The Sublimation of Sin in Clarice Lispector’s A maçã no escuro

• Published in: Confluencia (Greeley, Colo.) Vol. 39; no. 2; pp. 82 - 93
• Main Author: Varo, Alonso Varo
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Fort Collins Colorado State University 01.04.2024; Colorado State University, Dept. of Languages, Literatures and Cultures
• Subjects: Domestic violence; Good & evil; Heterosexuality; Lispector, Clarice (1920-1977); Novels; Semiotics; Signifiant and signifie
• ISSN: 0888-6091; 2328-6962; 2328-6962
• DOI: 10.1353/cnf.2024.a925994

For the protagonist, the attempted murder of his wife is a vortex of symbolic suction that ends up completely destroying the subject's former being (129). The subsequent evolutionary process developed in the novel is the product of the reconstruction of a soul, which although in ruins, freely chooses to reinstate the symbolic order necessary for its redemption. According to Kristeva, this painful joy is a mark of the abject and is closely linked to the chora -prelinguistic core of the semiotic- that corresponds to the earliest stage of psychosexual development in the individual {Revolution 79). [...]the rapture of Inner experience is linked to the dissolution of the bond between signifier and signified: "The ecstasy of inner experience appears to issue precisely from the dissolution of that intimate union of signifier and signified, from the collapse of the alliance, sanctified by usage, of word and concept which seems to make meaning possible" {Inner Experience 15-6).