week9. the hour of the star – syntax, semantics, and the spine

week9. the hour of the star –

There are authors that write to be seen, or to show something greater – a meaning, perhaps – within the story. One Hundred Years of Solitude is a great example of the latter approach – Márquez used that story to depict something greater than the sum of its parts. Lispector, however, through no direct or identifiable means, makes me – the reader – feel seen. In a way that I cannot really explain or verbalize, but mostly feel.

The ‘seen-ness’ struck me to realization when there was the metaphor of ‘a thin slice of watermelon’ or ‘what a thin slice of watermelon’. (I can’t remember exactly what it was or which page it was on). But something about my instant understanding of it made me feel seen, and to be seen by something so odd and silly made like I was part of something esoteric and hidden – like I solved a riddle and only then I was able to enter some gate into Lispector’s mind. This gate, I think, comes about many times, and each time I get to enter through another, it brings me a rare shred of joy.

This story, akin to many other stories of Lispector’s, was a kind of introspective, chaotically-meditative investigation of semantics. Lispector plays with the rules of syntax and semantics, and in her ‘play’, I think she’s discovered her own little esoteric world of meaning. The very beginning begins with “All the world began with a yes.” and the story ends with a “Yes.” – in this way, Lispector really does create her own world, but one that begins at the end, at the last word. I think the magic of Lispector’s writing is the absence of her words, the potent substance in-between the words left unsaid – and what really transcends it to a different level of enchanting is that the magic is captured by the reader only in a strange and intangible fashion.

All this, only to be elevated by the fact that the (true) author of this story is/was close to death herself. The story is itself a testimony of the spectator-spectacle relationship, but layered and crossed over many times. At times, I forgot that between Lispector and Macabéa, there was a middle-man – whom I often forgot about or thought that Lispector had forgot about. It’s almost like each layer of character and story-teller is watching its succeeding layer through a microscope while simultaneously being watched under another microscope by a ‘higher-being’. A kind of food-chain that either starts with God or the reader and ends with Macabéa. Somewhere in the middle is Lispector, Rodrigo S.M. (the writer in story), the translator of the story, Rio de Janeiro, and perhaps, the reader once again.

I think there’s a lot more to say about this story but each little thing is absolutely packed with a bullets of meaning. So, I’ll ask you something from the beginning – which title fit the story in your opinion? Would it be a different story given a different title? Who do you think wrote the titles, Lispector or Rodrigo S.M.?