Tag Archives: life

04/2/24

I’m Just A Girl – My Brilliant Friend

“Women, they have minds, and they have souls, as well as just hearts. And they’ve got ambition, and they’ve got talent, as well as just beauty. I’m so sick of people saying that love is all a woman is fit for.” (Alcott, Little Women)

A wearying message arrives to Elena: Her friend has vanished. Yet, it’s not entirely surprising as her friend had “wanted not only to disappear herself, now, at the age of sixty-six, but also to eliminate the entire life that she had left behind” (23). This life casts a burden on Lila and results in her vanishing. To comprehend why, it is crucial to delve into the before– it cannot be understated  “that there really had been a before” (36).

My Brilliant Friend sets the stage for Elena Greco and her friend Lila. The two live amongst the edges of Naples in a poorer neighbourhood. From Elena’s perspective, we experience Elena’s relationship with Lila from childhood to adolescence. Set amongst a background of eclectic characters, Elena and Lila stand out. With a list of characters in the beginning, the friendship of the two girls is the key theme. The two exist in a liminal duality–forever opposing yet existing complementarily.

Early on, Elena constantly compares herself to Lila. Lila was an intelligent student, making “[Elena] second in everything” (52). Despite having the opportunity to attend middle and, subsequently, high school, Elena still finds herself returning to Lila and her mind. Lila exudes a natural curiosity that has her soar over her peers. However, she can only attend school at the elementary level as her parents refuse to pay. The girls have many of the same ambitions (leaving the neighbourhood) but are destined to split. Thus, the diverging paths begin for the two girls, and a thematic device is shown in many parts.

 

A first read might have you considering the inherent jealousy between the two girls. I could recognize Elena’s pain at always feeling one step behind Lila. However, the authenticity of such feelings further cements the truth of the friendship.

Elena’s narrative may be filled with snipes at Lila, but considering the 1950s period, the community frowned upon the girls’ ambition. There is an internalized misogyny that is seen within the characters, and it is essential to notice that while looking at the overarching narratives of how women fit into the world.

I had to reread these narratives to understand if truly was a nasty relationship between the two girls. Of course, it isn’t, more so a reflection of the complex nature of growing up and being around other people–a sort of difficult period of finding your own identity amongst a sea of others (plus, puberty).

Within these 350 pages of agony, My Brilliant Friend is a very intense novel. Even just talking about the key relationship, there are many more that I haven’t mentioned. These girls exist alongside characters who are abusive, violent, and impulsive. But even in their differing lives, Elena and Lila are both connected to one another; just in the complex string of fate.

To be honest, reading this book was brutal. Ferrante truly projects her heart onto the paper, and I found myself needing to take a moment. The length is nothing if you understand why she placed each word as it was. Even as the first book in a series, she could convey an authentic view of childhood and leave you questioning.

ps. I was super sick reading this so I was already having a rough time. Enjoy the memes.

“It was as if, because of an evil spell, the joy or sorrow of one required the sorrow or joy of the other; even our physical aspect, it seemed to me, shared in that swing” (257)

 

Discussion Question

What is the effect of Elena and Lila being so different yet complementary? How can their relationship function as “Yin and Yang” or the “Sun and Moon”?

 

 

 

03/26/24

Death With Interruptions – A Permanent Curse Suspended in Limbo

“As in a game of chess, death advanced her queen. A few more moves should open the way to a checkmate, and the game will end.” (186)

Is the wish for immortality a blessing or a curse? That answer seems simple.

What begins as a celebration devolves into the unknown. Humanity’s fear of death is nothing compared to its fear of life.

In this new world, religion stands without purpose, the government is at a halt, and the ‘maphia’ (emphasis on ‘ph’ so as not to be confused with mafia with ‘fi’) starts to infect the community. Eternal life breeds new challenges that humanity hadn’t dared to consider, and one must “not foster false hopes” (8) of immortality.

Death may be gone, but pain is not. Those on the brink of death are suspended in a listless, forever undying state: a permanent state of limbo. The removal of death is not a blessing. It stirs doubt within the population because what is there to live for if you cannot die?

Amongst my brief summary (and subtle existential ramblings), this book is truly a hypnotic mind-fuck. The suspension of death is not typically something one thinks about–but these ‘what ifs?’ are genuinely the point with works of speculative fiction.

 

Narratives At Play

The beginning presents itself as the philosophical pondering of death’s vacation and, underneath it, the satirical nature of death’s vacation. It is a commentary on humanity’s futile existence. It is an absurdist case study.

“for it is not the same thing to bury a human being and to carry it to its final resting place a cat or a canary, or indeed a circus elephant or a bathtub crocodile…” (18).

The funeral directors, once having a market of corpses, now find the coffins empty. They complain over their new jobs of burying animals in elaborate ways–a strange complaint in this time of uncertainty. This is just one of the many absurdist themes in the novel. There is no longer any point. Death is gone, and people will start to wish to be dead. Immortality is a curse, which we will soon see.

 

Around more than halfway, death herself becomes a character. The tone switches into a melancholic existence.

This is where I started to connect emotionally with the novel. I am truly interested in the personification of death. I am intrigued by the paradoxical nature of death: being alive yet not feeling ‘alive’ in the way humanity does.

A cellist’s pre-death warning keeps bouncing back to death, something that has never happened before. Curious (and a bit worried), death takes it upon herself to investigate.

Death can find herself in the human world, sitting amongst the audience at the orchestra. What began as the journey to condemn the cellist to death reveals itself into death learning to live. It is such a beautiful narrative that focuses on the futility of life. As death watches the cellist, the readers find themselves entranced by the simple man. The way “a man and a dog asleep, perhaps […] dreaming about each other, the man about the dog, the dog about the man…” (170) is something so mundane it truly captivates death.

My stomach was in knots as I watched the impending countdown of the man’s life, the dog one day searching for his owner to no avail. It is genuinely the inevitability of death and its effects on others that is so heartbreaking. This man, unmarried, a simple cellist, accompanied only by man’s best friend, will leave his buddy. I don’t know why, but this broke something in me.

But all is not tragic as Death finds herself alive, setting a blaze to the cellist’s death letter and falling asleep (something death never could do). And with death alive, “no one died” (238).

If I reread this book, I think I will die from sadness. (Ps. I was on the verge of losing it if the dog died)

 

“For the first time in her life, death knew what it felt to have a dog on her lap” (172)

 

Discussion Question

In this land with no death, some cross the border to let the dying die. The morality of killing is blurry in a land without death, yet the limbo state of the dying is permanent. Reflecting on a world in which you have to decide whether to let someone you love live in pain or die, which would you choose? What are the moral implications of either choice?

 

The only certainty we have is life and eventually death: https://www.arthistoryproject.com/subjects/death/

“Self-portrait with Fiddling Death”– Arnold Böcklin

 

03/5/24

The Hour of the Star, starring Macabéa, the Typist, Virgin, and Coca-Cola Fan. Et tu brute?!

“But who am I to rebuke the guilty? The worst part is that I have to forgive them. We must reach such a nothing that we indifferently love or don’t love the criminal who kills us. But I’m not so sure of myself:  I have to ask, though I don’t know who can answer, if I really have to love the one who slays me and ask who amongst you slays me. And my life stronger than myself, replies that it wants revenge at all cost and replies that I must struggle like someone drowning, even if I die in the end. If that’s the way it is, so be it” (Lispector 72)

 

How do I even try to comprehend this novel?

 

Macabéa, the titular character who is not named until at least halfway into the novel, is strange. Frequently described as dumb, Macabéa is someone who “doesn’t know herself except from living aimlessly” (Lispector 7). If she were to contemplate her existence wondering, “Who am I?’ She would fall flat on her face” (Lispector 7). Within these opening remarks from the narrator, we can infer his self-righteous nature. He cannot fathom the very being of Macabéa, or at least he cannot understand her.

“It’s a fear that those whose sense of self is rooted in knowing often have about those perceived to be unknowing” (Minor)

The entire creation of Macabéa in the narrator’s eyes reminded me of Nadja; Breton also created a woman to redirect his insecurities. Thus, the narrator portrays his own self-isolation onto Macabéa. He claims that he “ha[s] to seek a truth that is beyond [him]” (Lispector 12). It is a desire to understand the girl who exists as nothing. But nothing is something; the very nature of there being nothing implies its very existence.

“All roads are blocked to a philosophy which reduces everything to the word ‘no.’ To ‘no’, there is only one answer, and that is ‘yes.’ Nihilism has no substance. There is no such thing as nothingness, and zero does not exist. Everything is something. Nothing is nothing. Man lives more by affirmation than by bread” (Sorenson, From Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables)

Leaving the academic philosophical lecture aside, the book is a more extensive commentary on humanity; what does it mean to be human? Who am I?

Previously, I touched upon the narrator’s desire to understand Macabéa. This one theme is central to the short novel because everyone around her seems to be trying to make sense of her. We see the explosive attitude of Olímpico, the somewhat helpful Glória, or even the mystical fortune teller. Everyone exists around her to eliminate her individuality or, rather, her lack of it; the narrator describes her as “a dispensable cog” (Lispector 21). But she is nothing of the sort. Macabéa’s very own identity contrasts with society’s. We can see her “possess[ing] a keen ability to see beyond the structures that everyone else lives by” (Berry). She existed “ in [an] impersonal limbo, without reaching the worst or the best.” (Lispector 15). To be frank, she just was. 

Macabéa is a being that just exists. She watches the little things, narrowing her view onto a small speck in the entire universe. Living a quaint life can never changed for the girl; “Just as you could be sentenced to death, the fortune teller sentenced her to life” (Lispector 70), and it is when she truly started living that she died. 

This novel may be one of the strangest things I’ve ever read. A closer look envelops all these heavy philosophical topics tucked under 80 pages.

Quick quote about Greta Garbo: “There was a reason, beyond the exertions of the Hollywood publicity machine, that a single line she uttered in one movie—“I want to be alone”—became so fused with her image.”

 

Discussion Question

What truly makes a life ‘meaningful’?

 

Works Cited

Gerry, Rachel. “Writing the Void: A Review of Clarice Lispector’s “The Hour of the Star” Prism Online, 2021, https://prismmagazine.ca/2021/05/27/writing-the-void-a-review-of-clarice-lispectors-the-hour-of-the-star/

Minor, Abby. “That Full Void’: Clarice Lispector’s The Hour of the Star.” AGNI, 2021 https://agnionline.bu.edu/review/that-full-void-clarice-lispectors-the-hour-of-the-star/

Sorensen, Roy, “Nothingness”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2023 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2023/entries/nothingness/

Talbot, Margaret. “What Was So Special About Greta Garbo?” The New Yorker, 2021 https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/12/13/what-was-so-special-about-greta-garbo