My first thought as I read Stefan Tobler’s translation of Água Viva for the first time was that I wanted to memorize it. All of it. A few moments later, I came to a passage in which Lispector acknowledges the mosaic quality of the work: “I know that after you read me it's hard to reproduce my song by ear, it's not possible to sing it without having learned it by heart. And how can you learn something by heart if it has no story?”
