Intertwined histories

gazes and paths in The Besieged City, by Clarice Lispector

Abstract

The Besieged City, a novel by Clarice Lispector, constitutes a factual and affective Portrait, at once temporal, historical, and geographical, representing a literary transfiguration of the years the author lived in Switzerland. Although the novel’s landscapes are shaped more as dreamlike or nightmarish impressions than as concrete descriptions of the settings encountered by the writer, Clarice herself emphasized the importance of her empirical experience in the conception of the work. The narrative is paradigmatic in demonstrating how local history—embodied in the fictional suburb of S. Geraldo—intertwines with the lives of its inhabitants, particularly the protagonist Lucrécia, who both shapes her surroundings through her gaze and is, in turn, shaped by them. This article draws on Clarice’s own writings to highlight key aspects of the novel, while also engaging with theoretical perspectives such as those of Michel Collot, who approaches landscape as a literary phenomenon that implies a subject no longer enclosed within itself but open to exteriority, thereby redefining subjectivity not as an autonomous substance but as a relational process. Beyond its aesthetic qualities, the novel remains relevant insofar as it invites reflection on whether the history of so-called technical progress, pursued in an impetuous manner, can be reconciled with the affective and, why not, poetic aspirations of human experience.