Hilda Hilst

Hilda de Almeida Prado Hilst (21 April 1930 – 4 February 2004) was a Brazilian poet, novelist, and playwright. Her work touches on the themes of mysticism, insanity, the body, eroticism, and female sexual liberation. Hilst greatly revered the work of James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, and the influence of their styles—like stream of consciousness and fractured reality—is evident in her own work.

Born in Jaú, São Paulo, Hilst graduated from the University 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 by Nikos Kazantzakis' Report to Greco to move away from the São Paulo scene, and she secluded herself in an estate near the outskirts of Campinas. 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 by schizophrenia 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. 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. Her mother was also institutionalized at the end of her life, in the same institution as her husband.

Hilst grew up in Jaú, 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 at Mackenzie Presbyterian University. 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.

After graduating from Mackenzie, Hilst began studying for her second degree at the law school at the University of São Paulo, where she met her lifelong friend Lygia Fagundes.

Hilst published her first book of poetry in 1950, Omen (Presságio), which received great acclaim from her contemporaries like Jorge de Lima and Cecília 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. There, she briefly dated singer-actor Dean Martin and impersonated a journalist, in an attempt to meet Marlon Brando. She asked him about his thoughts on Franz Kafka's works, to which he dismissively replied, "I won't think about Mr. Kafka".

Upon her return to São Paulo, she settled in the Sumaré neighborhood, and was frequently in the company of other artists, such as Gilka Machado and Bráulio Pedroso. However, after reading Nikos 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 in Campinas.