Clarice Lispector, renowned brazilian writer and poetress, with simple phrases wrote a little masterpiece. The phrases (a version into English) she used are shown below, but not in order. Once you realized the proper order youīll find out the beauty of what she wrote because, if you read it downwards, itīs the end of a love affair, and if you read it upwards, itīs a confession of a great passion. Can you just rearrange the phrases below to achieve this? You canīt add anything and the punctuations already made belong to the phrases where they are. All the initials I capitalized deliberately to make it not too easy, but in the original only those who start a phrase are capitalized.

           I still want you, as I always did.
           I`m sure that
           I feel inside that
           I already forgot you!
           I`ll be lying if I say that
           And Iīll never use again the phrase
           Nothing was in vain.
           Sorry, but I must tell you the truth:
           You donīt mean anything to me.
           I love you!
           I couldnīt ever say that
           Itīs too late...
           I donīt love you anymore.
           I preserve a great love.
           I feel more and more that                      

I decided to organize and categorize each of the lines.  I found four different categories: positive statements, negative statements, positive incomplete statements, and negative incomplete statements (I know these aren't the correct grammatical terms).

Positive: (P)
Nothing was in vain.
I preserve a great love.
I love you!         
I still want you, as I always did.

Negative: (N)
I already forgot you!
You donīt mean anything to me.
Itīs too late...
I donīt love you anymore.

Positive Incomplete: (PI)
Sorry, but I must tell you the truth:
I feel inside that
I feel more and more that
I`m sure that

Negative Incomplete: (NI)
And Iīll never use again the phrase
I`ll be lying if I say that
I couldnīt ever say that

I believe the poem should alternate between complete and incomplete statements.  Downwards, the NI should be followed by P and PI by N, as much as possible.  Upwards, PI should be followed by P and NI followed by N as much as possible.  There may be exceptions though...

There is still the question of which lines to use from each category.  Right now, all I can say is that some lines seem to fit together better than others.

So far, Clarice seems to be a pretty clever poet!

Posted by Tristan on 2005-09-09 22:51:46