Week Seven: Clarice Lispector, The Passion According to G.H.
To be honest, I got really sleepy as soon as I started reading the first page. I was already kind of tired when I sat down to read this book and the way it was written literally lulled me to sleep. Although the process of getting through this book was slow, I did think that the voice of the author was interesting. It was a style of writing that stands out as one that I don't often come across.
The passage that stuck with me the most is the description of the cockroach's features that the narrator gives after closing the closet door on him. She comes face to face with this thing that grosses her out so much, and she really stares into him. I'm also terrified of bugs and this close up description was not something that I ever needed or wanted to read.
"It was a face without a contour."
"The long and slender whiskers were moving slow and dry."
"Its black faceted eyes were looking."
"... had cilia all over. Maybe the cilia were its multiple legs. The antennae were now still, dry and dusty strands."
What an intimate moment between the narrator and her object of greatest disgust. It was not so much the descriptions themselves that weirded me out, but the morbidly fascinated way in which she drank in the reality of this half-squashed cockroach. Throughout the rest of the book, she is horribly drawn to this creature that she has almost killed. Inside of this cockroach, inside of it's oozing guts, she sees beauty, revelation, death and life. She sees an "ugly and sparkling being." It's fascinating and gross seeing it through her eyes, like a fever dream that I'm trapped in. The narrator literally solves the world's philosophical problems, sitting on the floor next to an almost-dead cockroach. This is why I think the writing was boring but also genius. Every sentence was a beautiful, nonsensical string of words.
On another note, how must the cockroach have felt knowing his killer was eating little bits of his insides? I'll probably re-read this book when I'm not feeling tired because I think it's one of those creations that deserve more than one read.
This is the question I am posing for this week: Has the narrator reached a state of pure mental freedom, something the rest of us can only hope to ever achieve, or is she just a little crazy?
"Has the narrator reached a state of pure mental freedom, something the rest of us can only hope to ever achieve, or is she just a little crazy?"
ReplyDeleteHa! Or perhaps both?
Hello lisa.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think would change if you read this book again in a more awake state?
On the other hand, it is true that at first the protagonist feels reactions of disgust. But don't you think that this initial rejection of the object (the cockroach in this case) later turns into a battle in which the protagonist evolves into other states? Let's think that in the end she ends up eating the cockroach.
Also, you could include more tags, for example disgust.
Best
Hi Lisa!
ReplyDeleteI have to agree, the descriptions of the cockroach definitely creeped me out as well. Although I don't *hate* bugs, I most certainly could have gone without reading those details.
As for your question, I reckon it's a bit of both. I would argue that in reaching that "state of pure mental freedom", craziness simply follows/comes with it. After all, one reason why we consider something to be crazy is that it is different from the majority (what we like to call 'normal'). So, when one attains a "state of pure mental freedom" that everyone else only hopes to reach, wouldn't it make sense that they also seem a little crazy (in comparison to the rest of us and from our biased perspective)?