SOURCE: "Clarice Lispector: Fiction and Cosmic Vision," in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. 8, No. 1, Winter, 1971, pp. 268-81.

In the following essay, Moises discusses Lispector's use of epiphany or "privileged moments," the relation of her characters to animals, and the influence of existentialism and phenomenology in Laços de família and A legião estrangeira. Moises contends that the two collections are united by a despairing "cosmic vision " whose only hope of escape is found in art.

At the very beginning, let us agree that an essay on the short stories of Clarice Lispector (born 1925), to be complete and satisfactory, should require an all-encompassing examination of her fiction, including both novels and "crônicas."¹ It is indeed true that such a necessity imposes itself whenever we deal with writers skilled in more than one form of literary genre; the exairnination of each of the various facets sheds light...