02/10/2023

Água Viva - Clarice Lispector 🖋️

The title of this book can be literally translated to 'living water', but in Portuguese, Água Viva also means 'jellyfish'.

I received this novella last summer as a graduation gift from my sister, and I couldn’t have wished for a more fitting book. After my finals, I first read *Letters to a Young Poet* by Rilke. Many praised this collection as a revelatory book full of tips for any writer or artist at the beginning of their career. However, I’ve rarely read a book that I so strongly disagreed with. When you manage to wade through Rilke’s everyday ramblings, the advice is ultimately quite sparse. Rilke, of course, is a big name, but I also found him to come across as elitist a bit too often. 

Clarice Lispector, on the other hand, showed me her poetic reflections on being a writer and artist with Água Viva. A novella that, despite its small size, invites you to linger over each paragraph. Lispector doesn’t aim to teach the reader a lesson, as was the case with Rilke. In her writing style, Lispector leaves room for personal interpretation and also shows that a true artist doesn’t have all the answers, that they always continue to search and learn. 

✷ Genre: poetry, philosophy , metafiction

✷ Themes: writing, time

✷ Aanrader? You’ll love it or you’ll hate it: a pure plotless stream of conciousness. Lispector makes this book a canvas for cryptic musings on the artistic process, which will mainly appeal to fellow creative people.