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Centre for the Study of Contemporary Women's Writing (CCWW)

Hilda Hilst

Hilda de Almeida Prado Hilst (21 April 1930–4 February 2004) is considered one of Brazil’s most important contemporary writers. Born in Jaú in the interior of the State of São Paulo, her father, Apolonio de Almeid a Prado Hilst, came from a traditional and wealthy background and was a journalist, essayist and poet as well as a coffee farmer. The author herself recognised that her father plays a central role in her oeuvre. From the age of 7, Hilst was aware that her father suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, spending almost half his life in sanatoria. Her mother, Bedecilda Vaz Cardoso, the daughter of Portuguese immigrants, separated from her father when the writer was only 2 years old. ‘Meu pai ficou louco, a obra dele acabou. E eu tentei fazer uma obra muito boa, para que ele tivesse orgulho de mim.’ Hilst’s fascination with madness and its manifestations was born of the desire to connect with her father. Her writing would later evolve to examine mankind’s frailties and limitations through diverse literary genres, including poetry, fiction, drama and newspaper columns. Through these forms, the author immersed herself in a profound exploration of the diverse possibilities of language. Towards the end of her career, Hilst identified that her interest in multiple fields of knowledge and her preoccupation with language ultimately represented a search for God. ‘Posso blasfemar muito, mas meu negócio é o sagrado. É Deus mesmo, meu negócio é com Deus’ (both excerpts quoted in Cadernos de Literatura Brasileira, 8 October 1999).    

Hilda_Hilst_by_Fernando_Lemos_2 1954 WikiCommons pd.jpg
Hilda Hilst, 1954 (Photo: Fernando Lemos via Wikimedia Commons p.d.)

After her parents’ split in 1932, Hilst moved with her mother and half-brother to Santos, where she began her schooling. In 1937 she became a pupil at a boarding school run by nuns in the city of São Paulo where she remained for 8 years. After finishing secondary school, Hilst studied Law at the University of São Paulo (USP), graduating in 1952. However, she worked as a lawyer for less than a year before deciding to abandon the profession, realising she was unsuited to it. During her university years, Hilst adopted a bohemian lifestyle and became ever more deeply involved in literature. In 1950, she made her debut with Presságio, a collection of poetry, which received positive reviews, including a famous critique by Cecilia Meireles. Having been an eager reader since an early age and considered a brilliant student, Hilst asserted that her strong interest in literature was initially inspired by poetry, citing Jorge de Lima as her favourite poet. Nonetheless her interests were wide-ranging, including Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Bataille, Joyce, Beckett, Rilke, Kafka and Camus.  

Hilst was a very beautiful woman and her conduct shocked 1950s Brazilian society. She lived her life at an intense pace, often travelling abroad and socialising with fellow artists and bourgeois friends, mainly in São Paulo. All the while, Hilst continued to produce poetry. In 1962, she won the São Paulo PEN Club award, for Sete cantos do poeta para o anjo. This was to be the first prize among many to come. During the course of her 50 year-long career, Hilst received the majority of Brazil’s most prestigious literary awards.

In 1963, Hilst made a decision that radically changed her life and intensified her literary activities. Influenced by Report to Greco, by Nikos Kazantzakis, she decided to cut herself off from the world, moving to her mother’s farm near Campinas in the São Paulo countryside. Her aim was to dedicate herself fully to her writing. In 1966, she opened A Casa do Sol (The Sunhouse), in the grounds of the farm. This became an informal cultural centre which opened its doors to many artists throughout the ‘70s and ‘80s. It was there that she married the sculptor Dante Casarini, her husband for 19 years. Hilst lived at A Casa do Sol until she died, aged 73. A Casa do Sol engendered the current Instituto Hilda Hilst – Centro de Estudos Casa do Sol, which still hosts events and activities related to the writer’s work.

It was at Casa do Sol that Hilst began writing plays in 1967, and later, in 1970, fiction. She wrote 8 plays, of which O Verdugo won the Prêmio Anchieta, the most coveted Brazilian theatre award of the time. Her Ficções received the APCA Award as the best book of 1977 from the Associação Paulista de Críticos de Arte. A short time later, Hilst received an award from APCA in 1981 in recognition of her entire literary output. She also received the Jabuti prize twice: in 1984 in poetry, for Cantares de perda e predileção, and in 1994 for Rútilo nada, a collection of short stories. According to critic Anatol Rosenfeld, in Hilst’s prose ‘todos os gêneros se fundem’ (online at http://www.angelfire.com/ri/casadosol/criticaar.html).

During her career, Hilst underwent 2 notable phases that influenced her work and contributed to her public persona as an eccentric artist. Hilst described having paranormal visions throughout her life and in the ‘70s, influenced by the Swedish researcher Friederich Jurgenson, she became interested in transcommunication. She purported to record voices from other dimensions, which she discussed in interviews. Furthermore, between 1990 and 1992, she defiantly launched her famous erotic trilogy, comprising O caderno Rosa de Lory Lamb, Contos d’escárnio/Textos grotescos and Cartas de um sedutor. According to Hilst, the trilogy was an attempt to increase her sales, but the experiment failed. The works were misunderstood, dividing both the public and critics, principally because despite attempting to be pornographic, the stories were still erudite, containing philosophical and metaphysical ideas. Indeed, as scholar Alcir Pécora points out, the trilogy could be considered the least erotic of Hilst’s works, since her oeuvre is permeated by an eroticism which has its roots in ‘traditional mystic matrixes’, such as the biblical chants and the ancient ‘mystical poetry of the Iberian Peninsula’ (online at http://revistapesquisa.fapesp.br/en/2004/03/11/hilda-hilst-has-died-long-live-hilda-hilst/). The presence of her eccentric public persona would have been responsible for ‘uma tremenda indiferença pelo projeto literário e pelas ideias de Hilda’, according to Cristiano Diniz (Fico besta quando me entendem, 2013, p. 6).

From 1982 to 1995, Hilst took part in the Programa do Artista Residente of the University of Campinas (Unicamp). For 2 years, she led the Text Laboratory of the Department of Performing Arts at the Unicamp’s Institute of Arts. In 1995, the University bought the author’s personal archives, which can now be openly accessed by researchers at the Institute of Language Studies. Up to the present day, her plays feature on the Dramatic Arts curricula of both Unicamp and USP. From 1992 to 1995 she published a column in Correio Popular, a local newspaper.

Hilda Hilst left a legacy of dozens of published works, the majority in the form of poetry. In 2001, Globo publishing house bought the rights to her work and began to publish most of her titles in a famous collection. Hilst’s work has been translated into French, English, German, Spanish and Italian.

Complied by Rosane Carneiro Ramos (London)