One Hundred Years after Tomorrow: Brazilian Women's Fiction in the Twentieth Century

Hilda Hilst / Agda (1973)

Hilda Hilst Born in 1930 and educated as a lawyer, Hilda Hilst has been writing for forty years. Her career has three distinct phases. Between 1950 and 1967, she published eight collections of poetry; between 1967 and 1969, she wrote eight plays; and since 1970 she has produced five volumes of fiction. She has been Artist in Residence at the university in Campinas (Sao Paulo), where she currently lives. Hilst has been influenced by both existentialism and surrealism, and she seems particularly interested in the themes of sexuality and mortality . She experiments with point of view, typography, and syntax, making extensive use of a somewhat Joycean free-associative language. Neologisms, agglutinated words, and exotic names abound in her writings . "Agda," from her 1973 volume Oados, is typical of her unorthodox and passionate fiction. Agda (1973) In memory of Sch. An-Ski In the direction of many deaths, many lives, my road now. Take care of yourself, Agda, it's time you took care, the fruit inside the hand, just give a look, how can you touch with your yellow hand the one who says he loves you, that tenuous one, Agda, begin your routine as always, take care of the pigs, clean the patio, water the 146 Agda 147 cactus, examine the ferns, the anthurium, walk slow slow, you've been looking old for a long time, and especially this morning. Remember your mother almost at the end saying you'll not endure, my daughter, you who take care of yourself so much, orange cream for your face, the other kind for your hands, the light green one for your body, stove cinders to whiten your teeth, daughter, you'll not endure, it's better you die Now Now life around you, clean clean, look at me, and above all else don't love, NEVER AGAIN, you have to be ashamed if someone touches you you already know the sadness of your flesh, everything dull dull, and your hands, look at your hands, they call that keratosis, daughter, it comes with old age, first the spot, then a thin crust, you think it'll go away, the doctor smiles, he says it begins at middle age, madam, it's time, do you understand, madam? You smile. Time? Yes, the time that no one sees, stretched out, mucus-like, more and more becoming transparent. How your Ana smiled when she learned that he loved you, and she smiled even more when you suddenly began to fix yourself up. Can you hem this skirt for me? And if there's time put a gold fringe here, look I already bought it, it'll look nice, won't it? Gold and maroon go very nicely together. Never again, never again they told you. Oh yes, I'm going to clean the patio, I'm going to water the cactus, oh yes, my God, I must forget the touch, the adornment, the golden hoop earrings, I must forget, stab the memory, no you never felt anything and much less now, you feel nothing, no, I don't feel anything, in dreams I saw the new little schoolgirls, they were dressed in green and going to chapel, I was dressed in black, going in the opposite direction, at the end a door-window opening onto the void. Now it will always be the abyss, I look deep down there, what is down there? Dryness, everything consummated. Never again. Never again, pull up the collar of your coat, look at the row of flowerpots on the bench, right, manure wasn't necessary for the cactus, now the coiled white, potbellied one is drooping over, it's necessary to put in tiny stakes, I'll be like that too when I'm satiated, Agda I myself satiated, folded over myself, each time more the abyss, each time more the earth, then after everything the shame, oh yes, shame, he'll tell his friends the old woman howled in my hands, the old yellow woman's breath rattled even at the touch of my fingers, fingers, your hand, my love, your hand isn't necessary over my dull whole, your sun-drenched hand over my shadowy body, I, a root 148 Hilda Hilst advancing beneath the earth, root-body-flesh, a thing that falls apart, no you musn't touch, don't mistreat the light that leaves your fingers, NEVER AGAIN should I be touched, it...