as for the future: a book review of ‘hour of the star’ by clarice lispetor
by Dylan Desmond
To regard the summary on the back of the book, Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector is a story about a poor girl from Northeastern Brazil who has relocated to the red-light district of Rio De Janeiro. She lacks talent, good looks, taste, wit, though is not without a reserve of unintentional, yet seldom observable, charm. The story is told through the eyes of the narrator, Rodrigo SM—a man of moderate class distinction. However, summaries on the back of books are just that- summaries. They are brief. Despite clocking in at only 86 pages, Hour of the Star is anything but so. The novella instead encapsulates a multidimensional quality that transcends such summarization in its glimpses into a series of microcosms.
At its core, the story is an existential conflict within the narrator. To take the meaning of that sentence as a microcosm, the story is about the human qualities of playing God. To step even further back and gauge that sentence as a microcosm, the story is about the human qualities of our perception of God. The God-play insinuation is continuous in that the story is being made up by him as he writes words to page; Rodrigo SM narrates from the metaphorical distortion of a mirror in real time with side commentary to the reader. Often, he asks for forgiveness for his coldness or makes excuses for his insecurities in the storytelling. To read the story this way, and to believe him, is to imagine the life of Macabea as a fantasy/alternate reality of the author; a story told through the eyes in a mirror. When one sees another set of eyes staring back that do not resemble hir or her own, a reader can only submit to the idea that the storyteller is stepping outside the self to cast light onto something inside that has no other method of illumination. A part of the self that lives beneath what a mirror can reflect.
How can we ever glimpse ourselves but in reflection? How else does one ever understand who one is but to look backwards at what he or she has done and how the past has shaped subsequent steps into the future? If one would reflect in this fashion, it must be done in the confines of a moment, like a mirror. The introspection must continue into that reflection, holding off the truths of the past and the uncertainty of the future simply to be in the unchanging, reflection of the present. Our narrator would have us believe that he tells the story in this way: “I should like to add some details about the girl and myself; we live exclusively in the present because forever and eternally it is the day of today, and the day of tomorrow will be a today. Eternity is the state of things at this very moment” (pg. 18).
In writing a story, what author does not insert something of their self into the main character? Or into the entire cast of characters, for that matter? Is this notion not a microcosm of the Biblical tale in which God creates mankind in his own image? Rodrigo SM, our narrator, is a self-styled writer who muses on the intricacies of life through his subject, the wholesome and naïve Macabea. This character is perhaps a literary tool—a reflection (i.e., projection)—for the narrator’s vision to sink deeper into the mirror in which he gazes. His effort of writing might be seen as a reflective effort to look deeper than the mirror allows. He informs his reader that he does not see himself in this mirror but, instead, a young woman gazing back at him. He describes her as poor, unattractive, and simple-minded. A woman he professes to love (one gathers in a fatherly way), despite her not knowing he exists. In all regards, he describes her as a fool that is unique. She is special in his eyes, in that her ignorance and naivete of the world shield her from its corruption and preserves the purity of her soul. Despite this special quality, our narrator reminds us that he is mentally superior to her, placing his status above hers. He explains Macabea’s character with an inherent misogyny, a patronizing superiority.
Here a question arises in regard to Rodrigo SM’s professed superiority to Macabea: Why does he see his own face through her eyes as she gazes into a mirror? “I see the girl from the North-east looking in the mirror and—the ruffle of a drum—in the mirror there appears my own face, weary and unshaven. We have reversed roles so completely” (pg. 22). The microcosm of this question perhaps asks the reader in what regard does the God-play of a narrator reflect the God-play of gods as creators? Is this mirror an analogy meant to convey the author turning into the subject he portrays?
Perhaps Rodrigo SM intends to make complexities in his writing for the sake of coming off as prestigious and renowned to the reader. Perhaps he wants the reader to understand his advanced position as a writer in that he and his subject become interchangeable.
I believe it is the contrary- Rodrigo SM is narrating a story and idealizes himself as a fictional character, Macabea, he would otherwise look down upon in his life. He longs for the squalor, the saintly purity of Macabea’s heart and the freedom he imagines her character to possess. He creates her as a literary flogger—her purity is designed to punish him for his insecurities.
If this is true, Macabea thus becomes an embodiment of what the narrator views to be good in the world. She is humble, asexual, simple, and perhaps most importantly, has honest interactions with what she believes to be real. In the volumes of CG Jung’s writing, a recurring theme describes that the imagined experience (be it dreamed or fantasized) is as real as the observable experience. I’m not a psychoanalyst, but I believe I’m correct in my assertions that Jung championed the idea that our dreams, no matter how outlandish, were real experiences within the confines of our personal psyches. And why shouldn’t they be? If one awakes from a powerful dream filled with a particular emotion and carries themselves in such a manner into a more tangible scenario, which in turn is shaped by the attitude from which they entered, who is to say that dream was not real? Rather, it would seem the dream had fortified the dreamer with an attitude, or perhaps a spirit, to fulfill a role. What instigates this spirit? Is it anything but the will or psyche of the subject?
Our narrator observes this phenomenon in his creation and description of Macabea: If she decides something is a certain way, it is that way. If a doctor gives her bad news about her heath, but she does not understand the words he uses, she will thank him for his attention and feel positive in completing the task. If her boyfriend critiques her, she feels a kindness from the attention.
Contrarily, the mental and social sophistication of one like Rodrigo SM (he would lead us to believe) distorts the inner workings of one’s spirit so that it’s dreams will be doubted away with a dilution of reason. This is the mirror that reflects the past. The looker’s inner wants and desires will be reasoned away according to the ethical code of the society at large that has such a powerful influence over us. Experience shapes what looks in and what looks back out in the mirror. But to imagine another face so much different from one’s own…
Hour of the Star was Clarice Lispector’s last piece before her untimely death from cancer at fifty-five years of age. One might admire the position (a privileged one no doubt) to reflect on oneself at a time when the end was laid out before them. After all, to hear Death’s footsteps would suggest a sudden urgency to the otherwise mundanity of the day. When Rodrigo SM sees poor Macabea, so unlike himself, gazing back when reflecting on his own life, the reader can’t help but wonder if they are in yet another microcosm through his eyes in which a mirror reflects Clarise Lispector herself. Given a diagnosis from her doctor, like that of Macabea from the soothsayer’s cards, Lispector found herself looking for the present moment in her own life to reflect forward and backward.
To what extent do we all play God with the moments of our lives? Lives which belong to us alone. One could be forgiven for not understanding any other way of carrying it on; who doesn’t see a shadow of Rodrigo SM’s unshaven face when they look in the mirror? Further, who doesn’t sometimes dream of an uncanny ability to ignore the brutal realities of the world with the blissful naivete of Macabea? To appreciate the simpleness of a moment in the complexities it floats within—to enjoy life. It is fleeting, after all, and our only certainty is its end. In the words of Rodrigo SM, perhaps it is precisely here that “Death comments on life.”