TRANSMODERNITY: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World

This paper explores the resemblance between Clarice Lispector’s Água Viva (1973) and the Book of Psalms. There are two principal claims to be made on the basis of this comparison. First, by oblique reference to the biblical Psalms, Lispector provides us with a crucial tool for understanding her project in Água Viva, namely the attempt to attain the intimacy, faith, and comprehension of herself, others, and existence as the Psalmist has of his God. Second, the intertextual relationship with the Old Testament may be taken as a Judaic trace in Lispector’s work, albeit one that the author employs not to emphasis her difference, but as a means of achieving communion with her readers, whoever they may be.