I just discovered that Lispector’s novel has been republished in a new translation (http://thecoffinfactory.blogspot.com/2011/12/hour-of-star-by-clarice-lispector.html). We had already read it in class, so the discovery arrived late though never to waste.
One of my favoriate novels, The Hour of the Star by the Brazilian Clarice Lispector, begins thus:
“All the world began with a yes. One molecule said yes to another molecule and life was born. But before prehistory there was the prehistory of prehistory and there was the never and there was the yes. It was ever so. I don’t know why, but I do know that the universe never began.”
It never began because something always antecedes presence and existence. In this space prior to the beginning that never is, the existence of the yes imbues the world yet with no presence. What is that something? Is it made of the same substance as the silence and rain falling down at the end of the narrative. The short novel ends with the following wondrous words, imbued with plenitude and yet irredeemable lack:
“Meanwhile the clouds are white and the sky is all blue. Why so much for God. Why not a little for men.”
Whatever happens in-between these two fragments demands to be read against a frame not outside the geopolitical and historical. Yet these two instances of the text defy any rational or empirical configuration of time and space. What presupposes that yes? Is this an immanent yes that necessitates no cause? What a terrifying yes… Does this yes represent immaterial will or the mechanical movement of one molecule toward any other? One must decide. Lispector’s novel leaves no room for the two propositions. One must say yes to one.
Realism 