"Remnants of Carnival" by Clarice Lispector (from The Complete ShortStories of Clarice Lipsector, published August, 2015, translated byKatrina Dodson, edited and introduced by Benjamin Moser)

My Prior Posts on Clarice Lispector 

 Colm Toibin's Review of The Complete Short Stories of Clarice Lispector from The New York Review of Books

When I first starting reading The Complete Short Stories of Clarice Lispector about four months ago I felt I was witnessing the exploding of a star upon the English language short story world.  I wondered if others would respond as strongly as I did.  Reviews are beginning to appear in top venues.  I have read all those I have seen, all are laudatory and insightful but I feel somehow they don't quite get Clarice.  As I read her stories, and now two of her novels, and admitting  I was under the spell of the ice cold beauty of her youth and the coldness and pain in her eyes as she matured, I wanted to find a way to shout out to short story lovers and writers all over the world to stop what they are doing and read her collection.   

As Toibin says in his review, happiness does not come easy if at all in the works of Clarice, I call her by her first name not out of familiarity but reverence, some of her stories are about how small incidents can haunt us forever and block our hope of being fully at home in the universe.  

Recife in Brazil is considered by afficiados to have the best, wildest most  exuberant of all carnivals. This story is about the involuntary memories of the narrators  first carnival, around age ten.  It draws on the life experiences of Clarice, the impact of her mother's illness and death when she was ten on her life.  A crepe paper dress in the color of a deep red rose is being made for her good friend.  She accepts her family cannot buy her a carnival dress.  She is so happy when there is enough material left for a dress to be made for her.  The friend's parents pay to have it made and it is so beautiful. She is remembering these events of years ago.  Just as she was ready to go to carnival, nearly overwhelmed with the excitement of the event, she cannot go to the carnival because her mother has gotten sicker (Clarice's mother was raped in a porgam in the Ukraine and would after years of illness from syphillis die when she was young.)  The narrator has the burden of guilt of having greatly resented her mother while knowing soon after this she would die.  This is what Carnival now brings to her mind.

In just a few pages  Clarice takes us deeply into the ways memories can flood in and destroy happiness.

Mel u