{"id":59,"date":"2022-02-28T21:25:09","date_gmt":"2022-03-01T04:25:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/rmst\/?p=59"},"modified":"2022-02-28T21:25:09","modified_gmt":"2022-03-01T04:25:09","slug":"blog7-neutral-divinity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/rmst\/2022\/02\/28\/blog7-neutral-divinity\/","title":{"rendered":"blog#7 \u2013 a woman and her Cockroach \u2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

blog#7 \u2013 a woman and her Cockroach \u2014<\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Reading The Passion According to G.H. was one of the closest moments that I felt like I was reading a well-composed transcript of my own thoughts. The way the Clarice Lispector seamlessly yet abruptly changes from concept to concept is mind-bogglingly impressive – all the while articulating it in such a way that ‘makes sense’. I also felt the need to constantly remind myself that this story (when stripped down to fact and plot, and put into a boring, plain language), is about a woman and a cockroach.<\/p>\n

Similarly to Louis Aragon’s ‘Paris Peasant’, Lispector’s succession of thoughts feels almost like second-nature. While Aragon’s story is literally rooted in the arcades of Paris, and then branches out to whatever Aragon’s next thought is – Lispector is the opposite. Lispector’s entire plot is derived from a handful of things in happening: G.H.’s maid quit and a cockroach appears in her former room. Aragon took a giant idea (like Paris or Surrealism) and zoomed in on particular concepts; Lispector discovered an entire world of thinking, one that predates humanity and will surpass it, all simply derived from a cockroach.<\/p>\n

Another part of what I loved about Lispector’s novel was this slight and unexpected transparency of the 4th wall. Lispector mentions the reader, and specifically the reader’s hand when she asks for support (or at least what I interpreted as her asking for our non-physical hand). It felt at first quite heartwarming, that an author has the gall to reach through all these invisible rules humanity has made for itself. Even the fact that an author would acknowledge this kind of human yet non-human agency of a reader. I think it is brilliant and courageous of Lispector to have acknowledged and spoken to this agency of the reader, even further, one that does not yet exist. Then to repent the initial intention of the act of holding one’s hand, and impose onto it a more nuanced meaning – a meaning that developed many more layers throughout the book itself.<\/p>\n

I’m curious as to the inclusion of the maid’s drawing that she left for G.H. What did you all take from it? I half-expected it to be the center of an existential crisis, but it was a more quiet sub-theme than I expected.<\/p>\n

All in all, I really loved reading Lispector’s writing. Her words and beauty of how its all strung together, and the layers upon layers of meaning that is injected into the prose.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

blog#7 \u2013 a woman and her Cockroach \u2014 Reading The Passion According to G.H. was one of the closest moments that I felt like I was reading a well-composed transcript of my own thoughts. The way the Clarice Lispector seamlessly yet abruptly changes from concept to concept is mind-bogglingly impressive – all the while articulating […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":75568,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,80,81,76,77,78,79,40],"tags":[91,90,20,86,88,44,32,36,89,45,84,87,83,82,85,38],"class_list":["post-59","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogs","category-brazil","category-cockroach","category-lispector","category-rio","category-the-passion-according-to-g-h","category-time","category-womanhood","tag-4th-wall","tag-agency","tag-anxiety","tag-brazil","tag-cockroach","tag-death","tag-divinity","tag-existence","tag-human","tag-life","tag-lispector","tag-maid","tag-monologue","tag-neutral","tag-rio","tag-time"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/rmst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/rmst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/rmst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/rmst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/75568"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/rmst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/rmst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/rmst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions\/61"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/rmst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/rmst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/rmst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}