“In the Heart of Mystery”: Genre of Notes in the Clarice Lispector’s Works

Abstract

The article investigates the autobiographical “Notes for Youth: About Written and
Experienced” by Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector. The genre originality of the work in the projection
of the author’s intentions of writing is analyzed, the dominants of the artistic narrative are studied.
This book occupies a special place in the author’s literary heritage, because it is about the work and
personality of the artist, who reveals the secrets of his own art laboratory. The article focuses on the
psychological aspects of the creative process, in particular, highlights the writer’s understanding of
art, the features of the creator’s existence; experience of artistic writing, interaction between readers
and critics, expression of thoughts and feelings, self-knowledge, as well as many other aspects that
remain behind the scenes, in the inner sphere of the artist’s life. In the notes we trace the Clarice
Lispector’s attitude to word: from the desire to tame him to the fear and ontological anxiety. The
writer depicts various creative states: a vacuum when you don’t know what and how to write; a state
of obsession with ideas, thoughts, ephemeral content that arises in the subconscious; the painful
process of the birth of a work, when “the soul beats in convulsions”. The features of the notes genre
were influenced by the introverted “Me” of the writer and the tendency to be philosophical, to delve
into the essence of everything around her, to carefully observe life. That’s why her texts are considered
airtight, difficult to perceive, because their reading requires certain costs of internal reserves, more
receptive than intellectual efforts. The leitmotif of the notes is the absolutization of the role of intuition
in the creative process. Thoughts lead the author, she obeys and writes texts, that resemble the flow of
consciousness, and then repeatedly edits and rewrites them to extract the desired content. Therefore,
the notes naturally show the process of spontaneous emergence and writing of thoughts.