The Hour of the Star

by Clarice Lispector

It moves from a deep awareness about the tragedy of being alive to a sly allowance for the fact that existence is a comedy.

It withholds and it tells too much. It makes sweeping judgments and tiny observations.

“I’ll miss myself so bad when I die.”

to all those who reached the most alarmingly unsuspected regions within me, all those prophets of the present and who have foretold me to myself until in that instant I exploded into: I.

And — and don’t forget that the structure of the atom cannot be seen but is nonetheless known. I know about lots of things I’ve never seen. And so do you. You can’t show proof of the truest thing of all, all you can do is believe. Weep and believe.

It's an unfinished book because it’s still waiting for an answer. An answer I hope someone in the world can give me. You?

But before prehistory there was the prehistory of prehistory and there was the never and there was the yes.

Make no mistake, I only achieve simplicity with enormous effort.

As long as I have questions and no answers I’ll keep on writing.

How do you start at the beginning, if things happen b...

indeed.

Truth is always an interior and inexplicable contact.

It’s the vision of the imminence of. Of what? Maybe I’ll figure it out later. Just as I’m writing at the very same time I’m being read.

and of course the story is true though invented

there are those who lack the delicate essential.

I also know about things because I’m alive. Everyone alive knows, even if they don’t know they know.

The story — I determine with false free will —

This isn’t just a narrative, it’s above all primary life that breathes, breathes, breathes. Porous material, one day I shall live here the life of a molecule with its possible bang of atoms.

Because there’s the right to scream. So I scream.

Moreover — I realize now — nobody would miss me either.

They don’t even realize how easily substitutable they are and that they could just as soon drop off the face of the earth. Few protest and as far as I know they never complain since they don’t know to whom. Does this whom exist?

Prayer was a means of mutely and hidden from others reaching myself. When I prayed I achieved an emptiness of soul — and that emptiness is all I can ever have.

One way of getting is not looking, one way of having is not asking and only believing that the silence I believe to be inside me is the answer to my — to my mystery.

So that’s why this story will be made of words that gather in sentences and from these a secret meaning emanates that goes beyond words and sentences.