Tradiciones místicas en la modernidad: Clarice Lispector y Teresa de Avila.

The narratives of Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector are characterized by a minimalist plot and a presence of female internal perspectives as a result of essentialist conflicts. Her novels have been described as “modern day mysticism” (Schiminovich 1993: 153) due to the emotionally loaded structures of her multilayered conjunctions. In particular, A Paixão Segundo G.H. (1964) and Preto do coração salvagem (1943) are examples of her mystical writing in which the concepts of early modern self-reflection and the subject crisis of the 20^th century, are interwoven. In order to explain this connection, interpretations draw upon existing discourses about the Spanish mysticism of the 16^th and 17^th centuries, with San Juan de La Cruz and Santa Teresa being the major initiators.

Thus, a chapter has opened, which concerns the converso-literature of the Spanish Golden Age. This raises the question, to what extent the literary analysis of christian culture, which in the literature of Lispector are viewed from a jewish perspective, are comparable regarding the interreligious encounters in the work of Santa Teresa. Both authors take biblical patterns into account and weave these into mystical realms of experience and self-reflection. A starting point for this cross-epochal synopsis is the assumption that the currency, which was attributed to the poetry of the mystic of the Spanish Golden Age, is due to transformations that draw their significance partly from the reformulation of biblical texts and, on the other hand, prove prefigurations of modern writing (see Certeau 1982).