
Will the Real Clarice Lispector Please Stand Up? - lermontov
https://www.believermag.com/issues/201806/?read=article_understanding_is_the_proof_of_error
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Jun8
Great essay, e.g.

"There should be a word for the ambiguous kinship between translators who
share an author. It’s a bond marked by tender antagonism or light rivalry,
mixed with a uniquely intimate solidarity."

It does seem interesting that such a word does not exist in light of the
bitter feuds resulting from translations one of the foremost being Nabokov
vs.Wilson (summary: [https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/09/books/review/feud-
nabokov...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/09/books/review/feud-nabokov-
edmund-wilson-alex-beam.html), read Wilson's scathing review of the _Eugene
Onegin_ translation that's a textbook case of a hatchet job:
[http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1965/07/15/the-strange-
case-...](http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1965/07/15/the-strange-case-of-
pushkin-and-nabokov/)).

If you're interested in her, another good essay is by her other translator,
Benjamin Moser, adapted from his Introduction to _Collected Stories_ :
[https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-true-
glamour...](https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-true-glamour-of-
clarice-lispector).

A good essay about the Bishop-Lispector relationship is
[https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/70270/its-
complica...](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/70270/its-
complicated-56d24a0b3a371). From what we know of Lispector's development,
Bishop's assertion that “She’s never read anything that I can discover” sounds
either like gross naïveté or an outsider's bumbling misunderstanding. But it
agreed with the carefully constructed self image by Lispector, e.g. see
[https://www.thenation.com/article/not-the-word-but-the-
thing...](https://www.thenation.com/article/not-the-word-but-the-thing-
itself/).

“What if Clarice Lispector had not been a disconcerting beauty?” is an
interesting question examined lightly here. Again, I'd say that the beatific,
straight pose is an important part of the image that Lispector herself created
rather than the one imposed on her by "the male gaze". Almost all images of
her have the rather unsettling straight on gaze, more of a glare really, and
she never smiles.

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ChefboyOG
I always think about the particular difficulty of translating authors who use
language in ways that are very subtly strange to native speakers. How do you
recreate that strangeness in a second language without completely reimagining
the writing?

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soneca
A great read. It made me want to read Clarice again.

