A Breath of Life is the last novel by Brazilian author Clarice Lispector. It was published posthumously in Brazil in the late 1970s. The book takes the form of dialogue between a male "Author" and his female creation, Angela Pralini (a character who shares a name with a character who appears in Lispector's Where Were You at Night). [1] The god-like author infuses the so-called breath of life into his creation who speaks, breathes, lives and dies at his behest. The author loves yet wants to destroy Angela even though he can not ultimately separate her from himself. [2]
The novel has been characterized as a lyrically schizoid duet between two distinct but overlapping voices which delve into the inner nature of thoughts, sensations, words, facts, and objects and the relations between each. [3] [4] The text is also said to confuse the two voices, and open up a wild space of contradiction and paradox.
When Lispector died she left behind a mountain of fragments that compose what became A Breath of Life. The fragments were structured and organized by Olga Borelli, Lispector's assistant and friend. [5] The final form of the book reflects the dark interior dialogue that took place in Lispector's head near the end of her life.
In 2012, A Breath of Life was published for the first time in English by New Directions in a translation by Johnny Lorenz edited by Benjamin Moser. [6]
Voice acting is the art of performing a character or providing information to an audience with one's voice. Performers are often called voice actors/actresses in addition to other names. Examples of voice work include animated, off-stage, off-screen, or non-visible characters in various works such as films, dubbed foreign films, anime, television shows, video games, cartoons, documentaries, commercials, audiobooks, radio dramas and comedies, amusement rides, theater productions, puppet shows, and audio games.
Clarice Lispector was a Ukrainian-born Brazilian novelist and short story writer. Her innovative, idiosyncratic works explore a variety of narrative styles with themes of intimacy and introspection, and have subsequently been internationally acclaimed. Born to a Jewish family in Podolia in Western Ukraine, as an infant she moved to Brazil with her family, amidst the pogroms committed by Soviet authorities after the First World War.
Brazilian literature is the literature written in the Portuguese language by Brazilians or in Brazil, including works written prior to the country's independence in 1822. Throughout its early years, literature from Brazil followed the literary trends of Portugal, gradually shifting to a different and authentic writing style in the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, in the search for truly Brazilian themes and use of Brazilian forms.
Giovanni Pontiero was a Scots-Italian scholar and translator of Portuguese fiction. Most notably, he translated the works of José Saramago and Clarice Lispector, two celebrated names in Portuguese-language literature.
Fernando Tavares Sabino was a Brazilian writer and journalist.
José Pereira da Graça Aranha was a Brazilian writer and diplomat, considered to be a forerunner of the Modernism in Brazil. He was also one of the organizers of the Brazilian Modern Art Week of 1922.
The Passion According to G.H. is a mystical novel by Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector, published in 1964. The work takes the form of a monologue by a woman, identified only as G.H., telling of the crisis that ensued the previous day after she crushed a cockroach in the door of a wardrobe. Its canonical status was recognized in 1988 by its inclusion in the Arquivos Collection, the UNESCO series of critical editions of the greatest works of Latin American literature. It has been translated into English twice, the first time in 1988 by Ronald W. Sousa, and then by Idra Novey in 2012.
Breath of life may refer to:
Lauren Margot Peachy Child is an English children's author and illustrator. She is best known for the Charlie and Lola picture book series and other book series. Her influences include E. H. Shepard, Quentin Blake, Carl Larsson, and Ludwig Bemelmans.
The Hour of the Star is a novel by Clarice Lispector published in 1977, shortly before the author's death. In 1985, the novel was adapted by Suzana Amaral into a film of the same name, which won the Silver Bear for Best Actress in the 36th Berlin International Film Festival of 1986. It has been translated into English twice by New Directions Publishing with Giovanni Pontiero's 1992 translation followed by Benjamin Moser's version in 2011.
Near to the Wild Heart is Clarice Lispector's debut novel, written from March to November 1942 and published around her twenty-third birthday in December 1943. The novel, written in a stream-of-consciousness style reminiscent of the English-language Modernists, centers on the childhood and early adulthood of a character named Joana, who bears strong resemblance to her author: "Madame Bovary, c'est moi", Lispector said, quoting Flaubert, when asked about the similarities. The book, particularly its revolutionary language, brought its young, unknown creator to great prominence in Brazilian letters and earned her the prestigious Graça Aranha Prize.
Benjamin Moser is an American writer and translator. He received the Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Susan Sontag, titled Sontag: Her Life and Work.
Idra Novey is an American novelist, poet, and translator. She translates from Portuguese, Spanish, and Persian and now lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Kate Zambreno is an American novelist, essayist, critic, and professor. She teaches writing in the graduate nonfiction program at Columbia University and at Sarah Lawrence College. Zambreno is a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow in Nonfiction.
The Assassin's Creed series is a collection of novels by various authors, set within the fictional universe of the Assassin's Creed video game franchise created by Ubisoft. The books are set across various time periods and, like the games, revolve around the secret war fought for centuries between the Assassin Brotherhood and the Templar Order. The series includes both direct novelizations of several Assassin's Creed games, and books that function as standalone narratives, although some of these tie-in with one or more of the games in the franchise. British publishing house Penguin Books was responsible for the publication of most of the novels in the series, as well as their respective audiobook versions, until 2020, when Aconyte Books took over as the main publisher of the series.
Family Ties is a 1960 short story collection by the Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector.
Senhor was a monthly cultural magazine published in the period of 1959 and 1964. The magazine was headquartered in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector is a book by Benjamin Moser published by Oxford University Press in 2009. Benjamin Moser details the majority of Clarice Lispector's life and then discusses the connections between her life and her work.
Água Viva is a 1973 novel by the Brazilian author Clarice Lispector. The novel has an unconventional form and uses no other form of structure other than double paragraph breaks, lacking chapters or sections. It also does not feature conventional plot or named characters and is framed as a directionless monologue from an artist, perhaps speaking to a lover, the public, or the work itself. In the novel, Lispector states that her goal is to fire "an arrow that will sink into the tender and neuralgic centre of the word".
Antes do Baile Verde is a Brazilian short story written by Lygia Fagundes Telles and originally published by Editora Bloch in 1970. It is considered one of the most important publications by the author, who began her career in the 1970s. The book brings together contemporary realist short stories of an intimate nature, reflecting characteristics of the third modernist generation and Concretism.