A Breath of Life

A Breath of Life is Clarice Lispector's final novel, 'written in agony', which she did not live to see published. Sensual and mysterious, it is a mystical dialogue between a god-like author and the creation he breathes life into: the speaking, shifting, indefinable Angela Pralini. As he has created Angela, so, eventually, he must let her die, for life is merely 'a kind of madness that death makes.' This is a unique, elegiac meditation on the creation of life, and of art.

A Breath of Life is Clarice Lispector's final novel, 'written in agony', which she did not live to see published. Sensual and mysterious, it is a mystical dialogue between a god-like author and the creation he breathes life into: the speaking, shifting, indefinable Angela Pralini. As he has created Angela, so, eventually, he must let her die, for life is merely 'a kind of madness that death makes.' This is a unique, elegiac meditation on the creation of life, and of art.

A mystical dialogue between a male author (a thinly disguised Clarice Lispector) and his/her creation, a woman named Angela, this posthumous work has never before been translated. Lispector did not even live to see it published. At her death, a mountain of fragments remained to be “structured” by Olga Borelli. These fragments form a dialogue between a god-like author who infuses the breath of life into his creation: the speaking, breathing, dying creation herself, Angela Pralini. The work’s almost occult appeal arises from the perception that if Angela dies, Clarice will have to die as well. And she did.

A mystical dialogue between a male author (a thinly disguised Clarice Lispector) and his/her creation, a woman named Angela, this posthumous work has never before been translated. Lispector did not even live to see it published. At her death, a mountain of fragments remained to be “structured” by Olga Borelli. These fragments form a dialogue between a god-like author who infuses the breath of life into his creation: the speaking, breathing, dying creation herself, Angela Pralini. The work’s almost occult appeal arises from the perception that if Angela dies, Clarice will have to die as well. And she did.