Near to the Wild Heart (Penguin Modern Classics)

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Joana bambina accanto al padre, momento felice cui tenderà a tornare per tutta la vita, inseguendo, già adolescente e poi donna, una libertà che le impedisce di legarsi e di amare fino in fondo. All these concerns and problems, big and small ones resounded in my head, reminding me myself when I was at your age.

The last time we see her she is standing on the deck of a ship, looking out to sea and loving her freedom, her choice and her newly found serenity: “The ship floated lightly on the sea like on gentle open hands. Non c'è regola apparente nei trapassi… Più del flusso di coscienza, allora, conta il trascorrere, di quella coscienza, da un individuo all'altro, tanto più vicina alla sua natura selvaggia quanto più indifferenziata, molteplice come i colori ma unica come la luce che li genera. Narrative epiphanies and interior monologue frame the life of Joana, from her middle-class childhood through her unhappy marriage and its dissolution to transcendence, when she proclaims: "I shall arise as strong and comely as a young colt. On reading the book such a statement seems understandable, given the visceral roughness of the language and the author's almost Swiftian preoccupation with the workings of the body : "She was traversed by long whole muscles. Even though this was first published in the early 1940s (and was started when Lispector was, amazingly, just 19), it feels like a text which illustrates the theoretical concept of écriture feminine - not because of gender essentialism but because of the way gender is imbricated with and through culture.As Joana, endlessly mutable, moves through different emotional states, this impressionistic, dreamlike and fiercely intelligent novel asks if any of us ever really know who we are. Leaning her forehead against the cold and shiny windowpane she gazed at the neighbor’s yard, at the big world of the hens-that-didn’t-know-they-were-going-to-die. He was unheeded, happy, and near to the wild heart of life , it is Joycean Stephen Dedalus in his quest of own identity.

The novel is divided into two parts: the first section delves into key moments from Joana’s childhood while the second considers the nature of her marriage.Lispector viene sempre avvicinata a Joyce e Virginia Woolf: da Joyce arriva il titolo di questo suo primo romanzo, la frase presa dal Dedalus è messa in esergo. I had heard of Lispector (albeit vaguely) but didn’t know much about her work until these fresh translations appeared a couple of years ago. As we become enlightened, we want to go back and read it from a point of knowing, but I guess that is not the same reading process, perhaps half the fun is in the gradual awakening. Soon, in my own home, where I raised my daughter, I’ll have to apologize to that girl for goodness-knows-what… She’s a viper.

Joana, the book's character, understands that it is eternal in her continuous thinking, and she gets tired of it several times. From the beginning of her marriage, Joana feels that her role as a wife causes her to abdicate her freedom and her identity. Joana, a young woman very much in the mode of existential contemporaries like Camus and Sartre, ponders the meaning of life, the freedom to be one's self, and the purpose of existence. I generally like books that incorporate these styles if only for the fact that it presents something different.When Clarice Lispector was writing Near to the Wild Heart and a friend suggested she revise sections, she responded: "When I reread what I've written, I feel like I'm swallowing my own vomit.