Existentialism, Ontology, and Mysticism in Clarice Lispector’s A descoberta do mundo

Abstract

This article aims to place Clarice Lispector as the inventor of a new type of newspaper chronicle. The style of her 468 chronicles published weekly in Jornal do Brasil, from 1967 to 1973, and collected in the book A descoberta do mundo (1984), differs from that of her contemporary male chroniclers, such as Rubem Braga, Paulo Mendes Campos, Fernando Sabino, and Otto Lara Resende, or even women chroniclers, such as Rachel de Queiroz and Dinah Silveira de Queiroz. Mingling Sartre’s existentialism and Heidegger’s phenomenology with the Jewish mysticism learned as a child enabled Lispector to write in a style that pioneered modern women’s prose fiction in Brazil after 1970. This article argues that fragmentation and hybridization are the marks of her “discovery” of a new world as a woman writer, making her crônicas predecessors of today’s women’s blogs.