Symbolic Vision in Clarice Lispector's: "THE APPLE IN THE DARK"

A Maga no Escuro (The Apple in the Dark), published in 1961, is considered Clarice Lispector's best work so far. It is a highly intellectual, perplexing, and puzzling novel. It is above all a verbal novel. Some novels use words as a tool: they have a message to ex press, and language just happens to be the medium through which to communicate that message. This novel's message, indeed, seems to be preocupied with the pro blems and limitations of the symbolism of language. Language is in many ways its subject as well as being unavoidably its medium. The plans of the protagonist, Martim, for a projected novel to be written in prison could be taken as the theoretical basis of the novel in which he has been a character. He muses: "Because it's