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And thus I don’t understand the egg. I only understand a broken egg: I crack it on the frying pan. In this indirect way I give myself to the egg’s existence: my sacrifice is reducing myself to my personal life. I turned my pleasure and my pain into my hidden destiny. And having only one’s own life …

Pale, kicked out of a Church, she looked at the stationary earth from which she’d departed and back to which she’d been delivered. She straightened out her skirts primly. She didn’t look at anyone. Contrite as on that day when in the middle of everyone the entire contents of her purse had spilled o…

But no one could have guessed what she was thinking. And for those who looked at her once more from the doorway, the birthday girl was only what she appeared to be: seated at the head of the filthy table, her hand clenched on the tablecloth as though grasping a scepter, and with that muteness that …

So, no. What she ought to do was wrap them up and send them off, without any enjoyment now; wrap them up and, disappointed, send them off; and in astonishment be rid of them. Also because a person must have some consistency, her thinking ought to have some continuity: if she’d spontaneously decided…

I’m tempted to suggest you skip this introduction and save your energy for Clarice Lispector, but she will give you energy instead of taking yours away. The fruits of her project—both an art and a philosophy (ontological, but also chosen, deliberate, developed)—are strangely restorative. While read…