Transcript The Hour of the Star

The Hour of the
Star
Clarice Lispector
“The Face of Garbo” by Roland Barthes
“To make up for it she identified with
the picture of the young Greta Garbo.
To my surprise, since I didn’t imagine
Macabea could feel what a face like
that was saying. Greta Garbo, she
thought without explaining herself, that
must be the most important woman in
the world. But what she really wanted
to be wasn’t the haughty Greta Garbo
whose tragic sensuality was on a
solitary pedestal. What she wanted, as I
said, was to look like Marilyn.”
Now Voyager, 1942
Edgar Morin, The Stars, 1957
For the soul is exactly that symbiotic
site where real and imaginary encounter
and feed on each other; love, that
phenomenon of the soul that mingles
most intimately our imaginary
projection-identifications and our real
life, assumes an increased importance.
The “I” is first of all an other, a
double, revealed and localized in
shadows, reflections, mirrors… The
double has pasted himself against
us, has become our “character,” the
pretentious role we unceasingly
play, as much for ourselves as for
anyone else. The duality is
ultimately internalized: it is a
dialogue with our soul, our
conscience.