CLARICE LISPECTOR:

LITERATURE AND TRAGIC KNOWLEDGE IN NEAR TO THE WILD HEART

Abstract

This paper intends to present a reading of Clarice Lispector’s first novel, Near to The Wild Heart, from a dialog between literature and philosophy. We stem from the relations between Clarice Lispector’s literature and Friedrich Nietzsche’s tragic philosophy to demonstrate how the Brazilian writer, in her opening novel, constructs a universe related to the tragic knowledge that affirms the body, not-knowing, and life as becoming. It is not about reading the literary text as a philosophical novel, but rather as a thinking text. In a first reading effort, we argue that the novel presents praise to sensitiveness as a line of force; then, we reflect on the notion of softness as another line of force also related to tragic knowledge.