Mineirinho

Short story or essay by Clarice Lispector. In Complete Stories.

Dream relating this essay to 2666¹

While on the fifth part of 2666, I had a dream that I received a letter in the mail; it contained perhaps some 5–10 pages of poetry from an anonymous author. I thought that it was excellent, possibly it was written by Hermes himself, and that was why I could read it only in a dream and would forget it afterwards. I also thought that somehow I could have written it myself, which I suppose makes sense, because the way gods write poetry is by inspiring humans to do it, as humans are better suited for the task. I also thought that it was written by someone else, and that I should look for this person, because they are my friend, and either I must help them, or they must help me, or both. Finally, I thought that it reminded me of something written by Lispector.

After waking up, I thought that I should open up the collection of Complete Stories on a random page and read, since I had not read the whole thing, so some of the stories would be new to me, and that I should specifically understand whatever I read to be somehow referencing 2666. I opened it to this page; I had not read this story before, and I would not really have expected Lispector to have anything to say about a subject like this before. Obviously, it is highly relevant to 2666; specifically (I don’t know precisely why) it reminded me of the part where Haas is in prison, and where we are told about his relationship with his lawyer. Maybe because I had another dream that I also thought was connected to this part.

1. Dreamt night of April 10–11, 2026. Indexed in list of dreams. ↩