberlin College. Max translates from Spanish and is interested in the works of Silvina Ocampo, Norah Lange, and Clarice Lispector.
Works Cited
Lispector, Clarice. Água viva. 1973. Editora Rocco, 1998.
Moser, Benjamin. Why This World. A Biography of Clarice Lispector. Penguin UK, 2014.
Lozada, Lucas Iberico. “Overlooked No More: Clarice Lispector, Novelist Who Captivated Brazil.” The New York Times, 18 Dec. 2020.
Moser, Benjamin. “A Lost Interview with Clarice Lispector.” The New Yorker, 13 Feb. 2023.
Smalley, Nichola. “Stefan Tobler’s Piece for Music & Literature on Translating Water and Jellyfish (and Clarice).” And Other Stories. 12 June 2014.
Great descriptive writing. Sounds like an amazing read. Thank you.