"The struggle to reach reality-that's the main objective of this creature who tries, in every way, to cling to whatever exists by means of a total vision of things. I meant to make clear too the way vision-the way of seeing, the viewpoint-alters reality, constructing it. A house is not only constructed with stones, cement etc. A man's way of looking constructs it too. The way of looking gives the appearance to reality. When I say that Lucrécia Neves constructs the city of São Geraldo and gives it a tradition, this is somehow clear to me. When I say that, at that time of a city being born, each gaze was making new extensions, new realities emerge-this is so clear to me. Tradition, the past of a culture-what is that besides a way of seeing that is handed down to us?"
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Jews from UkraineWomen authorsNovelists from BrazilShort story writers from BrazilJournalists from Brazil
Original Language: English
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1970 letter originally published in Jornal do Brasil, included at end of the English translation of The Besieged City
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Clarice_Lispector
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Clarice Lispector
Clarice Lispector (born Chaya Pinkhasivna Lispector; December 10, 1920 – December 9, 1977) was a Brazilian writer. Acclaimed internationally for her innovative novels and short stories, she was also a journalist and a translator. A legendary figure in Brazil, renowned for her uncommon and unique writing style, her great personal beauty — the American translator Gregory Rabassa recalled being "flabbergasted to meet that rare person who looked like Marlene Dietrich and wrote like Virginia Woolf,"
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