Hilda de Almeida Prado Hilst (21 April 1930 – 4 February 2004) was a Brazilian poet, novelist, and playwright. Her work touches on the themes ofmysticism, insanity, the body, eroticism, andfemale sexual liberation. Hilst greatly revered the work ofJames Joyce andSamuel Beckett, and the influence of their styles—like stream of consciousness and fractured reality—is evident in her own work.
Born inJaú,São Paulo, Hilst graduated from theUniversity of São Paulo in 1952. While studying there, she published her first book of poems,Omen (Presságio), in 1950. After a brief trip to Europe, Hilst was influenced byNikos Kazantzakis'Report to Greco to move away from the São Paulo scene, and she secluded herself in anestate near the outskirts ofCampinas. Deciding to devote her life to her literary creations, she constructed the House of the Sun (Casa do Sol), where she would invite several artists and intellectuals to live.
Writing forty works over her lifetime, she was one of the most prolific writers of her generation. Her works were mostly not well known outside of her home country until after her death, when several of her books were translated to English.
Hilda de Almeida Prado Hilst was the only daughter of Apolônio de Almeida Prado Hilst and Bedecilda Vaz Cardoso. Her father owned a coffee plantation and also worked as a journalist, poet, and essayist. He was affected byschizophrenia throughout his life. Her mother came from a conservative Portuguese immigrant family. The conditions of her parents' mental health (and the relationships they had with mental health) greatly influenced Hilst's writing, and her books describe several experiences she had with her father.[1] Her parents separated in 1932 while she was still an infant, and three years later her father received the diagnosis of schizophrenia and thereafter spent much of his life in mental institutions.[2] Her mother was also institutionalized at the end of her life, in the same institution as her husband.[3]
Hilst grew up inJaú, a town in the state of São Paulo, with her mother and half brother from her mother's previous marriage. Hilst attended elementary and high school at Collegia Santa Marcelina in São Paulo before enrolling in a bachelor's degree program atMackenzie Presbyterian University.[4] Before Hilst started college, her mother told her of her father's condition, and Hilst went to visit him in a mental institution for the first time.[5]
Hilst published her first book of poetry in 1950,Omen (Presságio), which received great acclaim from her contemporaries likeJorge de Lima andCecília Meireles. It was not long before she published her second book,Ballad of Alzira (Balada de Alzira) in 1951. That same year Hilst took over guardianship of her father. Later in 1957, Hilst began her seven-month tour of Europe, traveling through France, Italy and Greece.[3] There, she briefly dated singer-actorDean Martin and impersonated a journalist, in an attempt to meetMarlon Brando. She asked him about his thoughts onFranz Kafka's works, to which he dismissively replied, "I won't think about Mr. Kafka".[7][8]
Upon her return to São Paulo, she settled in theSumaré neighborhood, and was frequently in the company of other artists, such asGilka Machado andBráulio Pedroso.[2][9] However, after readingNikos Kazantzakis'Report to Greco, and being influenced by its themes of self-isolation to achieve knowledge of the human being, Hilst decided to leave São Paulo in 1964 and return to her childhood home inCampinas.[10]
She ordered the construction of a new house on the same property, nicknamed the House of the Sun (Casa do Sol), which she personally designed to be an artistic space for inspiration and creativity.[11] When it was completed in 1966, she moved into the house with sculptor Dante Casarini,[12] with whom she had a prior relationship.[9] In September of the same year, her father died.[13]
At the House of the Sun, Hilst was particularly prolific as she started writing her first theater works, completing nine plays and one poetry compilation between 1967 and 1969.[2] She married Casarini in 1968. Although the marriage only lasted twelve years, the two continued to live together in the House of the Sun.[9] Hilst lived somewhat secluded in Campinas for the rest of her life, accompanied by other artists. The House of the Sun became a hub for artists and writers, who were invited to spend time there and enjoy the creative atmosphere. Two prominent artists to do so wereBruno Tolentino andCaio Fernando Abreu. During her time at the House of the Sun, Hilst also engaged in her own experiments withelectronic voice phenomena, an electronic recording method that supposedly interprets the voices of the dead.[14] In 1969, she built a second home, theCasa da Lua (House of the Moon). Her theater writings finished in the same year, with her turning instead to prose fiction with her experimental textFluxo-Floema a year later.[15]
In the 1980s, due to increasing financial pressure from a lack of book sales, Hilst participated in thePrograma do Artista Residente (Artist-in-Residence program), at theUniversidade Estadual de Campinas, being the first artist to do so. The program was conceived as a way for students to meet established authors. She later held other teaching positions at the university.[16][17]
Hilst publishedLori Lamby's Pink Notebook (O caderno rosa de Lori Lamby) in 1990, the first book of a pornographictetralogy. She announced her "goodbye to serious literature" in the 1990s because she was "irritated by the meager reaching of her writing".[18]
Meus livros não vendem, não são reeditados, as pessoas me acham difícil. Estou cansada desse estigma... Fiquei desesperada com o esquecimento em torno do meu nome. Sempre quis ser lida, não queria ficar nas gavetas.[19]
My books don't sell, they don't get reprinted, people find me difficult. I'm tired of this stigma... I became desperate with the forgetfulness surrounding my name. I always wanted to be read, I didn't want to stay in the drawers.
— Hilda Hilst
A number of Hilst's books were originally published by smaller Brazilian publishers, but beginning in 2001,Editora Globo, the publishing branch of the Brazilian media organizationGlobo, began reissuing nearly all her works, as part of itsColeção Reunidas de Hilda Hilst.[20][21] She stopped writing in the same year, telling an interviewer that she had said everything she wanted to say.[22]
Hilst died on 4 February 2004, in Campinas at the age of 73. She had been hospitalized at theHospital das Clínicas da Unicamp since 2 January, following surgery for a fracturedfemur.[23] Her health sharply declined after contracting an infection, aggravated by a chronic heart and pulmonary condition, before she eventually died due to multiple organ failure.[24][25] Following her death, Hilst's friend Mora Fuentes created the Hilda Hilst Institute in her honor, an organization whose mission is to uphold the House of the Sun as a space for artistic creation and serves as a library and cultural center.[26] Author Yuri Vieira, who lived in the House of the Sun for two years, wrote a book about his experiences there.[27]
After her death, Hilst garnered more fame among English language readership as several of her novels were translated to the language, such asWith My Dog Eyes,The Obscene Madame D., andLetters from a Seducer.[2]
Hilda Hilst wrote for almost 50 years, publishing forty books over her lifetime.[28] The different periods of her life are reflected in the phases of her work: she began as a poet, publishingPresságio in 1950, through the time before she moved into the House of the Sun; around the death of her father and her marriage, she started publishing and staging plays in 1967; and shifted into prose in 1970, with her experimental textFluxo-Floema. Throughout her career, beginning in 1958 withAdoniran Barbosa, musicians selected poems of hers to be set to music.[29][4] Relatively obscure in her lifetime, her work has since been extensively studied and analyzed after her death. She has been highly referenced in books, magazines, academic journals, and others.[21]
In several of her writings Hilst tackled politically and socially controversial issues, such asobscenity,queer sexuality, andincest. The tetralogy that comprisesLori Lamby's Pink Notebook (O caderno rosa de Lori Lamby) andTales of Derision: Grotesque Texts (Contos d'escárnio. Textos grotescos) (1990);Cartas de um Sedutor (1991); andBufólicas (1992), includes overtly pornographic material, if notpornographyper se.[30] Her pornographic work started as a response to the minimal popularity her previous works had with the general audience.[31] She exploredtheological issues in her work as well, particularly regarding God and the "search of the divine".[32][33] Other common themes in her writings include madness,[34] old age,[35] love, and death.[33]
In Hilst's prose fiction, she employs several narrative features to build the narrative, including passages ofmetanarrative discourse;soliloquies;simulacra of dramatic theatrical texts; colloquial register of regional linguistic variants; words, expressions and quotations from foreign literary works in the language of origin – in English and Latin; stream of consciousness and fractured reality; sparse notes; poems; letters and questions addressed directly to the reader.[36] She was greatly influenced by the works ofJames Joyce andSamuel Beckett, whom she greatly revered.[37][38]
In 1962 she won the Prêmio PEN Clube of São Paulo, forSete Cantos do Poeta para o Anjo (Massao Ohno Editor, 1962). In 1969, the playO Verdugo took thePrêmio Anchieta, one of the most important cultural awards in the country at the time. TheBrazilian Association of Art Critics (APCA Prize) deemedFicções (Edições Quíron, 1977) the best book of the year. In 1981, Hilda Hilst won theGrande Prêmio da Crítica para o Conjunto da Obra, by the same association. In 1984, theCâmara Brasileira do Livro [pt] awarded her theJabuti Prize forCantares de Perda e Predileção, and the following year the same book claimed the Prêmio Cassiano Ricardo (Clube de Poesia de São Paulo).Rútilo Nada, published in 1993, took the Jabuti Prize for best short story, and finally, on 9 August 2002, she was awarded at the 47th edition of Prêmio Moinho Santista in the poetry category.[39][40]
Some of Hilst's texts have been translated from Brazilian Portuguese to French, English, Italian and German. In March 1997, her worksCom meus olhos de cão andA obscena senhora D were published byÉditions Gallimard, translated by Maryvonne Lapouge. The latter was translated into English asThe Obscene Madame D collaboratively by Nathanaël and Rachel Gontijo Araújo, and published jointly byNightboat Books in New York andA Bolha Editora in Rio de Janeiro in 2012. In 2014,Letters from a Seducer,John Keene's translation of the 1991 novelCartas de um sedutor, was published by Nightboat Books and A Bolha Editora, andWith My Dog Eyes, Adam Morris's translation of Hilst's 1986 novellaCom os meus olhos de cão, was published byMelville House.[2]
Fluxo-floema. São Paulo: Perspectiva (1970) / São Paulo: Editora Globo (2001)ISBN9788525036308
Qadós. São Paulo: Edart (1973) / São Paulo: Editora Globo (2001)ISBN9788525035431
Ficções (Fictions). São Paulo: Quíron (1977)
Tu não te moves de ti (You Don't Move from Yourself). São Paulo: Cultura (1980) / São Paulo: Editora Globo (2004)ISBN9788525038531
A obscena senhora D (The Obscene Miss D). São Paulo: Massao Ohno (1982) / São Paulo: Editora Globo (2001)ISBN9788525034649. English translation:The Obscene Madame D. Callicoon: Nightboat (2012)
Com meus olhos de cão e outras novelas (With My Dog Eyes and Other Novels). São Paulo: Brasilense (1986) / São Paulo: Editora Globo (2012)ISBN9788525041005. English translation:With My Dog-Eyes. New York City: Melville House (2014)
O caderno rosa de Lori Lamby (Lori Lamby's Pink Notebook). São Paulo: Massao Ohno (1990)
Contos d'escárnio: Textos grotescos (Tales of Mockery: Grotesque Texts). São Paulo: Siciliano, (1990) / São Paulo: Editora Globo (2001)ISBN9788525036193
Cartas de um sedutor. São Paulo: Paulicéia (1991) / São Paulo: Editora Globo (2001)ISBN9788525034915. English translation:Letters from a Seducer: Callicoon: Nightboat (2012)
^Visnadi, Marcos (6 July 2021)."Líquida semente: sobre a herança entre Apolônio e Hilda Hilst" [Liquid seed: on the inheritance between Apolônio and Hilda Hilst].Revell - Revista de Estudos Literários da UEMS (in Brazilian Portuguese).1 (28). Universidade Estadual de Mato Grosso do Sul:44–54.ISSN2179-4456.Archived from the original on 16 October 2022. Retrieved22 October 2023.
^Hilst, Hilda (October 1999). "Das sombras – entrevista".Cadernos de Literatura Brasileira (Interview) (in Brazilian Portuguese). No. 8. São Paulo: Instituto Moreira Salles. p. 39.Mas eu voltei a vê-lo quando tinha dezesseis anos. Meu pai estava na fazenda dele e pediu para me chamar. [But I saw him again when I was sixteen. My father was on his farm and asked him to call me.]
^Folgueira, Laura; Destri, Luisa (2018).Eu e não outra: a vida intensa de Hilda Hilst [Me and not another: the intense life of Hilda Hilst] (in Brazilian Portuguese). São Paulo, São Paulo: Tordesilhas.ISBN978-8-584-19070-6.
^Coelho, Kamilla Kristina Sousa França.Deus segundo o olhar de Kazantzakis e Hilda Hilst [God through the eyes of Kazantzakis and Hilda Hilst](PDF) (Thesis) (in Brazilian Portuguese).Archived(PDF) from the original on 7 April 2023. Retrieved7 April 2023.
^Hilst, Hilda (April 2001)."Os dentes da loucura" [The teeth of madness].Suplemento Literário de Minas Gerais (Interview) (in Brazilian Portuguese). No. 70. Interviewed by Weintraub, Fábio; Cohn, Sérgio. Belo Horizonte.Archived from the original on 9 October 2023. Retrieved16 October 2023.Mudei para cá no dia 24 de junho de 1966, dia de São João. Nessa época eu vivia com o Dante Casarini, com quem acabei por casar. [I moved here on 24 June 1966, St. John's Day. At the time I was living with Dante Casarini, whom I ended up marrying.]
^Hilst, Hilda (April 2001)."Os dentes da loucura" [The teeth of madness].Suplemento Literário de Minas Gerais (Interview) (in Brazilian Portuguese). No. 70. Interviewed by Weintraub, Fábio; Cohn, Sérgio. Belo Horizonte.Archived from the original on 9 October 2023. Retrieved5 October 2023.Não sei nada sobre a minha obra. Só sei que a escrevi. Durante cinquenta anos pude escrever tudo o que queria escrever. [I don't know anything about my work. All I know is that I wrote it. For fifty years I was able to write everything I wanted to write.]
^"Morre a escritora Hilda Hilst" [Writer Hilda Hilst dies].Estadão (in Brazilian Portuguese). 4 February 2004.Archived from the original on 22 May 2023. Retrieved22 May 2023.
^Shimizu, Heitor (4 February 2004)."Hilda Hilst morre aos 73 anos" [Hilda Hilst dies at 73].Agência FAPESP (in Brazilian Portuguese).Archived from the original on 22 May 2023. Retrieved22 May 2023.
^Vieira, Yuri (2018).O exorcista na Casa do Sol : relatos do último pupilo de Hilda Hilst [The exorcist at the House of the Sun : stores from Hilda Hilst's last pupil] (in Brazilian Portuguese) (1st ed.). Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio.ISBN978-85-03-01351-2.OCLC1054269123.
^Giron, Luís Antnio (13 July 2018)."A onda Hilda" [The Hilda wave].ISTOÉ Independente (in Brazilian Portuguese).Archived from the original on 15 August 2023. Retrieved7 October 2023.
^Pécora, Alcir; Destri, Luisa; Diniz, Cristiano; Purceno, Sonia (2010).Por que ler Hilda Hilst [Why read Hilda Hilst] (in Brazilian Portuguese). São Paulo: Editora Globo. pp. 57–62.ISBN9788525048455.
^Suttana, Renato (July 2006)."Hilda Hilst: a ficção em busca de Deus" [Hilda Hilst: fiction in search of God].Revista Analecta (in Brazilian Portuguese).7 (2). Guarapuava, Paraná: Universidade Estadual do Centro-Oeste:134–135.Archived from the original on 9 October 2023. Retrieved9 October 2023.
^abAlbuquerque, Gabriel Arcanjo Santos (12 December 2011).Deus. Amor. Morte: E as atitudes líricas de Hilda Hilst [God, love, death and the lyrical attitudes in Hilda Hilst's poetry] (in Brazilian Portuguese). Editora Valer.ISBN9788575125472.
^Moura, Amanda (2012)."A loucura em A obscena Senhora D." [The madness in A obscena Senhora D.].Crátilo (in Brazilian Portuguese).5 (1). Patos de Minas, Minas Gerais: Centro Universitário de Patos de Minas:40–49.ISSN1984-0705.Archived from the original on 16 October 2023. Retrieved10 October 2023.
^Hilst, Hilda (October 1999). "Das sombras – entrevista".Cadernos de literatura brasileira (Interview) (in Brazilian Portuguese). No. 8. São Paulo: Instituto Moreira Salles. p. 39.O Joyce e o Beckett eu acho maravilhosos. O Joyce está na minha mesa. Mas é curioso mesmo essa linha mais recuada da poesia e mais moderna da prosa. [I think Joyce and Beckett are wonderful. Joyce is on my desk. But it's curious, this more retro line in poetry and more modern in prose.]
Bueno, M. A., & Hilst, Hilda (1996).Quatro mulheres e um destino: Hilda Hilst, Fernanda Torres, Fernanda Montenegro, Eliane Duarte. Rio de Janeiro, UAPE.ISBN85-85666-17-X
Pécora, Alcir (org.), Luisa Destri, Cristiano Diniz, and Sonia Purceno (2010).Por que ler Hilda Hilst. São Paulo: Editora Globo.ISBN85-25048-45-3
Querioz, Vera. (2000).Hilda Hilst: três leituras. Editora Mulheres.ISBN85-86501-22-0
Siqueira de Azevedo Filho, Deneval (2007).A bela, a fera e a santa sem a saia: ensaios sobre Hilda Hilst. Vitória: GM Gráfica e Editora.ISBN85-99510-20-7
