A Breath of Life by Clarice Lispector Read Free Book Online Page A

am I the edge of Angela? Is Angela my mistake? Is Angela my variation?
    ANGELA: I like myself a little because I’m astringent. And emollient. And sucupira. And dizzy. Crackling. Not to mention rather estrogenic. I threw the stick at the cat-cat-cat but the cat-cat-cat . . . My God, I’m unhappy. Farewell, Day, it’s already dusk. I’m Sunday’s child.
    AUTHOR: Angela is a passion.
    ANGELA: I get along better with myself when I’m unhappy: a coming together takes place. When I’m happy, I feel like somebody else. Albeit another version of the same. Someone strangely joyful, whistling, slightly unhappy is more peaceful.
    I want so badly to be commonplace and a little vulgar and say: hope is the last to die.
    AUTHOR: I’d like to be able to “cure” her of herself. But her — “sickness”? is stronger than my powers, her sickness is the form her life takes.
    ANGELA: I am the contemporary of tomorrow.
    When I’m alone for a long time, I suddenly don’t recognize myself and I frighten myself and get chills all over.
    From now on I want more than understanding: I want superunderstanding, I humbly beg that this gift be given me. I want to understand understanding itself. I want to reach the most intimate secret of whatever exists. I’m in full communion with the world.
    AUTHOR: Angela lives for the future. It’s as if I didn’t read today’s papers because there’ll be newer news tomorrow. She doesn’t live off memories. She, like a lot of people, including me, is busy making the present moment slide toward the future moment. She was fifteen when she started to understand hope.
    ANGELA: I see the lamp that is lit. My interior is a mess. But I light myself up.
    AUTHOR: She’s a girl who, while she doesn’t seem to disrupt the existence of the thought of the present, belongs more to the future. For her each day has the future of the tomorrow. Each moment of the day is futurized to the next moment in nuances, gradations, a gradual increase of subtle characteristics of sensibility. Sometimes she loses heart, she gets discouraged when faced with the constant mutability of life. She coexists with time.
    ANGELA: My ideal would be to paint a picture of a picture.
    I am so upset that I never perfected what I invented in painting. Or at least I’ve never heard of this way of painting: it consists of taking a wooden canvas — Scotch pine is best — and paying attention to its veins. Suddenly, then a wave of creativity comes out of the subconscious and you go along with the veins following them a bit — but maintaining your liberty. I once did a painting that turned out like this: a robust horse with a long and extensive blond mane amidst the stalactites of a grotto. It’s a generic way of painting. And, moreover, you don’t need to know how to paint: anybody, as long as you’re not too inhibited, can follow this technique of freedom. And all mortals have a subconscious. Ah, my God, I have hope postponed. The future is a past that has not yet come to pass.
    Do you ever suddenly find it strange to be yourself?
    I’m not a dreamer. I only daydream to attain reality.
    AUTHOR: She, who is full of lost opportunities.
    Her true countenance is so secret. The almost weightlessness of a spider’s web. Everything inside her is organized around an enigma intangible in its most intimate nucleus.
    ANGELA: My enormous waste of myself. Even so I’m glutted and would like to dump even more my treasures hidden in the ark.
    Where’s my current of energy? My sense of discovery: even if it took an obscure form. I’ve always expected something new of myself, I was a shiver of expectation: something was always coming from me or from outside of me.
    The thing is I’m endemic.
    I can’t stand a particular feeling for long because it leads to anguish and my mind becomes occupied with that feeling and I untangle myself from it however I can to regain my freedom of spirit. I am free to feel. I want to be free to reason. I aspire to a