Editing Clarice Lispector (section)

==Early life, emigration and Recife==
Clarice Lispector was born Chaya Lispector in [[Chechelnyk]], [[Podolia]], a rural [[shtetl]] in what is today [[Ukraine]]. She was the youngest of three daughters of Pinkhas Lispector and Mania Krimgold Lispector. Her family suffered significantly in the [[pogrom]]s that followed the dissolution of the [[Russian Empire]], circumstances later dramatized in her older sister [[Elisa Lispector]]'s autobiographical novel ''No exílio'' (''In Exile'', 1948). They eventually managed to flee to Romania, from where they emigrated to Brazil, where her mother Mania had relatives. They sailed from [[Hamburg]] and arrived in Brazil in the early months of 1922, when Chaya (Clarice) was little more than one year old.

The Lispectors changed their names upon arrival. Pinkhas became Pedro; Mania became Marieta; Leah became Elisa, and Chaya became Clarice. Only the middle daughter, Tania (April 19, 1915 – November 15, 2007), kept her name. They first settled in the northeastern city of [[Maceió]], [[Alagoas]]. After three years, during which Marieta's health deteriorated rapidly, they moved to the city of [[Recife]], Pernambuco, settling in the neighbourhood of Boa Vista, where they lived at number 367 in the Praça Maciel Pinheiro and later in the Rua da Imperatriz.<ref name="Jewish Renaissance">{{cite journal | title=The most important Jewish writer since Kafka? | author=Moser, Benjamin| journal=[[Jewish Renaissance]] |date=October 2012 | volume=12 | issue=1 | pages=18–19}}</ref>

In Recife, where her father continued to struggle economically, her mother – who was paralysed (although some speculate she had been raped in the Ukraine pogroms,<ref name="Jewish Renaissance"/> there is no confirmation on this by relatives and close friends)<ref>Gotlib, Nádia Battella, ''Clarice, uma vida que se conta'' (in Portuguese), São Paulo, Ática, 1995; Ferreira, Teresa Cristina Montero, ''Eu sou uma pergunta'' (in Portuguese), Rio de Janeiro, Rocco, 1999.</ref> there are records that Mania's illness was in fact hemiplegia, that is, partial paralysis of half of the body resulting from trauma (violence caused by Bolsheviks) and that later she also had tremors caused by Parkinson's disease<ref>Jeronimo, Thiago C., 'Benjamim Moser: quando a luz dos holofotes interessa mais que a ética acadêmica'. DLCV - Língua, linguística e Literatura, 14(1), 8-20, 2018.https://doi.org/10.22478/ufpb.2237-0900.2018v14n1.42212</ref> – finally died on September 21, 1930, aged 42, when Clarice was nine. Clarice attended the Colégio Hebreo-Idisch-Brasileiro, which taught [[Hebrew]] and [[Yiddish]] in addition to the usual subjects. In 1932, she gained admission to the Ginásio Pernambucano, then the most prestigious secondary school in the state. A year later, strongly influenced by [[Hermann Hesse]]'s ''[[Steppenwolf (novel)|Steppenwolf]]'', she "consciously claimed the desire to write".<ref>Lispector, Clarice. "Escrever." In: ''A Descoberta do mundo'', p. 304.</ref>

In 1935, Pedro Lispector decided to move with his daughters to the then-capital, Rio de Janeiro, where he hoped to find more economic opportunity and also to find Jewish husbands for his daughters.<ref name="Jewish Renaissance"/> The family lived in the neighborhood of [[São Cristóvão (Rio de Janeiro neighborhood)|São Cristóvão]], north of downtown Rio, before moving to [[Tijuca]]. In 1937, she entered the [[Federal University of Rio de Janeiro Faculty of Law|Law School of the University of Brazil]], then one of the most prestigious institutions of higher learning in the country.  Her first known story, "Triunfo", was published in the magazine ''Pan'' on May 25, 1940.<ref>Gotlib, Nádia Battella. ''Clarice Fotobiografia'', São Paulo, Edusp, 2007, p. 123.</ref> Soon afterwards, on August 26, 1940, as a result of a botched gallbladder operation, her father died, aged 55.

While still in law school, Clarice began working as a journalist, first at the official government press service the [[Agência Nacional]] and then at the important newspaper ''[[A Noite]]''. Lispector would come into contact with the younger generation of Brazilian writers, including [[Lúcio Cardoso]], with whom she fell in love. Cardoso was gay, however, and she soon began seeing a law school colleague named Maury Gurgel Valente, who had entered the Brazilian Foreign Service, known as [[Itamaraty]]. In order to marry a diplomat, she had to be naturalized, which she did as soon as she came of age. On January 12, 1943, she was granted Brazilian citizenship. Eleven days later she married Gurgel.

===''Near to the Wild Heart''===
{{main|Near to the Wild Heart}}
In December 1943, Lispector published her first novel, ''Perto do coração selvagem'' (''Near to the Wild Heart''). The novel, which tells of the inner life of a young woman named Joana, caused a sensation. In October 1944, the book won the prestigious Graça Aranha Prize for the best debut novel of 1943. One critic, the poet [[Lêdo Ivo]], called it "the greatest novel a woman has ever written in the Portuguese language."<ref>Instituto Moreira Salles, ''Clarice Lispector: Cadernos de Literatura Brasileira'', IMS, p. 49.</ref> Another wrote that Lispector had "shifted the center of gravity around which the Brazilian novel had been revolving for about twenty years".<ref>Jorge de Lima, "Romances de Mulher", ''Gazeta de Notícias'', November 1, 1944.</ref> "Clarice Lispector's work appears in our literary world as the most serious attempt at the introspective novel," wrote the São Paulo critic [[Sérgio Milliet]]. "For the first time, a Brazilian author goes beyond simple approximation in this almost virgin field of our literature; for the first time, an author penetrates the depths of the psychological complexity of the modern soul."<ref>Sérgio Milliet, ''Diário Crítico'', Vol. 2.</ref>

This novel, like all of her subsequent works, was marked by an intense focus on interior emotional states. When the novel was published, many claimed that her stream-of-consciousness writing style was heavily influenced by [[Virginia Woolf]] or [[James Joyce]], but she only read these authors after the book was ready.<ref>Lispector, Clarice. "Correspondências – Clarice Lispector (organized by Teresa Montero)", Rio de Janeiro, Rocco, 2002. Based on private letters she exchanged with [[Lúcio Cardoso]] and her sister Tania.</ref> The epigraph from Joyce and the title, which is taken from Joyce's ''[[A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man]]'', were both suggested by [[Lúcio Cardoso]].

Shortly afterwards, Lispector and Maury Gurgel left Rio for the northern city of [[Belém]], in the state of [[Pará]], at the mouth of the [[Amazon River|Amazon]]. There, Maury served as a liaison between the Foreign Ministry and the international visitors who were using northern Brazil as a military base in World War II.