“I’ve discovered a miracle in the rain — Joana thought — a miracle splintered into dense, solemn, glittering stars, like a suspended warning: like a lighthouse. What are they trying to tell me? In those stars I can foretell the secret, their brilliance is the impassive mystery I can hear flowing inside me, weeping at length in tones of romantic despair. Dear God, at least bring me into contact with them, satisfy my longing to kiss them. To feel their light on my lips, to feel it glow inside my body, leaving it shining and transparent, fresh and moist like the minutes that come before dawn. Why do these strange longings possess me? Raindrops and stars, this dense and chilling fusion has roused me, opened the gates of my green and sombre forest, of this forest smelling of an abyss where water flows. And harnessed it to night. Here, beside the window, the atmosphere is more tranquil. Stars, stars, zero. The word cracks between my teeth into fragile splinters. Because no rain falls inside me, I wish to be a star. Purify me a little and I shall acquire the dimensions of those beings who take refuge behind the rain.”
From Clarice Lispector’s Near to the Wild Heart.
Biblioklept 
O, boy: If you are enjoying Perto do Coração Selvagem, I’d say your head will explode when you start reading Água-Viva—which is, by far, her magnum opus. But, as a Brazilian, what I’d really recommend you to do is: learn a little of our language, and go ahead and face the true best writer of the XX century (I am not kidding, he’s up there in my pantheon, in the company of Faulkner and Mann), the untranslatable João Guimarães Rosa.
LikeLike