Authors: Clarice Lispector
The dog is a mysterious animal because he almost thinks, not to mention that he feels everything except the notion of the future. The horse, unless he is winged, has his mystery resolved by nobility and a tiger is slightly more mysterious than the dog because its manner is even more primitive.
The dog — that misunderstood being who does whatever he can to share with men what he is . . .
AUTHOR: Angela’s dog seems to have a person inside him. He is a person trapped by a cruel condition. The dog hungers so much for people and to be a man. A dog’s inability to speak is excruciating.
If I could describe the inner life of a dog I would have reached a summit. Angela too wants to enter the being-alive of her Ulysses. I was the one who transmitted to her this love of animals.
ANGELA: Oh God, and here I am competing with myself. I detest myself. Fortunately others like me, it’s a tranquility. My dog Ulysses and I are mutts. Ah what a good rain is falling. It’s manna from heaven and only Ulysses and I know it. Ulysses drinks ice-cold beer so adorably. One of these days it’s going to happen: my dog is going to open his mouth and speak. It’ll be glory. Ulysses is Malta, he’s Amapá — he’s at the end of the world. How do you get there? He barks square — I’m not sure you’re getting what I mean. During the world cup he went mad during the fireworks. And my head got all square. I try to understand my dog. He’s the only innocent.
I can speak a language that only my dog, the esteemed Ulysses, my dear sir, understands. Like this: dacoleba, tutiban, ziticoba, letuban. Joju leba, leba jan? Tutiban leba, lebajan. Atotoquina, zefiram. Jetobabe? Jetoban. That means something that not even the emperor of China would understand.
Once he did something unexpected. And I deserved it. I went to pet him, he growled. And I made the mistake of doing it again. He gave a sudden leap that rose up from his wild depths of the wolf and bit my mouth. I was terrified, I had to go to the emergency room where they gave me sixteen stitches. They told me to give Ulysses away because he was a danger. But it so happened that, after the accident, I felt even closer to him. Perhaps because he made me suffer. Suffering for a being deepens the heart within the heart.
AUTHOR: Angela and I are my inner dialogue — I talk to myself. I’m tired of thinking the same thoughts.
ANGELA: It’s so wonderful and comforting to meet someone at four. Four p.m. is the best time of day. Four p.m. gives you balance and a calm stability, a serene taste for living. At times almost a bit whizzing and “in tremolo.” So I become fluttering, iridescent and slightly excited.
AUTHOR: I must forgive Angela, once again, for this business about “the best time of the day.” I must excuse her foolishness because she humbly knows her place: she knows she’s not one of the elect and she’s certainly not among the chosen. She knows that she will only be called and chosen once. When Death decides. Angela would rather it not be so. But, as for me, I’m already prepared and almost ready to be called. I realize it because of the disregard I feel for things and even for the act of writing. I find very little worthwhile now.
ANGELA: I bought a dress of black gauze with scattered flowers of a dead tone as though there were a veil over them putting them out. The whole dress seems to be played on a harp. I can feel myself flying in it, freed from the law of gravity. I’m ragged and weightless as though from black Africa I were resurging and arising white and pallid.
Black isn’t a color, it’s the absence of color.
AUTHOR: Angela is losing it. What do I care about the clothes she bought? She is sometimes an Austrian waltz. And when she speaks of God she becomes Bach. Moreover, she’s hooked on possessing. She confuses possessing for living. That’s why a dress can enrich her soul. Poor soul. She’s vulgar. But she has one charming quality: she’s a jug from which fresh water bubbles.
ANGELA: I’m suffering from happy love. That only seems like a contradiction. When you feel love, you have a deep anxiety. It’s like I’m laughing and crying at the same time. Not to mention my fear that this happiness won’t last. I have to be free — I can’t stand the slavery of great love, love doesn’t have such a hold on me. I can’t submit to the pressure of the stronger force.
Where’s my current of energy? my sense of discovery, though it takes an obscure form? I always expect something new from me, I am a shiver of expectation — something is always coming from me or from outside toward me.
AUTHOR: When Angela has a crisis of “womanishness” she spies on the world through the keyhole of the kitchen door. Her ambition is to live in a whirlpool of happiness. Stubborn without believing in life. I wonder if someone could simply decide: today is going to be an important day in my life. And then concentrate so much that the sun rises from within one’s soul and the galaxies swirl slow and mute.
The drama of Angela is the drama of us all: balancing upon something unstable. For anything can happen and damage the most intimate life of a person. What will have been done to my soul next year? Will that soul have grown? and grown peacefully or through the pain of doubt?
ANGELA: A shot in the middle of the night.
All of a sudden I hear a shot. Or was it a tire that blew out? Did someone die? What a mystery, dear God. It’s as if they were shooting me right into my poor heart.
Anyway, what poor thing! My heart is rich and strikes well the hours of my life.
The patience of the spider spinning the web. Moreover I’m bothered by badly making things out in the chiaroscuro of creation. I get skittish with the flash of inspiration. I am pure fear.
AUTHOR: I’d like to expose Angela to some terrifying music.
The music would have intervals of terrible silence with drops of flute-song here and there. Then a contralto voice suddenly and with extreme softness would hum with a closed mouth excessively calm and sure of itself: as in the threat that is made when one is sure of possessing deadly weapons. Angela would run and hide beneath the covers, holding on tightly to her dog Ulysses. I’m a little jealous of Ulysses. He’s so important to Angela. And she doesn’t seem grateful to me for having invented her. So I’ll avenge myself with that terrifying music: a single note but repeated, repeated, repeated until near-madness. Angela fears madness and already thinks she’s strange. I too find myself a bit strange but I don’t fear madness: I venture an icy lucidity. I see everything, I hear everything, I feel everything. And I stay far away from the intellectualized environments that would confound me. I am alone in the world. Angela is my only companion. You must understand me: I had to invent a being that was entirely mine. But it so happens that she’s becoming too powerful.
ANGELA: I rarely scream. When I do scream it is a red and emerald scream. But in general I whisper. I speak quietly to tell timidly. Telling is very important. Telling the truth that covers itself in lies. How often I lie, my God. But it’s to save myself. A lie is also a truth, it’s just cunning and a little nervous. Lie if you can, and may you lie with a peaceful spirit. Because the truth demands a long staircase to climb as if I were condemned never to stop. I’m tired: that’s also why I speak softly — it’s so I don’t offend myself.
AUTHOR: I’m an entangled and lost writer. Writing is difficult because it touches the boundaries of the impossible.
My head is full of characters but only Angela occupies my mental space.
ANGELA: It was intensely cold without any possible shelter. And the driver of the yellow cab had a bad cold. I forgot to say that, when I jumped out of the first taxi, in the middle of Avenida Rio Branco, people were crying out to me: I looked and saw everything that belonged to me exposed without blood on the asphalt of the street. And people were helping me in the middle of the traffic to gather my secrets. Because my purse had opened and been disemboweled: its entrails and my trampled prayers scattered across the ground. I gathered everything and stood humble and dignified waiting for who knows what. And while I was waiting a thin woman appeared and said, startling me: pardon me for asking, ma’am, but where did you buy that lovely green shawl? I was dismayed, and said to her defeated: I don’t remember. Small unusual facts were happening to me, and I at their mercy.
AUTHOR: Angela is always becoming. Angela is my adventure. For that matter I am my own great adventure: I risk myself every instant. But there is a greater adventure: the God, I won’t risk it.
ANGELA: I kept wandering aimlessly through the city. In the square the ones who give crumbs to the pigeons are the prostitutes and bums — more children of God than I. I give crumbs to you, my love. I, prostitute and bum. But with honor, folks, with my tribute to the pigeons. What a desire to do something wrong. The error is exciting. I’m going to sin. I’m going to confess something: sometimes, just for fun, I lie. I’m not at all what you think I am. But I respect the truth: I’m pure of sins.
Organ music is demonic. I want my life to be accompanied, as with twin sisters, by organ music. But it frightens me. Funeral music? I’m not sure, I’m a little out of it.
Today I killed a mosquito. With the most brutal sort of tact. Why? Why kill something that lives? I feel like a murderer and a guilty person. And I’ll never forget that mosquito. Whose destiny I traced. The great killer. I, like an industrial crane, dealing with a delicate atom. Forgive me, little mosquito, forgive me, I’ll never do it again. I think we have to do forbidden things — otherwise we suffocate. But without feeling guilty and instead as an announcement that we are free.
I’m my own mirror. And I live off the lost and found. That’s what saves me. I’m caught in an invisible war between dangers. Who will win? I always lose.
AUTHOR: Angela is very provisional.
ANGELA: I can’t manage to comprehend myself, no.
It’s smoke in my eyes, it’s the busy signal, it’s the broken fingernail, scratch of chalk on the blackboard, it’s the stuffy nose, it’s suddenly rotten fruit, it’s a speck in the eye, it’s a kick in the butt, it’s a stomp on the corn on my foot, it’s a needle piercing my tender finger, it’s a shot of Novocain, it’s spit in my face.
I am a perfect actress.
AUTHOR: Crazy gazelle that she is.
ANGELA: My most intimate friend? A typewriter. There’s a pleasant taste in my mouth when I think.
AUTHOR: She’s a substantial beast.
I want your truth Angela! Just that: your truth that I can’t quite grasp.
ANGELA: I love my feet: they obey me. And without doubting. The basic reason for my life is that there comes a time when I’m guided by a great hunger. That explains me. I’m indirect. I’m a person who is sudden and I get a little desperate when I think about the impossible. For example: I’ll never manage to get a phone call from the emperor of Japan. I could be dying and he wouldn’t call me. Or: how do you locate someone who isn’t home? The impossible subdues me. I wither. Only last Sunday night — alone with my dog — my body joined my body. And then I was. I was I.
I’m hungry and sad. It’s good to be a little sad. It’s a sweet feeling. And it’s good to be hungry and eat.
The most beautiful music in the world is the interstellar silence.
I’m sorry, but I can’t be alone with you or else a star will be born in the air. Those who love solitude do not love freedom.
Flowers? flowers give such a fright. The perfect silence of a flower. Soft like turning off the light to go to sleep. And the light switch makes a little noise that seems to say: good night my love.
Ah, I’m filled with desire! I want to eat salmon and drink coffee. And cake. Everything’s no more than a grand comedy that looks like a kermis. I want to be part of the festival of animals. In the shadows the rustling garden. The garden-abettor. Hiding-place of sparrows. Secrecy. The garden played on the harp . . . Creative intumescence.
I was alone for a whole Sunday. I didn’t call anyone and no one called me. I was completely alone. I sat on my sofa with my mind free. But as the day went on toward bedtime I experienced about three times a sudden recognition of myself and of the world that spooked me and made me plunge into obscure depths which I departed for golden light. It was the encounter of the I with the I. Solitude is a luxury.
AUTHOR: I looked for you in dictionaries and couldn’t find your meaning. Where is your synonym in the world? where is my own synonym in life? I’m unequalled.
ANGELA: In some modern music a precise note of heroic classicism is missing.
AUTHOR: You’re missing a certain extravagance, you don’t have a way of treating others more generously. You are the literal meaning.
ANGELA: I thought of something so beautiful that I couldn’t even understand it. And I ended up forgetting what it was.
AUTHOR: I love you geometrically and at a point on the horizon forming a triangle with you. The result is a perfume of macerated roses.
ANGELA: Pain? Happiness? It’s simply a matter of opinion.
I divine things that have no name and perhaps never shall. Yes. I sense things that will always be inaccessible to me. Yes. But I know everything. All that I know without exactly knowing it has no synonym in the world of speech but enriches me and justifies me. Although I lost the word because I tried to speak it. And knowing-everything-without-knowing is a perpetual forgetting that comes and goes like the waves of the sea that advance and recede on the sands of the beach. To civilize my life is to expel me from myself. To civilize my deepest existence would be to try to expel my nature and supernature. All of this meanwhile does not address my possible meaning.