Arbol de Alejandra Pizarnik Reassessed Ed Fiona J Mackintosh Karl Posso

Coleccin Tmesis SERIE A: MONOGRAFAS, 248
RBOL DE ALEJANDRA PIZARNIK REASSESSED

Thirty-five years after her death, this book reassesses Argentinian poet Alejandra Pizarnik (193672) in the light of recent publications of her complete poetry and prose, diaries, and previously unavailable archive material. The essays in this volume explore Pizarniks work from new angles: they examine her production as a literary critic, revealing her intense identificatory strategies as a reader, and the impact of such activities upon her own creative process. They also weigh up the influence of her ambiguous attitudes towards sexuality on her poetic personae, as well as the ways in which her concern with sex inspires her experimentation with humorous prose. New approaches are taken to key texts and themes: in the case of the much-studied work La condesa sangrienta, through a detailed philosophical reading involving comparisons with Kafka, and, in the case of the theme of the split subject, through the lens of translation. By broadening the scope of Pizarnik studies, this book will act as a catalyst for further research into the work of this compelling poet. Fiona J. Mackintosh lectures in Hispanic Studies at the University of Edinburgh and Karl Posso lectures in Spanish American and Brazilian Studies at the University of Manchester.
Tamesis
Founding Editor J. E. Varey
General Editor Stephen M. Hart
Editorial Board Alan Deyermond Julian Weiss Charles Davis
RBOL DE ALEJANDRA PIZARNIK REASSESSED
Edited by
Fiona J. Mackintosh
with
Karl Posso
TAMESIS
Contributors 2007 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner First published 2007 by Tamesis, Woodbridge ISBN 978-1-85566-153-0
Tamesis is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt. Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This publication is printed on acid-free paper Typeset by Mizpah Publishing Services, Chennai, India Printed in Great Britain by Biddles Ltd, Kings Lynn
CONTENTS
Contributors Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction
FIONA J. MACKINTOSH AND KARL POSSO
vii ix x 1 13 36 60
Gender, Sexuality and Silence(s) in the Writing of Alejandra Pizarnik

SUSANA CHVEZ SILVERMAN
Different Aspects of Humour and Wordplay in the Work of Alejandra Pizarnik

EVELYN FISHBURN
The Tormenting Beauty of Ideals: A Deleuzian Interpretation of Alejandra Pizarniks La condesa sangrienta and Franz Kafkas In the Penal Colony
KARL POSSO
Alejandra Pizarnik, Surrealism and Reading

JASON WILSON
77 91 110
Alejandra Pizarnik, the Perceptive Reader

FLORINDA F. GOLDBERG
Alejandra Pizarniks palais du vocabulaire: Constructing the cuerpo potico

FIONA J. MACKINTOSH
Alejandra Pizarniks Poetry: Translating the Translation of Subjectivity

CECILIA ROSSI
130 148 165
The Complete Works of Alejandra Pizarnik? Editors and Editions

CRISTINA PIA
Afterword
Subject Index
167
CONTRIBUTORS
Susana Chvez Silverman is a professor of Spanish, U.S. Latino/a and Latin American literature and culture at Pomona College (California). She is the author of Killer Crnicas: Bilingual Memories (2004) and co-editor of Tropicalizations: Transcultural Representations of Latinidad (1997) and Reading and Writing the Ambiente: Queer Sexualities in Latino, Latin American and Spanish Culture (2000). Current book projects include Goodbye, Alejandra: Reading Pizarnik and (Her) Others. Evelyn Fishburn is Professor Emeritus of Latin American Literary Studies at London Metropolitan University and Honorary Senior Research Fellow, University College London. She has published extensively on Borges; she edited Borges and Europe Revisited (1998) and, with Psiche Hughes, A Borges Dictionary (1998). She has articles on Storni, Somers, Castellanos and Pizarnik, and was the editor of Short Fiction by Spanish-American Women (1988). Florinda F. Goldberg is a lecturer in Spanish and Latin American Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her publications include Alejandra Pizarnik: Este espacio que somos (1994) and she is co-editor of the review Noaj. She is a board member of the Asociacin Internacional de Escritores Judos en Espaol y Portugus, and of LAJSA (Latin American Jewish Studies Association). Fiona J. Mackintosh is a lecturer in Hispanic Studies at the University of Edinburgh. Her research interests are focused around twentieth-century Latin American writing, and she has published Childhood in the Works of Silvina Ocampo and Alejandra Pizarnik (2003) as well as various articles. Cristina Pia is a poet and translator, and she lectures at the Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. She has published seven books of poetry and six critical works, including Poesa y experiencia del lmite: leer a Alejandra Pizarnik (1999) and Alejandra Pizarnik: una biografa (1991). She has won various prizes for her poetry, translations and critical essays, and she has received scholarships from the USA and France. Karl Posso lectures in Spanish American and Brazilian studies at the University of Manchester. He has published articles on Julio Cortzar, Reinaldo Arenas, Henri Bergson, Deleuze and Guattari, and the monograph Artful Seduction:
viii
CONTRIBUTORS
Homosexuality and the Problematics of Exile (2004) on gender theory and the work of Silviano Santiago and Caio Fernando Abreu. Cecilia Rossi is from Buenos Aires. She was awarded a PhD in Literary Translation by the University of East Anglia in 2007. Her translations of Pizarniks poetry have appeared in Comparative Criticism (2000) and Modern Poetry in Translation (2005) and received first prize in the John Dryden Translation Competition (1999), as well as a commendation in the Stephen Spender Prize for Poetry Translation (2006). She was acting Associate Director of the British Centre for Literary Translation from June 2006 to March 2007. Jason Wilson is Professor of Latin American Literature at University College London. His main publications include Octavio Paz: A Study of his Poetics (1979), Octavio Paz (1989), Travellers Literary Companion to South and Central America (1993), Buenos Aires, a Cultural and Literary Companion (1999) and Jorge Luis Borges (2006).
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I should like to thank the following: Karl Posso, for exemplary editing, and for more than generously giving of his time and red ink. Princeton University Library, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, for permission to quote from the Alejandra Pizarnik Papers (CO395), and the Friends of the Library for their generous grant enabling me to undertake this research. AnnaLee Pauls, Meg Rich and other staff in the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, for their willing help and friendship during my months research leave in Princeton. The Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures at the University of Edinburgh and the Argentine Embassy through the kind offices of Sr. Javier Pedrazzini, for help with publication costs. Fiona J. Mackintosh
ABBREVIATIONS
Correspondencia Diarios Poesa Prosa Ivonne Bordelois, Correspondencia Pizarnik (Buenos Aires: Seix Barral / Planeta, 1998) Alejandra Pizarnik, Diarios, ed. Ana Becci (Barcelona: Lumen, 2003) Alejandra Pizarnik, Poesa completa (19551972), ed. Ana Becci (Barcelona: Lumen, 2000) Alejandra Pizarnik, Prosa completa, ed. Ana Becci, prol. Ana Nuo (Barcelona: Lumen, 2002)
Editors Note
Reference to material held by Princeton University Library Department of Rare Books and Special Collections in the Alejandra Pizarnik Papers (CO395) will be referred to in the following way: Princeton, box #, folder #, p. # (p. # only in the case of notebooks where Pizarnik numbered the pages) All material from the Alejandra Pizarnik Papers is published with the permission of Princeton University Library.
Introduction
Fiona J. Mackintosh and Karl Posso
O jardim era to bonito que ela teve medo do Inferno. Clarice Lispector1 Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal. T. S. Eliot2 Si quieres ser feliz como me dices/ No poetices. Julio Cortzar3
In recent years Pizarnik has come to be widely acknowledged as a key figure within Argentinian literature. Born Flora Alejandra Pizarnik in 1936 in a Jewish immigrant district of Buenos Aires, Pizarnik rapidly evolved a distinctive poetic persona, the personaje alejandrino (Correspondencia, p. 53). This poetic self fed off her intense and eclectic reading which spanned Golden Age Spanish poetry, potes maudits such as Baudelaire and Rimbaud, surrealism, and the tortured worlds of Artaud and Kafka. The result was an accentuation of her latent feelings of estrangement, both from her immediate social environment and ultimately from language itself. In her short lifetime (ended by a fatal overdose in 1972) she published eight collections of poetry, as well as numerous uncollected poems and a significant number of reviews in literary magazines. Her first poetry collection was the adolescent La tierra ms ajena (1955), which parades self-consciously modern urban references, for example to la ventanilla tranviaria (Poesa, p. 29) or to the puerto de colores impresionistas (p. 32). The latter phrase calls to mind Benito Quinquela Martns popular paintings of the port area close to where Pizarnik grew up. More specific allusions to visual art would feature in later poetry, for example poems 246 of rbol de Diana are prefaced by the phrases un dibujo de Wols, exposicin Goya, and un dibujo de Klee (Poesa, pp. 1268), and there are references to Hieronymus Bosch, Marc Chagall, Odilon Redon and others. However, whilst her references to artists become more concrete, the poetic images associated with these artists become much less obvious. Pizarnik eventually disowned this early collection,
1 Clarice Lispector, Amor, in Laos de Famlia (1960) (Rio de Janeiro: Rocco, 1998), pp. 1929 (p. 25). 2 T. S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood (1920) (London: Methuen, 1960), p. 125. 3 Julio Cortzar, Rayuela (1963) (Madrid: Ctedra, 1988), p. 609.
but some poems from it are worth considering, such as Vagar en lo opaco (Poesa, p. 18), which focuses solipsistically on her eyes, or Yo soy (p. 30), which attempts to define the self as a kind of seer. These examples anticipate the inward-looking direction that her poetry would subsequently take. Rather than simply looking at ships in the nearby port and dreaming of irse, y no volver (Poesa, p. 32), as if wishing physically to leave Argentinas shores (which she would in 1960, bound for Paris), her later poetry repeats that trope of leaving, but the destination gradually becomes a more metaphorical otra orilla, associated with death rather than any actual foreign shore. This early collection was followed in 1956 by La ltima inocencia, and two years later by Las aventuras perdidas. In the former, the theme of leaving is reiterated, both in the poem Cenizas, which promises Pronto nos iremos (Poesa, p. 55), and most prominently in the title poem, where the mesmerizing word Partir is repeated in each short group of lines, culminating in the exasperated exhortation Pero arremete, viajera! (p. 61). After this desperate attempt to launch her poetic persona, the fledgling poetic self is eventually named, in what has become one of Pizarniks best known and most frequently quoted poems, Slo un nombre (Poesa, p. 65). The name in question is alejandra with its exotic Russian ancestry, in preference to the homeliness of Flora. Also part of the process of fashioning this persona is defining the nocturnal realm she will inhabit. Both this collection and Las aventuras perdidas contain poems which focus on the night: Noche, La noche and La luz cada de la noche. The publication of her next and best known collection, rbol de Diana (1962), marks something of a watershed in Pizarniks life. It dates from the most intense and formative period of her life, the time spent in Paris from 1960 to 1964. During these years her writing matured and she became friends with many writers, both French, such as Andr Pieyre de Mandiargues, and ex-patriate Latin Americans such as Julio Cortzar and Octavio Paz, who wrote the prologue for this collection. In rbol de Diana her poems become much sparer; of the thirtyeight numbered (rather than titled) poems, many are only two or three lines in length. The concision of rbol de Diana was followed by Los trabajos y las noches (1965), a collection in which she once again uses titles, and the presence of an implied second person gives many of the poems a greater sense of intimacy. The title poem of Los trabajos y las noches privileges thirst as the poets emblem. Other key themes are consolidated in this collection, including childhood, orphanhood, silence and the problematic nature of language, as indicated in the poem Fronteras intiles, where the poet seems to doubt the substance of her words as they circle around an absence:
Hablo de qu hablo de lo que no es (Poesa, p. 185)
Such doubts regarding what and how language communicates are magnified in the collection Extraccin de la piedra de locura (1968), though we also see here
INTRODUCTION
a kind of feverish intensification of poetic activity, associated with the poets realm, the night: Toda la noche hago la noche. Toda la noche escribo. Palabra por palabra yo escribo la noche (Poesa, p. 215). The poem Fragmentos para dominar el silencio perhaps best sums up the tensions experienced by the poet, through its use of paradoxical statements such as: He querido iluminarme a la luz de mi falta de luz (Poesia, p. 223). This reminds us of the kinds of conceits common in Spanish Golden Age poetry, in which Pizarnik was well versed.4 The final two parts of this four-part collection diverge, one consisting of epigrammatic single-line poems which seem in their elliptical nature to be tending towards silence, and the other veering towards the excessive and obsessive language of madness. The move towards silence in the third part is evident in clipped sentences which lack a subject or a main verb, or which thematically cluster around silence: Ninguna cosa. Boca cosida. Prpados cosidos (Poesa, p. 242); Pero el silencio es cierto. Por eso escribo (Poesa, p. 243). By contrast, the fourth part, rather than paring language down, draws attention to its shortcomings through repetition:
alguien me vio llorando en el sueo y yo expliqu (dentro de lo posible), mediante palabras simples (dentro de lo posible), palabras buenas y seguras (dentro de lo posible). Me adue de mi persona, la arranqu del hermoso delirio. (Poesa, p. 252)
The ever-seductive presence of the night is now linked both to death and to music rather than to a frenzied act of writing: Toda la noche escucho el llamamiento de la muerte, toda la noche escucho el canto de la muerte junto al ro, toda la noche escucho la voz de la muerte que me llama (Poesa, p. 254). This conjunction of music or song and death prefigures the final major collection published by Pizarnik in her lifetime, El infierno musical (1971). (Nombres y figuras [1969], her first collection to be published in Spain, had been published in the interim, but all except three of the poems included in it reappeared in El infierno musical.)5 The cornerstone of this important collection is the Piedra fundamental (Poesa, pp. 2646), in which all of Pizarniks earlier themes and poetic dilemmas re-emerge. The self is irremediably split, language fails, even music fails, and as if she had never yet managed to leave the docks of her earliest poetry, the poet is still seeking un lugar desde el cual partir (Poesa, p. 265). (This ide fixe is echoed in the diaries, where Pizarnik confesses to Intranquilidad nueva, como si el barco o el tren estuviera por partir y yo, con el billete en la mano, an no he decidido si partir o quedarme [Diarios, p. 404]).
4 Her notebooks show that she had read, for example, Gngoras Soledad segunda; she paraphrases parts of it, commenting specifically on lines where la luz del sol is alternately obscured then revealed (Princeton, box 4, folder 3). She had also read San Juan de la Cruzs poem Llama de amor viva and his commentary on it (Princeton, box 4, folder 9), and many of Quevedos sonnets (Princeton, box 4, folders 3 and 9 particularly). 5 See Cristina Pias note to her edition of Pizarniks Obras completas: poesa completa y prosa selecta (Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 1993; repr. 1994), p. 8.
The final section of El infierno musical is entitled Los posedos entre lilas; the dialogues and prose passages which make up this section are extracts from Pizarniks longer work, Los perturbados entre lilas (1969; published posthumously), her only theatrical piece.6 In its use of absurd and puerile humour this play is naturally paired by critics with the idiosyncratic collection of prose texts gathered under the whimsical title of La bucanera de Pernambuco o Hilda la polgrafa (197071; published posthumously). The emphasis in this latter text is on obscene word play. Some characters are sketchily developed for example, Bosta Watson and Flor de Edipo Ch but they are as much products of linguistic distortion and double entendres as characters with identifiable traits. Absurd situations which revolve obsessively around sex, lavatorial humour and psychoanalysis are mixed up with a bewildering array of clashing cultural references. The sheer linguistic excess of this text, which declares itself as el espacio donde celebramos la fiesta de mis voces vivas (Prosa, p. 97), contrasts sharply with the notorious prose piece La condesa sangrienta (published for the first time in book form in 1971), which gained a different audience for Pizarnik from that primarily interested in her poetry. Its fascination lies not only in Pizarniks choice of subject the notorious sixteenth-century Hungarian Countess Bthory who tortured and killed young women but also in her seemingly detached treatment of that subject. A brief note Pizarnik made, while reading Valentine Penroses book on which La condesa sangrienta is based, links this text more directly to her own constant poetic preoccupations: Entre Erzsbet y las cosas un espacio vaco (Princeton, box 4, folder 3). This empty space recalls one of Pizarniks most heartfelt and desperate poems (also published in 1971), which sums up the ultimately intractable problems with which she continually struggled as a poet; the poem En esta noche, en este mundo asks simply si digo agua beber?/ si digo pan comer? (Poesa, p. 399), and it is into this unbridgeable gap between language and the world that her poetry endlessly falls (Poesa, p. 446):
Alguien cae en su primera cada
In view of Pizarniks constant preoccupation with the treacherous nature of language, Thorpe Running places her firmly within a Latin American tradition of critical poetry.7 As Running concludes, the goal which Pizarnik shares with other poets in this tradition (including Octavio Paz) is that of a language without
6 See Cristina Pias essay in this volume regarding why there are two titles in circulation for this piece, Los posedos entre lilas and Los perturbados entre lilas. 7 Thorpe Running, The Negative Poems of Alejandra Pizarnik, in The Critical Poem: Borges, Paz and Other Language-Centred Poets in Latin America (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1996), pp. 87104.
INTRODUCTION
limits (p. 104). For Pizarnik, such a language was ultimately equated with silence or death.
Tradition and Voices

Pizarnik was acutely aware of tradition and of writing in the wake of others. We can see her as indebted to T. S. Eliots notion that the most individual parts of [a poets] work may be those in which the dead poets . . . assert their immortality most vigorously.8 According to Csar Aira, Pizarnik vivi y ley y escribi en la estela del surrealismo,9 as well as being a successor to the tradition of French potes maudits and to Latin American poets such as Rubn Daro and Alfonsina Storni. Aside from direct intertextual reference, Pizarniks acquaintance with Daro is obvious in her general penchant for Modernista imagery.10 The legacy of Storni, meanwhile, can be seen in frequent thematic echoes of her poem La loba, and of her resonantly-titled collection Mundo de siete pozos (1934); the idea that morir es partir from Stornis Diario de navegacin (1930) resurfaces in Pizarniks early poem La ltima inocencia, discussed above, and informs her ongoing sense of leaving as dying. Pizarniks attitude towards such precursors was experienced both as a richness and as a very real threat, an anxiety of influence. An early unpublished poem by Pizarnik entitled Destino de alfonsina begins with a tribute: Junto a ti, hermana/ de las olas, dej unas flores (Princeton, box 4, folder 1). However, she later mocks such an idea of sorority, labelling one of the characters in La bucanera de Pernambuco No-Alfonsina (Prosa, p. 160). Such ambivalence is symptomatic of the fact that Pizarnik knew that she could not form [her]self wholly on one or two private admirations (Eliot, p. 81), but had somehow to find her own voice. She comments wryly in her diary Supongo que pertenezco al gnero de poeta lrico amenazado por lo inefable y lo incomunicable. Y no obstante, no lo deseo ser (Diarios, p. 413). The question of Pizarniks poetic voice, or more aptly voices, is one which has occupied a prominent place in the substantial critical literature on her work.11 Indeed it has become something of a critical commonplace to contrast the lyrical
8 T. S. Eliot, Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919), repr. in Twentieth Century Poetry: Critical Essays and Documents, ed. Graham Martin and P. N. Furbank (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1975), pp. 7985 (p. 80). Pizarnik published a critical essay Sobre T. S. Eliot in El corno emplumado, 14 (1965), 89, and she refers to him in her diaries and notebooks. 9 Csar Aira, Alejandra Pizarnik (Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo, 1998), p. 11. 10 As charted by Alicia Borinsky in Alejandra Pizarnik: The Self and its Impossible Landscapes, in A Dream of Light and Shadow: Portraits of Latin American Women Writers, ed. Marjorie Agosn (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995), pp. 291302. 11 For example, Susan Bassnetts Speaking with Many Voices: The Poems of Alejandra Pizarnik, in her Knives and Angels: Women Writers in Latin America (London: Zed Books, 1990), pp. 3651; Susana Haydu, Las dos voces de Alejandra Pizarnik, in El puente de las palabras: homenaje a David Lagmanovich, ed. Ins Azar (Washington: Organization of American States, 1994), pp. 24556.
voice of her early poems with the biting, self-destructive and obscene voice of the later prose and theatrical work. Critics have tended to privilege the former voice, which Susana Chvez Silverman here aptly characterizes as the overdeterminedly Pizarnikian voice in her essay Gender, Sexuality and Silence(s) in the Writing of Alejandra Pizarnik. But recent publications and the availability of manuscript collections allow for a broader and fuller assessment of the many voices of Pizarnik. The appearance of her Poesa completa in 2000, Prosa completa in 2002 (including substantial sections devoted to her critical articles, prologues and reviews) and the Diarios in 2003, together with the Pizarnik Collection housed in the Princeton Library (which first became accessible in 2002), give a more complex picture.12 They also, as Cristina Pia explores here in her essay The Complete Works of Alejandra Pizarnik? Editors and Editions, raise timely theoretical and ethical questions about precisely what constitutes an oeuvre. Pia notes how some of Pizarniks letters can be seen as text in a Barthesian sense, and have indeed been productively read as such alongside the punning prose works. Whilst such generic ambiguity enriches the interpretative potential of both texts, it presents problems of categorization for the would-be editor of Pizarniks complete work. Pia highlights inconsistencies arising from problems of classification in the recent Lumen edition of Pizarniks poetry and prose, and also of her diaries, and outlines the issues for the scholar of Pizarnik in dealing with this newly available material.13 One of the main strands of this reassessment of Pizarnik deals with the crucial importance of her reading, as critic and poet, of other texts, and their subsequent incorporation or transmutation into her own, what Delfina Muschietti describes elsewhere using the verb fagocitar.14 Octavio Paz, in his introduction to rbol de Diana, speaks about a cristalizacin verbal (Poesa, p. 101), and this notion is important to an understanding of Pizarniks poetic process. The verbal crystallization of what can now be appreciated as a truly vast nexus of intertexts into something new and individual comes under scrutiny in those essays which here deal with Pizarnik as both reader and poet in parallel. Pizarnik the careful reader, already revealed to us in those of her review essays gathered in Pias 1993 edition of Obras completas: poesa completa y prosa selecta, takes on greater significance through the substantial section devoted to critical works in the Prosa completa, especially when read alongside her other critical essays which she published in diverse journals, but which have not as yet all been collected in a single volume. We can see through all these readings and through her
12 A finding aid and description of the Princeton Alejandra Pizarnik Papers may be accessed from http://libweb2.princeton.edu/rbsc2/aids/msslist/maindex.htm 13 Another edition of Pizarniks complete works, Obra completa, ed. Gustavo Zuluaga (Medelln: rbol de Diana, 2000), was not widely distributed. Zuluaga also edited the following by Pizarnik: Poemas (Medelln: Endymion, 1986); Prosa potica (Medelln: Endymion, 1987); Obras selectas (Medelln: Holderlin, 1992; republ. as Obras escogidas). 14 Delfina Muschietti, Las tres caras de Alejandra Pizarnik, review of Pizarniks Poesa completa (Barcelona: Lumen, 2001), in Pgina/12 (Argentina, July 2001). Reproduced at http://www.lainsignia.org/2001/julio/cul_077.htm
INTRODUCTION
unpublished notebooks the configuration of her personal library and private admirations Artaud, Baudelaire, Breton, Cortzar, Macedonio Fernndez, Mallarm, Michaux and Paz, amongst others. Obviously many of these preferences had already been apparent through intertextuality in the poetry, but others (such as Gngora and Quevedo, many of whose sonnets she copies into her notebooks) were a more latent presence. We also see confirmation of Ivonne Bordeloiss statement that Alejandra conoca a los grandes marginales, nunca citados en las bibliografas acadmicas,15 represented in an Argentinian context by such writers as Antonio Porchia, Georges Schehad, or Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (to whose waste books or Sudelbuch we might compare her palais du vocabulaire notebooks).16 The breadth of Pizarniks reading and reviewing, and the importance of her readerly and critical voice, is therefore something which is only recently being investigated by scholars, and it is explored here by Florinda Goldbergs essay Alejandra Pizarnik, the Perceptive Reader. Goldberg highlights in particular the importance to Pizarnik of her readings of Octavio Paz; she also evaluates the degree of empathy or distancing between reader and text in several of Pizarniks reviews. As Cristina Pia has noted, the degree of closeness to her subject lends some of her critical essays the character of textos dobles , telling us as much about her as about the text being reviewed.17 We could see this critical process as Pizarniks invisible work, to borrow Efran Kristals term, which is now being made visible.18 Kristal sees the invisible process of translation as more central to Borgess literary process than the familiar images of labyrinths, mirrors, tigers or encyclopedias, and in the same way, Pizarniks invisible activity as reader/critic could be seen to be as central to her poetic development and configuration as the much-discussed images of the night, death, childhood, the garden. Jason Wilsons essay Alejandra Pizarnik, Surrealism and Reading also looks at Pizarniks activity as a reader, but focuses in particular on her complex and contradictory relationship to surrealism as an example of the dynamic between reading and creating in her life. Although Pizarniks clarifying sojourn in Paris (to use Jason Weisss phrase) is another of the biographical details by which she could be seen simply to conform to an Argentine pattern,19 Wilsons chapter looks more closely at this Parisian apprenticeship, pointing out that Pizarnik read not only the surrealists, but also criticism on the surrealists, and she therefore found her voice as a critic of surrealism (Wilson). His examination of Pizarnik places her in a Borgesian readerly tradition, in the sense that the writer is first
15 Cited by Cristina Pia in Alejandra Pizarnik: una biografa (Buenos Aires: Planeta, 1991; 2nd edn Corregidor, 1999), p. 99. 16 Princeton, box 7, folder 42 contains a manuscript entitled Sundelbuch [sic]. 17 See introduction to Alejandra Pizarnik, Obras completas, ed. Cristina Pia, p. 9. 18 Efran Kristal, Invisible Work: Borges and Translation (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2002). 19 Jason Weiss, The Lights of Home: A Century of Latin American Writers in Paris (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 59.
and foremost a reader. However, in her case as Wilson notes with respect to her re-reading of Bretons Nadja the writer is a reader whose intensely identificatory reading strategies threatened to cause anxiety regarding her own creative voice. The creative voice about which Pizarnik seems to have been most ambivalent is the obscene, absurd and humorous voice, mainly known to us through her later prose works and theatrical pieces. However, far from being a late and sporadic experiment, this kind of prose was worked at extensively by Pizarnik throughout her life; indeed, amongst her manuscripts and notebooks there are examples of other theatrical pieces, prose pieces and extended humorous prose works which show Pizarniks concerted efforts to express herself in an antilyrical way. Carolina Depetris had already underlined the importance of the late prose, reading it as el indicio fundamental de una nueva direccin potica tendiente a resolver la tensin entre opciones dismiles en la que constantemente se debate su escritura.20 Evelyn Fishburns essay in this volume, Different Aspects of Humour and Wordplay in the Work of Alejandra Pizarnik, gives Pizarniks humorous prose voice its due attention, analysing in depth the linguistic and cultural mechanisms employed in the key texts, Los perturbados entre lilas and La bucanera de Pernambuco o Hilda la polgrafa. Fishburn draws our attention to one specific aspect of Pizarniks wordplay which is notably and surprisingly underdeveloped by her, that is, the Jewish dimension. Critics have frequently invoked Pizarniks own rootlessness and sense of nonbelonging, and have linked this to her Jewish identity.21 As Fishburn notes, Pizarnik herself felt strongly her lack of roots: la tremenda soledad que implica no tener races en ningn lado (Diarios, p. 373), whilst valuing the links she still had to Jewish culture. Fishburn examines how the poets ambivalent attempts to return to her Jewish roots are surprisingly rarely filtered through specifically Jewish humour, despite her obvious ease on a domestic level with that socio-cultural milieu. What emerges far more prominently than issues of ethnic identity is issues of sexual identity. Sexuality is the predominant semantic field for Pizarniks wordplay, and through it she gives reign to another ambiguous voice among her many voices. Ambiguous sexuality is an aspect of Pizarniks biography which has been the subject of much discussion, from Cristina Pias biography onwards. Pia alluded to Pizarniks lesbian relationships, but resisted reading her work in the light of these (Pia, Alejandra Pizarnik, pp. 12 and 190). This detached critical approach was countered by Chvez Silverman and Sylvia Molloy, who both
20 Carolina Depetris, Aportica de la muerte: estudio crtico sobre Alejandra Pizarnik (Madrid: Universidad Autnoma de Madrid, 2004), p. 176. 21 On this topic, see for example Leonardo Senkman, Alejandra Pizarnik: de la morada de las palabras a la intemperie de la muerte, in La identidad juda en la literatura argentina (Buenos Aires: Pardes, 1983), pp. 33740; and Cristina Pia, Poesa y experiencia del lmite: leer a Alejandra Pizarnik (Buenos Aires: Botella al Mar, 1999), pp. 7985.
INTRODUCTION
opened the door to more overtly lesbian-focused readings of her work.22 Correspondencia Pizarnik includes fifteen increasingly passionate letters from Pizarnik to Silvina Ocampo, yet through these letters we see only one angle on what was an amorous but conflictive relationship, one which dominates many pages of Pizarniks later diaries (omitted from the recently published Diarios).23 If we therefore take into account both these suppressed diaries, and her most overtly lesbian texts the unpublished texts Diana de Lesbos and Harta del principio femenino (which contains the line No es que me siento lesbiana homosexual)24 we can see clear evidence of the gender trouble which feeds into Pizarniks conflicting voices. Chvez Silvermans essay here revisits sexuality in Pizarniks work at a critical distance from her own earlier exposs, exploring Pizarniks struggle between containment and dispersal, between negative and positive configuration[s] of alterity which are always linked to notions of power and powerlessness. Part of Pizarniks feelings of powerlessness in her poetic writing derive from a gendered sense of inferiority to, or oppression by, male literary models. That Pizarnik looks to such male models is clear; her gallery of great writers (Princeton, box 8, folder 15) is composed entirely of males. She may, for example, have absorbed ideas from Paz about the split self, such as those found in his poem Escritura: Alguien escribe en m, mueve mi mano.25 Likewise his 1962 poem Aqu, about the poet hearing his own footsteps like another self in the fog, which she copies out (Princeton, box 3, folder 9w, p. 260). In terms of gender, however, she confesses in her diary to finding Paz too virile (Diarios, p. 412). Her own voice as is meticulously explored both by Chvez Silverman and by Cecilia Rossis essay Alejandra Pizarniks Poetry: Translating the Translation of Subjectivity is far more elliptical. Indeed, it is perhaps only when we are shown the difficulties of translating this voice into English a language in which
22 See Sylvia Molloy, From Sappho to Baffo: Diverting the Sexual in Alejandra Pizarnik, in Sex and Sexuality in Latin America, ed. Daniel Balderston and Donna J. Guy (New York and London: New York University Press, 1997), pp. 2508; Susana Chvez Silverman, Signos de lo femenino en la poesa de Alejandra Pizarnik, in El puente de las palabras: homenaje a David Lagmanovich, ed. Ins Azar (Washington DC: Organization of American States, 1994), pp. 15572; Susana Chvez Silverman, The Look that Kills: The Unacceptable Beauty of Alejandra Pizarniks La condesa sangrienta, in Entiendes? Queer Readings, Hispanic Writings, ed. Emilie L. Bergmann and Paul Julian Smith (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 1995), pp. 281305; and Susana Chvez Silverman, The Autobiographical as Horror in the Poetry of Alejandra Pizarnik, in Critical Studies on the Feminist Subject, ed. Giovanna Covi (Italy: Universit di Trento, 1997), pp. 26577. 23 For instance, on page 489 of Diarios, the entry for 2 January 1970 has been suppressed; this entry deals with her resentful distancing from Silvina Ocampo, and includes a rather sour retraction of the praise she had given to Ocampo in her article Dominios ilcitos (Princeton, Pizarnik Diaries, box 2, folder 9, 2 January 1970). Other entries detailing the effect that the ongoing emotional conflict with Ocampo is having on her ability to work have similarly been omitted for example, see those entries for 5 January 1970 and beyond (Diaries: box 2, folder 9). 24 Princeton, box 7, folders 10 and 20 respectively. 25 Octavio Paz, Libertad bajo palabra: Obra potica 19351957 (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Econmica, 1974), p. 66.
10
the potential for leaving the gender of the subject of verbs unspecified is severely limited that we realize the full extent of the gender ambiguity of Pizarniks poetic persona, in addition to its split nature. As Rossi observes, the absent personal pronouns those implied by the verb form but not explicitly included in the poem often bear more meaning than those in the text. Another of the ways in which this sense of a split poetic self manifests itself is in Pizarniks constant recourse to imagery expressing a dichotomy between the internal and the external. Fiona J. Mackintoshs essay explores how the body poetic is figured as a kind of dwelling place, in which the poetic voice feels alternately trapped and protected. Imagery of walls, tombs and asphyxiation is countered by the more positive connotations of her palais du vocabulaire, the name she gave to her notebooks of quotations. In her constant striving and search for a place within and beyond language, for a morada within language which will paradoxically allow the poet to go beyond its limitations, Pizarniks poetry has clear parallels with both surrealism and a typically Hispanic mystic tradition. The palais du vocabulaire reveals the signifant debt Pizarniks aesthetic owes to these and closely related literary traditions, with continual citations from Artaud, Breton, Char, and Ungaretti, and copying out of poems by San Juan de la Cruz, Quevedo and Gngora, as previously noted. But concurrent with this visionary side is the ever-present danger of going too far beyond language into madness. Her poetry thus moves uneasily at the limits of expression, veering towards the opposing poles of silence and el volcnvelorio de una lengua (Prosa, p. 109), both of which condemn the poet to non-communication. Pizarniks situating of herself at a connection between art and agony re-emerges from a different, comparative perspective through Karl Possos essay The Tormenting Beauty of Ideals: A Deleuzian Interpretation of Alejandra Pizarniks La condesa sangrienta and Franz Kafkas In the Penal Colony . Possos innovative reading uses Kafkas disconcerting story to elucidate the philosophical intricacies of Pizarniks fascination with death, and her paradoxical reflections on an ideal law of absolute negation. This collection of essays therefore explores Pizarniks work from new angles: it examines her serious and detailed activity as a literary critic, revealing her intense and identificatory strategies as a reader and the ways in which this activity feeds directly into her own creative process. The volume assesses the impact of her ambiguous sexuality on her poetic personae, and also how her concern with sexuality influences her experimentation with humorous prose. It offers new approaches to key texts and themes; in the case of the much-studied text La condesa sangrienta through a comparative and detailed philosophical reading, and in the case of the theme of the split subject through the lens of translation. By broadening the scope of Pizarnik studies, this book also hopes to act as a catalyst for further research into the dialogue between her critical and creative voices and their relationship with certain poetic traditions.
INTRODUCTION
11
Bibliography
Aira, Csar, Alejandra Pizarnik (Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo, 1998) Bassnett, Susan, Speaking with Many Voices: The Poems of Alejandra Pizarnik, in Knives and Angels: Women Writers in Latin America (London: Zed Books, 1990), pp. 3651 Borinsky, Alicia, Alejandra Pizarnik: The Self and its Impossible Landscapes, in A Dream of Light and Shadow: Portraits of Latin American Women Writers, ed. Marjorie Agosn (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995), pp. 291302 Chvez Silverman, Susana, Signos de lo femenino en la poesa de Alejandra Pizarnik, in El puente de las palabras: homenaje a David Lagmanovich, ed. Ins Azar (Washington DC: Organization of American States, 1994), pp. 15572 , The Look that Kills: The Unacceptable Beauty of Alejandra Pizarniks La condesa sangrienta, in Entiendes? Queer Readings, Hispanic Writings, ed. Emilie L. Bergmann and Paul Julian Smith (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 1995), pp. 281305 , The Autobiographical as Horror in the Poetry of Alejandra Pizarnik, in Critical Studies on the Feminist Subject, ed. Giovanna Covi (Italy: Universit di Trento, 1997), pp. 26577 Cortzar, Julio, Rayuela (1963) (Madrid: Ctedra, 1988) Depetris, Carolina, Aportica de la muerte: estudio crtico sobre Alejandra Pizarnik (Madrid: Universidad Autnoma de Madrid, 2004) Eliot, T. S., The Sacred Wood (1920) (London: Methuen, 1960) , Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919), reprinted in Twentieth Century Poetry: Critical Essays and Documents, ed. Graham Martin and P. N. Furbank (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1975), pp. 7985 Haydu, Susana, Las dos voces de Alejandra Pizarnik, in El puente de las palabras: homenaje a David Lagmanovich, ed. Ins Azar (Washington: Organization of American States, 1994), pp. 24556 Kristal, Efran, Invisible Work: Borges and Translation (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2002) Lispector, Clarice, Amor, in Laos de Famlia (1960) (Rio de Janeiro: Rocco, 1998), pp. 1929 Molloy, Sylvia, From Sappho to Baffo: Diverting the Sexual in Alejandra Pizarnik, in Sex and Sexuality in Latin America, ed. Daniel Balderston and Donna J. Guy (New York and London: New York University Press, 1997), pp. 2508 Muschietti, Delfina, Las tres caras de Alejandra Pizarnik [review of Pizarniks Poesa completa (Barcelona: Lumen, 2001)], in Pgina/12 (Argentina, July 2001). Reproduced at http://www.lainsignia.org/2001/julio/cul_077.htm Paz, Octavio, Libertad bajo palabra: Obra potica 19351957 (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Econmica, 1974) Pia, Cristina, Alejandra Pizarnik: una biografa (Buenos Aires: Planeta, 1991; 2nd edn Corregidor, 1999) , Poesa y experiencia del lmite: leer a Alejandra Pizarnik (Buenos Aires: Botella al Mar, 1999) Pizarnik, Alejandra, La ltima inocencia (Buenos Aires: Poesa Buenos Aires, 1956) , Las aventuras perdidas (Buenos Aires: Altamar, 1958)
12
Pizarnik, Alejandra, rbol de Diana (Buenos Aires: Sur, 1962) , Los trabajos y las noches (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1965) , Extraccin de la piedra de locura (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1968) , Nombres y figuras (Barcelona: La Esquina, 1969) , El infierno musical (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 1971) , La condesa sangrienta (Buenos Aires: Acuarius, 1971) , Poemas, ed. Gustavo Zuluaga (Medelln: Endymion, 1986) , Prosa potica, ed. Gustavo Zuluaga (Medelln: Endymion, 1987) , Obras selectas, ed. Gustavo Zuluaga (Medelln: Holderlin, 1992; republ. as Obras escogidas) , Obras completas: poesa completa y prosa selecta, ed. Cristina Pia (Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 1993; repr. 1994, 1999) , Obra completa, ed. Gustavo Zuluaga (Medelln: rbol de Diana, 2000) , Sobre T. S. Eliot, El corno emplumado, 14 (1965), 89 Pizarnik, Flora Alejandra, La tierra ms ajena (Buenos Aires: Botella al Mar, 1955) Princeton University Library, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Alejandra Pizarnik Papers (CO395), http://libweb2.princeton.edu/rbsc2/aids/msslist/maindex.htm Senkman, Leonardo, Alejandra Pizarnik: de la morada de las palabras a la intemperie de la muerte, in La identidad juda en la literatura argentina (Buenos Aires: Pardes, 1983), pp. 33740 Running, Thorpe, The Negative Poems of Alejandra Pizarnik, in The Critical Poem: Borges, Paz and Other Language-Centred Poets in Latin America (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1996), pp. 87104) Weiss, Jason, The Lights of Home: A Century of Latin American Writers in Paris (London: Routledge, 2003)
Gender, Sexuality and Silence(s) in the Writing of Alejandra Pizarnik

Susana Chvez Silverman
What kind of beast would turn its life into words? What atonement is this all about?1 Adrienne Rich Qu significa traducirse en palabras? Alejandra Pizarnik (Poesa, p. 253)
Alejandra Pizarnik fashioned a complex textual self through a variety of genres and voices. The sense of the radical separateness between these voices has been a function of canonical and historical (and gendered) habits of reading reified not least by the poet herself which ultimately served as both duenna and closet, buttressing the notion of a schism between the public and private realms and maintaining the misconception of two radically discrete voices: the sombre, hieratic, disciplined, asexual lyric voice (for years the overdeterminedly Pizarnikian voice par excellence) versus the transgressive, humoristic, mainly hypersexualized prose voice. Only quite recently, years after Pizarniks death, are scholars and other readers able to receive and restore a more accurate sense of the nuance and complexity which had been there in Pizarniks poetry all along, thanks to the publication of previously suppressed texts what I call unauthorized works, both poems (2000) and prose (2002) as well as some of her private writing, such as letters (1998) and diaries (2003). In her book El testigo lcido, Mara Negroni describes a process of fixation, disavowal and return, with regard to Alejandra Pizarnik, very similar to my own. Ultimately, Negroni arrived at a characterization which constitutes a holistic approach, respecting the sense of disquiet, deferral and desire in Pizarniks writing:
Pens que los textos malditos se erguan, frente al resto de la obra, como un testigo lcido (la expresin es de Aldo Pellegrini) pero no se le oponan . . . el efecto era de extraamiento radical y me pareci entender que el objetivo de
1 Adrienne Rich, cited in Jan Montefiore, Feminism and Poetry: Language, Experience, Identity in Womens Writing (London and New York: Pandora, 1987), p. 162.
14
la transgresin no era simplemente profanar, parodiar, agobiar la intertextualidad, sino . . . escenificar el proyecto siempre irrealizable de la significacin.2
Like Negroni, initially I was drawn to Pizarniks poetry. Later, I read La condesa sangrienta for and as a lesbian. Most recently, I undertook a re-evaluation of her poetry, looking for autobiographical signs of lesbian sexuality in poems Pizarnik had published during her life, as well as in several texts published posthumously.3 I am still interested in gesturing toward lesbianism (bisexuality, more accurately), but I want to remain mindful of the taxonomic thrust indeed, the possibility of homophobia underwriting some heteronormative and even lesbigay readings of homosexuality.4 In the present essay, I do not necessarly privilege lesbianism in my reading of signs of gendered and sexual alterity in Pizarniks writing. And yet, I am fascinated with Valerie Rohys conceptualization of (lesbianism as) impossibility:
What would it mean to build a theory . . . on impossibility? [The question] asks that we recognize as the task of oppositional criticism the interrogation not only of meanings handed down by cultural authority but also the socially constructed category of meaning itself. It implies an effort to conceptualize . . . a methodology based not on the truth of language and desire but on their uncertainty. (Rohy, p. 150)
Throughout her entire oeuvre, Pizarnik produces a textual self predicated on alterity. The signs with which she constructs this self are often overdeterminedly gendered, sometimes sexualized but always linked to notions of power and powerlessness, of authority versus de-authorization. These signs resemble mirror images, at the two poles of a spectrum running from negative to positive. The negative charge, so to speak, is represented by concrete, often miniaturized
2 Mara Negroni, El testigo lcido: la obra de sombra de Alejandra Pizarnik (Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo, 2003), p. 12. 3 A more fully developed exploration of this topic may be found in my 1995 essay The Look that Kills: The Unacceptable Beauty of Alejandra Pizarniks La condesa sangrienta, in Entiendes? Queer Readings, Hispanic Writings, ed. Emilie Bergmann and Paul Julian Smith (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995), pp. 281305, and in The Autobiographical as Horror in the Poetry of Alejandra Pizarnik, in Critical Studies on the Feminist Subject, ed. Giovanni Covi (Trento: Universit di Trento, 1997), pp. 26577. 4 Paul Allatsons insights, quoting Annamarie Jagose, are pertinent here: The lesbian . . . is subject to a graphetic drive, one that perpetuates a homophobic imperative to know and mark the lesbian as distinct and identifiable . Paul Allatson, My Bones Shine in the Dark: AIDS and the De-scription of Chicano Queer in the Work of Gil Cuadros, in Aztln: A Journal of Chicano Studies 32: 1 (2007), 2352, citing Annamarie Jagose, Inconsequence: Lesbian Representation and the Logic of Sexual Sequence (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2002), pp. 13 and 143. Further, in Impossible Women: Lesbian Figures and American Literature (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2000), Valerie Rohy reminds us of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwicks observation that both straight cultures and queer critics readings of homosexuality are susceptible to a strategic pose of knowingness whose homophobia consists in its refusal of difference, of uncertainty, of surprise (p. 150).
GENDER, SEXUALITY AND SILENCE(S)
15
images such as dolls, little girls, mechanized figures (such as la autmata and la sonmbula), Alicia (after Alice in Wonderland), birds, wounded animals. On a more abstract level, this charge can be perceived in a sense of immobility, impotence, lack/absence, thirst, asexuality and the very fragmentary, elliptical nature of much of the lyric poetry what I call the authorized voice itself. On the other hand, the positive charge is embodied concretely by the she-wolf, the ladies in red, the Bloody Countess, Hilda la polgrafa, and abstractly by images of power, corrosive humour, perversity, excess, sexuality and the monstrous. This charge predominates in the longer prose poems (especially those of Extraccin de la piedra de locura and El infierno musical), and also in what I call the minotaur voice5 prose and some poetry suppressed by Pizarnik during her lifetime or occasionally published in small magazines and reviews (but not collected in book form), particularly in the scathingly humorous, deconstructive, self-immolating Los perturbados entre lilas and La bucanera de Pernambuco o Hilda la polgrafa. La condesa sangrienta (1965; 1971) functions as a kind of bridge or fulcrum. Stylistically it shares the lapidary, highly aestheticized and static qualities of Pizarniks earlier poetry. Thematically, however, it represents the Rabelaisian and monstrous sexual excess of the positive charge, emblematized in its protagonist, the Hungarian Countess Erzsbet Bthory. In this essay, I closely examine the presence and function of these bipolar images in Pizarniks poetry, comparing and juxtaposing certain textual and chronological instances with images and phrases from her diaries and correspondence. I do not deal with La condesa sangrienta, although I want to underscore that it represents arguably the best known image of what I am calling the positive gendered and sexualized charge; nor do I look at the later minotaur texts (Los perturbados and Hilda), which have been discussed in detail by Mara Negroni and others.6 Before proceeding to a detailed reading of these more overdeterminedly gendered signs, at opposite poles of the negativepositive spectrum, the notion of silence requires elaboration. Many of Pizarniks critics have commented on the overwhelming importance of silence in her work, although few have made a rigorous study of its signifying realms, or what poet, rhetorician and critic Paolo Valesio has called silentiary regions.7 Like the more obvious images, both abstract and concrete, with which Pizarnik articulates her gendered, sexualized self, the abstract notion of silence is actualized in relation to a positivenegative
5 I use this term to characterize a voice the author mainly suppressed during her life (in terms of publication). 6 Although I agree with Cristina Pia, who has called it una de las obras centradas en la articulacin de sexualidad y muerte ms sobrecogedora de nuestra literatura (Pizarnik, Obras completas ed. Pia, p. 9) and with Sylvia Molloy, who considers the work Pizarniks most personal statement (from Sappho to Baffo, cited in my The Look that Kills, p. 302), in the interest of textual economy I do not include La condesa sangrienta among the works examined in this present essay. For other analyses of the Condesa, and of aspects of Los perturbados and Hilda la polgrafa, see the chapters by Posso and Fishburn respectively in this volume. 7 Paolo Valesio, A Remark on Silence and Listening, Rivista di Estetica, 1920 (1985), 1744.
16
spectrum. I have closely examined Pizarniks rhetorical use of silence elsewhere;8 in this essay I am interested in looking at Pizarniks use of silence in order to explore its relation to gender and sexuality. In A Remark on Silence and Listening, Paolo Valesio describes two main modes: silence as interruption or rupture and silence as plenitude (Valesio, p. 29). Both of these modes are amply represented in Pizarniks writing, in her poetry, prose, and diaries. In Muteness Envy a wide-ranging essay which touches on texts as disparate as John Keats Ode on a Grecian Urn and Jane Campions controversial film The Piano (1993) Barbara Johnson explores the overdetermined link between silence and the feminine, noting the textual ideal of the superiority of silence over poetry in canonical poets such as Keats, Mallarm, Archibald MacLeish and others, and characterizes this ideal as a muteness envy often gendered as female in male poets.9 Since Pizarnik deliberately positions herself as an outsider with regard to an Argentine or even Hispanic literary tradition, and as heiress to a Eurocentric canonicity, it is not surprising that one of her two (contradictory) attitudes toward silence (Valesios silence as plenitude) echoes Johnsons reading of silence as textual ideal in canonical European poets such as Keats and Mallarm.10 Interestingly, unlike many of the male poets she admired, Pizarnik does not gender silence as explicitly feminine (by representing the aesthetic apex in terms of images such as vessels, containers, a mute female statue, for example). However, as we shall see, she often connects silence as plenitude to the body, love, and sexual pleasure. The Poesa completa published in Spain in 2001 is certainly more completa than any of the previously published versions (whether called complete or not). It makes available an important selection of poems either previously unpublished or uncollected in volumes.11 I cannot resist reading the unpublished poem A un poema acerca del agua, de Silvina Ocampo intratextually. In fact, this sort of reading imposes itself because Pizarnik as is especially apparent after the recent publication of her complete poetry, her prose, and her correspondence and diaries presents a particularly noteworthy case of self-as-palimpsest.12 Mara Negroni, too, comments on Pizarniks intertextuality, her borrowing from canonical texts to legitimate her own writing, as well as noting el recurso narcisista de la intratextualidad: reciclar, absorber todo, sin vacilar (Julia Kristeva
8 The Poetry of Octavio Paz and Alejandra Pizarnik: A Dialogue with Silence, in Jewish Culture and the Hispanic World: Essays in Memory of Joseph H. Silverman, ed. Samuel G. Armistead and Mishael M. Caspi (Newark, DE: Juan de la Cuesta, 2001), pp. 12944. 9 Barbara Johnson, The Feminist Difference: Literature, Psychoanalysis, Race and Gender (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 129, 1312. 10 Many instances of Pizarnik inserting herself asserting her belonging, although not always smoothly or unequivocally into a Eurocentric and predominantly male literary tradition recur throughout her diaries (see especially Diarios, pp. 278, 412). 11 For a discussion of the issue of completeness in Pizarnik editions, see Cristina Pias chapter in this volume. 12 Thanks to Paul Allatson for suggesting this turn of phrase for Pizarniks life/work.
17
vio, en la actividad de poetizar, un canibalismo melanclico) (Negroni, p. 17, my emphasis).13 These drives appear in the above-mentioned undated poem, which is dedicated to Silvina Ocampo y a la condesa de Tripoli, and has an epigraph by Octavio Paz (embedded, in the italicized phrase in the last line of the poem itself). It is included by editor Becci in a section of unpublished and uncollected texts written between 1962 and 1972.
Tu modo de silenciarte en el poema. Me abrs como a una flor (sin duda una flor pobre, lamentable) que ya no esperaba la terrible delicadeza de la primavera. Me abrs, me abro, me vuelvo de agua en tu poema de agua
que emana toda la noche profecas.
(Poesa, p. 356)
The speakers direct address of the textual you (Silvina Ocampo) is highly unusual in Pizarniks work; far more common is the much commented-upon textual doubling, in which the you is an/other version of the speakers I. Here, the speaker attributes to the you a paradoxical ability to become silent in the poem. This is Pizarniks yearned-for silence as plenitude; the textual muteness achieved by the you in her own poem causes or is related to the speakers opening. The strategic and somewhat pathetic topos modestiae in the third line (parenthetically enclosed) notwithstanding, the positive value ascribed to this opening is undeniable. It can be detected in the simile of the flower (again, a somewhat unusual image in Pizarnik, except for the omnipresent, stereotypical and postRomantic lila), and in the use of the colloquial Argentine second-person singular familiar vos, which immediately conveys a sense of privacy and intimacy, particularly since Pizarnik generally did not favour its use, even in her private writing. Lines 45 complete and qualify the action of being opened; it is an unexpected blossoming a somewhat conventional metaphor for the action of love, taking place in that equally conventional season of renewal, la primavera. However, any tendency toward sentimentality is tempered by the oxymoron terrible delicadeza, which suggests the speakers unwillingness, or at least hesitation, in submitting to the transformative and balsamic elixirs of love, referred to metaphorically (after again underscoring the action of being opened, and opening herself, in line 5) in the sensually repeated images of water (line 6)
13 Negroni characterizes Pizarniks as una obra apoyada . . . en la libre circulacin textual y en el robo multidireccional, perpetrado sobre otros y sobre ella misma (pp. 1718). She discusses intertextual borrowing at length, particularly in relation to what she calls the textos de sombra: La condesa sangrienta, a version of French Surrealist writer Valentine Penroses La comtesse sanglante (pp. 8486) and Los posedos entre lilas, which, according to Negroni, constitutes a re-writing albeit with significant differences of Samuel Becketts absurdist End Game (pp. 8183).
18
and its property: emana[r], in the poems beautiful and borrowed final line.14 Reading this unpublished poem dedicated to Silvina Ocampo intratextually with Amantes (from Los trabajos y las noches [1965]) reveals much about the connection, for Pizarnik, between silence (as ideal), gender, and sexuality. An intratextual reading also opens the signifying possibilities in both texts to a sensual, queer presence:
una flor no lejos de la noche mi cuerpo mudo se abre a la delicada urgencia del roco.
(Poesa, p. 159)
The titles of both poems, juxtaposed, form an interesting and tense counterpoint. The published poem bears the title Amantes, yet there is no lover, or addressee, present in the text. On the other hand, the unpublished poem, although it is dedicated to Silvina Ocampo, is about and to Ocampos poem. It speaks, at least initially, to the Ocampo in her poem, although by the second line it appears (also) to speak to Ocampo directly, and the sense of a coupl(ing) is readily available (me abrs; Me abrs, me abro; me vuelvo de agua en tu poema de agua). Amantes is stylistically in line with Pizarniks well-known voice from this middle phase (the period in which she wrote and published rbol de Diana (1962) and Los trabajos y las noches); it is markedly more fragmentary and static than the unpublished poem. Whereas Amantes uses all lower-case letters, no punctuation and one verb in five lines, A un poema follows a somewhat more traditional format in terms of capitalization and punctuation, and has seven verbs in as many lines. What the unpublished text proffers in abundance (the fluidity of mutual jouissance, figured in imagery traditionally gendered as feminine flower, water the insistence on a communion-like silence and openness), the ironically-titled Amantes withholds. Or does it dissimulate? The flower is present, but stripped of its perhaps overly sentimental association with the spring. The flowers link with the speakers body is considerably weaker in Amantes as well. Instead, here, it is spatially and syntactically contiguous to la noche (an image Pizarnik associates time and again with the body and sexuality in her work, as in la noche de los cuerpos, Poesa, p. 171), which functions as a sort of fulcrum between the flower and the speakers body. This construction suggests, but does not concretize, the congruency between flower and body; it only hints, elliptically, at the realm of sexuality.
14 Pizarniks discomfort with conventional experiences (and representations) of love and sexuality is everywhere in her private writings. Two examples; in her diary entry for 24 July 1962: El deseo sexual es arduo y terrible, aun para quien lo escinde del amor (Diarios, p. 233), and in a letter to Mara Elena Arias Lpez, dated 25 May 1970: Anoche se unieron amor y sexo. Conjuncin que disgusta a esta enamorada de Bataille (Correspondencia, p. 113).
19
Silence specifically, muteness is attributed here to the speaker herself, to her body. The quality of silence is what allows for her openness to sexual arousal; just one impersonally constructed se abre, as against the reiterated and mutual action of opening in the unpublished poem. I must remark on the gorgeous starkness of the final line of Amantes, calling attention to the attenuation of the oxymoron, with delicadeza now in adjectival form, modifying urgencia (which as a noun, at the centre of the final line, is emphasized), rather than functioning as a noun in the less compact unpublished poem, where delicadeza was modified by terrible to describe the more abstract primavera. The stripped-down quality of Amantes, the tension between what the title says and the content only hints at, conveys a more heightened erotic charge than does the more wordy, literal (unpublished) poem. Or is it that I receive this charge precisely in the exchange, the back and forth shuttle of intratextuality, in being able to access the necessary supplementarity of A un poema, a supplementarity which was only a blind spot before the 2001 publication of Poesa completa? The presence of an undercurrent of eroticism and love subtending these two poems is supported by Pizarniks letters to Silvina Ocampo. According to Ivonne Bordelois, in the relationship between the older Ocampo and Pizarnik, el erotismo y la infancia van jugando alternativamente sus espejos (Correspondencia, p. 190). Bordelois also observes, in her introduction to these letters, that de todas las cartas de este epistolario, stas son las nicas donde la amistad rpidamente asciende a pasin y se enciende en ella (Correspondencia, p. 190). The clearest example of passionately erotic desire, tinged with abjection, is found in a letter from Pizarnik to Ocampo, dated 31 January 1972 (scarcely eight months before her death):
Quisiera que estuvieras desnuda, a mi lado, leyendo tus poemas en voz viva. Sylvette mon amour . . . yo s lo que es esta carta . . . Sylvette, no es una calentura . . . haceme un lugarcito en vos, no te molestar. Pero te quiero, no te imagins cmo me estremezco al recordar tus manos (que jams volver a tocar si no te complace puesto que ya ves que lo sexual es un tercero por aadidura. Te beso como yo s . . . o no te beso sino que te saludo, segn tus gustos, como quieras. Me someto. (Correspondencia, p. 211; original emphasis)
The irreconcilable tension between love and sexual desire represented as a yearning and yet sometimiento in this letter is a leitmotiv throughout Pizarniks diaries and correspondence (see note 12). The two poems I have just read, along with this letter, constitute a sort of intratextual stitching, an arpillera of sorts (yet with some threads missing or unravelled the poem and letters unpublished during Pizarniks lifetime), upon the wound of this unspannable chasm.15
15 I have spent considerable time reading and contrasting these three textual instances in detail not because I am interested in proving anything, in terms of the biographical subject Alejandra Pizarniks queerness/bisexuality, but rather because, as Sylvia Molloy has pointed out in another context: I am interested in the way that desire sees itself, the detours to which
20
To conclude this section (the examination of silence as plenitude or ideal in Pizarnik, and its relation to gender and sexuality), I want to look, briefly, at several diary entries related to this attitude toward silence. On 28 July 1962, Pizarnik writes: Slo el sexo merece seriedad y consideracin porque el sexo es silencio (Diarios, p. 241). The hieratic attitude toward silence and sex manifested here (and which I have been exploring in several poems, published and unpublished) can be seen in various other instances in the diaries, although it is even more frequently undermined and denied, as we shall see later. From 18 November 1963, we read: Su silencio. Ahora s por qu estoy enamorada. Su silencio es la presencia de las cosas en vez de su representacin imaginaria (Diarios, p. 345). Here, silence is linked expressly with love, rather than sex. In the entry for 12 March 1966, we read: S que no hay necesidad de escribir. Quiero decir que mucho ms eficaz sera, para m, hacer el amor da y noche. El silencio de los cuerpos (Diarios, p. 396). Here, as in Amantes and in the unpublished poem to Silvina Ocampo, Pizarnik connects silence directly to the body and to sex. Silence/lovemaking is, furthermore, hierarchized as superior to words (mucho ms eficaz); in effect, eroticized silence should replace writing, thus substituting, erasing the poets work. Pizarniks positive attitude toward silence (silence as textual ideal, or plenitude) dovetails with the ideal of (extra)textual muteness found in the male Symbolists, Modernists and (post)surrealists (such as Octavio Paz) she admired. Unlike silence in the works of these male poets, however, Pizarniks is not represented as feminine per se; it is often associated, rather, with love, the body, or sexual pleasure. I now turn to the other attitude toward silence in Pizarnik, what Valesio calls silence as rupture. According to Alicia Ostriker, for poets, silence or muteness is a harsh figure for a sense of inadequate existence.16 She goes on to specify that for women poets especially, the inability to speak signals . . . a state of passivity, marginality, self-hate (Ostriker, p. 67). Clearly, the muteness/ silence to which Ostriker is alluding, here, corresponds to the second attitude toward silence. One of the strongest connections in this silentiary region is with Antonin Artaud. In the diary entry for 25 December 1959, Pizarnik claims to understand and share the alienation of the one-time (later exiled) Surrealist: Si hay alguien que puede . . . comprender a Artaud, soy yo. Todo su combate con su silencio, con su abismo absoluto, con su vaco, con su cuerpo enajenado, cmo no asociarlo con el mo? (Diarios, p. 159). Here we detect her conviction that Artaud constituted a kind of doppelgnger, in terms of their common experience (agonistic) of silence represented here (as Pizarnik often does in all her writing)
it resorts in order to name itself . . . the codes it uses in order to be recognized even as it masks itself. Sylvia Molloy, Disappearing Acts: Reading Lesbian in Teresa de la Parra, in Entiendes? Queer Readings, Hispanic Writings, ed. Emilie L. Bergmann and Paul Julian Smith (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 1995), pp. 23056, p. 241. 16 Alicia Ostriker, Stealing the Language: The Emergence of Womens Poetry in America (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1986), p. 66.
21
as a void, an emptiness and of the (alienated) body. This desired/asserted doubling with Artaud on the one hand positions Pizarnik as heiress to the post-Romantic tradition of the potes maudits and Surrealists to which Artaud belonged. And yet, on the other, this doubling paradoxically also installs a sense of fracture in the continuity of this lineage, both because Artaud was an expelled Surrealist (connected with literal madness) and because Pizarnik herself undermines and qualifies her connection with him, thus: Pero hay una diferencia: Artaud luchaba cuerpo a cuerpo con su silencio. Yo no: yo lo sobrellevo dcilmente, salvo algunos accesos de clera y de impotencia (Diarios, p. 159).17 So, although Artaud was in a sense de-authorized, in terms of masculinist canonicity, by his expulsion from the Surrealist movement, Pizarniks Artaud manifests a larger-than-life sense of agency in his heroic struggle with silence. Her representation of herself, on the other hand, in direct contrast to Artauds supposed valour, is abject, feminized: she is docile in the way she bears or puts up with silence, except for the occasional temper tantrum or the oxymoronic fit of impotence. In the prose poem Descripcin, from 1964, silence is more an active, menacing presence than a yawning void: Caer hasta tocar el fondo ltimo, desolado, hecho de un viejo silenciar y de figuras que dicen y repiten algo que me alude (Prosa, p. 28).18 Silence, here, is an action, a verb, something that happens to the speaker. It is equal to a liminal end-zone (fondo ltimo) which, paradoxically, also contains silences logical opposite: figures which speak and allude to the yo. This dualistic construction is typical of Pizarnik, in terms of the larger positivenegative or bipolar spectrum which characterizes her textualization of the sign of silence itself; at each pole the sign (in this case, silence as rupture) often subdivides into positively or negatively charged valencies. The third paragraph of this prose poem reads:
Por eso hay en mis noches voces en mis huesos, y tambin y es esto lo que me hace dolerme visiones de palabras escritas pero que se mueven, combaten, danzan, manan sangre, luego las miro andar con muletas, en harapos, corte de los milagros de a hasta z, alfabeto de miserias, alfabeto de crueldades . . . La que debi cantar se arquea de silencio, mientras en sus dedos se susurra, en su corazn se murmura, en su piel un lamento no cesa. (Prosa, p. 28)
It is interesting to read Descripcin intertextually with Octavio Pazs widely anthologized early poem Las palabras. The word silence never appears in Pazs poem, which is constituted, rather, by a torrent of words. Las palabras is a fifteen-line lava flow of fifteen second-person familiar commands to the
17 For a closer look at the Artaud-Pizarnik connection, and madness, see my The Discourse of Madness in the Poetry of Alejandra Pizarnik, Monographic Review/Revista Monogrfica, 6 (1990), 27481. 18 The image of falling recurs regularly in Pizarnik, though not always with this negative connotation. The first section of El hombre del antifaz azul, for example, is titled la cada (Prosa, p. 45). Here, the fall is related to a sense of discovery and transformation.
22
reader/poet: Dales la vuelta,/ cgelas del rabo (chillen, putas).19 I shall refrain from belabouring the exegesis of this over-the-top Modernist classic, except to remark on its overdeterminedly (hetero)gendered qualities, which are inverted and diffused in Pizarniks Descripcin. In Pazs poem, silence is a threatening presence behind the exhausted words the tools of the poets trade which the masculine poetaddressee (gallo galante) is exhorted to reinvigorate (also staving off silence in the process) by bending them to his creative will(power). This is achieved through a series of violent, degrading, hypersexualized and admittedly at times comic actions, such as: aztalas, pnchalas, cpalas and so on. In Pizarniks Descripcin there is also a torrent of words. But rather than reading a stream of verbal commands, directed by a (god)father-like speaker to an acolytepoet or oyente, in this case we overhear voices which inhabit the speakers bones at night, like a haunting; we see visions of written words (emphasis in original). Rather than being under the poetspeakers command (which in Pizarnik is typically represented by static imagery), the words seem almost to pre-exist her (hay). They proliferate, at first violent and out of control (se mueven, combaten, danzan, manan sangre), then they become wounded, abject (con muletas, en harapos). It is as if the speaker were a mute witness to these palabras escritas, which she watches, transfixed in apprehension before this alfabeto de crueldades, and with a curious tenderness toward the alfabeto de miserias.20 The subtlety of this speakers position a feminized passivity and powerlessness which yet vacillates between awe and empathy toward the words is completely lacking in Pazs more straightforward, masculinist voice. Finally, Pizarnik represents herself in this poem with one of her well-known, third-person aphoristic epithets, La que debi cantar, which underscores both the poets natural task (cantar) as well as her inability to perform it. The abject, impotent self-characterization concludes: rather than singing, the speaker retches with silence. Unable to produce and control words, the speakers body is invaded, possessed by sounds (whispers in her fingers, murmurs in the heart, ceaseless laments on her skin).21
Octavio Paz, La centena (Poemas: 19351968) (Barcelona: Barral, 1969), p. 11. Thanks to Pierre T. Rainville for pointing out the sense of the speaker as fearful and then tender witness to the words. 21 For a discussion of Pizarniks images of muteness, related to feelings of choking and asphyxia, see Fiona Mackintoshs chapter in this volume. The sense of being taken over, inhabited, either by a menacing silence or by out of control voices/sounds, is well known to readers of Pizarniks poetry. Often silence as rupture is represented, precisely, as a proliferation of voices not created/controlled by the speaker. What I am especially interested is pointing out here, though, is the inability to articulate the muteness related to feelings of choking, asfixia, most likely directly connected to Pizarniks asthma. See, for example, the following: Si llego a distender mi garganta . . . cambiar mi relacin ahora tan complicada con el lenguaje . . . la misma sensacin de que una mano de hierro me oprime por esa zona (Diarios, p. 346; 1 December 1963).
19 20
23
In the third poem of rbol de Diana, Pizarnik comes close to inaugurating this decisive collection at the very centre of her published poetry by defining her self as silence: slo la sed/ el silencio/ ningn encuentro (Poesa, p. 105).22 These lapidary lines, the archetypal femininity of lack and muteness, particularly inscribed in the self-characterizing epithets in lines 5 and 6 la silenciosa en el desierto and la viajera con el vaso vaco have become overdetermined as Pizarniks true voice. This personaje alejandrino, strategically fashioned and manipulated by the poet herself, completely overshadowed (in her published poetry) during her lifetime the minotaur/humorous voice, which predominated toward the end of her life but which was also present if relegated especially in unpublished and private writings from early on.23 Formas, from Los trabajos y las noches, provides a sort of transitional or pivotal text:
no s si pjaro o jaula mano asesina o joven muerta entre cirios o amazona jadeando en la gran garganta oscura o silenciosa pero tal vez oral como una fuente tal vez juglar o princesa en la torre ms alta (Poesa, p. 199)
The poem contains a curiously bisemic image of silence; it also presents an emblematic set of images located at the positive and negative poles of the spectrum of gender and sexuality. The title itself is significant. The idea of forms gestures toward identitarian provisionality and disguise or inauthenticity; these ideas are culturally gendered as feminine and are abundantly represented in Pizarniks writing. Indecision, the inability (or refusal) to choose (often signified, as it is here, by the conjunction o), is a Pizarnikian commonplace. Here, she destabilizes the poems ostensibly self-defining intention by opening with no s si. The first-person singular of saber is the only marker of an I. However, the sense of a lyrical autobiography, or self-portrait, is unmistakable, particularly if we read this poem intratextually (virtually every image present here is repeated
22 Pizarnik published three books of poetry before rbol de Diana (although she repudiated La tierra ms ajena, the volume she self-published at age 19) and three after. Many critics consider rbol de Diana to be her finest work. According to Csar Aira, for example, by 1965, the year after Pizarnik had returned from her four years in Paris, Se vio transformada ms o menos en lo que es hoy, una figura casi legendaria, un centro, un modelo. Haba publicado sus dos mejores libros, rbol de Diana y Los trabajos y las noches. Csar Aira, Las metamorfosis de Alejandra Pizarnik, ABC Cultural, 6 January 2001, pp. 78. 23 In Pizarniks final letter to Ivonne Bordelois, dated 5 July 1972, she says she is going to send her some recent (unpublished) poems, cuyo emblema es la negacin de los rasgos alejandrinos. En ellos, toda yo soy otra (Correspondencia, p. 306). See also my earlier footnote 5.
24
throughout Pizarniks poetry and private writing). The poem sets up two distinct (and opposing) semantic and structural fields, which mainly function horizontally; the meanings alternate between positive and negative poles, each one discretely contained in a single line. This pattern is only broken in the poems first line, which constitutes a kind of double transgression of the texts grammar: first, in the inclusion of the first-person verb, and second, because this line contains two images, which figure both the negative and positive poles. Additionally, pjaro and jaula are more problematic than the images in the rest of the poem; by this I mean their polysemy, taking Pizarniks oeuvre as a whole, makes it somewhat difficult to determine at which end of the spectrum they fall. (Significantly, my own indecision about this first line is reflected in the speakers no s si.) Birds, although they traditionally connote freedom, the soul, generally symbolize the abject self for Pizarnik. The cages traditional symbolic link with containment, on the other hand, is often qualified (or directly inverted).24 There are four images at the positive end of the spectrum (leaving out bird and cage): mano asesina, amazona, oral, and juglar, and three at the negative pole: joven muerta, silenciosa, and princesa. These gendered images also overlap with the spectrum of silence: directly at the centre of the text (lines 4 and 5) are two images related to voice and muteness. Silenciosa is somewhat ambiguous, but can be read as signifying silence as rupture (as does the dead girl among funereal tapers), since the image is juxtaposed with and contained by affirming images of orality. Indeed, the dead girl, the princess and the silent one belong to the group of hyperfeminine, self-representational epithets Pizarnik fetishized in her authorized writing. On the other hand, the images I call positive by no means unequivocally connote a confident, or life-affirming subjectivity, although poignantly, three of the images seem to gesture toward this possibility. The murderous hand metonymizes the monstrous, excessive, violent self (the minotaur voice) that mainly emerges in unauthorized poems and prose, posthumously published, or in La condesa sangrienta. However, an attentive reading can find many glimpses of this voice, even in the published lyric poetry. The Amazon is a positive image, life-affirming here in its insistence on her primal orality, even as the line is surrounded, encapsulated by death on one side and silence on the other. The classical Amazons link with female same-sex culture and her panting, here, in an overdeterminedly feminine (indeed, vaginal, amniotic) throat, should, perhaps, not go unremarked. The last three lines reference the medieval oral tradition in poetry (especially Spanish) with which Pizarnik was intimately familiar. The orality of a fountain is positive (in a life-giving sense), as is the image of the minstrel or troubadour (the only unambiguously masculine image in the poem). Finally I cannot help but be reminded, by the princess image in the last line, of Countess Bthory, immured in her tower at
24 For example, in the poem El despertar (dedicated to her first psychiatrist, Len Ostrov), Pizarnik writes: La jaula se ha vuelto pjaro/ y se ha volado (Poesa, p. 92).
25
Csejthe. However, whereas Erzsbet Bthory is perhaps the most familiar embodiment, to Pizarniks readers, of monstrous (sexual) excess at the positive end of her gendered and sexualized spectrum, I read the princess image, rather, as unequivocally negative: hyperfeminized, enclosed in her fairytale lack of agency as she is here, en la torre ms alta. I will now look at some of the signs, both abstract and concrete, that inhabit the negative realm of the gender/sexuality spectrum. All the gendered and sexualized signs I examine support or indeed create the notion of radical alterity for Pizarniks textual self. As one might expect, the author herself was supremely aware both of this feeling of alterity itself and of its constructed (textual) nature, as we can see in this early entry from her diaries, dated 28 July 1955:
No hay qu decir, salvo que adelant en mi diagnstico. Ya aprend cabalmente que soy distinta de la mayora de la gente . . . me pregunto si a todos los neurticos les ocurre lo mismo. De pronto me admiro de todo lo que hice. De mis papeles. Algn da van a estar en el museo (de algn Instituto Psiquitrico). A su lado habr un cartel: Poemas de una enferma de diecinueve aos. (Diarios, pp. 423)
This disarming combination of difference/pathos, self-aggrandizement and selfdeprecating humour will remain characteristic of Pizarniks voice, particularly in her private writing, throughout her life. In the diaries we receive, mainly, a more abstract sense of the negative alterity which is mapped out in the poetry by the more widely studied concrete images. It seems to me that Pizarniks contest poetry versus prose can be read with an eye to gender, particularly in the light of Naomi Schors argument about the overdetermined femininity (and negativity) of the detail.25 A subtle rhetorics of gender and genre can be observed as early as 1959, in this diary entry of 28 December:
El peligro de mi poesa es una tendencia a la disecacin de las palabras: las fijo en el poema como con tornillos . . . y ello se debe, en parte, a mi temor de caer en un llanto trgico . . . adems, mi desconfianza en mi capacidad de levantar una arquitectura potica. De all la brevedad de mis poemas. (Diarios, p. 159)
There is no direct reference to prose yet. However, Pizarniks seemingly prescient ability to head off at the pass later detractors, who would disparage the fixity and limited repertoire of her imagery, is truly remarkable. She acknowledges this frozen (dehydrated) quality in her poems, linking it to her alreadyestablished spatial method of composition. She explains that this style serves, on the one hand, to check a fall into an excess of sentiment(ality) and on the other, paradoxically, constitutes a compensatory response to a perceived lack: her
25 Naomi Schor, Reading in Detail: Aesthetics and the Feminine (New York and London: Methuen, 1987).
26
insecurity about being able to undertake the grand(iose) aesthetic gesture. The binary gender dynamic, wherein the small and modest (feminine) mode is cultivated against the large and confident (masculine) mode is clearly visible here, as is, however, her ambivalence about conforming neatly to gender stereotypes about literary production. Several other diary entries consistently and obsessively juxtapose prose and poetry in hierarchical terms which are gendered and hauntingly poignant. On 28 September 1962, in Paris, Pizarnik writes: Escribir un solo libro en prosa en vez de poemas o fragmentos. Un libro o una morada en donde guarecerme (Diarios, p. 275 original italics). Here, she clearly prioritizes as both aesthetic and ontological project the singular, phallic object as against the small, dispersed poems she was producing. Because she establishes the impossible text (a work of prose) as a home or dwelling, within which she could take shelter, it follows logically that she feels homeless, exiled in her own genre, poetry. On 1 May 1966, while working on an essay about Octavio Pazs Cuadrivio, Pizarnik contemplates prose, poetry, and her place in the canon:
Deseo hondo, inenarrable (!) de escribir en prosa un pequeo libro. Hablo de una prosa sumamente bella, de un libro muy bien escrito . . . es extrao: en espaol no existe nadie que me pueda servir de modelo. El mismo Octavio es demasiado inflexible, demasiado acerado, o, simplemente, demasiado viril . . . yo no deseo escribir un libro argentino sino un pequeo librito parecido a Aurlia, de Nerval. (Diarios, p. 412)
In this complicated rhetorical stratagem, Pizarnik again privileges the impossible (deseo; inenarrable) prose work. She qualifies it, in the second sentence, in a nave, almost schoolgirlish tone, only to reverse herself and for all practical purposes declare herself beyond models, at least in Spanish. At the same time as she explains why several canonical Latin American male Modernist and Boom authors are unsuitable models (her dismissal of Paz with a gendered critique of his virility is followed by an admiring yet ultimately dismissive consideration of Cortzar, Borges and Rulfo), she insinuates herself into precisely this canon. And yet, ostensibly in order not to appear presumptuous, perhaps, with a cunning, double-edged topos modestiae she pledges her (non-Argentine) allegiance to Nerval, in her desire to write (but) a small, simple prose book, like his Aurlia. In addition to the abstractly negative configuration of alterity which predominates, the diaries include instances of concrete images which signify in this negative realm. For example, on 15 December 1960, in Paris, Pizarnik describes a rather Breton-like (though same-sex) crush on a woman identified only as M. The azar objetivo is not on her side, unfortunately, and she begins to speculate paranoiacally: tal vez ella s me vio y qu creer ahora de este pequeo monstruo que la persigue; creer que soy una lesbiana infecta. This thought leads her to Odio. Odio. Yo odio y quisiera que todos muriesen, salvo la vieja repugnante mendiga de ayer que dorma en el metro abrazada a una gran mueca. (As voy a terminar yo pero ser la mueca la que dormir conmigo en sus brazos)
27
(Diarios, p. 176). Her hatred and desire for everyone to die except for the old beggarwoman can be understood in terms of her abject identification with the mendiga subconsciously attenuating, perhaps, her anxiety about being perceived as a lesbian immediately after the (imagined) romantic rejection or impossibility with M.26 Pizarniks parenthetical projection into the infantilized same-sex dyad her self embraced by the lifesized doll (another textual strategy with which to negotiate her fear of/attraction toward lesbianism) overlaps intratextually with a number of poems, and leads us directly into the consideration of other concrete examples of negative gendered or sexualized alterity in the poetry. Approximately three years after the diary entry cited above, in an unpublished prose text written in Spain and titled El Escorial (which editor Ana Becci dates in 1963), the same binary image (mendigamueca) appears. Despite feeling herself (uncharacteristically) attractive to the heterosexual male gaze adorada por cuanto ojo macho ha dado Hispania fecunda Pizarnik writes: No obstante debajo o detrs o del otro lado se es mendiga, se duerme debajo de un puente totalmente ebria y abrazada a una mueca (Prosa, p. 18). Pizarniks text overlaps, in a fairly precise intertextual coincidence, with Cortzars story Lejana, from Bestiario (1951). In this story, protagonist Alina Reyes, a bored, young bourgeoise fiance in Buenos Aires, begins to dream and is eventually taken over by an abused beggarwoman in Budapest. The story narrates a radical sense of estrangement, evident even in the title itself. When Alina Reyes first begins to feel herself overlapping from within with the lejana, she repeats the word hate, linking it first with the image of the distant beggarwoman, and later, with a bridge in Budapest upon which she will fuse and then transmigrate permanently into the mendiga.27 It is possible Pizarnik picked up on the radical alienation figured in Lejana; in any case, she used the image of the mendiga (or the dyad, mendigamueca) repeatedly, to represent her own alterity, particularly though not exclusively in moments of being drawn to and then disavowing the mirror-like doubling implicit in a lesbian attraction. Let us keep in mind her linking the idea of odio to the image of the mendiga in the diaries, cited above (Diarios, p. 176), as well as the mendigapuente connection in El Escorial (Prosa, p. 18).28 Besides the mendiga and the mueca, other concrete, gendered images of negative alterity appear throughout Pizarniks poetry. In the earlier works these signs are often hyperfeminized or miniaturized, whereas a more complex, transformative ars combinatoria begins to take place in the later poetry (in the last
26 This anxious disavowal of lesbianism appears repeatedly throughout the diaries. See, for example, Diarios, pp. 154, 425, 494. 27 Julio Cortzar, La autopista del sur y otros cuentos (New York: Penguin Books, 1996), pp. 8, 1415. 28 I cannot be sure if Pizarnik had read Lejana by the time of the diary entry I am dealing with (1960), or even by the time she wrote El Escorial (1963). But given her friendship with Cortzar, and her reviews of his work, it is highly likely that she had.
28
two books, Extraccin de la piedra de locura and El infierno musical), where the negative signs are put into play with signs from the positive end of the spectrum. In poem 17 from rbol de Diana (Poesa, p. 119), the speaker identifies herself with two of the epithets most familiar to Pizarniks readers. She describes herself first with the adjective sonmbula, and then with the third-person phrase la hermosa autmata. The images are hyperfeminine and the poem itself is emblematically brief (a fragmentation that, as we have seen in the diaries, Pizarnik associates with an inferior, implicitly feminized form of writing). Yet there is an intriguing tension between a sense of stasis (in the feminine images themselves) and movement (in the poems form and in the actions performed by the personae). Although still short, the poem is in fact one of the longest in rbol de Diana; like poems 29 and 31, it is closer to prose than to the more lapidary, lyric texts that characterize the rest of the volume. If there is some sense, as I mentioned, of movement and agency in the poem, particularly in the actions of the autmata (se canta, se encanta, se cuenta casos y cosas), this possibility is immediately put into check by the nido de hilos rgidos that hamper the speaker in her first-person incarnation. In Reloj, also from Los trabajos y las noches (Poesa, p. 183), two more feminine epithets appear: dama pequesima and moradora en el corazn de un pjaro. As we shall see later, the dama appears at the positive end of the spectrum as well; here, however, she is actualized in miniature form, both in terms of her qualification by the superlative degree of the adjective and because she dwells note the archaic, fairytale quality of the verb within the heart of a bird (a symbol which, as we have seen, frequently serves as a negativized stand-in for the abject self). It is interesting that the final, monosyllabic line of this tiny poem is NO (Poesa, p. 183). This might give the impression of movement or agency. However, that this would be a misconception is suggested in the diaries. We read about the allure and the sense of self-defeating agony implicit, for Pizarnik, in refusal, in saying no. In the entry for 11 August 1962, she writes: 20 h. Le dije a P. que no. Separada . . . Te separas del amor por ganas del no amor . . . Soaste siempre con prescindir del amor, con separarte, no brutalmente sino diciendo no, gracias. Ya lo dijiste. Ests contenta? (Diarios, p. 260). Moving now into gendered/sexualized images of alterity at the positive end of the spectrum, toward the end of a lengthy diary entry from 12 March 1965, Pizarnik describes her attraction to the figure of the medieval Hungarian Countess Erzsbet Bthory, about whom she was working, at the time, on the essay La condesa sangrienta, which would be published later that year in Mexico:
Ensayo sobre la condesa Bthory. Diferencias entre las orgas de CB y el placer . . . el primero. Ante todo: su infinita, inenarrable tristeza (voir melancola) . . . La soledad./ La pura bestialidad. Se puede ser una bella condesa y a la vez una loba insaciable . . . En lo que respecta a mi imaginacin, su nica caracterstica . . . es su desenfreno . . . Todo esto se reduce al problema de la soledad. (Diarios, p. 397)
29
What is striking in this passage is Pizarniks intensely empathetic reading of the Bloody Countess. This empathy shows up most clearly in La condesa sangrientas vignette entitled El espejo de la melancola. In this diary entry (as in El espejo de la melancola), the structure of Pizarniks identification is dualistic: first, with the Countesss purported melancholy and above all solitude and second, with her pure bestiality. The positive charge of the identification is centred on the notion of bestial and excessive hunger, attributed both to the countess who is described with one of Pizarniks favorite epithets at this end of the spectrum, loba (this time qualified as insatiable) and to the authors imagination, whose wildness/wantonness is described as its only characteristic.29 Although I am not dealing with the prose minotaur texts, which are, along with La condesa sangrienta, the most emblematic of the positive charge, I want to point out Pizarniks awareness of the absolute alterity, the definitive fracture, wrought within her self, and between her and the outside world, by these texts. On 24 May 1966 she writes: Mis contenidos imaginarios son tan fragmentarios, tan divorciados de lo real, que temo, en suma, dar a luz nada ms que monstruos. Yo civilizo mis poemas al detenerlos y congelarlos (Diarios, p. 416). Here, approximately a year after she published La condesa sangrienta, the image of motherhood gone wrong of giving birth to monsters projects Pizarnik forward (not without anxiety: temo) toward the kind of writing the minotaur texts she will be fatally drawn to at the end of her life. She relates the possibility of these monster offspring to the divorce between her imagination and lo real; the palliative, compensatory action is to keep writing and publishing the controlled, short, frozen lyric poems, redolent of the negative charge, in order to soothe (civilize) the savage beast. On 2 June 1970 Pizarnik writes:
Advert que el texto de humor me hace mal, me descentra, me dispersa, me arrebata fuera de m a diferencia, par ex., de los instantes frente al pizarrn [where she composed many of her poems], en que me reno (o al menos me parece). Sin embargo, ninguno de los poemas por rescribir me enfervoriza. El texto de humor, por el contrario, es la tentacin perpetua. (Diarios, p. 495)
Here, already deeply involved in writing the texts which would comprise La bucanera de Pernambuco o Hilda la polgrafa, Pizarnik acknowledges the damage this writing does to her. It is interesting that the damage comes from outside; it is being done to her. The injury is described in terms of the humorous text taking the subject outside of herself (me arrebata fuera de m) a state which, in
29 Pizarniks letter to Juan Liscano, dated 7 September 1965, suggests that her identification with the Bloody Countess was aesthetic, romantic, rather than due to any shared affinities for literal evil (Correspondencia, p. 173). I think Bthorys homoerotic transgressiveness was also irresistible to Pizarnik.
30
the non-literal sense, Pizarnik prized as had the Surrealists before her. In contrast to this state of alterity are the moments before the chalkboard, where she feels wholeness (self-gathering). However, although she recognizes the self-affirming potential of these moments, they are not compelling to her. It is, more and more insistently, the (self-)destructive minotaur texts that beckon. The poem Violario (Prosa, p. 33) dates from 1965, but was published just over a year before Pizarniks death, in Revista de Occidente, in Madrid. In this prose poem, the I actively solicits the readers complicitous, homophobic gaze (upon an aging, predatory lesbian) through a series of disavowing moves, using the devices of humour and terror. The speaker is probably a young adult, but describes herself as having [una] estampa adolescente (which is the way Pizarnik preferred to see/present herself). The poem, which has the narrative qualities of a vignette, combines death, sex and aestheticism, as did La condesa sangrienta (published the same year Violario was written). It uses, however, a wicked humour, both to undermine the seriousness of death and to make fun of lesbianism. It opens in medias res, with the speaker speculating that her parecido mental with Little Red Riding Hood is what attracts predatory, aging lesbian she-wolves (de cara de lobo) to her. She singles out one in particular, who she remembers tried to rape her at a wake. The rest of the poem consists in the speakers cruel mockery of the vetusta femme de lettres, exploiting the disjunction between what appears to be an innocent, shared embrace between two mourners and the truth of the situation, which is never realistically described. The reader must instead surmise what is going on by correctly interpreting the speakers disavowing reactions, which become more unambiguously homophobic as the text proceeds. First, we see her disconcerted reaction to the older womans embrace, [yo] temblaba de risa y de terror; next the laughter disappears and the speakers fear remains, as they both tremble in the prolonged embrace por distintos estremecimientos (again, the representation of the womans lesbian desire is suppressed; we must infer it by contrast to the speakers growing horror). The inappropriateness of the womans advances of her desire is highlighted as we see that she attempts to secure the speakers cooperation: segu mirando las flores, segu mirando las flores [original emphasis] the woman orders the speaker, who reacts in precisely the opposite manner to what the woman had hoped. The penultimate paragraph is an outburst of over-the-top, anti-lesbian outrage. Rather than holding still, gazing at the flowers (providing a funeral-appropriate cover for the womans amorous advances) and allowing the woman to constitute her as object of desire, the speaker declares herself scandalized by the womans ardor a lo Rene Vivien, con ese bro a lo Nathalie Clifford Barney, con esa sfica uncin al decir flores (Prosa, p. 33). The specific cause of the speakers scandalized reaction the womans lesbian desire withheld or coded earlier in the poem, is clearly revealed toward the end. It is worth underscoring the disavowal of lesbian sexuality enacted in two important lesbian texts published during Pizarniks lifetime, Violario and La condesa sangrienta. The mechanisms of the disavowal are very different: La condesa sangrienta makes visible the perverse countesss sadistic excesses, whereas Violario reduces lesbian desire to a pathetic joke.
31
Both these texts, however which script the lesbian as monster are markedly different from the poem dedicated to Silvina Ocampo, for example, which importantly was not published while Pizarnik was alive.30 Two more texts, one early and one late, confirm Pizarniks use of concrete signs of gendered alterity at the positive end of the spectrum. La nica herida from Las aventuras perdidas (1958) opens with a question: Qu bestia cada de pasmo/ se arrastra por mi sangre . . .? (Poesa, p. 78). The image of the wound recurs throughout Pizarniks writing, published and private; it is perhaps the emblematic image. Its link with a sense of alterity (madness, victimhood/vulnerability, extranjera, Jewishness, exile, and so on) is well known. Here the wound is associated with the presence of a vampiric beast inside her bloodstream: having this beast inside her is the cause of her extreme, narcissistic alterity, which makes it difficult for her to live in daily reality: He aqu lo difcil:/ caminar por las calles/ y sealar el cielo o la tierra. I have always read the beast as masculine in Pizarnik, unless she explicitly genders it as feminine (such as loba, dama de rojo). I also connect it to the minotaur, an important variation of the monstrous in Pizarnik, as in El espejo de la melancola from La condesa sangrienta. That Pizarnik identified with the minotaurmonster (overdeterminedly gendered male), as an emblem of her extreme alterity, is made apparent in this entry from her diary, on 5 July 1955: me siento un producto de la cruza entre el Minotauro y una Amargada Marciana (Diarios, p. 31). It is interesting that both these parents are inhuman. It is worth noting, as well, that they are appropriately, heteronormatively gendered. Extraccin de la piedra de locura, written in 1964 and published in the eponymous volume, in 1968, is an important prose poem. I wish to highlight certain fragments of it for the uncompromising ars combinatoria she effects between and among signs at both ends of the spectrum of gendered and sexualized alterity. The speaker introduces herself as a voice. First, she appears undead, speaking from the tomb; then, another voice speaks her. This voice is related to the bestia we just saw, from the early poem La nica herida, and to the multiple iterations of alterity-by-desdoblamiento throughout her work: Hablo como en m se habla. No mi voz obstinada en parecer una voz humana sino la otra que atestigua que no he cesado de morar en el bosque (Poesa, p. 247). The tone is rational, dispassionate, but the content belies this appearance: it reveals the simulative quality of her human voice as against the genuineness or discursive truth of this (other) voice, which testifies that the speaker is still a forest-dwelling, wild creature.
30 Linda Williams formulation about the monster in classic horror (although she is discussing film rather than literature) may be apropos here. According to Williams, When the monster is constructed as feminine, the horror film thus expresses female desire only to show how monstrous it is. Cited in Carol J. Clover, Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film, in The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film, ed. Barry Keith Grant (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996), pp. 66113, p. 92, my emphasis. Taking this a step further: I would ask what happens to the degree of monstrosity made visible when the textual monster is not only female but a lesbian, created by an author who is also a woman and a (conflicted) bisexual?
32
Continuing with the insideoutside duality which Pizarnik used extensively, throughout her work, she declares herself possessed by a fatal premonition of a black, asphyxiating wind. In this silencing space, the speaker searches for a way out, first in her memories. When they fail to provide her with an escudo, o . . . arma de defensa, o aun de ataque, she acknowledges her abjection, her victimhood A qu hora empez la desgracia? (Poesa, p. 248) and then in what seems, at first, a paradoxical move, asks for silence. However, whereas the first silence, metaphorically represented in the viento negro que impide respirar, corresponds to silence as rupture, the second is located at the positive valency (Valesios silence as plenitude); it is equated with la pequea choza que encuentran en el bosque los nios perdidos (Poesa, p. 248). Here, we observe how the positive and negative signs begin to work together. The cottage, forest and children reference the miniaturizing, infantilizing fairytale quality we have seen at the negative end of the spectrum. The image of the cottage, in particular, also serves as a visual and metaphoric space of (comforting) containment for a speaking subject who represents herself, increasingly, as fractured. Directly after the sentence cited above, we read: Y qu s yo qu ha de ser de m si nada rima con nada (Poesa, p. 248). This poignant, colloquiallyinflected phrase nothing more quintessentially Argentine than the expression qu s yo, in spite of herself links the desired silence/cottage to the necessary (and impossible) bond between the self and the text, even as it inscribes the texts unravelling. It is clear that she is referring, nostalgically, to her (lyric) poetry, about which she stated many times that it was what held her together, contained her. The next section comprises a luxuriantly aestheticized, eroticized contemplation of a framed scene of beauty and pleasure; it appears to be a painting depicting a cherubic, Florentine youth, who invites the speaker into the picture. In distress, she declares herself fuera del marco pero el modo de ofrendarse es el mismo (Poesa, p. 249). Outside the frame, she is scattered, fragmented, and as abject and self-abnegating as a religious offering (an image which occurs repeatedly in Pizarniks work). This section is followed by an enumeration of scattered images which possess and inhabit the self, but they infantilize and terrify, rather than containing or articulating her: capitanes y atades de colores deliciosos y ahora tengo miedo a causa de todas las cosas que guardo . . . cuantas cosas en movimiento, cuantas pequeas figuras azules y doradas gesticulan y danzan (pero decir no dicen) (Poesa, p. 250). Immediately after this list, which has begun the work of referencing the compendium of typical Pizarnikian images at the negative end of the spectrum (childhood colours and storybook imagery, which uncannily produce apprehension rather than delight), comes one of the most eerie and beautiful fragments in Pizarniks work:
Sonre y yo soy una minscula marioneta rosa con un paraguas celeste yo entro por su sonrisa yo hago mi casita en su lengua yo habito en la palma de su mano cierra sus dedos un polvo dorado un poco de sangre adis oh adis. (Poesa, p. 250)
33
The rhythm of this prose fragment is vastly different from that of earlier texts in which some of these discrete images (or similar ones) appeared, signifying the hyperfeminization, powerlessness, and infantilization of the speaker. Here, these meanings are available, but they are mediated by the sensual, almost libidinal, punctuationless flow of the words, markedly different from the lapidary forms and the feeling of fixity common to the earlier poetry in which they appear. And yet, the imagery does overdetermine a childish and feminized lack of agency as the miniaturized speaker (a tiny pink puppet with a sky-blue parasol) seems to float, or flow (much like the shrunken Alice in Wonderland) into the very body of the Florentine ephebe (from the paragraphs just above this one), through his mouth, trying to found her morada first on his tongue tantalizing site of the signifying language which eludes her and then in the palm of his hand, where giant-like, he crushes her as if she were but a beautiful golden butterfly. In the rest of the poem (another three pages of dense, rhythmic prose), concrete images of miniaturization, infantilization and abjection (princesita ciega, joven muerta, dibujo borrado, pequea mendiga) alternate with images of wildness (mujer-loba, guarida) framed by a discourse whose structure and abstract imagery undermine the fixity of the negative images by embodying and enacting the positive charge, by resembling almost a subconscious flow, a movement beyond the binary and toward the edge of jouissance: qu quieres? (Poesa, p. 251) the speaker asks herself. And the very language itself incarnates the response, Un transcurrir de fiesta delirante, un lenguaje sin lmites, un naufragio en tus propias aguas, oh avara, even as, one sentence later, she denies it: Figuras de cera los otros y sobre todo yo (Poesa, p. 251). Toward the end of the poem, Pizarniks language approaches the unbridled, more directly sexual discourse of the diaries and the minotaur texts: El sexo a flor de corazn, la va del xtasis entre las piernas (Poesa, p. 253). But I say approaches deliberately, because in Extraccin de la piedra de locura this sexual, embodied language is not unmoored, let loose upon itself as it is in the minotaur texts, but rather brought back around, held in check by negative imagery (of closure, containment, refusal) which frames it. Directly before the quote above, she writes: el haberme acallado en honor de los dems. And directly after: Puertas del corazn, perro apaleado, veo un templo, tiemblo, qu pasa? No pasa. This is what she envisioned in her writing: Yo presenta una escritura total. El animal palpitaba en mis brazos con rumores de rganos vivos, calor, corazn, respiracin, todo musical y silencioso al mismo tiempo. This, instead, is what constantly eroded that vision, that writing: Qu significa traducirse en palabras? (Poesa, p. 253). The diary entry for 5 January 1964 captures precisely the two poles I have been addressing throughout this essay, and lays bare the stakes of this vital (fatal?) contienda between the authorized voice and the textos de sombra:
Esteticismo que finalizar en el silencio. Salvo que acepte los poemas veloces, internos, venidos de lejos sin tratar de detenerlos, sin matarlos, sin cosificarlos . . . No tener para quien escribir desemboca en dos formas poticas: la del
34
exorcismo, inteligible o no, y la detenida, asfixiante, esteticista que consiste en un pequeo poema mil veces corregido . . . Mi forma autntica es el automatismo afectivo. Slo me podr ayudar lo que escriba rpidamente puesto que mi conflicto es la inmovilidad, el muro. Y no se abate un muro construyendo a su lado otro muro. Quiero abrirme. (Diarios, p. 355)
Writing the struggle between containment (the lyric poetry, the authorized voice) and dispersal (the private, unpublished writing, the minotaur voice) constitutes, for this reader, Pizarniks greatest angustia and her greatest apertura.
Bibliography
Aira, Csar, Las metamorfosis de Alejandra Pizarnik, ABC Cultural, 6 January 2001, pp. 78 Allatson, Paul, My Bones Shine in the Dark: AIDS and the De-scription of Chicano Queer in the Work of Gil Cuadros, Aztln: A Journal of Chicano Studies, 32: 1 (2007), 2352 Chvez Silverman, Susana, The Autobiographical as Horror in the Poetry of Alejandra Pizarnik, in Critical Studies on the Feminist Subject, ed. Giovanna Covi (Italy: Universit di Trento, 1997), pp. 26577 , The Look that Kills: The Unacceptable Beauty of Alejandra Pizarniks La condesa sangrienta, in Entiendes? Queer Readings, Hispanic Writings, ed. Emilie Bergmann and Paul Julian Smith (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 1995), pp. 281305 , The Poetry of Octavio Paz and Alejandra Pizarnik: A Dialogue with Silence, in Jewish Culture and the Hispanic World: Essays in Memory of Joseph H. Silverman, ed. Samuel G. Armistead and Mishael M Caspi (Newark, DE: Juan de la Cuesta, 2001), pp. 12944 , Signos de lo femenino en la poesa de Alejandra Pizarnik, in El puente de las palabras: homenaje a David Lagmanovich, ed. Ins Azar (Washington, DC: Organization of American States, 1994), pp. 15572 Clover, Carol J., Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film, in The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film, ed. Barry Keith Grant (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996), pp. 66113 Cortzar, Julio, La autopista del sur y otros cuentos (New York: Penguin Books, 1996) Jagose, Annamarie, Inconsequence: Lesbian Representation and the Logic of Sexual Sequence (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 2002) Johnson, Barbara, The Feminist Difference: Literature, Psychoanalysis, Race, and Gender (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998) Molloy, Sylvia, Disappearing Acts: Reading Lesbian in Teresa de la Parra, in Entiendes? Queer Readings, Hispanic Writings, ed. Emilie L. Bergmann and Paul Julian Smith (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995), pp. 23056 Montefiore, Jan, Feminism and Poetry: Language, Experience, Identity in Womens Writing (London and New York: Pandora, 1987) Negroni, Maria, El testigo lcido: la obra de sombra de Alejandra Pizarnik (Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo, 2003)
35
Ostriker, Alicia, Stealing the Language: The Emergence of Womens Poetry in America (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1986) Paz, Octavio, La centena (Poemas: 19351968) (Barcelona: Barral, 1969) Rohy, Valerie, Impossible Women: Lesbian Figures and American Literature (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 2000) Schor, Naomi, Reading in Detail: Aesthetics and the Feminine (New York and London: Methuen, 1987) Valesio, Paolo, A Remark on Silence and Listening, Rivista di Estetica, 1920 (1985), 1744
Different Aspects of Humour and Wordplay in the Work of Alejandra Pizarnik

Evelyn Fishburn
Dark, sombre, black; angry, aggressive, corrosive; transgressive, iconoclastic; puerile, experimental, incomprehensible; surrealist, absurd; and above all, joyless. These are some of the words that come to mind most immediately when thinking about the difficult and painful topic of humour and Alejandra Pizarnik. There is not much, if any, in her poetry, which has meant that until recently humour was a neglected aspect of her writings, but the publication of her prose work, including her correspondence and diaries, has brought to our attention the significant role that humour played in her life and work. Pizarniks most important writings on humour can be found in much of her correspondence as well as in Prosa completa (2002), where there is a whole section gathered under the rubric Humor followed by the complete version of her only play, Los perturbados entre lilas. The late texts, published posthumously, were often ignored or all but dismissed as embarrassing by readers who considered them either puerile, private jokes or lashings of despair by a mind on the border of derangement. However, recent criticism has begun to consider them, emphasizing the seriousness of the dark humour that pervades them. In the words of Cristina Pia: Slo que no es el lenguaje de la locura sino el de un arte que ha llegado hasta el fondo de su impulso transgresor, imitando peligrossimamente el habla descarrilada del delirio.1 Significantly, Sylvia Molloy a close friend of Pizarnik spoke in a recent interview against a purified hagiographic version of Pizarnik that eliminates la parte cmica, soez, pornogrfica, como si eso fuera inferior.2 My contention is that these are important writings whose cruel anger and obscenity complements the tormented wonderment of her poetry. In this chapter I offer an introductory discussion of the place of humour in Pizarniks non-fictional writings before proceeding to examine its explosive presence in her tortuous and splintered late prose works, which is where most of the humour is found. In the second part of the chapter I examine Pizarniks rela-
1 Cristina Pia, Alejandra Pizarnik: una biografa (Buenos Aires: Planeta, 1991; 2nd edn, Corregidor, 1999), p. 192. 2 Memoria de una juventud en Olivos, in Suplemento Clarn, 26 July 2003. Accessed at http://www.clarin.com/suplementos/cultura/2003/07/26/index.html
DIFFERENT ASPECTS OF HUMOUR AND WORDPLAY
37
tionship to Jewishness and look at the presence (or absence) of a Jewish dimension to Pizarniks humour.3
Essays, Diaries, Correspondence

Pizarnik is generally remembered as the poet of hauntingly beautiful verse who committed suicide at the age of thirty-six, and although there may be a question mark over the taking of the fatal overdose, there is no debate about the death wish which beset her throughout her life. It is in the light, or shadow, of such a longing that her humour should be approached, as an insidiously corrosive and (self-)destructive element as well as an avenue of escape from the reality from which she felt alienated. Her humour, as already mentioned, is not joyous: echoing Vallejo, she wrote: todo est alegre menos mi alegra (Correspondencia, p. 166). It seldom produces laughter, and when it does it is a cold, uncomfortable laughter, often an embarrassed frisson. It is purposely difficult, its impenetrability being not only part of its own aggression but arguably the cause of aggressive feelings in the reader, who feels partly implicated in what is being attacked, and partly mocked, and therefore angered by the impossibility of finding a convincing or coherent sense in what is being said. The texts resistance to any interpretation as to its meaning is part of its convulsiveness (to invoke Bretons formula),4 and it may be thought foolish, not to say ridiculous, to adopt an analytical approach to writings that implicitly and explicitly flaunt their rebellion against order and comprehension: Por tanto les digo, lectores hinchas, que si me siguen leyendo tan atentamente dejo de escribir (Prosa, p. 133). But Pizarnik herself read attentively, as is only too evident from her excellent critical essays (see chapters by Wilson and Goldberg in this volume). Her discussions on humour in others (Cortzar, Bustos Domecq [Borges and Bioy Casares], Silvina Ocampo, Michaux) focus on aspects of her writings that run parallel with her own search for an alternative way of perceiving reality. They are illuminating as regards both their work and hers, providing an important insight into the conceptual background that informs her own usage. For instance, in an article on Cortzar she writes dismissively of Freuds joke-work, whose psychoanalytical thrust she considers irrelevant to the metaphysical humour of her own time (Prosa, p. 197). She argues that the avant garde vision of the world as absurd is mimetically realist and shows her admiration for the separation of cause and effect in Cortzars stories (Prosa, pp. 1989). Particularly pertinent to her own prose fiction, is the link that she perceives between the subversiveness of humour and of poetry, noting that both have the ability to look beneath the surface of reality and reveal the other side. In all her critical readings of humour, Pizarnik hears a tragic echo which in turn will resonate in her own humorous
3 I should like to express my appreciation to the Leverhulme Foundation for their generous support of my research visit to Buenos Aires in connection with this essay. 4 As Breton puts it on the final page of Nadja, la beaut sera CONVULSIVE ou ne sera pas, Nadja (Paris: Gallimard, 1964).
38
EVELYN FISHBURN
writings, where, as she says of Ocampos short stories, el eterno doble fondo de la risa is always lo trgico (Prosa, p. 281). Like that of the surrealists, with whom she had close affinities, Pizarniks humour is asocial and anarchic, a vital strategy of resistance against all conventionality, and a response to the horror of existence. Humour was an important element in Pizarniks self-figuration. It is interesting to observe the difference in the way she projects herself to herself in her diaries and to her friends in the correspondence. There is little humour to be found in the diary entries but there are many important references to it, often as a separate or additional part of her fragmented self: No s qu es pero el humor desapareci, el deseo de salir, trascenderme. Nada sino yo, este yo que muerde (Diarios, p. 104). Without her humor she is left only with herself, a yo she fears. In the diaries she cannot laugh at herself. On the contrary, thinking about herself kills any joyousness: Cada vez que pienso en m dejo de rer, de cantar, de contar. Como si hubiera pasado un cortejo fnebre (Diarios, p. 223). Noticeably, most references to humour are accompanied by some dark, negative thought. However, for Pizarnik humour is also el gran encubridor, on the one hand, a means to hide her inability to communicate with the world, and on the other, a way to approach proscribed topics. For instance, she writes, revealingly, that by treating her sexuality humorously she is able to hide her celibacy and assume an orgy-loving, aggressively heterosexual sexual persona to cover up what she calls her forzosa or forzada castidad, o lo que fuere (Diarios, p. 154). She notes, in this same entry of 1959, a tendency that will come to dominate her later prose, namely, to talk about obscene topics with humour. The contrast between the serious, tormented style of the diaries and the playful, jocular and suggestive style of her letters is startling. The latter are full of puns, throwaway witticisms, code-switchings between both registers and languages, delighting freely in private jokes, mostly of a sexual or scatological nature. Some are accompanied by childlike illustrations, all part of the puerile persona Pizarnik fondly adopted.5 The humour at first is largely uncomplicated, interesting mainly because it projects a persona that is at odds with that of the diaries and the poetry, but a change of mood can be detected in the later correspondence, when it becomes more insistently aggressive, with a marked increase in obscene punning. Her language is full of sexual and lavatorial innuendo, such as in the neologism articuloncio, the absurdly phrased le clav muy hondo mi culo azul, the onomatopoeic wordplay titla, ta Atila?, and hundreds more examples. Her punning pyrotechnics are a strategy to deterritorialize language and free it from clichd use; as with Atila, Pizarnik exploits proper names for their sonic as much as their semantic properties, indulging freely in the fun of making new connections. Thus, conflating the names of Onassis and Onan, followed by their two rhyming attributes, she creates the following bon mot: Onaniss que es armero, pajero (Correspondencia, p. 157). The interplay between Onassis, ship-building, and Onanism in this phrase
5 This topic is covered by Fiona Mackintosh in Childhood in the Works of Silvina Ocampo and Alejandra Pizarnik (Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2003).
39
is an excellent example of the way Pizarnik exploits the sound of words in order to decentre language and concepts by moving from one frame of reference to another through linguistic slippage and equivocation. Osas Stutman, to whom several of these late letters are addressed, aptly defined the puns as guirnaldas de sonoros calembours con capacidad de maravillar (Correspondencia, p. 155).6 In the correspondence, humour is an obvious distancing device that allows her to communicate her anguished state of mind to her friends in a veiled manner, masking emotion with the ingenuity of her dazzling linguistic inventiveness. For example, in a letter to Arias Lpez she coins the neologism UMOR-H, which, combining humo (smoke) and humor, is suggestive of the role of humour as a smokescreen. Umor may also be a wink to Pirandellos dicussion of this topic in his 1908 essay LUmorismo.7 With throwaway wit, Pizarnik refers to the difficulties of expressing humour que es velocsimo (y yo tan lenta) (Correspondencia, p. 113). This is typical of the playful, light-hearted vein in the letters; the following extract, from an early letter to Ana Mara Barrenechea, illustrates the rich gamut of humour devices used by Pizarnik:
Hermosa amiguita Ana, quiero decir, distinguida amiga: sonno iiiio! la tua Alejandra! En cuanto holl delicadamente el suelo de la mother patria mi madre en particular dictamin excesivas delgadeces lindantes con inminentes anemias. A causa de ello me llevaron a perder mi hermosa silueta a Miramar. Quiero decir: estuve en Bs. As. slo un da: del 10 al 11 de febrero. Anteayer regres por fin y me apresuro a darte seales del sentimiento trxico de mi exigencia. Antes de partir te envi all por las glidas navidades parisinas un sobre grande, grande, con el mismo articuloncio que remito ahora. Supe por otras amargas experiencias que los carteros, ebrios de fois gras y de largos besos, anonadaron y desaparecieron buena parte de la correspondencia mundial. Y agreg la fina poeta como tengo muy mucho inters en que leas este digamos reportaje que le hice a nuestro queridsimo Julio, te lo envo tout de suite. (Correspondencia, p. 98, continued on p. 100)
Though the humour is fairly obvious, I shall indulge momentarily in listing the various devices employed to underline its richness and versatility. These range from multilingual, mixed registers, self-mocking references to her weight problem, or to herself as la fina poeta, and the inevitable wordplay on culo. The explanation of the lost letters uses two important humour devices, incongruity and exaggeration, to make its ludicrous point, while the oblique reference to Unamunos work on existential angst is flippantly distorted both in trxico and in the double slippage from vida to existencia and to exigencia. These distortions act as an important self-distancing device for her own emotions, or, to quote her coinage, UMOR-H. A salient example of this can be found in another letter, to Stutman, dated October 1970:
6 For a discussion of the ambiguous position of such letters in delimiting Pizarniks oeuvre, see Cristina Pias chapter in this volume. 7 Luigi Pirandello, Lumorismo: Saggio (Lanciano: Carabba, 1908).
40
EVELYN FISHBURN
Ich been [sic] die heilige [sic] Lola vengo de descubrirlo; y ello, gracias a unas medias 3/4 bordadas por el padre Coloma bajo els batuto del bioqumico Toscanelli, maestro menor de las ubres completz de Mallarma en 20 tomos, un dado, 1 pennsula. (Correspondencia, p. 166)
The multilingual feast mixing Spanish, German, English (bin/been) and Catalan, with Italian and French allusions, is immediately apparent, and illustrates the ease with which Pizarnik moved in these different cultures. But a slower reading enriches the initial effect. For instance, the saintliness of die heilige Lola is funnier when read against Marlene Dietrichs well-known song Ich bin die fesche (smart, chic) Lola, and it may also be understood as a mark of homage to the German singer. El padre Coloma was a minor nineteenth-century writer, a critic of the Madrid aristocracy of the times, whose association with embroidery is obscure; not so the link between Mallarma [sic] and the famed dice of Un coup de ds jamais nabolira le hasard. However, the humour in the fusion of (Mallar)m and ma with ubres and obras is more oblique, and at the risk of rationalizing the absurd, responds to an inner logic that mocks poetic creativity. (This letter is unique for the number of overt Jewish allusions, which I shall discuss in the second part of this chapter.)
Theatre: Los perturbados entre lilas

Pizarnik wrote one play, an absurd farce entitled Los perturbados entre lilas (henceforth Perturbados).8 She later extracted some of the lyrical passages and published them separately in El infierno musical as Los posedos entre lilas, in the form of a prose poem (Poesa, pp. 169171). This purified version, though considered by some as her finest poetic achievement, misses the core and original motivation of the play, namely, to express fragmentation through the interplay between two moods. Perturbados is crucially important as the foremost place where the two voices of Alejandra meet, the lyrical voice of the highly sensitive poet, and the strident, mocking voice of the subversive writer revelling in bawdiness and vulgarity. Perturbados represents a duality that remains unresolved, without synthesis or catharsis. There is no discernible plot, and if there is a message, it needs to be read through the fragmented structure of the piece. Perturbados was written during JulyAugust 1969, a few years after Pizarniks return from Paris, where she had forged close links with many surrealists. Though she did not consider herself a surrealist, close affinities can be found between Perturbados and the subversive practices of the surrealists.9 According to Ana Mara Moix, the work is digna de figurar entre lo mejor de Alfred Jarry, Ionesco y Beckett.10 It includes extensive stage instructions, which are not
8 The play is more frequently referred to as Los posedos entre lilas, but I shall use the title as it figures in Prosa Completa (pp. 16594), to avoid confusion with the shorter prose poem version (Poesa, pp. 2916). 9 For a discussion of surrealism and Pizarnik, see Csar Aira, Alejandra Pizarnik (Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo, 1998), p. 11. 10 In Prosa de una belleza mgica, Babelia, 6 April 2002, p. 10.
41
always linked to the baffling dialogues of the main body of the play, thereby underlining and enacting the theme of fragmentation and lack of communication. No stable interpretation is possible, or even desirable. The plays rebellion against realist aesthetics or anything approximating the logic of causality lashes out with a relentlessly aggressive dark humour. All social conventions, but particularly those linked to childhood innocence and sexual mores, are the object of virulent derision. According to her diaries she was reading Artauds The Theatre and its Double (1958) at the time of writing Perturbados, and many of his ideas on the theatre are discernible in this work. Among these, the separation between stage instructions and dialogue, the renunciation of psychological and social man in favour of a metaphysical theatre, the use of violent physical images to crush and hypnotize the sensibility of the spectator, and a desire to extend the frontiers of what is called reality, by putting the reality of the imagination on an equal footing with life.11 But most particularly, and following Breton and Artaud, Pizarnik uses convulsiveness in her endeavour to express a new and more authentic concept of life. Her particular weapon is the use of humour in all its transgressive manifestations. Apart from a debt to the European Theatre of the Absurd, another more local lineage can be traced for Perturbados in a contemporary experimental movement that emerged in Argentina in the middle of the century and which itself harks back to the popular and highly influential grotesco criollo. This was a body of theatre which flourished in the 1920s and 1930s, written largely by immigrants about immigrants, and was predominantly concerned with feelings of social alienation, exposing the mismatch between official rhetoric of the liberal project and the reality. Perturbados can also be seen as a precursor of el neogrotesco, in which national myths and values are grotesquely parodied and aggression has become ritualized.12 Though Pizarniks play is more abstract in the sense of dislocation it conveys, there are some points of contact with this theatrical axis. These can be summarized as the experience of meaninglessness, the interplay of illusion and disillusion, and violence suggested through the use of hyperbole and exaggeration. The use of criollo popular speech reinforces these links, which, however, should not be overemphasized, given the predominantly metaphysical dimension of Pizarniks farce.13
11 Antonin Artaud, The Theatre and its Double, trans. Mary Caroline Richards (New York: Grove Press, 1958), see pp. 123 and 823. 12 For further information see Eva Claudia Kaiser-Lenoir, La particularidad de lo cmico en el Grotesco Criollo, Latin American Theatre Review, 12:1 (1978), 2132, and Osvaldo Pellettieri, Una historia interrumpida: teatro argentino moderno (19491976) (Buenos Aires: Galerna, 1997). For further discussion of Pizarnik as a precursor of a movement known as teatro neobarroso y under, see Mara Alejandra Minelli, Polticas de gnero en el neobarroco: Alejandra Pizarnik y Marosa di Giorgio, in Proceedings of the 2. Congresso Brasileiro de Hispanistas, 2002, So Paulo (SP) [online]. 2002 [accessed 15 November 2006]. Available at: http://www.proceedings.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=msc0000000012002000 300038&lng=en&nrm=iso 13 Pizarniks name does not appear in any general discussion of Argentine theatre. Her play was not considered for the stage until a few fringe performances in recent years, for example in the Saln Pueyrredn, Buenos Aires, April 1998.
42
EVELYN FISHBURN
Perturbados is set in the closed space of a contaminated nursery, and consists of a series of disconnected scenes played between four farcical characters who arguably represent a divided self, acting as splintered representations of the authors different personae. Pia sees this one-act piece as una autntica teatralizacin del inconsciente (Pia, Alejandra Pizarnik, p. 181). The characters clearly ludic names invite speculation. For example, Segismunda wittily combines and conflates (Sigmund) Freud, the great interpreter of dreams, with Calderns most famous character Segismundo (from La vida es sueo [1636]), the dreamer and questioner of the boundaries between dream and reality. But there are further layers of association: Freuds seminal discussion of childhood sexuality is also indirectly invoked and caricatured in the near homonym segus inmunda. Using the Latin prefix in as negation to refer jocularly to the character/authors anguished sense of dislocation from the world gives Segus no de este mundo as another possible layer of meaning. Segismunda is made to wear a bizarre outfit of exacting stipulation, every item extravagantly colourful and classified as modelo Keats, Shelley, Rimbaud, and so on. It is tempting to see in this a parodic reference to fashions fetishization of cult figures, yet such facile didacticism seems misplaced: Pizarnik was not particularly interested in normative humour and I prefer to see in these specifications an attempt to desacralize high culture by invoking literary figures not for their poetic oeuvre but for their effect on the world of couture. My point, in this analysis, is to reveal an underpinning of order and inner logic in what appears to be random. Other playful associations may be detected. Carol, two consonants short of (Lewis) Carroll and his world of nonsensical humour, represents an androgynous male character who acts as a sort of alter ego to the dominant/dominatrix Segismunda. His female appellation pokes fun at social gender division. The plays concentration on childhood eroticism is again emphasized in the explicitly sexual names of the lollipop-sucking character Macho and of Futerina, his female, uterine counterpart. Both are ridiculous, limbless creatures, whose grotesqueness dehumanizes them and makes them objects of revulsion rather than pity. Perturbados has many farcical stage instructions that combine very detailed visual and sound specifications with abstract stipulations of mood. Similarly, a jarred contiguity produces the comic effect of the dialogue, which moves constantly between moods and registers and between high and low culture. The usual pattern is that Segismunda voices her existential anguish and Carol interrupts by bursting into song, usually a plaintive tango. So, in reply to Segismundas world weary No ests cansado de este afn, Carol enacts this weariness, singing
Mi noche, tu noche, mi llanto, tu llanto, mi infierno, tu infierno.
(Prosa, p. 167)
Segismundas metaphysical question Y quin te garantiza que vos no sos la sombra de alguno de mis yo? is answered tunefully with El mismo amor, la misma lluvia (Prosa, p. 192). Pathos is turned into bathos: the invented tangos repeat the despair, but in an incongruously different key. This kind of interplay, or estranio contrapunto
43
(Correspondencia, p. 289), as Pizarnik called her play, is a perfect illustration of what the humour theorist Koestler has termed a bisociative shock, meaning a collision between two different codes or systems.14 This collision, he argues, is artistically creative, as well as being an important trigger for humour. Freuds relief theory, that laughter is produced by the energy released when pathos is short-circuited, is equally relevant to the relief effected by Carols bathetic interruptions.15 An insistent preoccupation with obscenity, aggravated, no doubt, by the nursery setting, lies at the heart of Perturbadoss constant flouting of conventional morality. Items that are completely appropriate for a nursery, such as tricycles, dolls, chamber pots or a whistle, are disturbingly rendered inappropiate by being eroticized. Thus, there is an insistence on penetrative erotic tricycles todos envidian mi triciclo mecanoertico (Prosa, p. 166), todas las hembras a medio hacer se mueren por los triciclos (Prosa, p. 181) though the erotic tricyles are themselves parodied: necesito un triciclo ms confortable, algo con biblioteca, frigidaire y ducha (Prosa, p. 175). Moreover, there is a fetishized doll, la mueca no est terminada pero . . . empieza a despuntarle un sexo que ni la Bella Otero (Prosa, p. 181); there are sepulchral and lavatorial cupboards described as fretros inodoros (Prosa, p. 166); a golden phallus is used as a whistle and there is generally much wilfully provocative sexual and scatological repartee. Much of it is grotesque, as in the following interchange between Macho and Futerina: Besame, tocame. Tocame un nocturno. No podemos con los triciclos en las entrepiernas. No te hagas la monja portuguesa, ven, acercate (Prosa, p. 172). These scenes are able to appear funny in spite of their utter tastelessness because, following the tradition of the Theatre of the Absurd, they are so very evidently purely verbal constructs, and no empathy is aroused. Perturbados stands in parodic dialogue with a number of other works, from the tango to the Bible. Most are here re-written with a strong emphasis on obscenity. For instance, the poetic eroticism of the Song of Songs is mimicked, but with pornographic innuendo: Mi amante es ms alta que un reloj de pndulo; Mi amante es obscena porque se toca la hora (Prosa, p. 178). Cortzars invented erotic language, using a high linguistic register and perfect syntax in a parodic manner, is also bawdily imitated, the reference to a copulating doll adding an element of perversion: Lo de que fifa es, por ahora, una hiptesis de trabajo. Pero en el caso de ser cierta, con quin fifara mi mueca? Con un matrimonio (Prosa, p. 190). Pizarniks lifelong fascination with, and her debt to, Lewis Carrolls Alice books has received excellent critical attention and not much needs to be added here, but the difference between the whimsical nonsense humour of these works and the morbid, corrosive laughter in Perturbados will have become apparent from what has been said so far.16
Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation (New York: Dell, 1967), pp. 3540. Sigmund Freud, Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious (Harmondsworth: Penguin Freud Library, 1991), VI, pp. 42534. 16 See Fiona Mackintosh, La pequea Alice: Alejandra Pizarnik and Alice in Wonderland, Fragmentos, 16 (1999), 4155.
14 15
44
EVELYN FISHBURN
There are other examples of humorous cultural subversion. Pizarnik joins a well-established twentiethcentury practice of attacking traditional aesthetics by defacing and defaming the Mona Lisa; where Duchamp added a moustache and beard in his 1919 work L.H.O.O.Q. (which was then reproduced by Picabia), Pizarniks cultural iconoclasm works not by disfiguring the icon but by debasing it by means of a gossipy explanation.17 The Mona Lisas legendary smile is explained as (una) cara de resfriada y sonriendo demasiado de modo que se descubre que tiene un solo diente (Prosa, p. 165). This is followed by a reference to what is presumably a drawing by Goya, whose cinturn para castidad para labios cleverly links sexual with verbal (political?) repression in a description that fits with the painters own views and mordant wit (Prosa, p. 166).18 There are other allusions to art; for example, later in the play, Segismunda indirectly describes her own (or Pizarniks) fragmented self as a caricaturized cubist painting: Tiene tatuados dos ojos, una nariz y, naturalmente, una boquita de corazn. Hasta un sombrero tiene. En fin, una tpica belleza de los aos veinte en pleno traste (Prosa, p. 189). And to finish the visual description, a different disruption, that of a non-sequitur: Adems de tener tatuajes, tiene siempre razn (Prosa, p. 189). Aside from these allusions to art, there are many more veiled references to dadaism, surrealism, and the theatre of cruelty, among others. Mara Negroni was the first to note the close structural and thematic parallels between Perturbados and Endgame, the work that most clearly inspired it, but, as she points out: La opacidad de Beckett se ha esfumado.19 In both plays grieving is associated with laughter, and ridicule and slapstick are used to give some sort of comic detachment from metaphysical anguish, but in Perturbados this anguish is itself parodied through hyperbole and aberration. Pizarnik re-writes from a female position: Becketts stark room is a prettified nursery, the main voice is female, as are her transgressive sexual urges. Segismundas foil, Carol, is a transcoded example of gender clashes: male with a girls name, he is a virgin frightened of sex. He is in a clearly subservient position, though at the end, like Clov, his Beckettian counterpart, he leaves in search of order. While the gender dimension does not circumscribe the humour, it adds a layer to its transgressiveness. (This is an issue which merits a separate, more detailed study.) A more recondite allusion in Perturbados is to a scene in Molires last play Le Malade imaginaire (1673) in which a gullible patient is implicitly mocked and a (pretend) doctor ridiculed and exposed as a charlatan.20 The same incident occurs in Pizarniks play but here it moves on to reach a level of transgressivenes
17 Compare Martn F. Yriarts essay Csar Aira o la esttica anarquista de la literatura, which reads the ideology of anarchism as that of: demoler lo institucionalizado, el sentido comn, la vulgaridad burguesa que con su mirada convierte a la Gioconda en una marca de dulce de membrillo, http://www.lainsignia.org/2005/octubre/cul_044.htm 18 See Nigel Glendinning, Goya: la dcada de Los caprichos. Retratos 17921804 (Madrid: Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Francisco, 1992). 19 Mara Negroni, El testigo lcido: la obra de sombra de Alejandra Pizarnik (Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo, 2003), p. 81. 20 I quote from the 1933 Larousse edition.
45
of groundbreaking proportion. Given the sustained verbatim repetition of the dialogue, the unexpectedness of the connection, and the fact that this reference has remained unnoticed hitherto, I quote the passage at length.21 My point, in doing so, is to underline the similarities, and to highlight, with the comparison, the obscene and venomous bravado that follows in Pizarniks re-enactment of the scene.
Le Malade imaginaire, Act III, sc. x Je suis mdecin passager, qui vais de ville en ville, de province en province, de royaume en royaume, pour chercher dillustres matires ma capacit, pour trouver des malades dignes de moccuper, capables dexercer les grands et beaux secrets que jai trouvs dans la mdicine. Je ddaigne de mamuser ce menu fatras de maladies ordinaires, ces bagatelles de rhumatismes et de fluxions, ces fivrottes, ces vapeurs, et ces migraines . . . Je veux de maladies dimportance, de bonnes fivres poupres, de bonnes pestes, des bonnes hydropisies formes, de bonnes pleurisies, avec des inflammations de poitrine poupres: cest l que je me plaie, cest l que je triomphe; et je voudrais, monsieur, . . . que vous fussiez abandon de tous les mdecins, dsespr, lagonie, pour vous montrer lexcellence de mes remdes . . . Je vous suis oblig, monsieur, des bonts que vous avez pour moi. Donnez-moi votre pouls. Allons donc, . . . Qui est votre mdecin? Monsieur Purgon Perturbados Yo voy de ciudad en ciudad y de provincia en provincia para encontrar enfermos dignos de ocuparme.
Desdeo entretenerme con enfermedades ordinarias, tales como reumatismo, prurito anal, dolores de cabeza y estreimiento. Lo que yo quiero son enfermedades de importancia, buenas calenturas con delirio, satiriosis, fulgor ulterino, hidropesa, priapismo, cabecitas de alfiler, talidomdicos, centauros, talon de Aquiles, Monte de Venus, Chacra de jpiter, Estancia de Atenea; en fin, en eso es donde yo gozo, en eso es donde yo triunfo. Deseara, seora, que estuviese Vd. abandonada de todos los mdicos, desahuciada, en la agona, para mostrar a Vd. la excelencia de mis remedios. Le agradezco, caballero, las bondades que tiene para m. Dme el pulso. Vamos, lo hallo natural. Eso no es natural. Quin es su mdico? El Dr Limbo del Hano
21 Ana Mara Rodrguez Francia notes la subyacencia del teatro molieriano in Los perturbados, but draws a different parallel: la relacin hipotextual respecto de El mdico a palos de Molire. See La disolucin en la obra de Alejandra Pizarnik: ensombrecimiento de la existencia y ocultamiento del ser (Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 2003), p. 117, and pp. 1245.
46
EVELYN FISHBURN
(The variation in the names of the doctors epitomizes the difference in tone between the two texts: Pizarnik often added an intrusive h.22) Molires text is a bitter attack on the medical profession and Pizarnik would not have been insensitive to the tragic irony of Molire, genuinely ill, using hypochondria for the subject of his play, or to the fact that the actor/playwright had a fatal attack while performing the part of the man who is not ill but imagines it. If in the seventeenth-century play the scene is part of a plot to prevent an unhappy marriage, in Perturbados it stands alone, out of context, a game serving mainly as a vehicle to extend the frontiers of where comic satire can venture. In both plays there is a carnivalesque inversion of accepted roles, a doctor wishing a patient the worst of health and real agony so as to be able to demonstrate his excellent medical expertise, and the patient being duly grateful. But the rather mundane common illnesses listed in Le Malade imaginaire progress in Perturbados to specifically sexual complaints and irregularities. Delighting at first merely in bawdy innuendo, the doctor follows it with a ludic enumeration of real and made-up sexual illnesses which he says he enjoys treating (the sexual innuendo in the Spanish gozar is stronger than se plaire), moving in an ordered crescendo of prurience from the slightly ambivalent calenturas con delirio, satiriosis (satyriasis is an uncontrollable or excessive sexual desire in man), fulgor uterino, priapismo, to cabecitas de alfiler (a sort of genital inflammation in women), and changing tack again, almost imperceptibly slips in the sickest of jokes by adding talidomdicos, and with the most perverse metonymic association, centauros, to the offensive catalogue (Prosa, p. 176). It must be remembered that the thalidomide crisis occurred in the 1960s, a few years before Perturbados was written. The skit has turned obscene and bitter and is perhaps the most extreme attempt in the play to be convulsive through the darkest use of sick, grotesque, humour. It is followed, as ever, by a complete change of mood, expressing metaphysical anguish and longing. Once again, what appears to be simply gratuitous indulgence in salaciousness and profanity has, as Cristina Pia and other critics have observed, a sombre underside, in which eros is linked to thanatos through orgasmic annihilation (la petite mort).23 This argument is supported by Segismundas gnomic statement, la obscenidad no existe. Existe la herida. But once again Carol interrupts, crooning la vida es una herida antigua (Prosa, p. 168).
22 This may gesture towards Julio Cortzars self-mocking character Horacio Oliveira, the central protagonist of Rayuela (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1962), which Cortzar asked Pizarnik to type up. Horacio adds silent hs as if to humorously deflate his own rhetoric: Usaba las haches como otros la penicilina. . . . Lo himportante es no hinflarse, se deca Holiveira (p. 581). 23 Cristina Pia, La palabra obscena, in Poesa y experiencia del lmite: leer a Alejandra Pizarnik (Buenos Aires: Botella al mar, 1999), pp. 2030 (p. 30). For a discussion of the link between sexual and ritual laceration and la petite mort see Georges Bataille, Visions of Excess: Selected Writings 19271939, ed. and trans. Allan Stoekl, with Carl R. Lovitt and Donald M. Leslie, Jr. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985), pp. 2503 (p. 251).
47
The Late Prose Work: La bucanera de Pernambuco o Hilda la polgrafa

If in Perturbados humour plays a bathetic, oppositional role to pathos, in La bucanera de Pernambuco o Hilda la polgrafa (henceforth La bucanera) it occupies centre stage, with intensified, uncontrolled stridency. Pizarniks neologism el volcnvelorio de la lengua (Prosa, p. 109), a fusion of volcanic eruption and wake, hints at that ever-present link of humour with death.24 In La bucanera, the story which takes its title from or lends it to the collection as a whole, Pizarnik emphasizes the curse of writing: eso que escribo para la mierda, Qu damnacin este oficio de escribir!, and Una se abandona . . . Nada (Prosa, pp. 1545). But the fragility of meaning is perhaps most subtly hinted at in allusive and alliterative ways: coge Adela un ramo de asfdelos o es un ramo de asfdelos lo que coge a Adela? (Prosa, p. 156). The palindromic structure of the question actually enacts the absurdum of reality which can be understood in one way, or its opposite. As suggested in the titles bizarre juxtaposition of piracy and cryptography, cultural plunder and remote intertextuality are the core of these unclassifiable texts, in which aggression against accepted moral codes is accompanied by extreme cultural iconoclasm. There is an impressive array of references to writers of erotica, and to many others whose names are exploited for the playful sexual potential of their sound. Heraclitus becomes heracltoris, in En alabama de heracltoris; Origen, becomes Orgasmo and Erasmus, Orgasmo Derroterdamcul, which is followed by Mein Goethe! Soy Bertoldo Bertoldino y Cacaseno. Soigneur ds, un coup de dieux nabolira pof la lzarde (Prosa, pp. 1201, 156, 106). Learning, too, is linked to sexuality: textculo, pajericultos lectores, in culo volens loquendi chorlitus (Prosa, p. 100), and, like almost anything else, serves for subversive wordplay. The piece La pjara en el ojo ajeno is saturated with inventive interchanges between paja and the associative pajarito. Its mock-innocent Moraleja is El nio azul gusta de la paja roja pero la nia roja gusta de la paja azul (Prosa, p. 1004). In the following nonsense sentence Pavlovs salivating dogs are ingeniously encoded by metonymic association: la dorada [for la adorada] Pavlova que gracias a Pavlov pudo darse una ducha en Cucha-Cucha (Prosa, p. 134). The same humorous sideways leap occurs in Juana Manuela Gorriti, tan til para la lluvia (Prosa, p. 90). Gorriti was a nineteenth-century Argentine writer and feminist avant la lettre, which makes the trivialization of her name doubly daring. In Helioglobo 32 the made-up title conflates a reference to Artauds life of Heliogabulus, Hliogabale ou lartiste couronn (1934), and Count Zeppelins air balloon (helios and globo). The number 32 is a learned, esoteric reference to the 32 distinctive signs of the Buddha, which is taken up through colloquial banter in the text: Recordar el lector que, no bien naci Buda, la gente vio a Asita [Asita is a monk who has attained enlightenment], el ermitao n. 122, bajar del Himalaya
24
See Mara Negronis discussion of this phrase in El testigo lcido, p. 92.
48
EVELYN FISHBURN
pegando saltitos con un solo pie puesto que tena un solo pie. Asita entr chez Buda y ley en el cuerpo del pibe los 32. The holy figure, 32, is then transposed to the unholy 69, los 32 signos del Buda son 69, its sexual innuendo underlined by a reference to the erotic world of Histoire dO (Prosa, pp. 969). Una musiquita cacoqumica, as the title indicates (in the prefix caco with its lavatorial nuances coexisting with the Greek root kakos, bad) and as the piece illustrates, is a celebration of cacophonic wordplay, aptly dedicated to el abate Calemberg, the comic charater from old German folk tales credited with the invention of punning (calembours). References to Bernard Shaw and his name are numerous, and wittily inventive. For instance, his play Pygmalion (1913) is lavatorially and sonically distorted to Pigmen y Gatafea, in the title of a non-existent piece which is dedicated to a doctor Bernard School (Prosa, p. 92). I read this as a mocking wink to Professor Higginss insufferable didacticism, but surely also to that of the playwright himself. Elsewhere, Shaw appears as a pedicure and the designer of slippers, pantuflas ad patitam exclusivamente diseadas para nosotros por Bernard Showl (Prosa, pp. 158 and 101). There is an inner logic to this nonsense: we recall that Pygmalions rebellion at the end of the play revolved around the fetching of slippers, and ad patitam leads to Dr Scholl of pedicure fame (Scholl is pronounced Sholl in German). The point is that though these countercultural references are an undoubted celebration of chaos, they are not as haphazard as they appear to be at first; instead, they conform to some sort of momentary inner logic. This is perhaps not simply an empty display of Pizarniks vast cultural knowledge so much as an inventive and deliberate application of this knowledge to bring down the barriers between high and low culture. Humour, like metaphor, draws together two dissimilar concepts, but its effect is more transient. I am aware that nothing kills humour as much as its explanation and the rationalization of absurdity, yet there needs to be a shared frame of reference for an intended joke to be grasped, so that when the association is particularly oblique some reflection may enrich the first spontaneous reading. For instance, the link between the name Concha Espina (much quoted in the diaries and letters as well as often in La bucanera) and the Freudian notion of the vagina dentata is not difficult to detect, but the ridicule is enhanced through knowledge that the Spanish writer of that name was a devout Catholic and propagator of traditionalist Falangist ideology. (Her full name was Mara de la Concepcin Jess Basilisa Concha Espina.) Still on this topic, a mixed-register clash that Pizarnik did not invent, but which she certainly exploited ferociously, is the dual meaning of the word Introitus, used for the opening act of worship in the Mass, and, in medical parlance, for the passage leading from the vulva to the cervix. Pizarniks reference to el introito a la vagina de Dios brings down time-honoured barriers between the sacred and the profane. In Bakhtinian terms of the carnivalesque, the accepted world is turned upside down by feminizing the Deity in an extravagantly blasphemous image which exploits in mock erudite language the two very different usages of this technical term: Estas
49
razones, que obran a modo de palabras liminares o de introito a la vagina de Dios, tienen por finalidad abrir una brecha en mi flgido ceremonial (Prosa, p. 154). One of the subversive characteristics of humour, amply demonstrated in the foregoing example, is that it allows us to breach taboos, say the unsayable, and take pleasure in it. Freud offers an explanation for this: he argues that indecent and unrestrained jokes allow us to outwit the censor within us and take pleasure in overcoming our inhibitions, whether sexual or malicious (Freud, p. 185). It would be too reductive to discuss Pizarniks humour in gendered terms, but gender is one of the important categories constantly transgressed. A male, Ch or lector, can be encinto though mainly to rhyme playfully with recinto whilst adding to the overall absurdity of the sentence. Other examples are more pointed gender transgressions, starting with the buccaneer of the works title: women were not traditionally pirates, and cannibals are not usually depicted as very old females, but here two ancianas antropfogas de 122 aos seem happily to have barbecued some missing persopejes (Prosa, p. 155). Later on in the story, if it can be called this, the traditional feudal male prerogative, the droit de seigneur, is feminized in a mock sexual context, where a woman is urged to exert this right: Us el derecho de pernada, tarada! (Prosa, p. 155). These examples suffice to provide the reader with a cross-section of humour in Pizarniks work. This humour is fundamentally countercultural, and the clearest explanation of its effect can perhaps be reached by comparison with Borges (a writer whose style Pizarnik often imitated with tongue in cheek, and most evidently in the Postdata and Postdatita of La bucanera [Prosa, 1567]). I have argued elsewhere that allusion in Borges is always apposite, however perverse or counterculturally it is used.25 It inflects the meaning of the text, and sometimes, when a reference is read against its original context, a new meaning emerges in the space created between the two uses. This is not the case or the purpose of Pizarniks citations, which, like her wordplay, rely on sonic and thematic association in texts that are themselves absurd, and simply do not bear such weight. Both writers are concerned with entropic humour, as a means of responding to the absurdity of the world,26 but while Borges replaces the rejected order with a parodic fictional order, Pizarnik celebrates disorder by simply offering chaos. I suggested earlier that an inner logic informs many of her intertextual jokes, but their effect is, as true humour should be, immediate, spontaneous and ephemeral. The overall result, however, is more lasting: it is a true cultural revolution, an irreversible defiance of accepted reality, with its false boundaries and hierarchies.
25 Evelyn Fishburn, Hidden Pleasure in Borgess Allusions, in Borges and Europe Revisited, ed. Evelyn Fishburn (London: Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London, 1998), pp. 4959. 26 See Patrick ONeill, The Comedy of Entropy: Humour, Narrative, Reading (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), p. 50.
50
EVELYN FISHBURN
Pizarnik and Jewishness

I will now focus specifically on the Jewish dimension of Pizarniks humour, and to this end, a certain amount of basic biographical contextualization is required. Pizarnik was born and died a Jew. Fleeing anti-Semitism, her parents emigrated to Argentina from the Ukraine two years before her birth in 1936; she was brought up in a Yiddish-speaking household and went to a Jewish school. Though she rejected early on both the Jewish way of life and a conventional middle-class existence, Pizarnik returned to her Jewish roots towards the end of her life. She was buried according to Jewish rites at La Tablada cemetery, the cementerio extrao y judo where her fathers body also lay (Prosa, p. 44). Pizarniks attitude to her Jewish heritage was markedly conflictive. On the one hand she resented and rejected what she perceived as its cultural and emotional constraints, mi angustia no permite lamentos intrusos she wrote after an aunts visit. In this diary entry dated 31 August 1955 Pizarnik resents her aunts constant talking about Hitler and anti-Semitism, seeing it as masochistic (Diarios, p. 63). On the other hand, she bemoaned her lack of roots: la tremenda soledad que implica no tener races en ningn lado (Diarios, p. 373). A current theme in post-Holocaust literature concerns the loss of shared family memories, a regret that Pizarnik voices with pretend childlike innocence: Mam nos hablaba de un blanco bosque de Rusia . . .Yo la miraba con desconfianza . . . qu significa un bisabuelo? (Prosa, p. 30). The double pull of her Judaic allegiance is also reflected in the changes to her name, and to the way in which she referred to herself. At home and at school she was Blime, Yiddish for flower, and its variations Blmele and Buma; elsewhere she was known by its Spanish version Flora, with which she signed her first writings. Eventually, in seeking a new persona, she adopted her second name Alejandra. This was not merely the signature of the poetic persona, but a name so wholeheartedly embraced that in her famous outcry, it stands for both surface and inner self:
alejandra, alejandra, debajo estoy yo, alejandra (Poesa, p. 65)
In a later poem she laments

. . . he perdido mi nombre el nombre que me era dulce sustancia en pocas remotas, cuando yo no era yo sino una nia engaada por su sangre . . . (Poesa, p. 95)
Yet the name that was dulce sustancia had not been entirely wiped out: in a letter to her mother written as late as 1969 she still signs Bumita. Pizarnik often expressed feelings of extranjera, which not unreasonably have been linked to her personal Jewish history. Nevertheless, in the context of
51
the extraordinarily high proportion of second generation immigrants living in Buenos Aires at the time, of which the Jewish community formed a significant part, Pizarniks adolescent experience as a daughter of immigrants would not have been that uncommon.27 Whilst it was undoubtedly a contributory factor, and a conditioned way of thinking about herself, her sense of exclusion probably owes less to any ethnic considerations than to personal feelings of existential alienation. Although she writes, longingly, Yo quera entrar en el teclado para entrar adentro de la msica para tener una patria (Poesa, p. 265), her isolation is felt beyond the communal as the following quotation makes clear: desconocida que soy, mi emigrante de s (Poesa, p. 267). The same argument can be put forward regarding her avowed errancia: Pizarnik felt herself to be a wanderer, and it may well be appropriate to link this with the topos of the Wandering Jew, but the Jewish reference can be read beyond its cultural specificity, as a metaphor for a spiritual and emotional sense of homelessness: para m, que soy errante, que amo y muero (Poesa, p. 264). Errante here must be understood in its double sense of wandering or straying both physically and morally. Leonardo Senkman finds in Pizarniks ontological and verbal sense of exile una inconfundible voz juda, and while this statement cannot be disputed it is important to weigh Pizarniks lamentations of not belonging against her strong attraction to, and identification with, the outcasts condition typical of the pote maudit.28 Pizarniks strange way of speaking Spanish is sometimes linked to her bilingual upbringing, but the examples given by Bajarla and Bordelois do not point to a Jewish intonation, or the use of Yiddishisms, so much as to an idiosyncratic way of speaking Spanish, running separate words into one another and stressing the wrong syllables.29 Pizarnik was, after all, portea, born in Avellaneda, and her odd way of speaking was part of her intense awareness of the difficulties of language, expressing her wish to distance herself from a language that for her was too conclusive, too confident in its ability to express what to her were doubtful certainties. Hence, she felt the need to create a purer, more authentic expression, and used a basic strategy to defamiliarize conventional speech by simply altering its rhythm. This was fundamentally important to her; in her words, [a] cento y palabra justa en m estn escindidos. Si aspiro a la justeza de un texto
27 As an indication of the size of the immigrant community in Buenos Aires, in 1914, 49.4% of the population were born outside Argentina. James R. Scobie, Buenos Aires: Plaza to Suburb, 18701910 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974), p. 263. In 1939, there were 300,000 Jews living in Argentina. The numbers would have swelled immediately before the Second World War. See Boleslao Lewin, Como fue la inmigracin juda a la Argentina (Buenos Aires: Editorial Plus Ultra, 1971), p. 156. 28 See Leonardo Senkman, Alejandra Pizarnik: de la morada de las palabras a la intemperie de la muerte, in La identidad juda en la literatura argentina (Buenos Aires: Pardes, 1983), pp. 33740, and Florinda Goldberg, Alejandra Pizarnik: este espacio que somos (Gaithersburg, MA: Hispamrica, 1994). 29 Juan Jacobo Bajarla, Alejandra Pizarnik: anatoma de un recuerdo (Buenos Aires: Almagesto, 1998); Ivonne Bordelois in Correspondencia, p. 16.
52
EVELYN FISHBURN
debo matar su acento (17 August 1968; Diarios, pp. 4556. See also 7 September 1962; p. 268). In her chapter Judasmo y extranjera, Pia observes that there are only three poems in which there are any Jewish allusions, and that all three were published posthumously (Alejandra Pizarnik, pp. 7985). The first, Los muertos y la lluvia, alludes obliquely to the chanting at a Jewish burial, and ends with a quotation from the Talmud: Dios tiene tres llaves: la de la lluvia, la del nacimiento, la de la resurreccin de los muertos (Poesa, pp. 434).30 The second appears in a poem entitled El ojo de la alegra (un cuadro de Chagall y Schubert), where Jewish music is again invoked as well as the Chagallian image of a young girl holding a seven-branched candelabrum, one of the most important symbols of Judaism (Poesa, p. 423). The third is a very short untitled text comparing her vanishing childhood to a Golem (Poesa, p. 436). To these examples can be added Poema para el padre, a loving tribute to her dead father, where the Jewish background remains unspecified but is the underlying issue (Poesa, p. 370). The relatively recent publication of the extended Diarios, the inclusion of hitherto unpublished texts in the Prosa Completa, and access to the Pizarnik archives held at Princeton University have given us a wider perspective on the topic of Pizarnik and Judaism, which may colour our perception of this issue. Jewish elements are usually, but not always, placed in an exalted context; however, in a piece not included in the 1982 edition of her posthumous work, written while Pizarnik was interned in the clinic El Pirovano, there is a scabrous Jewish reference, comparing female pubic hair to unkempt rabbinical beards. Yo he lamido conchas en varios pases she writes boastfully, calling herself la Reik del abrirse camino entre pelos como de rabinos desaseados oh el goce de la roa! (Poesa, p. 412). As I shall argue below, it is highly significant that this is about the only obscene Jewish reference amidst the plethora of obscenities that permeate the late prose work. Towards the end of the long poem Pizarnik returns to the theme of extranjera as spiritual alienation, identifying herself in this last respect with one of the writers with whom she felt the greatest affinity, Kafka, a fellow Jew: Y sobre todo Kafka/ a quien le pas lo que a m, si bien l era pdico y casto. The poem continues:
Se alej me alej No por desprecio (claro que nuestro orgullo es infernal) Sino porque una es extranjera Una es de otra parte. (Poesa, p. 416)
In speaking inclusively of nuestro orgullo, a reference to the Jews as a stiffnecked people, she seals the shared bond between herself, Kafka and the Jewish
30 The correct quotation from the Talmud reads as follows: Three keys are in the hands of the Holy One, blessed be He, which are not entrusted to any messenger, and they are: The key of rain, the key for a woman lying-in, and the key for the resurrection of the dead (Tract Taanith, Fasting). http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/t04/taa06.htm
53
people.31 Yet it is not a straightforward relationship on the part of either writer, as expressed in the famous quotation from Kafka which Pizarniks orphaned voice so clearly echoes: What have I in common with the Jews? I have hardly anything in common with myself.32 Pizarniks admiration for and sense of affinity with Kafka is well documented: she read a paragraph from his work every day a fin de darme fuerzas (Diarios, p. 444) and como quien lee la Biblia (Diarios, p. 447). Less known is the fact that in her private notebooks, where she copied passages from works that were important to her, there are a great number of quotations from Kafkas writings, many underlined and even annotated by Pizarnik. Termin los diarios de Kafka y ahora me siento ms sola que nunca (10 June 1969; Diarios, p. 473).33 Pizarniks relationship to Kafka has been examined in great depth by Anastasia Telaak in a key work on Jewish writing in Argentine literature, where she discusses the many points of contact between them, and makes important observations regarding their difference.34 Chief among these is the fact that Judaism plays a consistent and explicit role in Kafkas work, particularly in his diaries, some entries being devoted almost exclusively to the situation of the Jews. This stands in stark contrast to Pizarniks diaries, where her increased interest in mi cuestin juda, tan nueva is considered mainly, though not exclusively, in a few entries from 1967 to 1970 (see particularly, Diarios, pp. 4304). Her interest is personal, focused on how Judaism affects her. For instance, the longest entry dwells on what being Jewish means to her, and she discusses this with reference to Kafka: si hay algo que me disgusta es el tipo de muchachito judo muerto de hambre de amor, y que lo pide [the reference is to Jesus], un pequeo judo enamorado de ciertas ideas (amor, caridad, compasin). . . . Pero a los judos como K. los amo y son ellos, en suma, mi raza y mi casa. Pero ser judo significa . . . ser poseedor de un secreto (Diarios, p. 432). Perhaps this shared secret is a perception, seen through the lens of Judaism, of the world as an unfathomable, senseless place, both menacing and disorientating. Alicia Borinsky has put this most insightfully: el mismo juego que parece buscar una autodefinicin a ratos en la hibridez y otros en la universalidad del abismo del sentido, la inscribe en un judasmo contemporneo, desfamiliarizado y escindido de la tranquilidad de las
31 and the Lord said to Moses . . . I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people (Exodus, 32: 910, King James Bible). For a reading of Pizarnik and Kafka see Karl Possos chapter in this volume. 32 Was habe ich mit Juden gemeinsam? Ich habe kaum etwas mit mir gemeinsam . . . (und sollte mich ganz still, zufrieden damit da ich atmen kann in einen Winkel stellen), 1 January 1914. 33 I would like to thank Fiona Mackintosh for references to material from the Princeton Archives. The copied passages are principally from Kafkas diaries, but also from the story The Great Wall of China and from Blanchots Kafka et la littrature. Surprisingly, the diary quotation mentioned immediately above is not included in the notebooks. 34 Anastasia Telaak, Krper, Sprache, Tradition: jdische Topographien im Werk zeitgenssischer Autorinnen und Autoren aus Argentinien (Berlin: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 2003), pp. 291398.
54
EVELYN FISHBURN
figuras de definicin colectiva.35 Pizarnik was very interested in Kafka as a humorist, and at one time had planned to write a short essay on the topic of Kafka and humour, taking the Jewish element to be crucial. She writes that she would have to read Kafka cien veces, and ensayos sobre el humor . . . en general y sobre hum. Juif. Luego sobre K. . . . Luego sobre judasmo (Diarios, p. 442). But the article appears not to have been written and neither Kafka in particular, nor Jewish humour generally, figure among her learned and penetrating essays on humour in Cortzar, Borges and Bioy Casares, Silvina Ocampo and Michaux. While Kafka figures a few times in La bucanera, most prominently in the form of an epigraph taken from his diaries (Prosa, p. 91), this is not particularly connected to humour. Indeed, there is a notable absence of what is conventionally understood as Jewish humour from Pizarniks work, especially as regards the late prose, where humour is paramount. (Tellingly, in Telaaks detailed study there is no mention of humour with reference to Pizarnik.) Even Jewish culture in general is largely missing from these late writings and its absence among the welter of multicultural and multilingual references which permeate La bucanera seems particularly striking. In addition to Kafka, a few Jews are named (Heine, Proust) but their Jewishness is all but ignored, in contradistinction to their treatment by Borges, who when referring to Heine insistently underlines his Jewishness. Absent too are the great Jewish humorists: there is no mention of Scholem Aleichem, no Isaac Bashevis Singer, no Saul Bellow or Philip Roth, whose pornographic novel Portnoys Complaint achieved instant success upon publication in 1969, just before Pizarnik wrote La bucanera. The one important Jewish presence in La bucanera is so fleeting, so cryptic, that, to my knowledge, it has escaped all critical attention. It occurs at the beginning, in a mock-index which lists the titles of some pseudo prosas, each accompanied by a dedicatee. The last of these reads as follows: A idishe Mame o la autora de Igitujs, and I shall analyse it in terms of what Pia recalls as talmudic devices, esos tirabuzones conceptuales con los que Alejandra jugaba and ese darles vueltas (cabalstico) a las palabras buscndoles otro significado yo otro, o otro ms (Alejandra Pizarnik, pp. 1056). A idishe Mame is an obvious allusion to the proverbial Jewish mother, so often stereotyped as overprotective and oppressive, and most probably evoked ironically in her shmalzy portrayal in the Yiddish song of that title, popularized, among others, by Sophie Tucker and Al Jolson. Igitujs is a more ingenious scatological example of Hildas cryptic writing, in that it joins the beginning of the usual Sabbath greeting A git Shabbes onto Tuches, the Yiddish for arse (with all the kissing or licking that accompanies the term also in English). The idishe Mame is a not improbable reference to Pizarniks mother, and to their conflictive relationship.36 In this case, the
35 Memoria del vaco: una nota personal en torno a la escritura y las races judas, in Revista Iberoamericana, 66:191 (2000), 40912 (p. 411). 36 Pizarniks problematic relationship with her mother is frequently mentioned in the correspondence and particularly in Juan Jacobo Bajarla, where she refers to her as la vieja
55
mother would be her author, or creator, and Pizarnik would be referring to herself self-deprecatingly in the insulting terms that the Yiddish neologism implies. And since idishe Mame is dedicated to Amlie de Freud, the Hispanicized form of address for Freuds mother, the phrase could refer, in an oblique way, to the Virgin Mary, of whom Pizarnik once wrote madre juda tpica, tan tpica como la madre de Freud (Diarios, p. 433). Causality is never straightforward in Pizarnik, and La autora de Igitujs may well be understood as a reference to Freuds renowned discussion of anality, or equally to his theory of the Oedipus complex, to which there is a well-known Jewish dismissive response: Oedipus, Schmiedipus, as long as he loves his mother. But there may be another layer linking Pizarnik and Freud in the Oedipal joke: Freud had a traumatic experience in early childhood when he saw his mother naked, and could only bring himself to refer to this incident in Latin; Pizarniks rare foray into Yiddish to allude to her own mother can perhaps be seen as an inverted parallel, moving into a more familiar and domestic language rather than into arcane formality.37 The extremely veiled nature of this super-condensed, overdetermined joke in La bucanera is obviously intended for a small, dedicated and perhaps slightly obsessive Jewish readership. In marked contrast to this stands the explicitness and expansiveness of the Jewish element in the one other place Jewish humour appears, namely, in the private body of letters written to Osas Stutman, an Argentine poet and immunologist, at the time that Pizarnik was writing La bucanera. I referred in the first part of this chapter to Pizarniks play (in these letters) on the sonic qualities of words, in order to decentre language and concepts while making new, absurd associations; uniquely, in this correspondence with presumably a fellow Jew, there is a marked Jewish presence, with Jewish humour playing a sustained role. For instance, in the following passage, Jewish references appear among a multiplicity of criollo and other allusions, but the bite lies in the Jewish element:
yo tejer un tui penniene (con lentejoilas!) como los que vende mi to LvyStrauss en el Rest. Goldenberg (Ile Saint Louis) con campanitas para que respiren y tintineen y todo Mineapolish sienta que disfruts de la vida y tireas la ccjara en el Zoilo para que la pise Azucena Maizani o Troilo o Edmue Riperro y canten ese tang de la dinasta ming desbito coxal, me la agarr! fine estoy contenta porque mand a la merduzia a un shlieper que casi me deja enfinca de un Rodrguez no s cuanto. Yo, quedar Rodriz! (25 August 1970; Correspondencia, p. 158)
The passage stands alone; it makes no coherent sense, but conjures a Jewish atmosphere which shows Pizarnik at ease with her Jewishness, and, in the best
rezongona (Bajarla, p. 18 onwards). Telaak discusses the motherdaughter relationship from an Oedipal perspective, and examines what she terms Mutterhasse, aggressivity towards the mother, in the context of the role of the mother in traditional orthodox Jewish culture; see Telaak, pp. 33142, particularly page 337. 37 Peter Gay, Freud: A Life for our Time (London: Dent, 1988), p. 11.
56
EVELYN FISHBURN
tradition of Jewish humour, laughing at the stereotype. For example, by mocking the way Jewish immigrants speak Spanish in Argentina, Pizarnik is, wittingly or otherwise, displaying her own superiority in having overcome that stage but at the same time signalling a conspiratorial sense of identification with her people, emphasizing their exclusion from the accepted language of culture. The Yiddish preferred substitution of the oy sound for the Spanish diphthong ue is mimicked in Zoilo for suelo and lentejoilas, for lentejuelas. This mispronunciation is often used in anti-Semitic caricature, or, as here, in that staple of Jewish humour, self-mockery. The clash between the two codes the yiddish shlepper (shlieper), and the aristocratic would-be hyphenated Hispanic Rodrguez no s cuanto produces a textbook example of what humour theory calls a cultural frisson.38 This might lie behind Pizarniks mock outrage at the thought of becoming pregnant by a goi, however socially illustrious. Similarly, the Rest. Goldenberg is a renowned Jewish restaurant in Paris in the rue des Rosiers, which is in the Jewish quarter, the Marais, and to (mis)place it in the exclusive Ile de St Louis points to another joke based on a suggestion of clashing cultures. Pizarnik did not have an uncle called Lvy-Strauss, and mi to LevyStrauss is more likely to be a way of referring to Jews as a people, or thinking of the key work on kinship by the famous (Jewish) anthropologist of that name an extended family. From to to ta, this last idea is repeated in the letter in a saying by Kafka, Todos los judos tenemos una ta llamada Klara, which Pizarnik quotes to show Jewish solidarity, also claiming to have an Aunt Klara. But this aunt differs from the image conjured by a stiff-necked people (nuestro orgullo); she is trivialized as someone handing out a homely Jewish delicacy pepinillos en un viejo frasco de nescafe and playing basketball for a Jewish athletic team, Maccabi, with someone now called Levin (Correspondencia, p. 160). Death is never far from Pizarniks humour, and the Jewish ritual custom of washing the dead cuando en el cementerio juif lavan al muerto con Lux (Correspondencia, p. 166) is recalled with false hilarity in another letter, in a passage that seeks to convey a feeling of joylessness amidst general joy. The profusion of Yiddishisms or Spanish words with a Jewish inflection in these letters serves to highlight acutely their absence in the rest of Pizarniks profusely multilingual writing. For example, Ay veiz mir! is a frequently heard lament; Woe is me is a literal rendering whose elevated register misses the intimacy and sense of victimization of diasporic history. Minneapolish hints at the citys large Jewish population; chistejes (for chistes) mimics the hard ch sounds of Semitic languages; and some words are made to end with Russiansounding suffixes, such as Acablotski and (calle) Floridaskaia, or to start with Sh or Sch, as in Schuck, schmack. The Argentinian author Frida Shultz de Mantovani serves at least twice for Yiddish punning, first as Fryda Schmutz (dirt, or rather, smut) de Manco-Capac and then as Fr. Schulltz de Schmalz (Schmaltz, known mainly as an oversweet literary style, in fact refers to the opulence of
38
See my earlier comment on Koestlers bisociative shock.
57
rendered fat, preferably goose fat, a ghetto luxury). In the light of the constant wordplay in the correspondence, it would be reasonable to read these alliterative jibes as not much more than a wish to play with language, and particularly with names, for their sonic associations, without any specific intention beyond the overall iconoclasm of the prose. But, significantly, in this case the punning is based on Jewish/Yiddish sounds and word formations, showing Pizarniks sensitivity to Jewish culture, whilst also showing a jocular sense of being at home with it. My purpose in exploring the Jewish references in Pizarniks only fairly recently accessible diaries, poetry, correspondence, prose and notebooks was to examine more closely the presence and significance of Judaism in her writing. So far, Pizarniks Jewishness has been evaluated mainly on the basis of her poetry as in the case of Goldberg, Senkman and Telaak. In discussing Pizarniks carcter de juda Pia concentrates mainly on the poetry, although she also includes in her assessment friends testimonials as well as the darker texts, the destructive, obscene humorous prose. She interprets the Jewish element in these as an ontological mark of difference, together with other more concrete markers of difference, namely, her being female and bisexual (Poesa y experiencia del lmite, pp. 834). My own focus on instances of explicit Jewish references has not altered the previously observed fact that these are, numerically, very few, but it has added a new perception to their nature and scope. The detailed analysis of the Jewish element in the letters to Stutman not only gives a unique picture of Pizarnik being entirely at home in Jewspeak, whether in the form of Yiddish expressions and associations or in the mixing of Yiddish sounds with Spanish, but also serves to highlight the void that its absence leaves in the humorous prose. Pizarnik obviously had the knowledge, the inner-awareness and the Jewish wit to have included Jewish humour more openly in her work, but did not do so. Many reasons come to mind for this, but it would be foolish to suggest a rational explanation for a mind as complex and unpredictable as Pizarniks. Better to rejoice in the rich and inventive area of humour revealed, and to add this controversial aspect of Pizarniks sense of Jewishness to the overall picture.
Bibliography
Aira, Csar, Alejandra Pizarnik (Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo, 1998) Artaud, Antonin, The Theatre and its Double, trans. Mary Caroline Richards (New York: Grove Press, 1958) Bajarla, Juan Jacobo, Alejandra Pizarnik: anatoma de un recuerdo (Buenos Aires: Almagesto, 1998) Bataille, Georges, Visions of Excess: Selected Writings 19271939, ed. and trans. Allan Stoekl, with Carl R. Lovitt and Donald M. Leslie, Jr (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985) Beckett, Samuel, Endgame (London: Faber & Faber, 1958) Borinsky, Alicia, Memoria del vaco: una nota personal en torno a la escritura y las races judas, in Revista Iberoamericana, 66:191 (2000), 40912
58
EVELYN FISHBURN
Breton, Andr, Nadja (Paris: Gallimard, 1964) Fishburn, Evelyn, Hidden Pleasure in Borgess Allusions, in Borges and Europe Revisited, ed. Evelyn Fishburn (London: Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London, 1998), pp. 4959 Freud, Sigmund, Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious (Harmondsworth: Penguin Freud Library, 1991), vol. 6. Gay, Peter, Freud: A Life for our Time (London: Dent, 1988) Glendinning, Nigel, Goya: la dcada de Los caprichos. Retratos 17921804 (Madrid: Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Francisco, 1992) Goldberg, Florinda, Alejandra Pizarnik: Este espacio que somos (Gaithersburg, Maryland: Hispamrica, 1994) Kaiser-Lenoir, Eva Claudia, La particularidad de lo cmico en el grotesco criollo, Latin American Theatre Review, 12:1 (1978), 2132 Koestler, Arthur, The Act of Creation (New York: Dell, 1967) Lewin, Boleslao, Como fue la inmigracin juda a la argentina (Buenos Aires: Editorial Plus Ultra, 1971) Mackintosh, Fiona J., Childhood in the Works of Silvina Ocampo and Alejandra Pizarnik (Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2003) Minelli, Mara Alejandra, Polticas de gnero en el neobarroco: Alejandra Pizarnik y Marosa Di Giorgio, in Proceedings of the 2. Congresso Brasileiro de Hispanistas, 2002, So Paulo (Sp) [Online], 2002 [accessed 15 November 2006]; http://www.proceedings.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=msc000000 0012002000300038&lng=en&nrm=iso Moix, Ana Mara, Prosa de una belleza mgica, Babelia, 6 April 2002, p. 10 Molire, Le Malade imaginaire (Paris: Classiques Larousse, 1933) Molloy, Sylvia, Memoria de una juventud en Olivos, in Suplemento Clarn, 26 July 2003; http://www.clarin.com/suplementos/cultura/2003/07/26/index.html Negroni, Mara, El testigo lcido: la obra de sombra de Alejandra Pizarnik (Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo Editora, 2003) ONeill, Patrick, The Comedy of Entropy: Humour, Narrative, Reading (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990) Pellettieri, Osvaldo, Una historia interrumpida: teatro argentino moderno (1949 1976) (Buenos Aires: Galerna, 1997) Pia, Cristina, Alejandra Pizarnik: una biografa (Buenos Aires: Planeta, 1991; 2nd edn, Corregidor, 1999) , Poesa y experiencia del lmite: leer a Alejandra Pizarnik (Buenos Aires: Botella al mar, 1999) Pirandello, Luigi, Lumorismo: Saggio (Lanciano: Carabba, 1908) Pizarnik, Alejandra, Poesa completa y prosa selecta, ed. Cristina Pia (Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 1994) Rodrguez Francia, Ana Mara, La disolucin en la obra de Alejandra Pizarnik: ensombrecimiento de la existencia y ocultamiento del ser (Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 2003) Scobie, James R., Buenos Aires: Plaza to Suburb, 18701910 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974) Senkman, Leonardo, Alejandra Pizarnik: de la morada de las palabras a la intemperie de la muerte, in La identidad juda en la literatura argentina (Buenos Aires: Pardes, 1983), pp. 33740 Talmud, http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/t04/taa06.htm
59
Telaak, Anastasia, Krper, Sprache, Tradition: jdische Topographien im Werk zeitgenssischer Autorinnen und Autoren aus Argentinien (Berlin: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 2003) Yriart, Martn F., Csar Aira o la esttica anarquista de la literatura, http://www. lainsignia.org/2005/octubre/cul_044.htm
The Tormenting Beauty of Ideals: A Deleuzian Interpretation of Alejandra Pizarniks La condesa sangrienta and Franz Kafkas In the Penal Colony
Karl Posso
Desire for a deeper sleep that dissolves more. The metaphysical urge is only the urge toward death. Franz Kafka1 The excess of reason engenders the unjustifiable. The excess of transparency engenders terror. Jean Baudrillard2
Alejandra Pizarnik is notorious for a short prose work entitled La condesa sangrienta, which, contrary to what is stated in the recently published Prosa completa, first appeared in 1965 under the title La libertad absoluta y el horror.3 The story was then republished several times in various journals and eventually came out as a book in 1971, the year before Pizarnik committed suicide. Surprisingly, this piece, which Pizarnik claimed to be her best prose, started life as a humble book review (Diarios, pp. 4645). A book review, however, which soon enough elides completely the ostensible object of its scrutiny, Valentine Penroses La comtesse sanglante (1962), in order to distil and transform the history therein narrated. What we have here is effectively the second most celebrated and oddly absolved case of plagiarism in Argentinian literature after the works of Borgess Pierre Menard. But it is perhaps this unconventional gestation, combining critical intent with dexterous piracy, which makes the piece so different from the rest of Pizarniks work. The story is that of Erzsbet Bthory, a sixteenth-century Hungarian countess famed for the alleged torture and murder of some six hundred girls, who is said to have bathed in their blood in order to
1 Franz Kafka, The Diaries of Franz Kafka, 19101913, ed. Max Brod, trans. Joseph Kresh (London: Secker & Warburg, 1948), p. 259 (8 April 1912). 2 Jean Baudrillard, The Intelligence of Evil or The Lucidity Pact, trans. Chris Turner (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2005), p. 193. 3 Alejandra Pizarnik, La libertad absoluta y el horror, Dilogos, 1:5 (1965), 4651. In Prosa completa Ana Becci claims the essay first appeared in Testigo, 1:1 (1966).
THE TORMENTING BEAUTY OF IDEALS
61
preserve her youth. Bthory has gone on to become, alongside Vlad the Impaler, one of the main historical sources for the myth of Transylvanian vampirism both feature in Rev. Sabine Baring-Goulds seminal anthology The Book of WereWolves (1865).4 In the twentieth century, Bthory inspired the likes of Georges Bataille, who claims in The Tears of Eros that if Sade had known of [her] existence, there is not the slightest doubt that he would have felt the fiercest exaltation; [she] would have made him howl like a wild beast;5 and Angela Carter, whose puckish account of the Carpathian countess as photosensitive lamia in The Lady of the House of Love is contrasted with Pizarniks terser, more sinister sketch in The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales.6 These rather distinct writers all exalt Bthory as the force of devastating sensuality which interrupts the received order of things. Pizarniks La condesa sangrienta, however, is merely an abridged version of Penroses account which Cortzar also plundered, albeit in a more restrained fashion, when writing 62 Modelo para armar (1968).7 Pizarnik seizes upon details in Penroses text which she considers interesting or important, but erases the overtly fanciful dialogue between the characters and sterilizes the French poets nauseating purple prose exemplified by the histrionics with which she goes about setting the scene: A time when children and virgins disappeared without anyone being too much concerned: much better not to get mixed up in
4 Andrei Codrescu, The Blood Countess (London: Quartet Books, 1996); Sabine BaringGould, The Book of Were-Wolves: Being an Account of Terrible Superstition (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1865), pp. 13941; Ken Gelder, Reading the Vampire (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), pp. 245; Clive Leatherdale, The Origins of Dracula: The Background to Bram Stokers Gothic Masterpiece (Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex: Desert Island Books, 1998), pp. 14151; Maurice Prisset, La Comtesse de sang (Paris: ditions Pygmalion/Grard Watelet, 1975), pp. 1517; Gabriel Ronay, The Truth About Dracula (New York: Stein and Day, 1970); Tony Thorne, Countess Dracula: The Life and Times of the Blood Countess, Elisabeth Bthory (London: Bloomsbury, 1997), pp. 512; James B. Twitchell, The Living Dead: A Study of the Vampire in Romantic Literature (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1981), pp. 1718. 5 Georges Bataille, The Tears of Eros (1961), trans. Peter Connor (San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books, 1989), pp. 13841 (p. 139). 6 Angela Carter, The Lady of the House of Love (1979), in The Bloody Chamber (London: Vintage, 1995), pp. 93108; Chris Baldick, ed., The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 46697. See also M. A. Seabra Ferreira, Alejandra Pizarniks Acerca de la condesa sangrienta and Angela Carters The Lady of the House of Love: Transgression and the Politics of Victimization, New Comparison, 22 (1996), 2757; Gina Wisker, Revenge of the Living Doll: Angela Carters Horror Writing, in The Infernal Desires of Angela Carter: Fiction, Femininity, Feminism, ed. Joseph Bristow and Trev Lynn Broughton (London and New York: Longman, 1997), pp. 11631. 7 Ana Mara Hernndez, Vampires and Vampiresses: A Reading of 62, in The Final Island: The Fiction of Julio Cortzar, ed. Jaime Alazraki and Ivar Ivask (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1978), pp. 10914; ngeles Mateo del Pino, El territorio de la memoria: mujeres malditas, La condesa sangrienta de Alejandra Pizarnik, Rassegna Iberistica, 71 (2001), 1531; Silvia Scarafia and Elisa Molina, Escritura y perversin en La condesa sangrienta de Alejandra Pizarnik y 62 Modelo para armar de Julio Cortzar, in Un tal Julio, ed. Mara Elena Legaz (Crdoba: Alcin Editora, 1998), pp. 89114.
62
KARL POSSO
this sort of thing. But their hearts, their blood, what happened to those?8 Pizarnik limits herself to reporting selected details about Bthory in the present tense, and uses simple, crisp language; in marked contrast to Penrose, the narrative is introduced thus: Sentada en su trono, la condesa mira torturar y oye gritar (Prosa, pp. 2823). Penrose dramatizes: Erzsbet lowered her eyes . . . above the bracelets, on the spot where the blood had lain for several moments, she noticed that her flesh had the translucent glow of a candle illuminated by the light of another one (Penrose, p. 70); whereas Pizarnik states: la condesa, para preservar su lozana, tomaba baos de sangre humana (Prosa, p. 292). On the whole the text advances through a series of unadorned declarations and examples; attempts on the authors part to probe her protagonists inner being are limited; every detail is meant to form part of a strictly rational exposition. It seems paradoxical that in the act of condensing rather than writing ex nihilo Pizarnik achieves a forceful directness when it comes to themes such as the anguish of being, violence and death: themes which in the laboured succinctness of her poetry often emerge as somewhat hackneyed considerations, or alternatively which atrophy within the solipsistic miasma of her journals. The curt reportage of La condesa sangrienta plays a fundamental role in compelling the reader to persevere with the horror: by dispensing with the dramatic embroidery of fairy tale, the text acquires an air of rational acuity regarding the uncanny fantasy of free will and destruction; so the lure of the rational of elucidation makes sure the reader reads on.9 A more significant paradox therefore is the disjunction between the narratives sustained awe for the belleza convulsiva (Prosa, p. 282) of the eponymous condesa sangrientas libertad absoluta, and the concluding disavowal of said absolute freedom by the narrator, who has willingly subjected herself and her readership to the ordeal of the narrative. My aim here is to analyse this disjunction in the light of Gilles Deleuzes essay Coldness and Cruelty (1967), in which he sets out to dissociate the symptoms of so-called sadomasochism into two distinct perversions. For Deleuze, masochism relates to the egos destruction of the superego, and sadism to the expulsion of the ego in the production of an ideal of authority. But perhaps the incompatibility of sadism and masochism is best illustrated by the following old joke: A sadist marries a masochist and, when they arrive at their honeymoon suite, the masochist describes in detail all the things the sadist should do, at which point the sadist replies, Youd like that, wouldnt you? 10 A genuine sadist, in other words, could never tolerate a masochistic victim. In any case, Deleuze claims that the writings of the Marquis de
8 Valentine Penrose, The Bloody Countess, trans. Alexander Trocchi (London: Calder and Boyars, 1970), p. 11. It may come as little surprise then that the trite Hammer horror, Countess Dracula Dir. Peter Sasdy, Rank Organization, 1971 is based on an adaptation of Penroses text. 9 Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny (1919), in Art and Literature: Jensens Gradiva, Leonardo da Vinci and Other Works, ed. Albert Dickson, trans. James Strachey, The Penguin Freud Library (London: Penguin Books, 1973 ), XIV (1990), pp. 33576 (p. 372). 10 Nancy J. Holland, What Deleuze Has to Say to Battered Women, Philosophy and Literature, 17:1 (1993), 1625 (p. 25).
63
Sade (17401814) and those of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (18351895) serve a clinical function by defining two distinct links between psychic life, pain and sexual pleasure.11 Deleuze argues that the worlds of sadism and masochism simply do not communicate: they repel each other both structurally and philosophically. His intricate cleaving of the sadomasochistic composite offers a useful analytical scalpel with which to dissect Alejandra Pizarniks La condesa sangrienta. Deleuzes essay will also serve to flay the callused body of criticism which over the past four decades has recklessly applied the term Sadean to the piece simply because it deals with torture, without paying due attention to the stylistic and philosophical implications of such a label or to the texts problematic affiliation to the art of Masoch by presenting itself as a contract with the reader a contract which it then goes on to breach rather dramatically. On first reading, there are certainly sufficient points of contiguity between La condesa sangrienta and Sades The One Hundred and Twenty Days of Sodom: both texts consist of enumerations of violent descriptions les aplicaban los atizadores enrojecidos al fuego; les cortaban los dedos con tijeras o cizallas; les punzaban las llagas, les practicaban incisiones con navajas (Prosa, p. 285) within self-contained vignettes of homicidal debauchery.12 In Pizarnik each of the eleven vignettes following the introductory section carries its own title: La virgen de hierro, in which an anthropomorphic torture device skewers its victims in a seductive embrace; Muerte por agua, in which cold water is poured over a naked girl in the snow until she becomes a perfectly preserved ice statue; and so on through a list of baos de sangre and assorted torturas clsicas all of which are recorded with sangfroid, scientific precision. As in Sade, it soon becomes obvious to the reader that this gruesome inventory remains subsidiary to the demonstration of an idealized or pure reason: Countess Bthorys ideal of a world of pure negation. Bathing in the blood of virgins may be meant to negate the bodys passage through time, but unlike the version of events offered by Penrose, in which intense vanity determines the unfolding atrocities, for Pizarniks Countess negation goes far beyond the cosmetic (Penrose, pp. 702). The Countess negates aging and therefore life, but she does so absolutely, to the point of identifying with death itself as the ultimate and therefore perfect negation: nunca nadie no quiso de tal modo envejecer, esto es: morir. Por eso, tal vez [la condesa] representaba y encarnaba a la Muerte. Porque, cmo ha de morir la Muerte? (Prosa, p. 287). Pizarniks Bthory inherits this absolute negation through ultimate reasoning from the libertine. As Pierre Klossowski argues in the essay Nature as Destructive Principle, for the libertine there are two modes of nature or being: a secondary nature which is the continuum of creation and destruction, and a primary nature of pure negation which remains an ideal pure
11 Gilles Deleuze, Coldness and Cruelty, in Masochism, trans. Jean McNeil (New York: Zone, 1999), pp. 15138. 12 Mara Victoria Garca-Serrano, Perversin y lesbianismo en Acerca de la condesa sangrienta de Alejandra Pizarnik, Torre de Papel, 2 (1994), 517 (p. 7).
64
KARL POSSO
negation as the ideal of reason itself.13 The rage or despair of the libertine and of Pizarniks Countess Bthory is born of the realization of the triviality of their (personal) destructive actions in relation to the (impersonal) ideal which they can only reach through reasoning. Actual death and destruction belong to secondary nature: they are merely the reverse of creation and change; they are derivative and so do not belong to the primary nature of impersonal or immanent negation, that which is symbolized for Bthory through the paradox of accessing eternal life by negating it and identifying with death itself Porque, cmo ha de morir la Muerte? In a bid to access the impersonal, Bthory is compelled to negate secondary nature and this includes her own ego. Furthermore, in order to prove the idea of absolute negation, something which cannot be given in actual experience, she is confined to endless demonstration, hence the unrelenting repetitiveness of Pizarniks Sadean text. Bthory, like Sade, strives to make the ideal a reality: she demonstrates her reason and instructs her victims with no consideration for the victims approval or conviction. Furthermore, for the libertine Countess the number of victims and violent acts is of capital importance because quantity depreciates the value of individual objects and the aim here is to refute the personal, that is, secondary nature; by depreciating the value of objects, both ones reality and that of the other is diminished (which is also why the victims suffering is dramatized in Penroses text but not referred to in Pizarniks). This explains the well-known apathy of the libertine and the continual return of Pizarniks narrative to the impassive gaze of the silent Countess, whose active participation in torture can only be described as infrequent: the text is punctuated by references such as sola espectadora silenciosa (Prosa, p. 283); la sonmbula vestida de blanco lenta y silenciosa (p. 284); el negro silencio de la condesa (p. 292); su terrible erotismo de piedra (p. 294). Critics have generally accounted for the Countesss silence by concurring with Cristina Pias assertion that her reluctance or inability to speak is a result of narcissistic impotence, that is, of Lacanian specularity;14 others, in the context of the texts seeming non sequitur: Y a propsito de espejos: nunca pudieron aclararse los rumores acerca de la homosexualidad de la condesa (Prosa, p. 290), have gone on to develop more fully a reading of silence as coded or closeted lesbian eroticism.15
13 Pierre Klossowski, Nature as Destructive Principle, in Marquis de Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom and Other Writings, ed. Austryn Wainhouse and Richard Seaver (London: Arrow, 1989), pp. 6586. 14 Cristina Pia, La palabra obscena, Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, 5 (1990), 1738 (p. 30); Cristina Pia, Poesa y experiencia del lmite: leer a Alejandra Pizarnik (Buenos Aires: Botella al Mar, 1999), pp. 467. 15 Sylvia Molloy, From Sappho to Bappho: Diverting the Sexual in Alejandra Pizarnik, in Sex and Sexuality in Latin America, ed. Daniel Balderston and Donna J. Guy (New York: New York University Press, 1997), pp. 2508; Suzanne Chvez Silverman, The Look that Kills: The Unacceptable Beauty of Alejandra Pizarniks La condesa sangrienta, in Entiendes? Queer Readings, Hispanic Writings, ed. Emilie L. Bergmann and Paul Julian Smith (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995), pp. 281305.
65
All of these readings, however, confine the text to the preoccupations or passions of secondary nature. Silence or apathy in Pizarniks text is intended to go far beyond this. Apathy, which for Sade distinguishes the libertine from the tawdry enthusiastic pornographer, crucially renders the individual capable of doing in cold blood acts which would have brought remorse when done in a moment of frenzy. So, if the sadist carries the exaltation of the ego to its height, at the height of exaltation comes apathy where the ego abolishes itself simultaneously with the other, or as Pizarnik puts it: [como si] Teseo adems de ser l mismo, hubiese sido, tambin, el Minotauro; matarlo, entonces, habra exigido matarse (Prosa, p. 290). The pleasure of apathy, in which the ego and the other are simultaneously abolished, is a pleasure which breaks away from the act of destruction itself; as Klossowski states, in this dissociation the Sadean conscience reproduces in its own operations the perpetual motion of nature which creates but which, in creating, sets up obstacles for herself. The only way she [Nature] recovers her liberty, even momentarily, is by destroying her own works.16 By negating nature within the ego and outside the ego, as we find with Bthory, apathetic pleasure becomes the pleasure of demonstrative reason through repetitive description, which is precisely what we find in La condesa sangrientas drive toward absolute negation. Everything in Pizarniks narrative is subordinated to the imperative of repetitive description of torture, violence and eroticism to the extent that the taleessay contains passages such as this, less than half-way through: Resumo: el castillo medieval; la sala de torturas; las tiernas muchachas; las viejas y horrendas sirvientas; la hermosa alucinada . . . (Prosa, p. 286). As a result, Penroses somewhat imaginatively embellished account of the Countesss historical context and her trial (she includes extracts from the court proceedings in an appendix) are given short shrift by Pizarnik. The complexities of the Bthory dynasty are reduced to a cursory genealogy of feral prurience; and the details of the Countesss legendary trial are abridged thus by Pizarnik: the proliferation of rumours regarding the Countesss activities obliged the Hungarian palatine, Thurz, to investigate; he found her guilty, and sentenced her to be immured perpetually within her castle (rather like Sade imprisoned in the Bastille). But at this point Pizarniks focus returns, once again, to the Countesss monstrous apathy: a woman on trial who cannot be bothered to defend herself or to complain, but who calmly states que todo aquello era su derecho de mujer noble y de alto rango (Prosa, p. 295) and then returns to a state of imperturbable quiescence. Regarding this derecho de mujer noble, one should add that, with the exception of the trial, because of the extended absences of her warrior husband and the remote patronage of the Habsburgs (who brought about her downfall but ultimately prevented her execution), the historical Countess Bthory (15601614) independently ruled many
16 Klossowski, Nature as Destructive Principle, p. 86. See also Leo Bersani, A Future for Astyanax: Character and Desire in Literature (London: Marion Boyars, 1978), pp. 16085 (p. 160): If pleasure results from the reduction of tension due to stimuli, the ultimate pleasure is the elimination of all stimuli, and the wish to die is a fantasy of ecstatic inertia.
66
KARL POSSO
castles and estates along a vast swathe of feudal Hungary during most of her adult life; in practice then, she had enjoyed absolute authority.17 And for Pizarnik, inasmuch as Bthory adopted the legislative and prohibitive function of a Hungarian patriarch within the exclusively female realm of her fortress, the Countess is rendered all the more sexually ambiguous. However, within the narratives scheme of sadistic apathy, in which Pizarnik largely divests her character of political context, qualities and emotions, all things of a secondary nature are attenuated and remain ambiguous so that Bthory becomes a somewhat rarefied expression of the law. The irony here is that, as in Sade, Bthorys embodiment of the law undermines the law by instituting an overarching principle of absolute evil which in effect becomes an anarchic ultra-law. The issue of Bthory as law is significant in terms of the ideal of absolute negation which the text appears to promote, and so is worth reflecting on. If we take the law to be a secondary power derived from the supreme Platonic principle, the Good, then lawful behaviour is the best in that it brings us into closest proximity of the Good.18 As Deleuze argues, there is a great deal of irony in the operation that seeks to trace the law back to an absolute, unreachable Good, and humour in the attempt to sanction the law by recourse to an infinitely more righteous Best (Deleuze, Coldness and Cruelty, p. 82). In the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant reversed classical order and made the Good contingent upon the law, thus making the law entirely and explicitly selfgrounded; in other words, absolute. In so doing, Kant makes the object of the law including moral law clearly unknowable: the law defines a realm of transgression where one is already guilty, and where one oversteps the bounds without knowing what they are; punishment does not reveal the nature of the law, it just leaves it in an indeterminate state which equates it to the specificity of the punishment itself. Kant, in other words, delineates the law narrated by
17 Since 1526 Hungary had served the Habsburgs as a buffer against Ottoman invasion; this meant that the Habsburg overlords often pandered to Hungarian nobles in order to keep them from siding with the Turks. During most of Erzsbet Bthorys lifetime, therefore, power in and around the Carpathian region was much more diffuse feudal than a late sixteenthcentury map of Habsburg territory might suggest. It was only when Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II reneged on the Peace of Vienna shortly after signing it in 1606 that the suppression of all Bthories became a pressing Habsburg concern. The situation was exacerbated after 1608 when his successor to the Hungarian throne, the future Emperor Matthias, sought to oust Erzsbets pro-Turkish, Protestant nephew, Gbor Bthory, from the principality of Transylvania. Regarding the Countesss trial: the public decapitation of a Habsburg-related noble could not, however, be countenanced by the Viennese court, hence her immurement. C. A. Macartney, Hungary: A Short History (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1962), pp. 734, 7980; Karin J. MacHardy, The Rise of Absolutism and Noble Rebellion in Early Modern Habsburg Austria, 15701620, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 34:3 (1992), 40738 (p. 430); Denis Sinor, History of Hungary (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1959), pp. 18891; Thorne, Countess Dracula, pp. 2133, 12631, 1917. 18 Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good over Other Concepts, in Virtue Ethics, ed. Roger Crisp and Michael Slote (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 99117 (pp. 110 11).
67
Kafka in The Trial and more specifically perhaps in In the Penal Colony (1914; published 1919), a story I would like to turn to briefly because of its relevance to the ideas broached by Pizarnik in La condesa sangrienta. Kafkas story of a foreign explorer in a penal colony on a tropical island, centres on the event of a public execution which is about to be carried out by an officer using a punitive writing machine created by the former commandant of the colony. A criminal is to be executed for failing to salute the closed door behind which his superior is asleep and for then losing his temper when whipped for being neglectful. The officer explains the functioning of the machine to the explorer with an atomistic sense of detail: a prisoner is stripped bare and shackled to the machines quivering bed; a scriber governing the movements of a glass harrow embedded with needles then engraves the prisoners sentence upon his body over a twelve-hour period, at which point he dies. The harrow is made of glass so that spectators may read the writing upon the victims body, but the machines script is utterly illegible. More alarming though is the fact that the prisoner is never tried because, as is often the case in Kafka, guilt is never to be doubted.19 A prisoner is never told his sentence, instead he experiences it on his body, and the truth of the law is then revealed to onlookers through the expression of enlightenment that is said to radiate from his eyes during the sixth hour of torture (Kafka, pp. 1549). As Foucault would have it in Discipline and Punish (1975), punishment in public operates as the lustful actualization of the law that justifies the existence of the atavistic (penal) community it is the excessive manifestation or spectacle of punishment which produces the transcendence of the law.20 However, in this case, when the foreign explorer refuses to voice his support for this form of punishment to the new commandant of the colony (who finds the machine archaic and distasteful), the officer an avid disciple of the old commandant, the machines creator decides to throw himself, rather than the prisoner, on to the machine. The dilapidated apparatus then malfunctions, so instead of achieving death through corporeal enlightenment, the officer suffers the indignity of a summary crucifixion and impalement. Following this event, the explorer is led to the grave of the former commandant the gravestone, concealed by a table in a tea house, proclaims that one day the commandant will return to the colony. The traveller then flees the island, fending off the former prisoner and his guard who attempt to escape with him. In In the Penal Colony the law is the undecipherable scripture of the old commandant, a figure who has receded godlike from the work he has created. The
19 Franz Kafka, In the Penal Colony, in Franz Kafka, Stories 19041924, trans. J. A. Underwood (London: Abacus, 1995), pp. 14778 (p. 155). (Henceforth Kafka, with page references given after quotations in the text.) 20 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (London: Penguin Books, 1991), pp. 369. See also Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. Walter Kaufmann, in What is Justice?, ed. Robert C. Solomon and Mark C. Murphy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 262.
68
KARL POSSO
story has been read as an allegory of post-colonialism;21 as a reflection of the collapse of the Habsburg empire and the disintegration of Europe during World War I, and as a prophecy of the Third Reich.22 In the same way, Pizarniks La condesa sangrienta was subsequently appropriated or even read anachronistically as an allegory of the various military dictatorships that prevailed in Argentina from 1966 onwards.23 In other words, Kafkas story has been read repeatedly as a condemnation of absolute power; but the point to be made here is that the explorer does not represent a triumph of liberalism over absolutism, given what follows the collapse of the machine: the explorers orders are ignored by the reprieved prisoner, that is, the subject of the law (Kafka, p. 176), and in the end the explorer has to skulk off the island leaving behind him chaos and the prospect of the old orders messianic return. All legal structures in the story are thus negated: what we have here is the ironic erasure of the ideal of the laws transcendence via the arch-law of absolute negation. The result of this is that the law emerges as a volatile product of desire; the law is relational rather than transcendent in that it pervades the individuals and components of the social/judicial machine. Kafkas immanent law remains unspecified, it only makes itself known in the characters desire for (transcendent) order and the actualization of sentences. The same is true of Bthory as law: the Countess desires the ideal of pure negation, but she is also desired by the people as an organizing force (her transcendence emerges as a relational product of immanent desire). Ironically, she does not issue edicts, only punishments, so her wards and servants live in terror of their unknown transgressions, which they only become aware of through the manifestation of their mistresss wrath. In other words, Bthory becomes an absolute law of unjustified cruelty. Obedience to the law, as Kafka and Pizarnik show, is therefore not governed by the desire to approximate to the Good, but by a sense of guilt which is grounded in the primal repression of social subjectivity Bthorys maids are always already guilty because they are the products of household law (symbolic order). However, Pizarnik, like Sade, responds to the idea of the law through irony, an anti-law of pure negation. Bthory as law submits to an idealized superego which annihilates the ego itself: by apathetically destroying her objects, her victims, the sadistic ego annihilates herself; on the few occasions she is an active participant in torture she either soaks in the blood of her victims or bites them, thus abasing herself by blurring the subject/object relationship; more significantly
21 Elizabeth Boa, Kafka: Gender, Class, Race in the Letters and Fictions (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), pp. 1349; David Pan, Kafka as Populist: Re-reading In the Penal Colony, Telos, 101 (1994), 340; Karen Piper, The Language of the Machine: A PostColonial Reading of Kafka, Journal of the Kafka Society of America, 20:12 (1996), 4254. 22 Gary Adelman, Fearful Symmetry: Becketts The Lost Ones, Journal of Modern Literature, 26:2 (20023), 16570 (p. 168). 23 David William Foster, Of Power and Virgins: Alejandra Pizarniks La condesa sangrienta, in Structures of Power: Essays on Twentieth-Century Spanish-American Fiction, ed. Terry J. Peavler and Peter Standish (New York: State University of New York Press, 1996), pp. 14558. Fosters argument implies that the text was written either during or after the Onganiato. He gives an incorrect date of first publication 1976.
69
though, Bthory is already silent and listless when the law the absolutist Habsburg superego decrees her immurement at the end of the tale (despotic law merely negates itself momentarily here in order to preserve its transcendence). Why are the ruminations on the law in both La condesa sangrienta and In the Penal Colony eroticized? Freud shows how the formation of the narcissistic ego and the superego involves a process of desexualization of Eros (libido): within psychic life the desexualization of libido through idealization leads to the power of the imagination in the ego, and through the process of identification it constitutes the power of thought in the superego. Freud maintains that the desexualization of libido can have two possible effects on the pleasure principle either sublimation or neurosis. With neurosis, perverted resexualized libido then takes either the ego or the superego as its object. Thought is a form of sublimation which proceeds from the formation of the superego, but in sadism, owing to the egos overinvestment in the superego, the desexualization involved in the creation of an idealized superego is accompanied by the sexualization of thought itself. Thus in Kafka the old commandants complete dedication to the thought of order and justice to the point where the product of his thoughts affords the erasure of his presence/ego means that his law machine turns out to be nefariously erotic: a machine which stiffens and protractedly penetrates the criminals body in an unmistakable travesty of copulation in order to offer orgasmic illumination.24 Similarly, Bthory is reduced by Pizarnik to a superego who exercises cruelty to the fullest extent, and instantaneously recovers her full sexuality as soon as she diverts her power outwards: si el acto sexual implica una suerte de muerte, Erzbet Bthory necesitaba de la muerte visible, elemental, grosera, para poder, a su vez, morir de esa muerte figurada que viene a ser el orgasmo (Prosa, p. 287). The fact that she appears to have no ego other than that of her victims, just as the Penal Colonys law only manifests itself in the bodies of its criminals, explains the apparent paradox of sadism, its pseudo-masochism (Deleuze, Coldness and Cruelty, p. 124). Bthory enjoys suffering the pain she inflicts upon others; when her destructive madness is deflected outwards it is accompanied by an identification with the external victim. The irony of sadism lies in the two-fold operation whereby Bthory necessarily projects her dissolved ego outward and as a result experiences what is outside her as her only ego devastating melancholia: su interior es un espacio de color de luto; nada pasa all, nadie pasa. Es una escena sin decorados donde el yo inerte es asisitido por el yo que sufre por esa inercia (Prosa, p. 290); only torture livens things up temporarily:
por un breve tiempo pueden borrar la silenciosa galera de ecos y de espejos que es el alma melanclica . . . hasta pueden iluminar ese recinto enlutado y transformarlo en una suerte de cajita de msica con figuras de vivos y alegres
24 Clayton Koelb, The Margin in the Middle: Kafkas Other Reading of Reading, in Kafka and the Contemporary Critical Performance: Centenary Readings, ed. Alan Udoff (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1987), pp. 7686 (p. 77).
70
KARL POSSO
colores que danzan y cantan deliciosamente. Luego, cuando se acabe la cuerda, habr que retornar a la inmovilidad y al silencio (Prosa, p. 290)
There is no real unity with masochism here, or any common cause, but a process which according to Deleuze is quite specific to sadism a pseudo-masochism which is entirely and exclusively sadistic and which is only crudely similar to masochism. Irony is the operation of the overbearing superego, the art of expelling or negating the ego, with all its sadistic consequences. The imperative of repetition and demonstration that governs both the Countesss actions and the sovereignty of the penal writing machine aims to neutralize the dimension of eroticism and pain through excess in order to reinstate the purity of thought; as mentioned earlier, there is a progression in sadism from the negative to negation; that is, from the negative as a partial process of destruction endlessly reiterated, to negation as an absolute idea of reason. It will come as no surprise that at the time of writing La condesa sangrienta, and in fact throughout the last decade of her life, Pizarnik became increasingly obsessed with Kafka; references to him, his diaries and narratives become progressively more frequent in her journals with the passing of each year. It is in relation to Kafka and Jesus, in a diary entry dated 25 September 1967, that Pizarnik elaborates her own Kantian dismissal of the law grounded in the sovereignty of the Good and replaces it with a law of inverted Platonism: a law identified with the (impersonal) primary nature of absolute negation, which is in every way opposed to the (personal/egotistical) demands and the rules of secondary nature:
La Presencia mxima es, paradjicamente, esta ausencia sin mezcla. . . . Jess es un pequeo judo enamorado de ciertas ideas (amor, caridad, compasin), y las ama porque nunca las vio en la dite ralit. . . . Jess amaba esas tres ideas pero en tanto ideas. Digo que imagino a Jess mandando a la mierda a los apstoles, golpeando a su madre pero llorando a solas mientras elucubra sus ideas de bondad luminosa. . . . Su antpoda es Kafka. Pero comparar a Kafka con Jess es risible. Jess sera el lacayo indigno de Kafka. Jess, aqu est tu civilizacin judeo-cristiana con sus hospicios y sus cmaras de tortura. No la respeto. Me resulta roosa y tortuosa. Pero a los judos como Kafka los amo . . . Pero ser judo significa ser poseedor de un secreto. Me acerco a ese secreto. Lo veo pero no lo leo. Pero esto s: soy juda y no dejo de estar contenta contenta a muerte y con muerte. (Diarios, pp. 4323)
From the assertion of a primary nature (presencia mxima) of ausencia sin mezcla, Pizarnik goes on to dismiss Jesus Christ as the embodiment of the ironically tortuous false laws or ideals of secondary nature love, charity, compassion in short, the unknowable Platonic Good. In Kafka, the melancholy man who ordered that all his work be destroyed, she finds the apotheosis of negation; as the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants, she finds in her fellow Jew perhaps in the wake of the Holocaust a heightened affinity to fatality. The secret she tentatively identifies as death in the above journal entry death or something
71
akin to it, something sensed but unknown reads as an intimation of the Freudian death instinct, Thanatos, which can never be given as such in experience, and can therefore only be spoken about in speculative terms. Critics have identified such speculation as the crux of Pizarniks poetry and as the strident overture to her suicide; 25 but it is in La condesa sagrienta that this speculation is at its most refined given the previously mentioned formulation of the Countesss morbid desire to become death, because death alone is that which cannot die. Beyond deaths concrete relation to the body as its limit, which is what we find in In the Penal Colony actual, personal deaths death in La condesa sangrienta is celebrated as the impersonal absolute death as an infinitive whereby death turns against death; where dying is the negation of death, and the impersonality of dying no longer indicates only the moment when I disappear outside myself, but rather the moment when death loses itself in itself.26 (In relation to the poetry, Frank Graziano highlights the fundamental paradox of Pizarniks commitment to the failure of writing: she attempts with increasing feverishness to recover or sustain immediate life through the very medium which abstracts and preserves it as non-existence; this paradox replicates the Sadean logic of wanting to become death because death alone cannot die.27) Unlike the Platonic Good, which is a transcendent ideal, Thanatos although absolute is immanent to being. And the reason for this distinction is offered by Freud in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920). There Freud explains that the repeated binding of Eros the energetic links of excitations and the biological bonds between cells produces in us time as a cumulative, psychological unfolding in which every living present contains both the past and the present to come.28 (This delineation of the immanence of Thanatos with respect to psychological time or Bergsonian duration is adumbrated by Pizarnik in the contemplation of the lugubrious present as a concentrated point of an infinite and virtual open whole of time in Extraccin de la piedra de locura [1968].29) At the start of life Eros includes the preceding moment of inanimate matter, Thanatos, and similarly, it brings with it the moment after life, or the return to Thanatos. Neither
25 Carolina Depetris, Aportica de la muerte: estudio crtico sobre Alejandra Pizarnik (Madrid: Universidad Autnoma de Madrid, 2004), pp. 16478; Alexandra Fitts, Alejandra Pizarniks La condesa sangrienta and the Lure of the Absolute, Letras Femeninas, XXIV, 1:2 (1998), 2335; Susana H. Haydu, Alejandra Pizarnik: evolucin de un lenguaje potico (Washington: Interamer, 1996), pp. 86102; Mara Negroni, El testigo lcido: la obra de sombra de Alejandra Pizarnik (Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo, 2003); Marta Sierra, De canbales, bucaneros y polgrafas: escritura, obscenidad y mutilacin en Alejandra Pizarnik, Latin American Literary Review, 33:66 (2005), 7794 (p. 81). 26 Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, trans. Mark Lester and Charles Stivale (London: Athlone, 1990), p. 153. 27 Frank Graziano, Alejandra Pizarnik: A Profile (Durango, CO: Logbridge-Rhodes, 1987), pp. 1012. 28 Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), in On Metapsychology: The Theory of Psychoanalysis, ed. Angela Richards, trans. James Strachey, The Penguin Freud Library (London: Penguin Books, 1973 ), II (1991), pp. 269338 (pp. 3368). 29 Alejandra Pizarnik, Extraccin de la piedra de locura (1968), in Poesa, pp. 21358.
72
KARL POSSO
Eros nor Thanatos can be given in experience; all that is given are combinations of both the role of Eros being to bind the energy of Thanatos and to subject these combinations to the pleasure principle in the Id (Deleuze, Coldness and Cruelty, pp. 11516).30 Eros is the ever-repeating synthesis which constitutes the present, but Eros only emerges from the larger field of the pure form of time, the groundless dimension of Thanatos, a dimension convulsed by an incessant repetition of a simultaneous past, present and future in other words, the macabre eternity rhapsodized by Bataille and aspired to by Pizarniks Countess.31 Thanatos is an absolute (primary nature), but this absolute negative does not exist in the unconscious because destruction is always presented as the other side of a construction, as an instinctual drive which is necessarily combined with Eros (secondary nature). So beyond the repetition that links life comes the repetition that erases and destroys, that emulated by the repetition of the sadistic superegos demonstration which tries to access the inanimate realm of Thanatos, from which all life emerges and returns. Thanatos as an ideal represents, not a separate world beyond the sensible world, but a contestatory force of violent disequilibrium within the sensible world. And it is with the most perverse disequilibrium that La condesa sangrienta concludes; it ends, as mentioned at the outset, with a crushing narratorial disavowal of the preceding celebration of the Countesss cold and unremitting demonstration of absolute negation in freedom. It does this with a surprising line of apparent ethical re-alignment: Como Sade en sus escritos . . . la condesa Bthory alcanz, ms all de todo lmite, el ltimo fondo del desenfreno. Ella es una prueba ms de que la libertad absoluta de la criatura humana es horrible (Prosa, p. 296). But the irony of this statement is guaranteed because it comes at the end of a text which has completely undermined judgement and the law which pronounces such judgements. La condesa sangrienta initially presents itself as a book review; it engages its readers through the abnegatory display of masochistic subservience to the book (superego) it is about to praise, only to proceed by tearing up this contract. After the first few lines, direct references to Penrose as source are barred from the text; Pizarniks piece disavows its own lack of originality its plagiarism in order to speak about Bthory with intimacy, and so, ironically, making manifest the notion that all experience in writing is inauthentic (lifeless). This is reminiscent of Kafkas law-writing machine: a machine meant to vindicate by producing on the victims body an inscription faithful to his experience, but which, through the officer, makes patently clear that the belief that writing redeems insofar as it produces moral illuminations of experience is a belief to be
30 In this context the Id is simply taken to mean the unconscious system in Freuds first model of the psyche. 31 Georges Bataille, The History of Eroticism, in The Accursed Share, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Urzone Books, 1988), II and III, pp. 846, 10910; Georges Bataille, Inner Experience, trans. Leslie Anne Boldt (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1988), pp. 712. See also Melanie Nicholson, Evil, Madness, and the Occult in Argentine Poetry (Florida: University Press of Florida, 2002), pp. 869.
73
resisted.32 Pizarnik does not judge (review) Penroses book; she gainfully and sadistically preys on and repeats it in an act of Menardian vampirism in order to cancel it out but in so doing she is also cancelling out the legitimacy of her own writing and its claims to moral illumination. The final judgement in La condesa sangrienta returns the reader to a notion of moral law in order to underscore the transgressive nature of the acts described, and so it intensifies the horror and pleasure of the text; but this judgement is delivered by an authorial voice which, through the breach of contract with the reader who expected a review, has already established itself as being thoroughly unlawful; hence the overwhelming irony. By the end of La condesa sangrienta the validity of all judgement moral or otherwise has already been undermined and dismissed as a consideration of the secondary order; a consideration which vanishes in the context of the ideal sovereignty of absolute negation.
Bibliography
Adelman, Gary, Fearful Symmetry: Becketts The Lost Ones, Journal of Modern Literature, 26:2 (20023), 16570 Baldick, Chris, ed., The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992) Baring-Gould, Sabine, The Book of Were-Wolves: Being an Account of Terrible Superstition (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1865) Bataille, Georges, The History of Eroticism, in The Accursed Share, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Urzone Books, 1988), II and III , Inner Experience, trans. Leslie Anne Boldt (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1988) , The Tears of Eros (1961), trans. Peter Connor (San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books, 1989) Baudrillard, Jean, The Intelligence of Evil or The Lucidity Pact, trans. Chris Turner (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2005) Bersani, Leo, A Future for Astyanax: Character and Desire in Literature (London: Marion Boyars, 1978) Boa, Elizabeth, Kafka: Gender, Class, Race in the Letters and Fictions (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996) Carter, Angela, The Lady of the House of Love (1979), in The Bloody Chamber (London: Vintage, 1995), pp. 93108 Chvez Silverman, Suzanne, The Look that Kills: The Unacceptable Beauty of Alejandra Pizarniks La condesa sangrienta, in Entiendes? Queer Readings, Hispanic Writings, ed. Emilie L. Bergmann and Paul Julian Smith (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995), pp. 281305 Codrescu, Andrei, The Blood Countess (London: Quartet Books, 1996) Corngold, Stanley, Franz Kafka: The Necessity of Form (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988)
32 Stanley Corngold, Franz Kafka: The Necessity of Form (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), p. 245.
74
KARL POSSO
Deleuze, Gilles, Coldness and Cruelty, in Masochism, trans. Jean McNeil (New York: Zone, 1999), pp. 15138 , The Logic of Sense, trans. Mark Lester and Charles Stivale (London: Athlone, 1990) Depetris, Carolina, Aportica de la muerte: estudio crtico sobre Alejandra Pizarnik (Madrid: Universidad Autnoma de Madrid, 2004) Fitts, Alexandra, Alejandra Pizarniks La condesa sangrienta and the Lure of the Absolute, Letras Femeninas, XXIV, 1:2 (1998), 2335 Foster, David William, Of Power and Virgins: Alejandra Pizarniks La condesa sangrienta, in Structures of Power: Essays on Twentieth-Century Spanish-American Fiction, ed. Terry J. Peavler and Peter Standish (New York: State University of New York Press, 1996) Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (London: Penguin Books, 1991) Freud, Sigmund, Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), in On Metapsychology: The Theory of Psychoanalysis, ed. Angela Richards, trans. James Strachey, The Penguin Freud Library (London: Penguin Books, 1973 ), II (1991), pp. 269338 , The Uncanny (1919), in Art and Literature: Jensens Gradiva, Leonardo da Vinci and Other Works, ed. Albert Dickson, trans. James Strachey, The Penguin Freud Library (London: Penguin Books, 1973 ), XIV (1990), pp. 33576 Garca-Serrano, Mara Victoria, Perversin y lesbianismo en Acerca de la condesa sangrienta de Alejandra Pizarnik, Torre de Papel, 2 (1994), 517 Gelder, Ken, Reading the Vampire (London and New York: Routledge, 1994) Graziano, Frank, Alejandra Pizarnik: A Profile (Durango, CO: Logbridge-Rhodes, 1987) Haydu, Susana H., Alejandra Pizarnik: evolucin de un lenguaje potico (Washington: Interamer, 1996) Hernndez, Ana Mara, Vampires and Vampiresses: A Reading of 62, in The Final Island: The Fiction of Julio Cortzar, ed. Jaime Alazraki and Ivar Ivask (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1978), pp. 10914 Holland, Nancy J., What Deleuze Has to Say to Battered Women, Philosophy and Literature, 17:1 (1993), 1625 Kafka, Franz, The Diaries of Franz Kafka, 19101913, ed. Max Brod, trans. Joseph Kresh (London: Secker & Warburg, 1948) , In the Penal Colony, in Franz Kafka, Stories 19041924, trans. J. A. Underwood (London: Abacus, 1995), pp. 14778 Klossowski, Pierre, Nature as Destructive Principle, in Marquis de Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom and Other Writings, ed. Austryn Wainhouse and Richard Seaver (London: Arrow, 1989), pp. 6586 Koelb, Clayton, The Margin in the Middle: Kafkas Other Reading of Reading, in Kafka and the Contemporary Critical Performance: Centenary Readings, ed. Alan Udoff (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1987), pp. 7686 Leatherdale, Clive, The Origins of Dracula: The Background to Bram Stokers Gothic Masterpiece (Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex: Desert Island Books, 1998) Macartney, C. A., Hungary: A Short History (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1962)
75
MacHardy, Karin J., The Rise of Absolutism and Noble Rebellion in Early Modern Habsburg Austria, 15701620, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 34:3 (1992), 40738 Mateo del Pino, ngeles, El territorio de la memoria: mujeres malditas, La condesa sangrienta de Alejandra Pizarnik, Rassegna Iberistica, 71 (2001), 1531 Molloy, Sylvia, From Sappho to Bappho: Diverting the Sexual in Alejandra Pizarnik, in Sex and Sexuality in Latin America, ed. Daniel Balderston and Donna J. Guy (New York: New York University Press, 1997), pp. 2508 Murdoch, Iris, The Sovereignty of Good over Other Concepts, in Virtue Ethics, ed. Roger Crisp and Michael Slote (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 99117 Negroni, Mara, El testigo lcido: la obra de sombra de Alejandra Pizarnik (Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo, 2003) Nicholson, Melanie, Evil, Madness, and the Occult in Argentine Poetry (Florida: University Press of Florida, 2002) Nietzsche, Friedrich, On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. Walter Kaufmann, in What is Justice?, ed. Robert C. Solomon and Mark C. Murphy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990) Pan, David, Kafka as Populist: Re-reading In the Penal Colony, Telos, 101 (1994), 340 Penrose, Valentine, The Bloody Countess, trans. Alexander Trocchi (London: Calder and Boyars, 1970) Prisset, Maurice, La Comtesse de sang (Paris: ditions Pygmalion/Grard Watelet, 1975) Pia, Cristina, La palabra obscena, Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, 5 (1990), 1738 , Poesa y experiencia del lmite: leer a Alejandra Pizarnik (Buenos Aires: Botella al Mar, 1999) Piper, Karen, The Language of the Machine: A Post-Colonial Reading of Kafka, Journal of the Kafka Society of America, 20:12 (1996), 4254 Pizarnik, Alejandra, Extraccin de la piedra de locura (1968), in Poesa completa, ed. Ana Becci (Barcelona: Lumen, 2003), pp. 21358 , La libertad absoluta y el horror, Dilogos, 1:5 (1965), 4651 Ronay, Gabriel, The Truth About Dracula (New York: Stein and Day, 1970) Sasdy, Peter, dir. Countess Dracula, Rank Organization (Hammer Productions), 1971 Scarafia, Silvia, and Elisa Molina, Escritura y perversin en La condesa sangrienta de Alejandra Pizarnik y 62 Modelo para armar de Julio Cortzar, in Un tal Julio, ed. Mara Elena Legaz (Crdoba: Alcin Editora, 1998), pp. 89114 Seabra Ferreira, M. A., Alejandra Pizarniks Acerca de la condesa sangrienta and Angela Carters The Lady of the House of Love: Transgression and the Politics of Victimization, New Comparison, 22 (1996), 2757 Sierra, Marta, De canbales, bucaneros y polgrafas: escritura, obscenidad y mutilacin en Alejandra Pizarnik, Latin American Literary Review, 33:66 (2005), 7794 Sinor, Denis, History of Hungary (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1959) Thorne, Tony, Countess Dracula: The Life and Times of the Blood Countess, Elisabeth Bthory (London: Bloomsbury, 1997)
76
KARL POSSO
Twitchell, James B., The Living Dead: A Study of the Vampire in Romantic Literature (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1981) Wisker, Gina, Revenge of the Living Doll: Angela Carters Horror Writing, in The Infernal Desires of Angela Carter: Fiction, Femininity, Feminism, ed. Joseph Bristow and Trev Lynn Broughton (London and New York: Longman, 1997), pp. 11631
Alejandra Pizarnik, Surrealism and Reading

Jason Wilson
This essay will explore Alejandra Pizarniks years in Paris (196064) as a reader of surrealism at its source, and the effects this intense reading had on her work, specifically on the title piece from her Extraccin de la piedra de locura (1968, but written in 1964). The inter-textual density of her work obviously implies careful reading on her part, and yet, paradoxically, her work appears to discard allusion and bookish matters to deal directly with her inner world and its fraught relationship with language, what Bernardo Ezequiel Koremblit called her delatora transparencia.1 It could be that so much study, so much jettisoned literary work was a cause of her sense of impotence, of not being able to find the authentic language of being she sought inside herself, even contributing to the now mythical sense of being haunted by a future suicide. That is, so much library work contributed to her mutism, to her inability to hear the music. Cristina Pia, her first biographer, quoted a critic and friend, Ivonne Bordelois, as noting that her poetry did not read like conventional surrealism: el parentesco vital de Alejandra con el surrealismo es obvio, su escritura est lejos del surrealismo.2 Csar Aira, another friend, developed this crucial insight by situating Alejandra Pizarnik in the estela of surrealism. Surrealism for him was primarily un sistema de lecturas, el ms rico y productivo de los tiempos modernos, where he would also situate his own stream of bizarre short novels.3 Rather than stimulating a mimetic urge to become a surrealist by practising automatic writing and the myth of the authenticity of the first draft, Pizarniks engagement with surrealism led to her developing a strong critical sense of not imitating blindly what she read. Edgardo Dobry noted that Pizarnik seemed to be conscious del agotamiento de los mtodos del surrealismo.4 But there is no need for that seemed. That is, Alejandra Pizarnik expressed a critical posture towards surrealism in her texts, as well as in her essays.5 There are several
1 Bernardo Ezequiel Koremblit, Todas las que ella era: ensayo sobre Alejandra Pizarnik (Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 1991), p. 93. 2 Cristina Pia, Alejandra Pizarnik (Buenos Aires: Planeta, 1991; 2nd edn, Corregidor, 1999), p. 100. 3 Csar Aira, Alejandra Pizarnik (Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo, 1998), pp. 1115. 4 Edgardo Dobry, La poesa de Alejandra Pizarnik: una lectura de Extraccin de la piedra de locura, in Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, 644 (2004), 3343 (p. 36). 5 This posture is also observed by Carolina Depetris, who refers to Pizarniks referencia
78
JASON WILSON
explanations for this. The most important explanation emerges from Airas notion of estela. Alejandra Pizarnik arrived in Paris well after surrealisms heyday, its heroic period in the 1920s and its break-up over revolutionary politics in the 1930s. Andr Breton was still alive, still edited surrealist magazines like La Brche (eight numbers between October 1961 and November 1965), but otherwise the late 1950s and 1960s belonged to Sartre and his committed brand of existentialism and the radical nouveau roman. However, Alejandra Pizarnik did latch on to an exciting tail end by befriending Octavio Paz, Julio Cortzar and fringe surrealists like Andr Pieyre de Mandiargues (who wrote the back flap to the first edition of Extraccin de la piedra de locura and to whom a poem is dedicated) and, most importantly, the Belgian poet and painter Henri Michaux, who was then living in Paris. The biographical anecdotes around these figures in Paris and this period are sufficient to suggest that there was a group of late, dissident surrealists, led by Octavio Pazs close friendship with the ageing Breton and his own reinterpretation of surrealism as ethical, appealing to a triad of love, poetry and freedom and elaborated in his book on poetics, El arco y la lira (1956), particularly its second edition of 1967.6 Cristina Pia even claimed that the first chapter of Julio Cortzars 1963 novel Rayuela was the best description of Pizarniks Paris (Pia, p. 92). Pizarnik certainly identified with La Maga, as she told me herself over a long evening in Buenos Aires in 1970. Cortzar included an Octavio Paz poem from Salamandra (1962) in his text (chapter 149). Indeed, if you listed Cortzars cited debts in the novel, you would come up with a reading list similar to Pizarniks own. In the novel, there is a quasi-surrealist group called El Club de la Serpiente, with its anarchic thinkers listening to the latest jazz. In chapter 60, Morellis list of debts in term of writers included Borges and Michaux, with Rimbaud crossed out as too obvious. Octavio Paz has evoked these Paris years in a prologue of 1959 to a book of poems by Blanca Varela.7 He insists that all of them in that Paris looked hacia adentro. According to him, they listened to jazz in the Htel des Etats-Unis, drank white wine and rum, danced and heard El Alquimista read poems by Artaud and Michaux, and they walked the streets, as flneurs. Paz then lists fourteen first names of this quasi-surrealist group, which include Breton himself, his Chilean wife Elisa, Pazs first wife Elena Garro, and Jean Clarence Lambert, a French poet and translator of Paz into French (the rest remain anonymous to me). What united them in the depression of the Cold War years was seeing art as exorcismos. Poetry was defenderse, defender a la vida. He then moves on to
continua, al surrealismo, y tambin a su superacin and to Pizarniks involvement with the entorno of surrealism, through which she discovered the Romantics, mystics and potes maudits. Carolina Depetris, Aportica de la muerte: estudio crtico sobre Alejandra Pizarnik (Madrid: Universidad Autnoma, 2004), pp. 912. Depetris also explores Pizarniks relationship to Argentine manifestations of surrealism in the 1950s; see pages 926. 6 See Jean-Louis Bdouin, Vingt ans de surralisme, 19391959 (Paris: Denol, 1961). 7 Octavio Paz, Destiempos, de Blanca Varela, in Obra Completa, III (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Econmica, 1999), pp. 34953.
ALEJANDRA PIZARNIK, SURREALISM AND READING
79
Blanca Varela no friend of Pizarnik as she excluded her from the anthology Las nsulas extraas: Antologa de poesa en lengua espaola (19502000), which she co-edited with Eduardo Milln, Jos Angel Valente and Andrs Snchez Robayna. The choice caused a stir, particularly the exclusion of Pizarnik from this canon. Nevertheless, the crucial term was exorcise, a religious practice related to the devil inside and echoing the Bosch painting of Pizarniks title. This term also underlines the massive influence of Henri Michaux. His collections Exorcismes had appeared in 1943, and his key anthology Lespace du dedans in 1944. Lysandro Galtier published his influential translations in Buenos Aires in 1959 and Paz began writing essays on Michaux in the 1960s.8 Pizarnik was in the vanguard of his cult admirers. Since the late 1960s I have discerned a Michaux air in many Latin American writers.9 Alejandra Pizarnik was no timid disciple, and explored her own version of surrealism by reading and absorbing Georges Bataille: Mi lectura de fondo sigue siendo Georges Bataille, she wrote in a lettter to Ivonne Bordelois (Correspondencia, p. 242). Both Paz and Cortzar had also engaged with Bataille in their work; his thinking in essays seemed at the time a natural continuation of surrealist erotics, with his notions of transgression and literary extremism. She also studied Antonin Artaud, who had died in 1948; he was the most surrealist of them all, but had been excluded from the group for many years by Breton. Pizarniks biographical meanderings between these various eminent figures are complex. Paz wrote a prologue to her rbol de Diana (1962), almost an anthology of her work up to then. As a kind of padrino, Paz opened up the world of literary magazines to her, so her work appeared in Mexican magazines like Ramn Xiraus Dilogos or Sergio Mondragns El corno emplumado; she published in Mito in Bogot and in Venezuela through another of Pazs friends, Juan Liscano. She wrote for Emir Rodrguez Monegals Paris-based Mundo Nuevo, for Sur and the Revista de Occidente; I have found poems by her in Csar Airas little magazine El cielo, and there is more of her work scattered among many others, for example Cordillera and Ssifo (La Paz), Vector (Paris), Cuadernos del viento (Mexico), Cormorn y Delfn and Pianola (Buenos Aires), Meridiana (Crdoba), Comunidad (Asuncin), Jeunesse internationale (Frankfurt), Humboldt (Switzerland), and Le Thyrse (Brussels). Pizarnik was keen to get published in literary magazines and to be read around the Spanish-reading world and beyond, as we can see through her careful documentation of these various publications (Princeton, box 4, folder 2). According to these records, in addition to what has subsequently been republished in the Prosa completa, Pizarnik also published the following critical articles: Antonio Porchia in El Hogar (Buenos Aires, 1956); Leopold Sedar Senghor o la lucidez y el delirio, in Cuadernos, 70 (March 1963, Paris); Salamandra de Octavio Paz, in Cuadernos, 72 (May 1963, Paris); Obra selecta de Carlos Castro Saavedra, in Cuadernos, 91
8 Henri Michaux, Antologa potica, trans. Lysandro Galtier (Buenos Aires: Fabril, 1959); Paz collected his essays on Michaux in Corriente alterna (Mexico: Siglo Veintiuno, 1967). 9 Jason Wilson, Despus de la poesa surrealista, in nsula, 51213 (1989), 479.
80
JASON WILSON
(December 1964, Paris); Olga Orozco o la poesa como juego peligroso, in Zona Franca, yr 1, num. 7/8 (Caracas, December 1964); Notas sobre Bruno Schulz, La Repblica (Caracas, 3 May 1964); Sobre T. S. Eliot, in El corno emplumado, 14 (1965, Mexico); and La libertad absoluta y el horror, Dilogos, vol. 1, num. 5 (JulyAugust 1965, Mexico).10 Through Paz, Pizarnik met and studied Henri Michaux, already being seen as the most original surrealist because he refused to join Bretons group in the 1920s. Pizarnik was asked by Cortzar to type out his novel Rayuela, and nearly lost the typescript; later she would identify with its main female character La Maga, as already noted. But most crucial was Bretons own fascination with the occult, with dissident thinkers like Fourier or the alchemists. So in a general sense, Pizarnik absorbed what surrealism had become in Paris in the decade leading to Bretons death in 1966, and wrote critical essays about many of her friends there (including Cortzar, Paz, and Michaux).11 Pizarniks letters are testimony to these Paris years, where she learnt French and could at last live the literary life (supported by her family in Buenos Aires). She was acutely conscious of her dependence, of la culpa de ser poeta, de haber dejado sola a mi madre, de hacerme mantener por ella y dems (Diarios, p. 442). As early as 1954 she had moaned about viles imitaciones francesas in Buenos Aires (she was 18 years old) and longed to travel abroad to live her dream of becoming a poet: Oh, cmo deseo vivir solamente para escribir! (Diarios, pp. 27 and 64). She voiced that traditional Argentinian viaje a Pars bedazzlement: Estoy enamorada de esta ciudad (Correspondencia, p. 68); she was aware that lo que me calma de aqu es mi vivir sola, sin familia, viendo a la gente slo cuando lo deseo (Correspondencia, p. 130). She later summarized these years of freedom from her family and from porteo gossip: el nico perodo de mi vida en que conoc la dicha y la plenitud fue en esos cuatro aos de Pars (Correspondencia, p. 288). Part of the reason for this dicha was being able to read surrealist books on the spot, rather than from the one or two bookshops like the Galatea in Buenos Aires that sold the latest French texts. Her reading became the place Pizarnik wanted to be, in the sense of finding a homeland; she noted that los poemas favoritos son como una patria (Correspondencia, p. 175). Paris has been created by its writers and thinkers; its caf life and bohemian freedoms became a life-style for Pizarnik. To live as a poet, to become poetry, was indeed the surrealist dream. The curious distancing of Pizarnik from classic surrealism had one last consequence, beyond the vague grouping that adopted her in the early 1960s. Pizarnik not only read the classic surrealist texts like Bretons autobiographical novel Nadja (1928) and wrote about it, but she also absorbed the already burgeoning criticism. My sense is that she was like a postgraduate student, building up a
10 This last essay is in fact La condesa sangrienta under a different title, as Karl Posso indicates in his essay in this volume. 11 For a list of Pizarniks critical texts, see the bibliography at the end of Florinda Goldbergs essay in this volume.
81
critical reading list. This dual activity of creative work and critical texts informed her own work, not only as a critical poet, in Thorpe Runnings term, for it allowed her to become a critic of surrealism.12 She especially attacked Bretons promise of paradise regained in the freed unconscious. Pizarnik couldnt free her unconscious, and found that the inner world was dark, very threatening and always just out of reach, tauntingly immanent. To Bretons famous boast that in surrealism les mots font lamour in their erotic liberation on a page, Pizarnik warned: No, las palabras no hacen el amor hacen la ausencia (Correspondencia, p. 304). Pizarnik found her voice as a critic of surrealism. The merging of criticism and creative text was in the air. Octavio Paz even defined modern poetry as a critical poetry, not only of morality and institutions along 1920s surrealist lines, but also of poetry and language itself. Closer to home for Pizarnik was Jorge Luis Borges, whose illuminating work of the 1940s was, generically, a fusing of review, critical essay and short story to create a ficcin. Borges broke through into his most creative phase by pretending that a story was in fact a book review his hoax El acercamiento a Almotsim was published in Historia de la eternidad (1936) and carried over into Ficciones (1944). Every name mentioned in the text (for example, T. S. Eliot, Dorothy L. Sayers and Richard Church) was an actual living writer or critic, only the book and its plot were faked (so well, that a friend famously ordered the book reviewed). Pizarniks take on this critical/creative fusion is somewhat different: La condesa sangrienta appeared in book form in 1971 as a gloss on the surrealist poet Valentine Penroses study of the Countess Bthorys murdering of about 600 girls.13 Penroses was a genuine text, published in Paris in 1962 and read by Pizarnik there. However, what is not stated anywhere in Pizarniks gloss is that her essay began life as a book review for the Mexican magazine Dilogos, and also appeared in Testigo in Buenos Aires.14 Interestingly, in a letter, Paz referred to it as a nota, with its journalistic sense, for Paz would have known of its dependence on the Valentine Penrose book.15 A telling conjunction of reading in Paris and writing a book review for an ignorant Hispanic public supplies the epigraphs for her book review/essay. The first is, naturally, from Sartre. The second is from Ren Daumal (one of Cortzars favourite fringe surrealists, cited in Rayuela). The third is from Witold Gombrowicz (a Polish writer trapped in Argentina during the war years to become, in translation, one of the key figures in the alternative Argentine canon elaborated by Piglia and Aira). Then we have Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Milosz, an eighth-century Anglo-Saxon elegy, Paz, Artaud, the Upsala cancionero, Jouve and Sade. Turn these epigraphs into a reading list
12 Thorpe Running, The Critical Poem: Borges, Paz, and Other Language-Centered Poets in Latin America (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1996). 13 Alejandra Pizarnik, La condesa sangrienta (Buenos Aires: Aquarius Libros, 1971). 14 Alejandra Pizarnik, La condesa sangrienta, Testigo, 1:1 (1966), 5563. For a discussion of this text see Karl Possos essay. 15 I would like to thank Fiona Mackintosh for references to material from the Princeton Archives (box 9, folder 8, correspondence with Octavio Paz).
82
JASON WILSON
and we can grasp how much Pizarnik read around surrealism, and, through her epigraphs, wanted to tell us, her readers, what she had been reading. We could equally have listed the dedications to her poems in rbol de Diana, with names dropped like Cortzar, de Mandiargues, Esther Singer (Calvinos Argentinian wife), Alain Glass (a surrealist sculptor living in Mexico), Laure Bataillon (a translator) and Pazs prologue, to again catch that transient group life of Paris. To live the literary life was liberating, but to sit down and write poems remained a problem. In her diary, Pizarnik was acute about so much reading: llegado el instante de escribir un poema, no soy ms que una humilde muchacha desnuda (Diarios, p. 80). Her writings are the result of this nakedness and rejection of her personal library of texts, quotations and associations. Octavio Paz offered her his way out of this confrontation that leads to sterility, and advised her to write essays (Diarios, p. 495). That is, reading and criticizing a book would wake up her response and would lead to a poem. This technique was his own strategy and he accompanied all his poems with critical essays that overlapped, so that they could be read together. Even Pizarnik found his work too intellectual, too essayistic (Diarios, p. 476), but she followed his advice. In 1970, in Testigo, she published the essay Relectura de Nadja, de Andr Breton.16 The relationship of the main male surrealists to women is complex and one-sided. Already in 1971 Xavire Gauthier, in the wake of Simone de Beauvoirs ground-breaking attack on the male surrealists in Le Deuxime sexe (1949), published her critique of how all the surrealists placed woman on a pedestal, turned her into myth, goddess of love, and denied her a concrete existence.17 Many critics have followed suit since. This relectura is interesting, for Pizarnik is obliged to take an oblique angle on the 1928 text, and her insights are not that clear. That is, her reading does not depend on a shared rationality with her reader. She writes elliptically as a poet. Indeed, she joked in her diary that haca poemas que ni yo comprendo and that work like her Extraccin de la piedra de locura es muy difcil y nadie o casi nadie podra comentarlo con justicia (Diarios, p. 464). Her essay is divided into three sections. In the first, Pizarnik focuses on Bretons description of Nadjas eyes (Prosa, p. 262); links her to a tradition of bellas extraviadas (Prosa, p. 263), women who find no refuge in Hansel and Gretels hut, but vanish into the dark of a gruta encantada. For Nadja is the night; es el poema que slo se atiene a la muerte (Prosa, p. 263). So Nadja emigrates from herself, to be locked in a dark house. The title appeared academic another re-reading but the reading Pizarnik actually gives us is opaque, personal and identificatory.18 Alejandra is Nadja: her insights come
16 Alejandra Pizarnik, Relectura de Andr Breton, Testigo, 5 (1970), 1218. Quotations from the essay will be referenced to the more readily accessible reprint in Prosa. 17 Xavire Gauthier, Surralisme et sexualit (Paris: Gallimard, 1971). 18 According to Ana Mara Rodrguez Francia, Pizarnik sees Bretons text as una oportunidad propicia para desplegar elementos de una Potica. See La disolucin en la obra de Alejandra Pizarnik: ensombrecimiento de la existencia y ocultamiento del ser (Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 2003), p. 337.
83
from thinking herself into Nadjas skin. This led Csar Aira to posit that all her poetry was a self-creation, a literary mask como una Nadja en primera persona, escrita por su personaje (Aira, p. 36). The second section moves on to another detail; Pizarnik, like Borges in his criticism, enters this work through what she calls detalles privilegiados. Breton added photographs to Nadja as part of his revulsion for descriptive realism. But he was refused permission to print a provocative wax statue from the Muse Grevin. Pizarnik asks us why he wanted to include a photo of somebody who is not Nadja and offers her conjetura, which is really a certidumbre. It is because behind all women there is a presentimiento de la mujer verdadera (Prosa, p. 264), at the end called Solange, who is the ghost of herself (Prosa, p. 265). We have a typical Pizarnik substitution. Identity is an unreal reflection of a real ghost. That is, we cannot quite make out our real selves, her illustration of Rimbauds famous Car JE est un autre in his letter to his school teacher Paul Demeny in 1871.19 The elusive other in us. Again, Pizarniks reading is idiosyncratic and personal. The third section picks up Nadjas phrase about time as the key to Bretons aventura laberntica (Prosa, p. 266). She asks herself, and us: What did not happen between them? There was no meeting; she arrived late. Bretons fantasy was to meet a beautiful naked woman in a wood, thus a desire made reality. Had that happened, Breton would not have written his book (he would have lived it). Pizarnik then adapts this fantasy to make of writing itself a process of encircling a wood that you cannot enter, un lugar vedado (Prosa, p. 267). Nadja herself seems to grasp the truth of Bretons desire, but cannot satisfy it. Breton remained too aware and was able to flee. Pizarnik summarizes the book: Pero, qu otra cosa sino huir hace Breton en este libro? Huye de Nadja, por supuesto; y para ello le sobran motivos, comenzando por el primero: la locura de Nadja (Prosa, p. 267). There was to be no walk in the woods; the whole affair and the book a trop tard, a rewrite of Poes nevermore. For Nadja also misses out, there is no canto del bosque destinado a la muchacha de ojos abiertos (Prosa, p. 268). No salvation through love, nor through chance, nor through writing. What Pizarnik takes from her re-reading is loss, a kind of grieving for Nadja. Pizarniks supposed essay is as opaque as any of her so-called texts; she has blurred the frontiers of essay and poem; she has read Nadja as her elusive self. In her diary, Pizarnik divorces herself as a reader from her generation; mis jvenes amigos vanguardistas son tan convencionales como los profesores de literatura. Y si aman a Rimbaud no es por lo que aull Rimbaud: es por el deslumbramiento que les producen algunas palabras que jams podrn comprender (Diarios, p. 171). The clash between howl and words, between horror and anxiety and the comfort of writing is what she perceived in Nadja. As a reader, she identifies so strongly with what she is reading that she becomes what she reads and suffers the consequences. The most poignant outcome is that she
19 Arthur Rimbaud, Oeuvres compltes, ed. Antoine Adam (Paris: Gallimard, 1972), p. 250.
84
JASON WILSON
remains Alejandra Pizarnik. In her diary she notes her debt to Breton as inenarrable and gives an odd reason for this debt: Tal vez es aquel que nada me ense y no obstante es aquel que ms influy en m (Diarios, p. 422). Her divergence from him is what made her herself. Pizarnik also twice wrote essays on her friend Julio Cortzar, like her, a student of Artaud and avid reader of countless fringe surrealists. Her first piece was written in 1961 and was a review, or even promotion, of Cortzars whimsical and absurdist Historia de cronopios y famas (1962) with what she calls its risita zen (Prosa, p. 198). She outlines the way Cortzar divided up the world into famas, who stand for the enemies of art, for common sense and bourgeois precaution, with the esperanzas (not in the title) as idiots and the cronopios as the surrealists and others. Pizarnik lists them as Don Quixote, Charlie Parker, Rimbaud, the Arcipreste de Hita and Cortzar himself (Prosa, p. 198). She identifies with him and with this tradition of metaphysical humour, telling her readers, secretly, that she was an insider. She approves of Cortzars skill, his apasionada minuciosidad (Prosa, p. 200), and claims this text as subversive (Prosa, p. 201). But it is in her diary that she accuses Cortzar of plagiarizing Henri Michaux. In her diary she wrote: Olvido lo principal: Julio es, antes que un gran escritor, un gran lector. Tambin, como Eliot, es un gran plagiador (Diarios, p. 445). This is a Borgesian point: a famous writer is first a great reader; a projection, we could say, of Pizarnik herself, a great reader of surrealism. Pizarnik prepared an essay on Henri Michaux as a review of his book Passages in 1963. She views Michaux as the gran terapeuta: writing as a cure of soulsickness. He has penned la mejor poesa de nuestro siglo, like Rimbaud or Lautramont (surrealisms great models). She reckons that his work is an exorcism, a term she carries into her own work, of his own suffering and obsessions, that it, the literary text, does not aim for beauty, but self-knowledge and cure. She reads Michaux con fervor; his evocation of a piano is perfecto (Prosa, pp. 2079). She also wrote about her mentor Octavio Paz (not collected in the Prosa completa) in the form of a review of his collection Salamandra.20 Here she offers a classification: Paz is not a surrealist, es un poeta inclasificable, a pesar de que est fincado en las ms bellas conquistas del surrealismo: lo maravilloso, el mundo onrico.21 He is and is not a surrealist, like all the group of Latin Americans on the fringe of surrealism in Paris in the 1960s, many of whom Pizarnik read, met, translated and commented on to then reject in her own work, as she had done with Breton. In fact, as already cited, she found Pazs poetry too intellectual. So reading for Pizarnik is a kind of exorcism, as well as frequently being an identification (especially with Rimbaud and Michaux). The prose poem Extraccin de la piedra de locura from the book of the same title taps into Pizarniks world, her fear of going mad, her fascination with madness (and especially the work and life of Antonin Artaud). Her fears about
For discussion of this review, see Florinda Goldbergs essay in this volume. Alejandra Pizarnik, El premio internacional de Poesa y Salamandra, in Mxico en la Cultura, 767 (1 December 1963), p. 5.
20 21
85
madness tie in with psychoanalysis and her different therapists, ending with the eminent Enrique Pichon Rivire, himself a researcher into Isidore Ducasse, otherwise known as Lautramont (in other words, a very literary analyst).22 However, her diary was an alternative kind of analysis; its language is sober and she employs few metaphors. She even analysed her own literary style in 1962 as poor, stiff language, with no music. She never thinks in sentences and reduces everything to a few key words (Diarios, p. 286). In 1959, when Pizarnik thinks of travelling to Paris she playfully wonders if all me curara and decides probably not (Diarios, p. 156). So her sense of herself as a person and as a writer is deeply involved with the notion of cure. The cover of the first edition of Extraccin de la piedra de locura does not illustrate the famous Prado painting by Hieronymus Bosch (El Bosco) titled in English The Curing of Madness. Instead, there is a line drawing of a long-haired girl with long ribbon-like fingernails, juggling some scissors and a comb (it could be a Dorothea Tanning). It does not identify the artist. The Bosch of the Spanish title, however, looks to the modern eye like a medieval torture scene. A man or doctor in a conical hat is trepanning a tubby man, while a priest flicks holy water at him and a nun watches, balancing a book on her head. Pizarniks cure is not so dramatic, for it is the writing of the piece that is her confession and cure. That she focused on a Bosch affirmed her surrealist heritage, since Bosch had become by the 1960s, in Sarane Alexandrians words, the most important pre-surrealist visionary, on whose example the surrealists relied most.23 It is hard to decide whether Pizarnik interpreted the Bosch painting as an allegory or just saw it as a dramatic reflection of her own situation. Charles de Tolnay cites the inscription in Dutch to translate it as master cuts out the stones / my name is Lubbart das (it rhymes in the Dutch, and das means badger or cheated). A stone was a common emblem of folly at the time. As an allegory, then, this small oval painting expresses the folly and uselessness of all worldly healing. The conical hat on the quack is the funnel of wisdom and the nun has placed on her head a book of medical knowledge.24 However, as the editors of Boschs complete paintings and drawings noted, the painting remains enigmatic.25 The point that could be made, then, is that all cures are impossible; that Pizarnik wanted to stay with her stone. Pizarniks epigraph from the Flemish contemplative and mystic Ruysbroeck (12931381) is in French and plainly states that the soul is sick and suffers, is wounded and broken and that nobody heals it. It is part of her text; her prose poem argues with that opinion of soul-sickness. Pizarnik is not interested in
22 See Juan Jacobo Bajarla, Alejandra Pizarnik: anatoma de un recuerdo (Buenos Aires: Almagesto, 1998), pp. 856. Pichon Rivire alluded to Boschs painting: y se es el verdadero sentido de esa pintura [. . .] donde ensea que lo extrado de la cabeza del alienado no es una piedra sino una flor. Vicente Zito Lema, Conversaciones con Enrique Pichon Rivire sobre el arte y la locura (Buenos Aires: Timerman, 1976), p. 38. 23 Sarane Alexandrian, Surrealist Art (London: Thames & Hudson, 1970), p. 10. 24 Charles de Tolnay, Hieronymus Bosch (London: Eyre Methuen, 1966), p. 54. 25 Jos Koldeweij, Paul Vanenbroeck and Bernard Vermet, Hieronymus Bosch: The Complete Paintings and Drawings (Rotterdam: Nai Publishers, 2001), pp. 1489.
86
JASON WILSON
giving us a picture of Ruysbroeck, or his teachings: she simply reads herself into the quotation. But one vital piece of information is the spark of the soul and Ruysbroecks mystical path towards the spiritual marriage (title of Ruysbroecks book). If belief in God or any transcendental experience is removed, then terms like the abyss of the Godhead, that God is unknowable and incomprehensible, the emptiness of all things and the traditional mystical notion that all words are foreign to the truth, take on a poetic force close to Pizarniks wager. The experience she sought is close to what Ruysbroeck called the dark silence in which all lovers lose themselves, a phrase which echoes Pizarniks intentions and failures.26 Pizarnik has read subtly about this kind of experience (spurred on by Bataille). The prose piece opens with the arrival of poor light and the first affirmation about reading:
La luz mala se ha avecinado y nada es cierto. Y si pienso en todo lo que le acerca del espritu . . . Cerr los ojos, vi cuerpos luminosos que giraban en la niebla, en el lugar de las ambiguas vecindades. No temas, nada te sobrevendr, ya no hay violadores de tumbas. El silencio, el silencio siempre, las monedas de oro del sueo. (Poesa, p. 247)
This poor light could be a realistic reference to the sun having set; it could refer to the start of the dark night of the soul. But the result is the same, a sense of uncertainty where normal visual perception, open eyes, fails. Pizarnik then asks the fundamental question: Y si pienso en todo lo que le acerca del espritu. She has read copiously about illumination, but when she honestly examines herself she sees niebla and ambiguity. She then shuts her eyes. A crucial phrase of intent to look inwards and not outwards, into the dark mind. She tells herself that she wont be illuminated: No temas, nada te sobrevendr, ya no hay violadoras de tumbas. That is, the nocturnal terror world of vampires no longer exists; it is just words, literature, reading. Outside literature, there seems to be nothing but silence, and cheap exchange or gold coins of dreams (but not the alchemists gold). The second paragraph (stanza) of the text leaps to her voice, that voice that is witness to having lived in the wood, but she now doubts if there was a green alameda (Poesa, p. 247). Her great artistic desire is stated openly: Te deseas otra. La otra que eres se desea otra (Poesa, p. 247). She seeks some inner transformation, but is locked out from her long dead past. Childhood, the reino, is now cenizas. She may have read about many things, but she should be honest and talk about what she knows: Habla de lo que sabes (Poesa, p. 248). This knowledge is inside her, not in books; vibra en tu mdula (Poesa, p. 248), it is the pain of her bones, vertigo, her betrayal. So she turns her back on her epigraph, as she did with Breton, and focuses on herself. Her task is now to exorcise, and here the Bosch painting comes to light, to get rid of her inner demon.
26 F. C. Happold, Mysticism: A Study and an Anthology (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968), pp. 24962.
87
Exorcise is a verb that alludes, as noted, to Henri Michauxs Exorcismes (1943). He views writing as an exorcism of inner battles. In her adulthood, nada rima con nada (Poesa, p. 248). The text then continues with a lament about loss, about not being able to cross over into a painting and live inside it (Poesa, p. 249), but she remains in suffering, like the man being trepanned in the Bosch panel. I cite this paragraph as it refers to another unidentified painting Pizarnik trained with the Uruguayan surrealist Juan Batlle Planas to be a painter, and often conceived of her poems as words drawn onto large white sheets:
Si de pronto una pintura se anima y el nio florentino que miras ardientemente extiende una mano y te invita a permanecer a su lado en la terrible dicha de ser un objeto a mirar y admirar. No (dije), para ser dos hay que ser distintos. Yo estoy fuera del marco pero el modo de ofrendarse es el mismo. (Poesa, p. 249)
A rough paraphrase would say that she wishes to escape into the world of art, a world without pain or death or madness, a world of epiphanic bliss. She is now aware that she is in the real world, outside the boundaries of the frame, but still wants to offer herself, to become the young Florentines lover. The whole text is built rhetorically on negatives; there are no pirates, no buried treasure, no sea captains (all clearly derived from childhood reading and her stirred up imagination); what is there is the espacio negro (Poesa, p. 250), the threshold into locura and a hint at the poems title. Madness, and the suffering it entails, leads to a desperately ironic rewriting of the famous Descartes aphorism, as she laments: Sufro, luego no s (Poesa, p. 252); instead of light, she lies in darkness. She had dreams of love (in the form of a poem within the prose piece), dreams of finding her self through sex (la va del xtasis entre las piernas), but writing doesnt make anything happen. Her ambition as a poet was a Mallarmean dream of the total work: Yo presenta una escritura total (Poesa, p. 253). But, she asks, what happens when words arrive and betray you? Qu significa traducirse en palabras? (p. 253). This essential statement gets to the core of her poetics. The act of writing words down, however carefully and Pizarnik was very careful, a strict corrector of her own work always leaves the living poet behind. Words cannot be inhabited; they betray the speaker, leaving only a ghost there, but not the self. Pizarnik has plans to perfect herself, to nurture her spirit, and autodidactic plans to cure her poor grammar, but these dreams are now seen to be ruins. The last paragraph opens with a visin enlutada and more pain in her bones. The truth is that through writing, there is no new self: ningn nacimiento (Poesa, p. 253). This failure of re-birth touches one of the great surrealist dreams. At the end of Bretons 1935 lecture (which was read by another surrealist as Breton was banned from the Congress of Writers), he cited Marxs call to transform the world and Rimbauds to change life: ces deux mots dordre pour nous nen font quun.27 The Cuban Revolution ushered in the New Man,
27
Andr Breton, Manifestes du surralisme (Paris: Jean-Jacques Pauvert, 1962), p. 285.
88
JASON WILSON
while Paz in his 1950s and 1960s poetry claimed that poetry could change the world by changing consciousness (in his Piedra de sol [1957] he wrote optimistically: si dos se besan/ el mundo cambia).28 But Pizarnik denied this revolutionary tradition, despite having been seduced by it. Her failure to become what she read, to redeem Nadjas own failure with Breton, leads to this self-definition: Ebria de m, de la msica, de los poemas, por qu no dije del agujero de ausencia (Poesa, p. 253). Her song means nothing, except silence, the last word in the piece, and that mutates into night and death. What she means by silence is the absence of music, not the staccato or elliptical text we have just read. A poet critic, Ricardo Herrera, pinpointed this block in her work as la delectacin en explicar los mecanismos de la trampa (como si una minuciosa descripcin del tormento pudiera conjurar el dolor de estar atrapado en s mismo).29 That minute description is her text Extraccin de la piedra de locura, a self-conscious parable about not being able to change herself, again in Herreras words, of not being raptado por la sonoridad ingenua de las palabras. Her critical self-analysis, her reading of key surrealist writers like Rimbaud and Michaux, had eliminated the traditional lyrical strengths of letting the words sing. Pizarniks posthumous work, in its punning and jokes and obscenities, would simply continue this deafness to lyrical music. What we have in this piece is an honest confrontation with the promises of reading surrealism, poetry and the mystics; these promises have failed the poet, and have resulted in a void at the centre of her texts. She did once believe in these promises, but can no longer. This pattern of past faith in art and present bleakness is close to the tempo of Rimbauds Une saison en enfer (1873), which opens with Jadis: as a child, he felt he had power, and rebelliousness, and he gives many examples of this. The prose texts set up stories about what he had experienced, but by the end he has seen through all the lies without knowing where to seek help (therapy): Enfin, je demanderai pardon pour mtre nourri de mensonge. The lies which have nourished him include especially the lies of love, women and couples; rid of these, he can now be completely himself, possder la vrit dans une me et un corps (Rimbaud, Oeuvres compltes, pp. 11617). It is clear that Rimbaud here refers to his bitter acceptance of his homosexuality. Yves Bonnefoy concluded that lhomosexualit demeure ses yeux une passion ngative, une provocation, un chec.30 We could assert that Pizarnik too is left with no beliefs, no sense that art is a cure for the soul, and feeling that her sexuality is now categorically defined as homosexual. If reading Rimbaud into Pizarnik is part of how she read herself into him, then the implicit confessions include the failure of transforming herself through art, with the further wound that when all the literary work is removed from her mind, what
Octavio Paz, Poemas (19351975) (Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1979), p. 271. Ricardo Herrera, Lo negro, lo estril, lo fragmentado o el legado de Alejandra Pizarnik, in Usos de la imaginacin, ed. Juan Gustavo Cobo Borda (Buenos Aires: El Imaginero, 1984), pp. 95105 (p. 98). 30 Yves Bonnefoy, Rimbaud par lui-mme (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1970), p. 91.
28 29
89
remains is a blank, silence, the white page. In a diary jotting she honestly wrote, after years of reading him, that yo no soy Rimbaud (Diarios, p. 164). But his fierce dismissal of art Maintenant je puis dire que lart est une sottise (Rimbaud, Oeuvres compltes, p. 117) merges with her own despair; rather than abandon art, like Rimbaud, to trade in the Middle East and North Africa, Pizarnik surrenders to her own sense of impotence, that art cannot cure her. So we close with the Bosch painting and the title to her 1968 collection, Extraccin de la piedra de locura, where she is also the strange nun with the book on her head, having been driven Quixotically mad by so much reading.
Bibliography
Aira, Csar, Alejandra Pizarnik (Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo, 1998) Alexandrian, Sarane, Surrealist Art (London: Thames & Hudson, 1970) Bajarla, Juan Jacobo, Alejandra Pizarnik: anatoma de un recuerdo (Buenos Aires: Almagesto, 1998) Bdouin, Jean-Louis, Vingt ans de surralisme, 19391959 (Paris: Denol, 1961) Bonnefoy, Yves, Rimbaud par lui-mme (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1970) Breton, Andr, Manifestes du surralisme (Paris: Jean-Jacques Pauvert, 1962) de Tolnay, Charles, Hieronymus Bosch (London: Eyre Methuen, 1966) Depetris, Carolina, Aportica de la muerte: estudio crtico sobre Alejandra Pizarnik (Madrid: Universidad Autnoma de Madrid, 2004) Dobry, Edgardo, La poesa de Alejandra Pizarnik: una lectura de Extraccin de la piedra de locura, in Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, 644 (2004), 3343 Gauthier, Xavire, Surralisme et sexualit (Paris: Gallimard, 1971) Happold, F. C., Mysticism: A Study and an Anthology (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968) Herrera, Ricardo, Lo negro, lo estril, lo fragmentado o el legado de Alejandra Pizarnik, in Usos de la imaginacin, ed. Juan Gustavo Cobo Borda (Buenos Aires: El Imaginero, 1984), pp. 95105 Koldeweij, Jos, and Paul Vanenbroeck, Bernard Vermet, Hieronymus Bosch: The Complete Paintings and Drawings (Rotterdam: Nai, 2001) Koremblit, Bernardo Ezequiel, Todas las que ella era: ensayo sobre Alejandra Pizarnik (Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 1991) Michaux, Henri, Antologa potica, trans. Lysandro Galtier (Buenos Aires: Fabril, 1959) Paz, Octavio, Destiempos, de Blanca Varela, in Obra Completa, III (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Econmica, 1999), pp. 34953 , Corriente alterna (Mexico: Siglo Veintiuno, 1967) , Poemas (19351975) (Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1979) Pia, Cristina, Alejandra Pizarnik (Buenos Aires: Planeta, 1991; 2nd edn, Corregidor, 1999) Pizarnik, Alejandra, El premio internacional de Poesa y Salamandra, in Mxico en la Cultura, 767 (1 December 1963), p. 5 , La condesa sangrienta, Testigo, 1 (1966), 5563 , Relectura de Andr Breton, Testigo, 5 (1970), 1218 , La condesa sangrienta (Buenos Aires: Aquarius Libros, 1971)
90
JASON WILSON
Rimbaud, Arthur, Oeuvres compltes, ed. Antoine Adam (Paris: Gallimard, 1972) Rodrguez Francia, Ana Mara, La disolucin en la obra de Alejandra Pizarnik: ensombrecimiento de la existencia y ocultamiento del ser (Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 2003) Running, Thorpe, The Critical Poem: Borges, Paz, and Other Language-Centered Poets in Latin America (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1996) Wilson, Jason, Despus de la poesa surrealista, in nsula, 51213 (1989), 479 Zito Lema, Vicente, Conversaciones con Enrique Pichon Rivire sobre el arte y la locura (Buenos Aires: Timerman, 1976)
Alejandra Pizarnik, the Perceptive Reader

Florinda F. Goldberg
No es un producto del azar el que casi todos los grandes poetas contemporneos sean, paralelamente, grandes crticos. No nos referimos a la crtica literaria de carcter parcial . . . Pensamos en el poeta que se aproxima a interrogar la poesa de una manera nica y casi siempre trgica. Alejandra Pizarnik1
More than fifty years after the publication of her first collection of poetry and thirty-five years after her death, we are in a position to map out the route taken by criticism of Alejandra Pizarniks work. At first, critical interest was centred on her poetry (including the prose poems and narratives), and this continues to be the focus of many critical studies. Later, scholars and essayists turned their attention to her heterodox prose texts, particularly La condesa sangrienta and La bucanera de Pernambuco. In recent years, in response to the publication of the Correspondencia, Prosa and Diarios, critical emphasis has gradually shifted to a study of other texts by Pizarnik, and to the analysis of her readings of literary works, whether classic, contemporary, canonical or marginal. Many informal instances of these readings are to be found in her books, notebooks and scrapbooks.2 Such studies allow for a greater understanding of Pizarniks literary interests, of what she absorbed and whom she was influenced by, as well as what she rejected, and the overall development of her own creativity:
Queda por realizar . . . un estudio de Pizarnik como lectora, que debera comenzar por los subrayados de los libros de su biblioteca y extenderse a estos interesantes testimonios de su admiracin y feroz exigencia literaria [los cuadernos de citas], para culminar en los muy interesantes estudios crticos que nos
1 Alejandra Pizarnik, Leopold Sedar Senghor o la lucidez y el delirio, Cuadernos, 70 (Paris, 1963), 89. 2 El cuaderno verde, que por suerte y privilegio especial conservo, era un cuaderno entre varios de citas que Alejandra copiaba con su aplicada letra de colegiala . . . All aparecen mezcladas citas de e. e. cummings y de Quevedo, del Cancionero Medioeval y de Artaud, de Tutebeuf y de Eluard (Correspondencia, p. 277). There is an example of Pizarniks informal comments on literature in a letter to Ivonne Bordelois, where she analyses briefly one line of a sonnet by Garcilaso (Correspondencia, p. 275).
92
ha dejado y que no han sido an reunidos ni citados en su totalidad. (Correspondencia, pp. 2778)
The analysis of Pizarniks critical discourse is therefore still in its early stages. One obvious and necessary step in this direction would be the republication (or at least the production of a comprehensive list) of the articles she originally published in newspapers and magazines in Argentina, Venezuela, Mexico, Spain and France, which are now difficult to track down:
Todava est por hacerse el recuento de los trabajos crticos de Alejandra reseas y entrevistas que, lejos de la imagen exclusivamente narcisista que suele presentarse de ella, nos muestran su profunda y adivinatoria capacidad de empata con escritores aparentemente muy alejados de su estilo y de su temperamento, en los que saba discernir la convergencia de ciertos sueos, fantasmas o races estticas comunes, coincidencias que proporcionaban una arista inesperada y luminosa en la comprensin de esos autores para el pblico lector. (Correspondencia, p. 26)
A preliminary list of Pizarniks critical texts is appended to this chapter. The most comprehensive collection of her reviews is in the Prosa completa, which comprises sixteen texts (two previously unpublished), one of which (La condesa sangrienta) exceeds the bounds of a critical commentary on Valentine Penroses book and is now considered to be a creative work by Pizarnik in its own right. Unfortunately, the four reports published in Zona Franca between 1964 and 1966 are missing from the book, as is the important review of Octavio Pazs Salamandra (1962). Her review of Jorge Sergios Fondo arriba is available on a website.3 In this first approach to Pizarnik as critical reader, I propose to consider a limited selection of these reviews, supporting my analysis with reference to comments and observations made in her letters and diaries.4 It is not my intention to critique her literary criticism which would seem like an arrogant comparison with what I might have written on the same texts but rather to look for correspondences between her critical interests and focus, and her own poetics: Su potencialidad crtica era idntica a su capacidad potica, porque su lectura y su escritura eran en cierto modo una sola cosa (Correspondencia, p. 19). Reading the reviews allows us to see varying degrees of interest and involvement in the different authors and texts. Doubtless she had a variety of reasons for undertaking reviews of particular texts, from personal pleasure to more strategic motives getting herself known, establishing a good working relationship with a particular journal, writer or group not forgetting the question
3 http://sololiteratura.com/php/docinterno.php?cat=miscelanea&doc=361 First published in La Gaceta de Tucumn, 22 June 1958. 4 In many cases we find mention in her diaries and letters of projected reviews or articles which she never completed or published (to the best of my knowledge), for example the piece on Cadalso (Diarios, p. 46). See also footnotes 12 and 17 and discussion on p. 99.
ALEJANDRA PIZARNIK, THE PERCEPTIVE READER
93
of money (on the rare occasions when she was actually paid for writing reviews).5 A clear example of practical motivation for writing is to be found in her commentary on the volume of sixteenth-century texts, Relacin varia de hechos, hombres y cosas de estas Indias meridionales, the first paragraph of which is undisguised flattery of the publishing house Losada, who compiled the selection. In addition, her own personal view emerges when she draws attention to cases of humor involuntario and spontaneous expresiones de alto valor potico in these voices of chronicles and conquistadors (Prosa, pp. 203 and 204).6 Whatever the circumstances in which any particular article was written, what matters is how Pizarnik detects and highlights in the text she is commenting upon the convergences and divergences with her own ideas about writing and language, which lends a productive and frequently provocative dialogic structure to her commentaries. However, she does not use the writing of others merely as a springboard for talking about her own work; she never loses sight of the object of her analysis, yet at the same time she reflects in her comments whether explicitly or implicitly the principles of her own personal poetics.7 What comes across most strongly in these reviews is a sense of exceptional clarity, an extraordinary ability to read in the most profound and active sense of the word, what Ivonne Bordelois calls her calidad de penetracin (Correspondencia, p. 19). Yo entiendo que era una crtica extraordinaria y tena un don de lectura prodigioso para hacer una resea se enfrascaba das y das con un libro hasta extraerle la mdula pero tambin tena un golpe de vista fabuloso, iba hasta el centro de una sola picada. Nunca recurra a teoras circundantes ni a previas reseas sobre los autores que trataba.8 Her diaries and letters give us an insight into how she went about writing some of her reviews, and the difficulties she encountered in the process (including the inevitable disruption to her own writing).9 They also reveal her sometimes contradictory literary and emotional responses. For example, on 28 June 1964 she writes: Termin el artculo sobre Michaux. Mediocre y superficial. Then two days later: E. y l admiraron mi artculo de Michaux. Tambin los dems artculos. Esto confirm mi idea (errnea?) del esfuerzo inmenso que
5 For example, on 30 September 1964 she writes in her diary: Carta de Sucre. Posibilidad de hacer artculos. Alegra y alivio y, a la vez, angustia porque justamente ayer pensaba que mi situacin de hija de familia me permite leer y escribir (Diarios, p. 382). 6 Reviews will be cited from the Prosa (except that of Salamandra); details of the original publications can be found at the end of this essay. 7 The only departure from this is in her review of Julio Cortzars El otro cielo, in which Pizarnik takes advantage of the quotation he uses from Lautramont to include two paragraphs of her own thoughts on this quotation. That she is perfectly aware of this abuse is clear from the fact that she modestly encloses these paragraphs in parentheses (Prosa, p. 246). 8 From personal correspondence with Bordelois, 30 May 2006. 9 In a letter to Antonio Beneyto, Pizarnik complains about needing more than a month to write a single article. See From the Forbidden Garden: Letters from Alejandra Pizarnik to Antonio Beneyto, ed. Carlota Caulfield (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2003), p. 40.
94
necesito para hacer algo bueno (Diarios, pp. 369 and 371). Between 19 October and 20 November 1964 we find the following notes, which chart Pizarniks contradictory feelings towards Artaud and his work during the process of writing her essay on him:
Lunes, 19 Artaud. Deseos de escribir una pgina sobre su sufrimiento. Su tensin fsica; sus conflictos con el pensamiento, las palabras. Pero sin retrica, por favor, sin retrica. . . . Domingo, 8 Artaud Mi angustia al tener que dedicarme a un solo autor . . . (Diarios, p. 383) Lunes, 10 [sic] Confusin. No s si me gusta Artaud. Martes, 17 de noviembre Alivio al prorrogar el artculo sobre A. para el lunes . . . Ivn K[aramazov]. Me fascina . . . El intelectual tpico. Lo que nunca podrs ser a causa de tus dificultades para pensar, para idear palabras. Por eso Artaud te da tanto miedo. (Diarios, p. 384) Viernes, 20 de noviembre Termin el artculo de Artaud. Le gust mucho a J.A. (Diarios, p. 385)
There are many other examples of textual and emotional self-criticism relating to her work as a critic and reviewer:
El artculo sobre Z[ona] F[ranca] peca de generalizaciones. Nostalgia de lo concreto, de los lmites. No s reconocer los lmites. Cuando los tengo en este caso el artculo de ZF los odio y quiero evadirme. (Diarios, p. 404; 17 August 1965) [H]e aceptado la proposicin de E[nrique] P[ezzoni] de comentar para Sur La motocyclette. Esto significa uno o dos meses de fabricacin de un artculo que ser tan excelente como intil . . . Y en verdad, no me atrev a decirle no a E. P. Y por qu no me atrev? Miedo de perder, siempre miedo de perder. (Diarios, p. 478; 25 June 1969)
In the subsequent diary entries (Diarios, pp. 47981) there is a work plan and various comments that she obviously did not intend to include in the review, which according to Bordelois trasluce slo en parte la ambivalencia de Pizarnik con respecto a Mandiargues (Correspondencia, p. 291, note 95). The most interesting of these comments is as follows: lo principal de sus novelas es el bello estilo, el artificio, cosas que nada tienen que ver conmigo (Diarios, p. 479). This subjective criterion of what really matters to her as a poet, what she feels to be essential, is a thread running through much of her critical work as well as through her own informal comments on that work in her diaries. Writing about the review of Octavio Pazs Cuadrivio (1965), we see her consciously dividing her time between criticism of works which really speak to her and those on which the critical gaze is perhaps more mechanically and reluctantly focused as a task to be completed:
95
Debera dedicarme a la nota sobre Utrillo y, a modo de complemento potico, el artculo sobre el libro de Octavio. El primero es trabajo; el segundo entra ms en lo mo. (Diarios, pp. 41113; 2 February 1966)
The fact that a work may speak to her does not automatically make the process of writing about it easier; indeed, there appears to be more of a sense of struggle in precisely those cases. Yet the greater the struggle to communicate a reading of these works, the greater her sense of achievement when she feels that her critical writing adequately conveys her response to them:
El artculo sobre Octavio me enferma. Es demonaco esto que me hace aceptar artculos. (Diarios, pp. 41113; 27 April 1966) Largas horas con el artculo de Octavio. Por momentos estaba contenta. Esto me da la ilusin de estar creando. No s por qu trato con desprecio filisteo al ensayo sobre Cernuda. Tal vez porque intuyo que es arbitrario o que la poesa de C. es inferior y menos compleja de lo que O. dice. (Diarios, pp. 41113; 3 May 1966)
Pizarniks relationship to the texts she is reviewing can be traced quite comprehensively through such external informal commentary on the reviewing process, but even more easily through the selective use she makes of the first person in expressing judgements and reactions. This is not as obvious as it might seem, if we recall that one of the conventions of book reviewing is the exclusive use of the third person (less so now, but certainly very much the norm at that time), at best semi-personified in the phrase the reader or in the more empathetic but vague we. Pizarnik naturally adheres to this general rule, but in cases where her own personal involvement in the commentary or assessment is particularly strong, she departs from the norm and uses the first person:
Por mi parte, he ledo y reledo con fervor especial los captulos en que el poeta se refiere a la pintura, a la msica y a la infancia. (Review of Michaux; Prosa, p. 207) Girri hace hablar y pensar a los cuadros de Breughel en su poema a mi juicio el ms bello del libro titulado Ejercicios con Breughel. (Review of Girri; Prosa, p. 221)
It is not surprising that the review with the most unequivocal first-person assertions is that on Octavio Pazs Salamandra (discussed further below); as Jason Wilson notes in his essay in this volume, Paz actively encouraged Pizarnik to practise literary criticism alongside her poetic work, so in writing on him she gives full rein to this authorized critical activity:
Ahora, en su nuevo libro, sus anteriores y maravillosas conquistas aparecen se me aparecen a m como tributarias del drama del lenguaje.
96
Promesa? Yo dira cumplimiento. Mejor dicho: es Salamandra quien me hace decirlo.10
In some cases, the first person fulfils a metalinguistic function, by which Pizarnik subjects her own critical discourse to the same level of scrutiny that she applies to the literary texts she is analysing: No quisiera soslayar en esta nota la sabrosa comicidad de algunos pasajes hallados a lo largo del libro (Review of Relacin varia de hechos, hombres y cosas . . .; Prosa, p. 203). At times this metalinguistic commentary on the first persons critical approach is used for the purposes of gentle irony: Estos detalles, y tantos otros que no sealo, designan la pasin de la exactitud de Andr Pieyre de Mandiargues (Review of Pieyre de Mandiargues, La motocicleta; Prosa, p. 276). On other occasions this irony becomes more explicit as Pizarnik uses the first person to brazenly assume full responsibility for a damning remark: Me apresuro a citar unas lneas ms vivas y ms vigentes que este verso. Fueron publicadas en 1554 y su autor es Garcilaso (Review of Molinari, Antologa Potica; Prosa, p. 229).
The problem cases: Molinari, Girri and Murena

In 1965 Pizarnik published a piece about Ricardo Molinaris anthology in the Venezuelan magazine Zona Franca (Prosa, pp. 2239). The fact that it was outside Argentina probably made it easier for her to express herself sincerely, since, given the tone and the rhetorical devices used, this review deserves to be included in the Humor section of the Prosa completa (were it not for the obviously unamused irritation of its author). After an apparently flattering opening, which is then revealed to be ironic Ricardo Molinari, el ms celebrado poeta argentino (Prosa, p. 223) Pizarnik systematically demolishes this work generally regarded as canonical, but which to her mind constitutes una suerte de evasin fuera de la poesa (Prosa, p. 229). Fair play and irony go hand in hand as she alternates between more and less damning comments. For example, she acknowledges the authors potential for finding the right poetic turn of phrase, in saying that he is acquainted with good rhetorical sources, and he uses emotions which have traditionally lent themselves to poetic treatment. However, she then dismisses his actual poetic realizations as lacking in value and characterized by banality, thus leaving this potential unfulfilled:
Para que la palabra poesa siga teniendo sentido es necesario condenar esa mezcla de conformismo, complacencia e inautenticidad que implica un poema astutamente confeccionado con los lugares comunes ms muertos de una determinada tradicin literaria, y que est destinado . . . a halagar los sentimientos ms fciles. (Prosa, p. 229)
10
Pizarnik, Salamandra, de Octavio Paz, Cuadernos, 72 (1963), 903.
97
By contrast, the principles according to which Pizarnik composed her own work are implied: lack of conformity, revitalization of the language, authenticity and the rejection of superficiality. It must have been very taxing for her to review Alberto Girris El ojo (the review appears in Prosa, pp. 21822), as is clearly indicated by a brief note in her diary: El artculo sobre el libro de Girri. Mi darme en sacrificio (Diarios, p. 380; 10 September 1964). In my opinion, Pizarniks difficulty stems from her ambivalence towards thematic concerns which partly overlap with her own, but which Girri explores through a particular vision and way of writing that feels alien to her. These thematic preoccupations include [la] contienda de opuestos, [la] sed, [el] ignorar cmo decir: yo soy, [el] retorno a un tiempo original, en donde fuimos/ uno y unidad y abrazo: un verbo/ que carece de tiempos (Prosa, p. 219), and the link between poem and painting in Ejercicios con Breughel. Pizarnik makes it abundantly clear which texts she likes: Hasta el alba is perfectamente desesperado y hermoso (p. 218); Relaciones y opuestos is de gran belleza and amazes the reader by transforming verdades que . . . an no nos han habituado a que sean materia de canto (p. 219) into poetry; Ejercicios con Breughel is a mi juicio el ms bello del libro (p. 221). Her disagreement with Girris poetics is to be found in el curso seguro e igual de los poemas (p. 220), in which opposites, rather than being reconciled, se anulan mutuamente (p. 219). It is curious that John King finds a link between Girri and Pizarnik, precisely through this theme of contradiction: La nostalgia de Girri por la unidad en un mundo estructurado por la contradiccin encontr un eco de tal vez la ms importante poetisa joven que apareciera en Sur en los sesenta, Alejandra Pizarnik.11 In reviewing Girri, Pizarnik also objects to the fact that Aqu, lo que el poema quiere decir lo dice el poema, and she feels the lack of any kind of halo . . ., subyacencia (p. 220). For her, poetry must communicate suggestively and allusively beyond the direct referential meanings of the words; poetry should always gesture beyond language to silence, death or music. So if a poem actually spells out in so many words what it is trying to communicate, then the poem has failed to reach the level of true poetry. Thus although the peculiar carga del verso de Girri transmits cierta vibracin to the reader, the limit imposed by the word cierta reveals Pizarniks decisive judgement on Girri. His is a poetry that deliberately unveils and reveals enigmas, whilst for her, el preguntar potico puede volverse respuesta, si nos arriesgamos a que la respuesta sea una pregunta (p. 222).12 Furthermore, it is striking that in this article Pizarnik proposes a kind of
11 John King, SUR: Estudio de la revista argentina y de su papel en el desarrollo de una cultura 19311970 (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Econmica, 1986), p. 241. 12 In a letter to Juan Liscano from 1965 or 1966 (after the review was published), Pizarnik adds this comment: Sin duda estars de acuerdo conmigo en que Girri puede seducir o repeler pero es uno de los escassimos poetas serios, y adems es importante en el sentido en que influye en otros (Pizarniks emphasis); she also mentions having undertaken, at his request, an interview for Zona Franca in which she had to cambiar el tono de algunas respuestas, por la sola razn de su aspereza (Correspondencia, pp. 1746). To my knowledge, this interview was never published.
98
opposition, perhaps ironic, between poets who are either inspirados o extremadamente lcidos (p. 219), when we know that in her own writing she was both at the same time.13 The review of Hctor A. Murenas El demonio de la armona, published in Sur in 1965 (Prosa, pp. 21217), seems to have caused friction between her and the author, as can be inferred from the stark reference in her diary a few months later to la hostilidad de Murena (Diarios, p. 410; 2 February 1966). However, it appears that their relationship continued on reasonable terms, since in letters to Bordelois in 1969, when she was planning her trip to the United States, she mentions that Murena had given her advice and addresses of potential places to stay (Correspondencia, pp. 273 and 282). It is worth recalling that the fiction writer, poet and essayist Hctor A. Murena a controversial figure but prominent in the Argentine literary and intellectual scene at that time was on the editorial board of Sur. Moreover, it should be noted that he was among the first to recognize the value of Pizarniks poetry, and he dedicated his novel Las leyes de la noche (1958) to her. The fact that Pizarnik was aware of the problems it might cause for her lends greater weight to the honesty of her criticism, backed up by Ivonne Bordeloiss comment that this review like that of Girri was precisely one of those motivated by her need to cuidar contactos.14 In this case a sense of critical integrity triumphs over strategic flattery. To begin with, Pizarniks analysis of this book which towards the end she will classify as poco o nada fcil (p. 216) maintains a sense of critical detachment, whilst nevertheless dwelling on a theme which is dear to her as a poet, namely the alternate use of frases and silencios: En ellos hay un perpetuo decir acerca de algo que parece estar dicindose en otra parte. Esa otra parte es el invisible pero presentido interior del poema (p. 212). The following paragraph praises the poem Trabajo central, which poetiza [. . .] un instante privilegiado (p. 213) the same idea which she had enthusiastically highlighted in her review of Pazs Salamandra. In it she identifies that [u]na suerte de energa primordial fundamenta ese instante en el que cesa toda oposicin . . . las palabras vuelven a ser las genuinas . . . la libertad del poeta se torna ilimitada (p. 213). Her approbatory value judgement is explicit: Esos versos dicen de la alegra ms alta (p. 213). The commentary then goes on to analyse Murenas aspiration towards un lenguaje total and his consciousness of the difficulty of attaining it in an everyday world full of el murmullo catico y el silencio estril (p. 213). We can recognize in these Pizarniks own themes, from both her poetry and her conception of poetic art. For instance: Decir libertad o verdad y referir estas palabras al mundo en que vivimos o no vivimos es decir una mentira (El poeta y su poema, Prosa, p. 299); similar views are also expressed in her responses to
13 En cuanto a la inspiracin, creo en ella ortodoxamente, lo que no me impide, sino todo lo contrario, trabajar mucho tiempo un solo poema (El poeta y su poema, Prosa, p. 299). De all mis deseos de hacer poemas terriblemente exactos a pesar de mi surrealismo innato y de trabajar con las sombras interiores (Moia, 1972, in Prosa, p. 313). 14 Personal communication, 30 May 2006.
99
Martha I. Moia (Prosa, pp. 31115). Furthermore, almost all the lines that she quotes contain words or images which are important in her own texts: barco, naufragio, hablar con silencio, centro, jardn, puerta cerrada. The same happens with her interpretative paraphrases of the poems: muro color de ceniza, poema de fuego, espacio feroz (pp. 21314). But the critical blows, whether ironic or resounding, are not long in coming:
en dos oportunidades le acontece caer en la mayor disonancia. . . . La voz se crispa y apostrofa: Feto de la tiniebla / arrojado entre lo impar, / t me entiendes, / edad de plomo! La voz grita: que se alle! que se alle ms! Estos ejemplos dan cuenta de un Murena excedido por los significados. Ha dicho lo que quiso decir, s, pero a costa de la poesa, sacrificndola. (Prosa, p. 215)
The critical tone then returns to descriptive reading, approval and even praise: Cada serie de versos [en La vida hacia todo] es sostenida por la hermosa partcula S inserta en el silencio (p. 215). But in the concluding paragraph, Pizarnik the reviewer hiding behind the cautious figure of the lector ms atento pronounces a curiously ambiguous tribute, yet one which is consistent with what she has been saying all along: on re-reading, this lector atento . . . siente una emocin muy particular ante ciertos versos de forma humilde, como por ejemplo stos: es la tuya / mi mano . . . perfecta frmula de una reconciliacin (Prosa, pp. 21617).15 It is obvious that both in this case and in that of Girri though perhaps with greater difficulty here Pizarnik tried hard to overcome the tension between public relations, her ambivalence towards the texts, and a sense of critical integrity, by using these alternating critical evaluations.
Julio Cortzar: From cronopia to cronopio

. . . y me contento y me alegro como enormsima cronopia . . . (Letter to Ivonne Bordelois, February 1969, Correspondencia, p. 274)
We know Julio Cortzars reactions to Pizarniks review of Historia de cronopios y de famas (Prosa, pp. 197201) through his letters to her and to others. Cortzar wrote to Laure Bataillon: Alexandra a crit un merveilleux compterendu des Cronopios. Quelle sensibilit et quelle intelligence allies ce que tient toujours du miracle! (Mais elle est quelque peu trop prodigue en loges).16 In letters to Francisco Porra, Cortzar describes her study as muy bonito y
15 To anyone that knew Murena, it is quite clear that this reduction to the state of humilde must have come across as an unpardonable insult; hence, doubtless, the previously-noted hostility which Pizarnik complains of in her diary. 16 Julio Cortzar, Cartas, ed. Aurora Bernrdez (Madrid: Alfaguara, 2000), I, p. 559 (20 April 1963). The same ideas are reiterated in another letter to Bataillon dated 30 April 1963, Cortzar, Cartas, I, p. 566.
100
muy fino.17 On 24 June 1966, he thanks Pizarnik for her commentary on Todos los fuegos el fuego (1966) in terms that clearly reveal the affinities that each perceived in the other:
Una vez ms, lo que me decs sobre mis ltimos cuentos me toca de lleno porque no tiene nada que ver con las cosas ms o menos convencionales que yo escucho a derecha o a izquierda. Hasta ahora sos la nica que me ha dado la alegra de sentir que mucho, en mis cuentos, es operacin potica, nace de ese territorio donde lentamente se pasean las Madres . . . algo tan evidente como lo que ves vos cuando me les. Y otra cosa que has visto muy bien . . . es la complementaridad de los relatos que forman el libro . . . En fin, como siempre vos ves mucho ms lejos que cualquiera en ese terreno, sents las fatalidades que juegan en esas ceremonias, y a m me basta con alguien como vos para sentir que esos cuentos merecan escribirse.18
The review of Cronopios is clear evidence of the profound link Pizarnik felt with Cortzars writing a happy complement to the ties of friendship uniting them, which are equally evident in Cortzars letters to her.19 However, writing to Ana Mara Barrenechea on 30 March 1982 (almost ten years after Pizarniks death), Cortzar endeavours to fix the limits of his relation with the young poet: Mi hermosa amistad con Alejandra no fue, a pesar de todo, una relacin tan estrecha como la que esos aos mantuve con otras personas en Pars, and above all to establish that there was never any romantic attachment between them, and that Pizarnik was not (as she may at times have suggested) the model for la Maga in Rayuela.20 Pizarniks text does enthuse, exuding happiness and a cronopial delight not found in any of her other critical writings; no one else reviewed by her was so directly and playfully praised (so much so that, as noted, Cortzar himself thought that she was exaggerating somewhat). According to her, the key to the books success lies in the fact that [a]ctualmente, el humor literario es de un realismo que sobrecoge; whereas este maravilloso libro de Julio Cortzar
17 Letters dated 29 October 1963 (Cortzar, Cartas, I, p. 629) and 13 February 1964 (Cortzar, Cartas, II, p. 682). In a letter to Porra (30 November 1964; Cortzar, Cartas, II, p. 788) he talks about an interview that Pizarnik did with him; in a letter to Pizarnik he mentions that Porra had read it, that le gust mucho, and that he wanted a copy of it (30 November 1964; Cortzar, Cartas, II, p. 791); on 24 June 1966 he writes to her: Me decas en tu carta que ADN quera publicar tu reportaje sobre Rayuela . . . cosa que me alegrara mucho porque me acuerdo muy bien de esas pginas, cont conmigo para cualquier posible modificacin . . . creo que tal como estaba nos exhiba a vos y a m en la mejor de nuestras formas (Cortzar, Cartas, II, p. 1041). To my knowledge, this interview was never published. 18 Cortzar, Cartas, II, p. 1040; 24 June 1966. 19 See Cortzar, Cartas, II, pp. 791, 103941 and 10734; III, pp. 1390 and 1480 (dated 9 September 1971, in which he is clearly anxious about Alejandras state of mind), and III, p. 1490 (the last letter, dated 20 January 1972), and in comments and recommendations included in his correspondence with other people. Unfortunately, the letters that Pizarnik wrote to him have not been published. 20 Cortzar, Cartas, III, p. 1765.
101
ala perfectamente el humor y la poesa (Prosa, p. 197). It is not just that the cronopios possess cierto rgano en vas de extincin en el digamos hombre actual: el rgano que permite la visin y percepcin de la hermosura (p. 198). They also undertake a rechazo de la vida considerada como hbito y alienacin (p. 201), and above all, the book testimonia ejemplarmente de qu manera el humor y la poesa son subversivos, y cmo y cundo, ante el tejido confuso que se presenta como mundo real, ambos poesa y humor proceden a exhibir el revs de la trama (p. 201). That subversion is all the more serious insofar as la irrupcin de la poesa y de lo maravilloso en lo que nos dan como realidad (p. 199) is algo profundamente trgico (p. 200). According to Pizarniks assessment, [e]l humor de Cortzar . . . [s]iempre es humor metafsico . . . muchas veces es feroz; pero su ternura es inagotable (p. 200). It is tempting to see here a foreshadowing of Pizarniks own subversive humour, which will be much more ferocious but also painfully tender. Another attitude shared by the two writers is their precision in the writing process, their apasionada minuciosidad: Maravillosa es la perfeccin con que Cortzar plasma sus relatos: aun el ms fantstico presenta una arquitectura acabada como una flor o una piedra. Se puede decir que Cortzar no deja el azar librado al azar (p. 199). The aforementioned comments made in letters about Todos los fuegos el fuego never actually materialized in the form of a review, in spite of the fact that in a letter to Emir Rodrguez Monegal dated 18 October 1966 Pizarnik refers to the piece on this book being in preparation for Mundo Nuevo (the magazine Rodrguez Monegal was in charge of in Paris), and she asks him for more time. The way in which Pizarnik asks for an extension to the deadline appears to me to reveal an element of ambivalence or lack of ease: Si bien no me detendr en la nota todo el tiempo que quisiera, que el libro merece, tampoco es posible confeccionar una nota simple y trivial.21 For some reason, perhaps because Monegal could not wait any longer, the project never came to fruition, and in November Mundo Nuevo published a review of Todos los fuegos el fuego written by Anbal Ford.22 In 1968, the collection of essays La vuelta a Cortzar en nueve ensayos included an article by Pizarnik on El otro cielo, one of the short stories from Todos los fuegos el fuego.23 On this occasion Cortzar appears not to have been particularly enthusiastic about her commentary, reading between the lines of his letter to the editor of the volume: Su ensayo [el de Nstor Tirri] me interes mucho ms que cualquiera de los otros del libro . . . en los ensayos de Pizarnik, Gregorich y Jitrik . . . hay una cantidad de cosas tiles para m en cuanto escritor, pero todos ellos se mueven en un territorio crtico ms til, pienso, al lector de mis libros que a m mismo.24 Cortzars comments are not unjustified; this
Mackintosh, Childhood, p. 129. Anbal Ford, Los ltimos cuentos de Cortzar, Mundo Nuevo, 5 (1966), 814. La vuelta a Cortzar en nueve ensayos, ed. Sara V. Tirri and Nstor Tirri (Buenos Aires: Carlos Prez, 1968), pp. 5562. Reproduced in Prosa, pp. 24551. 24 Cortzar, Cartas (2000), II, p. 1300, 4 December 1968.
21 22 23
102
review is more academic and less empathetic than her review of Cronopios, apart from the paragraphs on Lautramont already mentioned. Pizarniks diaries allow us to glimpse her reservations towards what is one of Cortzars most heterodox texts, La vuelta al da en ochenta mundos (1967). Her first rather lengthy comment doubtless springs from the need to order her thoughts about the book and its author, and compare them with her own position. She begins with the subjects of plagiarism and pastiche, in an ambivalent tone which suggests admiration tinged with envy at Cortzars skill:
Empec La vuelta al mundo en 80 das [sic]. La evidencia de la impostura es excesiva y, no obstante, la magia verbal de Julio ms su seguridad de ser el primero (que plagia a aut.[ores] desconocidos en Arg.[entina]) ms su exaltacin al adoptar la pose de cronopio exaltado y desordenado, todo eso concede al libro una dignidad inmensa. Olvido lo principal: Julio es, antes que un gran escritor, un gran lector. Tambin, como Eliot, es un gran plagiador, un gran calculador. (15 June 1968; Diarios, pp. 4445)
As the introduction to the review proper continues, this feeling of envy becomes explicit, and centred on one of her recurrent obsessions: the quasi-surrealist idea of life and literature becoming one. Pizarnik admires Cortzars ability to live for literature, without his rationality or his life being compromised. At the same time, she objects to his appeal to playfulness and to colloquial language at the expense of seriousness, seeing this as an attempt to attract a young or youthful readership. This objection does not prevent her from understanding that she has to learn from his use of language and his techniques if she is to nurture her own writing and indeed her own life. In the entry for 20 June 1968 Pizarnik continues with her discrepancies and her ironic yet serious tone: Julio C. hace referencia a los escritores acrisolados que escriben un lenguaje hiertico. Cree que porque l usa expresiones como che, pibe automticamente deja de escribir como un literato y escribe como cuando se conversa. Creo que se confunde, creo que el espaol es hiertico o es catico. And then, after talking about something else: No logro saber por qu Julio alude al collage en su libro (Diarios, pp. 4456). The same day, another entry shows that Pizarnik carried on thinking about the themes of humour and language, and particularly humour within Argentinian writers. It is interesting that her musings lead her to propose a rereading not of Cortzar (in spite of what she had written about humour in Cronopios) but of the pairing BorgesBioy Casares: Acaso convenga emplear fichas para la seccin humor, nada opuesta . . . a la carp[eta] Jaune con sus temas infantiles. Deseo de argentinizar la carp[eta] de humor. Quiero descubrir los juegos del idioma argentino. (B. Domecq: leer el nuevo y releer seis problemas) (Diarios, p. 446). This project indeed came to fruition (see Prosa, pp. 27981), but the paragraph also contains in a nutshell the idea for La bucanera de Pernambuco, which Pizarnik would complete in 197071, with her own peculiar mixture of humour and infantilism, her puns and word games with colloquial language, and her construction of a (very Argentinian) Spanish which is
103
simultaneously chaotic, anarchic and obsessively controlled.25 Her reactions to La vuelta al da en ochenta mundos continue for the next few days, with the same ambivalence and with one important ally: E[nrique] P[ezzoni] . . . me dijo que el libro de J.C. lo exaspera por el tono. Tambin a m y sin embargo es un libro que puede ayudarme a liberar mis prisiones literarias (22 June 1968; Diarios, p. 446). On 23 June 1968, perhaps responding to a need to try and restore her own faith in Cortzar, she notes down briefly a possible project: Releer Cortzar y pensar en un libro sobre l (Diarios, p. 447). Four days later, the ambivalence has become extreme it is now all or nothing: Deseos de abandonar el libro de J.C. y deseos, tambin, de leerlo de cabo a rabo (Diarios, p. 448). And on 2 July 1968, the damning conclusion: Acab de leer el libro de J.C. No me sirvi de mucho. Grandes palabras y conceptos remanidos (Diarios, p. 449). Pizarniks reactions to Cortzars work thus seem to shed light on her ambivalence as a critic; she desires to judge each text on its own merits, without allowing personal relations to obscure her critical gaze, yet with those writers who touch upon her fundamental concerns she finds it difficult to be impartial. It is no other than Cortzar about whom she writes two years later, in an emotional letter to Silvina Ocampo: no dejes de decirle que el mero hecho de que l, Julio, exista en este mundo, es una razn para no tirarse por la ventana (Correspondencia, p. 208; 3 April 1970).
Octavio Paz: ese momento de fusin

Pizarniks commentaries on Octavio Pazs texts Salamandra and Cuadrivio allow us to compare her different critical discourses on two distinct genres (poetry and the essay) by the same author; furthermore, of all her critical writings these are probably the ones in which she makes the most observations which are relevant to her own ars poetica.26 The review of Salamandra enthusiastically praises this book and Pazs poetry in general: desde sus primeros poemas y ensayos viene iluminando problemas como la libertad, la poesa . . . Iluminndolos con un pensamiento peculiar, encarnndolos en un lenguaje que es magia pura (original italics).27 She calls Paz un poeta excepcionalmente lcido (p. 91) and singles out la belleza violenta o delicadsima de sus poemas (p. 92). As I pointed out earlier, her frequent use of the first person emphasizes both her personal involvement and her empathetic identification with the poet and the texts. But the review is broader and more far-reaching than mere eulogy. From the very beginning, Pizarnik situates Pazs entire uvre within the problematics of modern poetry, understood in terms of el drama inherente al decir potico (p. 90).
25 For a detailed discussion of Pizarniks humour and wordplay, see Evelyn Fishburns essay in this volume. 26 Paz, with whom Pizarnik became friendly in Paris, had written the prologue to rbol de Diana, which appeared in 1962. 27 Cuadernos, 72 (1963), 903 (p. 90). I am quoting from the original version since it has not been republished in the Prosa completa.
104
She supports this reading through quotations from Hlderlin, Heidegger, Fernando Pessoa, Alain Bosquet, Claude Vige, Albert Bguin and even from Paz himself in his prologue to the Antologa of Pessoa and in Libertad bajo palabra. She recognizes herself in the poetic mode of this book, in which anteriores y maravillosas conquistas [de Paz] aparecen se me aparecen a m como tributarias del drama del lenguaje. Y ello no es asombroso: todo poeta autntico inquiere en algn momento; a veces siempre la significacin o validez de la poesa (p. 91). The drama del lenguaje consists of its inherent ambiguity, symbolized by Paz in the figure of the salamander, which is a sign of his actitud e inquietud ante la palabra: indecible cuando se quiere hablar de ella. Y sin embargo. . . (p. 91). This y sin embargo. . . leads us to the battleground which is the home of modern poets (whether Paz or Pizarnik):28
Es esta una batalla que el poeta no cesa de librar: Hemos perdido todas las batallas / Todos los das ganamos una / Poesa. Por esta victoria obtenida duramente da tras da se accede a la presencia, a lo que existe . . . Batalla ganada a pesar de todos, de todo; aun a pesar de s mismo, de lo que llamamos yo . . . El poeta-Ssifo-moderno: no puede decir, no puede no decir. (p. 91)
Pizarnik highlights the fact that this conflict with the word, which is never innocent, leads Paz to construct through his poetry a puente entre los temibles contrarios (p. 91), whilst nevertheless being conscious of the fact that [y]a escrita la primera/ palabra (hay otra, abajo,/ no la que est cayendo,/ la que sostiene al rostro, al sol, al tiempo/ sobre el abismo: la palabra/ antes de la cada y de la cuenta) (p. 92). To quote those of Pizarniks own texts in which the same problematic appears and even in the same images would be to quote a large portion of her work; among her late poems, obvious examples would be no, la verdad no es la msica and Alguien cae en su primera cada, and Slo un nombre from her earlier work.29 Following on from the previous quotation, Pizarnik points out Pazs use of parentheses as una suerte de segundo silencio . . . que el poeta puebla de palabras; she herself would use this device to great effect in her later poetry, particularly in El infierno musical and Textos de sombra.30 At the same time, and despite her strong identification with Paz, through this review we can see Pizarniks ambivalence towards Pazs attainment of momentos privilegiados (p. 92) in which [s]er y tiempo se vuelven sinnimos de plenitud: cmo soportar ms esta fascinacin aliada a una suerte de terror sagrado? (p. 93). Nevertheless, Pizarnik recognizes that in Paz the drama of language reaches plenitude and a himno de celebracin y alabanza, and she closes her comments with the first few lines of Himno entre ruinas: palabras que son flores, que son
28 Inevitably one associates this with Borgess And yet, and yet (Nueva refutacin del tiempo, Borges [1960], p. 240). 29 From Textos de Sombra (dated 1971 and 1972) and La ltima inocencia (1956) respectively; Poesa, pp. 431, 446 and 65. See Goldberg, Alejandra Pizarnik: este espacio que somos (Gaithersburg, MD: Hispamrica, 1994), pp. 256, 723 and 1038. 30 See Goldberg, Alejandra Pizarnik, pp. 423, and 99100.
105
frutos, que son actos (p. 93). Did Pizarnik aspire to such joy in 1963? Almost ten years later, just before her death, she would write: Me pruebo en el lenguaje en que compruebo el peso de mis muertos (Poesa, p. 450). To the very end, her language was a ceaseless fight against words which no hacen el amor/ hacen la ausencia (Poesa, pp. 3989); rather than the word as fruit, the word is seen ultimately as something which can give the poet neither shelter nor sustenance. In her extensive commentary on Cuadrivio from 1966, she closely follows Pazs own schema, situating the authors analysed (namely Rubn Daro, Ramn Lpez Velarde, Fernando Pessoa and Luis Cernuda) and the metadiscourse of Paz in the context of the drama inherente al decir potico, here understood following Paz as una tradicin de la ruptura que es, precisamente, la tradicin de nuestra poesa moderna (p. 232). This time, Pizarnik does not use the first-person singular, but she does take responsibility for judgements on aesthetic value, which are always laudatory: sus ensayos . . . relatan estas aventuras apasionantes del espritu (p. 232); Paz se demora con particular felicidad en la prosodia (p. 234); estas frases perfectas (p. 235); el deslumbrante anlisis de su misticismo ertico [de Daro] (p. 236); es muy exacta la definicin de Paz (p. 239); Esto, y mucho ms, revela al lector privilegiado que es Octavio Paz (p. 243). Above all, Pizarnik praises Pazs dual critical thrust, entering into dialogue with the work he is analysing and simultaneously with himself, an interrogation no slo al poeta con quien est dialogando sino tambin a s mismo que est preguntando (p. 232). Perhaps her approval stems from her own tendency to operate in the same way. Her commentary on the section dedicated to Daro is the longest, in proportion to the amount of space given to Daro in the corresponding section of the original work. It is also the section which reveals the greatest affinity with her own poetic interests, once again coinciding with those of Paz, who was doubtless more interested in Daro than in the other writers studied in his book. Pizarnik outlines Pazs vision of modernismo in general and of Daro in particular, his roots in Romanticism (especially the nostalgia de un origen, p. 233). Other aspects she notes are pretensions to a cosmopolitan modernity, the recovery of rhythm and music as productive nuclei of poetic language, discovery of the religious and revelatory power of poetry, a certain erotic mysticism and his fascinating eroticization of death. Predictably, given her own interest in Lautramont (as previously noted), she underlines the perhaps less important fact that Paz unlike other interpreters remembers that Daro was el primero, fuera de Francia, en descubrir a . . . Lautramont (pp. 2345). Yet she completely bypasses those aspects of the essay that do not directly interest her: the poets biography and the description of the political and historical context of his life and work. In her critical discourse here, she frequently uses litotes (affirmation via negation), but this is absent from other sections of the review, giving this particular section a certain rhetorical air and possibly a tone of insecurity: No deja de resultarle paradjico a Paz que . . . (p. 233); No resulta extrao, en consecuencia, que . . . (p. 233); No es un azar si . . . (p. 233); No es intil recordar que . . . (p. 234); Esta segunda visin no deja de evocar . . . (p. 236). The section devoted to Pazs essay on Lpez Velarde simply summarizes its main points, and Pazs value
106
judgements;31 her only personal contribution is to point out the valioso and convincente nature of the parallels between troubadour love and that of the Mexican poet, the most obvious being amar al amor, a la Imagen ms que a un ser real, presente y mortal (211), a notion which was not entirely alien either to Pizarniks own experience or to her poetry. After summing up Pazs description of the creation of Fernando Pessoas heteronyms, Pizarnik highlights those points with which she undoubtedly has the greatest affinity: alienation, searching for the self, delicious yet poignant humour. She then places herself unequivocally alongside Paz in a dramatic ontological statement: compartimos con Octavio Paz la conviccin de que el verdadero desierto es el yo . . . porque nos encierra en nosotros mismos, y as nos condena a vivir con un fantasma (p. 215). The diary entry referring to writing this review includes a very scornful comment about the section devoted to Luis Cernuda (Diarios, pp. 41213). Indeed, in that section of her review it is at times difficult to know whether Pizarnik is talking seriously or sarcastically; for example: Cernuda es el poeta del amor. Nada ms cierto, nada ms complejo. Adems de hablar del amor, habla tambin del deseo, del placer y, al mismo tiempo, de la soledad. Son estos los temas centrales de su obra. Y puesto que esa obra se llama La realidad y el deseo, no hay duda de que el deseo fue, para Cernuda, un tema muy principal (p. 242). Nevertheless, Pizarnik did find grist here for her poetic and existential mill: cada vez que amamos, nos perdemos: somos otros . . . Amar es transgredir (p. 243). She agrees with Paz that what is fascinating about this work is un doble movimiento de total entrega al poema y, simultneamente, de reflexin acerca de lo expresado (p. 244). Once again she responds positively to writing which combines the creative with a process of reflection on that creation. In drawing attention to el silencio que preexiste a las palabras autnticas y verdaderas, y sin el cual las palabras son meras palabreras o rumor (p. 244), we are reminded of her criticisms of Girri for allowing the poem to speak too directly, devoid of the sense of silence that true poetic words must have. In the final paragraph, Pizarnik highlights the principal virtue of Cuadrivio: the fact that not only does it demonstrate courage and freedom in daring to re-think works that have been exhaustively commented upon, but above all it is characterized by prosa fascinante que desanima todo intento de reducirla a otro lenguaje. Picking up what was said in her first paragraph about criticism as a dialogue, she recalls that Paz himself ha dicho, en otro libro, que los grandes poetas contemporneos son tambin grandes crticos (p. 244). For her, the definition of a great critic (as we can see from the piece on Senghor which prefaces this essay) did not mean taking apart other peoples writing in minute detail, so much as searching for answers to the readers own questions in the writing of others.
31 Though it is beyond the scope of the present study, it would be interesting to explore the question of why Paz chose precisely Lpez Velarde as representative of Mexico in his quadrivium; his assessments of the writer are quite ambivalent and frequently reveal a hint of somewhat insincere compromise. It seems significant that for the 1991 Seix Barral edition of Cuadrivio, Paz markedly reduced this section of the book.
107
In previous publications, my readings of the work of Alejandra Pizarnik have been guided by what I call her spatial imaginary as a matrix for generating meaning, a model through which I attempted to understand the complex relationships established in her texts between the poet and the poetic material: the I-persona, the world and writing.32 In some of her texts I found the configuration of a theatrical space, characterized by two clearly delimited sub-spaces, that of the person who contemplates, and of the thing that is contemplated.33 In beginning to look at her critical works, I think this model can equally well be applied to the positions she adopts vis--vis the various authors and texts she reviews. This dynamic could be described as follows: first, those cases in which Pizarnik maintains a rigid distinction between the analysing subject and the object of analysis (Molinari, Murena, and Pieyre de Mandiargues); secondly, those instances where she reaches across the divide to take what interests her from the author in question, then rapidly returns to her own space. This applies in the majority of cases for example, Girri, Ocampo, Cuadrivio, Bonnefoy, Artaud, and Senghor. Lastly, we have those cases where the dividing line becomes a meeting place for recognition and empathy between reader and text, without dissolving completely (Salamandra and Cronopios). On the dividing line between reader and text there is frequently a mirror in which, quite knowingly, Pizarnik sees fragments of her own face reflected. And since we are talking about mirrors, nothing better reflects and illuminates the perceptiveness and method of Pizarnik as reader than what she wrote about Paz the perceptive reader:
sta es su actitud crtica: un dilogo con la obra potica; un dilogo que no excluye nada, desde el tiempo histrico que da fecha a la obra hasta el silencio que alienta en ella. Octavio Paz no expone: busca, explora, interroga (no slo al poeta con quien dialoga sino tambin a s mismo que est preguntando) y sus ensayos dan cuenta de esos movimientos; ellos relatan estas aventuras apasionantes del espritu inseparable de la existencia. (Prosa, p. 232)
Bibliography
Borges, Jorge Luis, Otras inquisiciones (Buenos Aires: Emec, 1960) Caulfield, Carlota, ed., From the Forbidden Garden: Letters from Alejandra Pizarnik to Antonio Beneyto (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2003) Cortzar, Julio, Cartas, ed. Aurora Bernrdez, 3 vols (Madrid: Alfaguara, 2000) , Historia de cronopios y de famas (Buenos Aires: Minotauro, 1962) , Todos los fuegos el fuego (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1966) , La vuelta al da en ochenta mundos (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 1967) Ford, Anbal, Los ltimos cuentos de Cortzar, Mundo Nuevo, 5 (1966), 814 Girri, Alberto, El ojo (Buenos Aires: Losada, 1964) Goldberg, Florinda F., Alejandra Pizarnik: Este espacio que somos (Gaithersburg, MD: Hispamrica, 1994)
32 33
Goldberg, Alejandra Pizarnik, p. 16. Goldberg, Los espacios peligrosos, pp. 789; Goldberg, Un cuento olvidado.
108
Goldberg, Florinda F., Un cuento olvidado de Alejandra Pizarnik: El viento feroz , Reflejos, 5 (1996), 1824 , Los espacios peligrosos de Alejandra Pizarnik, in Locos, excntricos y marginales en las literaturas latinoamericanas, ed. Joaqun Manzi, 2 vols (Poitiers: Universit de Poitiers, Centre de recherches latino-amricaines, 1999), II, pp. 7791 King, John, SUR: estudio de la revista argentina y de su papel en el desarrollo de una cultura 19311970 (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Econmica, 1986) Mackintosh, Fiona J., Childhood in the Works of Silvina Ocampo and Alejandra Pizarnik (Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2003) Moia, Martha Isabel, Con Alejandra Pizarnik: algunas claves, La Nacin, 11 February 1973, p. 5; reprinted in El deseo de la palabra, pp. 24651, and in Prosa, pp. 31115 Molinari, Ricardo, Un da, el tiempo, las nubes (Buenos Aires: Sur, 1965) Murena, Hctor A., El demonio de la armona (Buenos Aires: Sur, 1964) Paz, Octavio, Salamandra (Mexico: Joaqun Mortiz, 1962) , Cuadrivio Daro, Lpez Velarde, Pessoa, Cernuda (Mexico: Joaqun Mortiz, 1965) Pieyre de Mandiargues, Andr, La motocicleta (Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1968) Pizarnik, Alejandra, La condesa sangrienta (Buenos Aires: Acuarius, 1971) , El deseo de la palabra, comp. Antonio Beneyto (Barcelona: Barral, 1975) , Textos de Sombra y ltimos poemas, ed. Olga Orozco and Ana Becci (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1982) Tirri, Sara V. and Nstor Tirri, eds, La vuelta a Cortzar en nueve ensayos (Buenos Aires: Carlos Prez, 1968)
Critical Texts by Alejandra Pizarnik (in chronological order)

Antonio Porchia, El Hogar, Buenos Aires, 1956 Fondo arriba [on Jorge Sergio, Fondo arriba], La Gaceta de Tucumn, 22 June 1958 http://sololiteratura.com/php/docinterno.php?cat=miscelanea&doc=361 El poeta desinteresado, Sur, 278 (1962), 711 [poems by Yves Bonnefoy; intro. and trans. Alejandra Pizarnik and Ivonne Bordelois] Humor y poesa en un libro de Julio Cortzar: Historia de cronopios y de famas, Revista Nacional de Cultura, 160 (1963), 7782 [republished in El deseo de la palabra, pp. 20814, and in Prosa, pp. 197201] Leopold Sedar Senghor o la lucidez y el delirio, Cuadernos, 70 (1963), 89 Salamandra, de Octavio Paz, Cuadernos, 72, (1963), 903 [also published in: Courier du Centre International dtudes Potiques, 45 (1963); Jorge Guilln, Posie intgrale (Brussels: Maison Internationale de la Posie, 1963); Mxico en la Cultura, 767 (10 December 1963), p. 5; Octavio Paz, comp. Pedro Gimferrer (Madrid: Taurus, 1982), pp. 195200 (the last two re-translated back from French)] El poeta y su poema, in Quince poetas, comp. Csar Magrini (Buenos Aires: Centurin, 1963), pp. 12930 [republished in Antologa consultada de la joven poesa argentina (Buenos Aires: Fabril, 1968), pp. 678, El deseo de la palabra, pp. 2434, and Prosa, pp. 299301] Obra selecta de Carlos Castro Saavedra, Cuadernos, 91 (1964) [pages not known]
109
Relacin varia de hechos, hombres y cosas de estas Indias Meridionales (Textos del siglo XVI), Cuadernos, s/n (1964) [pages not known; republished in Prosa, pp. 2035] Paisajes de Michaux, El Nacional, Caracas (1964) [pages not known; republished in Prosa, pp. 20611] Entrevista con Jorge Luis Borges [in collaboration with Ivonne Bordelois], Zona Franca, 2 (1964) [pages not known] Alberto Girri: El ojo, Sur, 291 (1964), 847 [republished in Prosa, pp. 21922] Olga Orozco o la poesa como juego peligroso, Zona Franca, 1:78 (1964) [pages not known] Notas sobre Bruno Schulz, La Repblica (Caracas), 3 May 1964 [pages not known] Sobre T. S. Eliot, El Corno Emplumado, 14 (1965), p. 89 La libertad absoluta y el horror, Dilogos, 1:5 (1965), 4651 Antonin Artaud, el verbo encarnado, Sur, 294 (1965), 359 [republished in Antonin Artaud, Textos (Buenos Aires: Aquarius, 1971), El deseo de la palabra, pp. 23742, and in Prosa, pp. 26975] La condesa sangrienta, Testigo, 1:1 (1966), 5563 [republished in Prosa, pp. 28296] Silencios en movimiento [on El demonio de la armona by Hctor A. Murena], Sur, 294 (1965), 1036 [republished in Prosa, pp. 21217] Antologa potica de Ricardo Molinari, Zona Franca, 26 (1965), 503 [republished in Prosa, pp. 2239] Un equilibrio difcil: Zona Franca, Sur, 297 (1965), 1089 [republished in Prosa, pp. 2301] Cinco poetas jvenes argentinos, Cuadernos, 99 (1965), 315 [on L. J. Bartolom, B. Eichel, M. Satz, F. Gorbea, and M. Pichon Rivire] Una tradicin de la ruptura [on Cuadrivio by Octavio Paz], La Nacin, Buenos Aires, 26 June 1966 [republished in Octavio Paz, comp. Alfredo Roggiano (Madrid: Fundamentos, 1979), pp. 20519, and in Prosa, pp. 23244] Entrevista con Victoria Ocampo, Zona Franca, 35 (1966), 1419 Entrevista con Juan Jos Hernndez, Zona Franca, 40 (1966), 245 Sabios y poetas [on El gato de Cheshire by Enrique Anderson Imbert], Sur, 306 (1967), 51; a different version appears in El deseo de la palabra, pp. 2336, and in Prosa, pp. 25961 Entrevista con Roberto Juarroz, Zona Franca, 52 (1967), 1013 Notas sobre un cuento de Julio Cortzar: El otro cielo , Imagen, 25 (1968), 56 [republished in La vuelta a Cortzar en nueve ensayos, comp. Sara V. de Tirri and Nestor Tirri (Buenos Aires: Carlos Prez, 1968), pp. 5562, El deseo de la palabra, pp. 21523, and in Prosa, pp. 24551] Relectura de Nadja de Andr Breton, Imagen, 32 (1968), 5 [republished in Testigo, 5 (1970), 1218, El deseo de la palabra, pp. 199207, and in Prosa, pp. 2628] Dominios ilcitos [on El pecado mortal by Silvina Ocampo], Sur, 311 (1968), 915 [republished in El deseo de la palabra, pp. 22432, and in Prosa, pp. 2528] La motocicleta de Andr Pieyre de Mandiargues, Sur, 320 (1969), 1015 [republished in Prosa, pp. 2748] Yves Bonnefoy, Poemas, trans. Alejandra Pizarnik and Ivonne Bordelois, La Nacin, Buenos Aires, 28 November 1971 Humor de Borges y Bioy Casares [manuscript, 1971 or 1972; published in Prosa, pp. 27981]
Alejandra Pizarniks palais du vocabulaire: Constructing the cuerpo potico

Fiona J. Mackintosh
In this essay I should like to propose a reading of Pizarniks textual production and aesthetic preoccupations which links all aspects of her output. An examination of her diarios de lectura (henceforth DL), which contain notes and critical analyses of her eclectic reading from Quevedo to Blanchot, and the notebooks of the palais du vocabulaire (henceforth PV), in which she carefully records phrases from other writers work for her own poetic process, reveals a pattern which seems to underlie the apparently divergent facets of her work.1 The pattern relates to what I see as the central problem in Pizarniks entire output and indeed attitude: a constant tension between the external and the internal. The forms this tension takes are multiple, and in different modes of expression (diary, essay, note-taking, poetry) the ways in which it manifests itself become more or less metaphorical. In some poems the externalinternal tension gives rise to a nexus of contradictory images, and in some of her readings the sense of an internalexternal dialectic provides a strong interpretive strategy. The occasional sterility of this binary is alluded to in a droll phrase which Pizarnik quotes from the Real Academia Espaola dictionary definition of crculo vicioso: Abrir es lo contrario de cerrar, y cerrar es lo contrario de abrir (Princeton, box 3, folder 9, p. 188). A few examples will suffice to indicate the prevalence of this interior/exterior dialectic in the whole spectrum of her writings, from DL and diaries to poetry:
En mi cuadro del mundo, existe un vasto reino exterior y un igualmente vasto reino interior. Entre ambos se sita el hombre, enfrentndose ora al uno ora al otro y, segn su humor y su temperamento, tomando al uno por la verdad
1 My approach of looking at PV and DL to shed light on the poetry and other works is in some ways the reverse of that taken by Mara Negroni, whose excellent book on Pizarnik aims to leer la sombra en Alejandra Pizarnik . . . para armar el rompecabezas de sus genealogas, descubrir su biblioteca secreta, El testigo lcido: la obra de sombra de Alejandra Pizarnik (Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo, 2003), p. 18. I also refer readers to Florinda F. Goldbergs important and detailed examination of a spacial imaginary in Pizarniks work, based around the antithesis cercalejos, Alejandra Pizarnik: Este espacio que somos (Gaithersburg, MD: Hispamrica, 1994), p. 19.
ALEJANDRA PIZARNIKS PALAIS DU VOCABULAIRE
111
absoluta, negando o sacrificando al otro. (Jung; copied by Pizarnik into her Notebook, August 1960 [Princeton, box 4, folder 3]) hasta cundo esta intromisin de lo externo de lo interno, o de lo menos interno de lo interno, que se va tejiendo como un manto de arpillera sobre mi pobreza indecible (Poesa, p. 257) El surrealismo ha explorado la [presin] de lo imaginario sobre lo real, de lo interno sobre lo externo. (Princeton, box 4, folder 3)
Obviously this relationship between the external and the internal could be read through any number of lenses psychoanalytical (especially given Pizarniks lifelong analysis sessions), phenomenological, Romantic, Surrealist. Indeed, her copious notes on Breton include underlining the phrases un modelo puramente interior and la representacin interior, and she takes notes on Bretons Le Surralisme et la peinture (1928), and Situation surraliste de lobjet, observing how Surrealism is liberated from reproducing forms of the exterior world (Princeton, box 8, folder 14). A letter from Octavio Paz suggests yet another way of interpreting the interior: Tal vez la verdadera va est en Occidente . . . No un regreso al Oriente sino, desde Occidente, a nuestro ms ac, a nuestro espacio interior.2 My aim here is simply to look at references to this exterior/ interior tension in works of self-fashioning such as the diaries and notebooks, drawing comparisons with the published poetry and prose where appropriate.3 I hope to demonstrate that for Pizarnik the process of constructing the body poetic, and the place in which this process happens, El lugar de los cuerpos poticos (Poesa, p. 254), are continually construed or apprehended (in all its intellectual, physical and fearful senses) in terms of an exterior/interior dialectic. As I shall go on to explore, this dialectic finds its expression in two particular metaphorical nexuses: metaphors of buildings or dwelling-places ranging from gruta to palacio (hence the connection to the palais du vocabulaire), which offer the body either shelter or entrapment, and metaphors of clothing, which likewise can protect the body or become constraining, like a shroud. The body itself is the primary site of external/internal conflict, seen as the place from which the poetic voice issues yet in which it is somehow confined. So there is a clear overlap between the discourse of the exterior/interior relating to dwelling places and clothes, and the discourse relating to the body.
2 Letter dated 22 Dec. 196[?], Princeton, box 9, folder 8. The internal and the external could also be read as coincidentiae oppositorum, which Anna Soncini sees as a recurrent trope in Pizarniks poetry. Itinerario de la palabra en el silencio, Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos: Los complementarios, 5 (1990), 715 (p. 10). 3 Ana Mara Moix, in her review of the Prosa completa (2002), sees the different modes of writing as influencing one another; for instance, she says of Pizarniks critical essays that they are una autntica potica que arroja no poca luz sobre su propia escritura. La nia, la mueca y la muerte, Clarn: Suplemento Cultura y Nacin, 14 September 2002 [consulted online; n.p.].
112
FIONA J. MACKINTOSH
The external: literary tradition and the palais du vocabulaire

Perhaps the most significant aspect of the exterior for Pizarnik is that of other literary texts, the canon of works which is in the public domain and against which her poetry will be measured; what others might more immediately associate with the outside world is frequently dismissed by her as lo utilitario, though seen as threatening rather than neutral.4 Immediately we are presented with the difficulty of separating the internal from the external, since books exist externally as physical objects, but the only way in which they have value (other than in a commercial or abstract cultural sense) is as texts, through the process of reading and internalizing them mentally. So the first self-positioning Pizarnik has to undertake is that of the self in relation to this internalized (or ingested) external textual tradition. PV thus plays a crucial role, mediating her relationship to external literary tradition, and as we shall see shortly providing the building blocks for creating her own literary edifice. Pizarniks diaries clearly demonstrate her preoccupation with inserting herself into a literary tradition. She even assembles a kind of family album composed of photographs, cut out from newspapers, of all those writers she most admires Hugo, Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Mallarm, Valry, Claudel and Breton (Princeton, box 8, folder 15). Yet, as outlined by Quevedo in a passage which she copies out from his letters regarding ones own posterity, a distinction has to be made between becoming worthy of some kind of monument, and trying to create that monument for oneself. Here we have the first of our building metaphors:
morir dignos de que otros les fabriquen templos, no es pretensin, sino mrito; fabricarsele as viviendo, sospecha es de que se idolatra y no se conoce. . . . disfrazar en palacio la sepultura, engao es, no confesin . . . (De las epstolas y ltimas cartas de Francisco de Quevedo, Princeton, box 3, folder 9, pp. 28991)
Extrapolating from this quotation, we can read Pizarniks relationship to her own poetic work as highly ambivalent: on the one hand she wants to construct her own poetic edifice, which will be worthy of being placed alongside her chosen literary precursors, thereby adding her individual talent to that tradition (pace Borges and T. S. Eliot); but on the other, as she sees others fabricating around her the kind of templo of her as the young talented poet, she has a horror of not being able to sustain that admiration. Quevedos linking of palace with grave also seems to express for Pizarnik her fear about her poetrys survival her horror of falling into convencionalismos poticos y literarios (Diarios, p. 170), which, if realized, would turn her poetic edifice from palace to grave, and she would be walled up inside it, like the Bloody Countess in her castle. This idea of the poet being condemned to creating his own tomb is echoed by her beloved
4 The interior world in a social and domestic sense is equally threatening el crculo familiar te tiene cautiva, she notes in PV1 (Princeton, box 4, folder 7, p. 33)
113
Mallarm: Para Mallarm . . . el caso del poeta en una sociedad que no le permite vivir es el de un hombre que se aisla para esculpir su propia tumba (Princeton, box 4, folder 3). Another example clearly indicates this dangerous ambiguity relating to the poetic edifice; Pizarnik reads Ramn del Valle-Inclns poem Karma, but she only chooses to copy into her PV the first two lines. This is the whole first verse:
Quiero una casa edificar como el sentido de mi vida, quiero en piedra mi alma dejar erigida. (Valle-Incln, Karma; lines in italics copied into PV1 [Princeton, box 4, folder 9, p. 23])
By choosing not to copy out the whole verse, Pizarnik shapes Valle-Inclns desire to express her own; she wishes to construct an edifice as the meaning of her life, or ambiguously similar to the meaning of her life. However, the idea of leaving her soul erected and fixed in stone is apparently too rigid a prospect (and perhaps demasiado viril, as she comments of Octavio Paz elsewhere).5 For Pizarnik, palace and grave become two poles representing the potential powers and pitfalls of poetry, from the splendid creative potential of the palais du vocabulaire to the various desperate poems composed as if de ultratumba. As part of the poets ongoing engagement with the exterior, DL shows a belief in the importance of being acquainted with literary and poetic tradition (an acquaintance which will form what Miguel Dalmaroni terms her densa red intertextual).6 Nora Catelli sees this as one of the main elements in Pizarniks notes and diaries, pointing out that we get a much clearer picture of her as a kind of educanda from these sources, a picture which until now has been obscured.7 For instance, Pizarnik declares in her diary: Nada podr hacer si no me impongo un mtodo de trabajo. Y en primer lugar, un mtodo de aprendizaje literario (Diarios, p. 122), and in the notebooks she sets out a method for reading, quoting Federico Bleifarben (Princeton, box 4, folder 5, p. 90). She plans tasks such as reading certain authors or certain topics (for example, ancient Mexican civilization), and also devotes notebooks and index cards to her linguistic development (a more literal palais du vocabulaire) with lists of synonyms for such key words as inefable or augurar (see Princeton, box 4, folder 8, and box 4, folder 7, p. 25 respectively). Often she will underline certain synonyms perhaps indicating a preference, or an intention to incorporate this word more actively into her vocabulary. For example: fascinar alucinar, encandilar, seducir, embaucar,
5 See Frank Graziano, Alejandra Pizarnik: Semblanza (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Econmica, 1984), p. 277. 6 Miguel Dalmaroni, Sacrificio e intertextos en la poesa de Alejandra Pizarnik, Orbis Tertius: Revista de teora y crtica literaria, 1:1 (1996), 93116 (p. 96). 7 Nora Catelli, Invitados al palacio de las citas, Clarn: Suplemento Cultura y Nacin, 14 September 2002 [consulted online; n.p.].
114
FIONA J. MACKINTOSH
deslumbrar, turbar, encantar; atraer: absorber, aspirar, hechizar, arrebatar, seducir, perturbar (Princeton, box 8, folder 13).8 These words become recognizable building blocks of Pizarniks poems. The autodidacticism coupled with a continual sense of inadequacy is reiterated in the diaries; at the same time, in both poetry and notes, Pizarnik repeatedly expresses (or copies out quotations which express) a sense of dislocation, orphanhood, extranjera and not-belonging, which has been attributed by critics to her Jewishness and to her familys forced emigration from Russia prior to the Second World War. This combination of non-belonging, diffidence and the obsession with learning about literary tradition and language produce a powerful drive towards creating an alternative place through poetry: Escribes poemas/ porque necesitas/ un lugar/ en donde sea lo que no es (Poesa, p. 318). However, this quest for an other place where what is not, will be, and where the poet can belong, is coupled with the realization that that place is nowhere: Sbete y entiende que no es aqu tu casa . . . Esta casa donde has nacido no es sino un nido, es una posada donde has llegado, es tu salida para este mundo; aqu brotas y floreces . . . tu propia tierra otra es . . . (Aztec song, copied out by Pizarnik [Princeton, box 4, folder 9, p. 27]). Or as Cervantes more humorously puts it (and Pizarnik at times sees the humorous side, at least in her reading of others), Por el camino del ya voy,/ se llega a la casa del nunca (Princeton, box 4, folder 9, p. 130).
Dwelling places
Pizarniks poetic solution to this problem of radical dislocation and yet of needing to be part of an external tradition (such as Modernism in the non-Hispanic sense of the term) is double. First, she aims to construct a literary edifice (through PV and through her autodidactic activity) within which to be protected, whilst projecting outwards her own poetic identity; to quote Wallace Stevenss Of Modern Poetry, which she read and underlined in Spanish translation, Tiene que edificar / un nuevo escenario (Princeton, box 3, folder 9, p. 219). Secondly, she also simultaneously wishes to construct for herself through her own poetry a more metaphorical morada within language, variously denominated the pequea casa de la esperanza (Poesa, p. 430), the pequea casa del canto (Poesa, p. 435) or Casa de la mente, which is both created by and protectively houses the figure of the poet: la casa mental/ reconstruida letra por letra/ palabra por palabra/ en mi doble figura de papel (Poesa, p. 355).9 She is thus creating for herself a protective place and space within poetic language, a kind of interior barricaded against the exterior, which threatens the poet with not-belonging and rejection: El lenguaje es un desafo para m, un muro, algo que me expulsa, que
These and all subsequent underlinings are the authors own, unless otherwise indicated. Patricia Venti has noted how Pizarnik also seeks a similar kind of morada through her diaries, in Los diarios de Alejandra Pizarnik: censura y traicin, Espculo, 26 (2004) [n.p.]. Consulted online at http://www.ucm.es/info/especulo/numero26/diariosp.html
8 9
115
me deja afuera (Diarios, p. 286). This expulsion is explicitly linked to her Jewish heritage: Talmud. Qu Dios es este que destruye su propia casa y expulsa a sus propios hijos? (Diarios, p. 379). But the basic paradox is inescapable: shoring oneself up in language as defence against language itself. As well as the concept of a casa within language, Pizarnik in auto-didact mode explores synonyms and definitions for various other kinds of dwellingplaces. For instance, in taking notes on Bachelard, she lists cavernas, grutas, antros, criptas and seems to approve of his gloss on gruta, since it is a reposo amparado y tranquilo, morada sin puerta (Encerrada no, protegida s). Relacin con el afuera y el adentro (Princeton, box 4, folder 5, p. 86). In such a dwelling without a door, the relationship between inside and out, between internal and external is more fluid, protecting without enclosing, and it is towards such a threshold or liminal space that she aspires. Having established this concept of the morada within language, the question obviously arises of how to construct it. Words are the building blocks, and words are repeatedly associated by Pizarnik with hard materials he sufrido con las palabras de hierro, con las palabras de madera, con las palabras de una materia excepcionalmente dura e imposible (Diarios, p. 189); El peligro de mi poesa es una tendencia a la disecacin de las palabras: las fijo en el poema como con tornillos. Cada palabra se hace de piedra (Diarios, p. 159). The problem that Pizarnik expresses here is that in constructing her dwelling place in poetry, the words become lifeless; not only is there a constant tension between external and internal, but also between fluidity and mobility on the one hand, and fixity or immobility on the other. And yet, whilst complaining of this metaphorical fixity of her words, the poet simultaneously laments the fact that they can never actually become solid objects. In the same way that she asks, rhetorically and desperately, si digo pan, comer? (Poesa, p. 399), she writes despairingly though as if contradicting it through erasure escribo palabras/ quisiera escribir piedras (Princeton, box 5, folder 4; Pizarniks crossing-out). Pizarnik thus repeatedly expresses doubt at her ability to construct this poetic edifice: mi desconfianza en mi capacidad de levantar una arquitectura potica (Diarios, p. 159).10 Indeed, the sense that her quest for this protecting literary place will always be unsuccessful is suggested by one of the many Ren Char quotations which she copies into her notebooks, a quotation which indicates that the place of poetry may not actually be any morada, but merely the means by which to get into that morada like the key into Alices garden: Une cl sera ma demeure (Princeton, box 3, folder 9, p. 15). Nevertheless, the poetry keeps repeating the gestures towards building, despite el fracaso de todo poema (Poesa, p. 398), and the first gesture is that of laying the foundation stone, a stone laid with public ceremony to celebrate the founding of the edifice. Thus Pizarniks Piedra fundamental can be seen symbolically as one of her key poems, if not the most important, and in this poem we see the
10 Susana Chvez Silverman, in her essay in this volume, links this anxiety about a poetic edifice, particularly in prose, to Naomi Schors gendered rhetorics of genre.
116
FIONA J. MACKINTOSH
uniting of the imagery of poetry as edifice with that of poetry as the body, in the phrase Sus ojos eran la entrada del templo (Poesa, p. 264). As with the phrase yo y la que fui nos sentamos/ en el umbral de mi mirada (Poesa, p. 113), which indicates both a bodily and a temporal threshold (back into childhood), there is here an equation between the body and a building, where the threshold of the building is crossed at the point of entry into the body. Here, the eyes (traditionally windows of the soul) are the point of entry to the temple, which as Alfredo Rosenbaum points out, is [el] lugar donde habita lo permanente, lo que trasciende, lo Uno que est ms all de todo, donde se encuentra la Verdad.11 Nevertheless, since by way of the gaze the eyes look outwards from the body as well as allowing access to the temple, they become simultaneously entrance and exit. This opens up the liberating possibility of the self escaping from its own interiority, in order to enter the other. Pizarnik notes down a phrase of Flaubert which expresses such a possibility: A force de regarder un caillou, un animal, un tableau, je me suis senti y entrer (Princeton, box 4, folder 5, p. 86). But conversely, the self can often be seen not only as unable to enter the other, but also as only ambiguously present within itself, being either divided or absent. Pizarnik puts into PV quotations which explore both of these interior issues of identity: first, quoting Francisco de Aldana: entrarme en el secreto de mi pecho/ y platicar en l mi interior hombre, which offers a traditional view of a self divided between outer (public) and inner (private); secondly, drawing on Brecht: Dentro de m los veo cmo vagan/ por una casa en ruinas, which already indicates a loss of control, a distancing, and a sense of dissolution which links the body to a building once more; and thirdly, using Amir Guilboa to express an interior absence: la que est dentro de mi nombre/ . . . / no estaba (Princeton, box 4, folder 9, pp. 135 and 125). Pizarniks much quoted poem Slo un nombre carries strong resonances of this latter quotation. So the dwelling place, the body and even the name are all viewed ambiguously, as possibly housing a divided or absent self.
Moradas ideales: paper palaces and protective clothing

The ambivalence of this body-dwelling, and of Quevedos templetomb, is carried over into another key Pizarnik image, that of the childish house which is both beautiful and sinister, echoing the phrase siniestra como una casa de muecas from her reading of Djuna Barness Nightwood (Princeton, box 4, folder 9, p. 99). The link between Pizarniks unstable poetic buildings and the world of childhood is apparently strengthened by a note saying Andersen / palacios de papel (Princeton, box 3, folder 3). This presumably refers to Hans Christian Andersens celebrated ability for making fantastic paper cut-outs,
11 Alfredo Rosenbaum, Un infierno centrfugo: Glosas a Piedra fundamental de Alejandra Pizarnik, in Poticas argentinas del siglo XX, ed. Jorge Dubatti (Buenos Aires: Belgrano, 1998), pp. 195202 (p. 197).
117
which, according to Jens Andersen, accompanied his story-telling performances;12 Andersen created little figures such as the paper girl from The Steadfast Tin Soldier, which seem to be re-created in the fragile creatures peopling Pizarniks poetry, for example Noche compartida en el recuerdo de una huida with its Muequita de papel (Poesa, p. 258). Andersen also made theatrical tableaux (again, compare Pizarniks poem La verdad del bosque [Prosa, p. 34], in which the fairytale story is played out en mi pequeo teatro) and grander paper castles, and fairytale or Oriental palaces a very vulnerable and flimsy form of shelter. It is as though the morada has to be fragile so as not to become threatening, and in recognition of the ephemeral nature of the childhood paradise. There is frequently a more positive charge on dwelling-places associated with childhood, as well as those linked to Pizarniks realm par excellence, the night: El esplndido palacio de papel de los peregrinajes infantiles (Poesa, p. 287); cuando el palacio de la noche/ enciende su hermosura (Poesa, p. 128), but note that this latter is subtitled (Un dibujo de Klee), which recalls such pictures as his Palace partially destroyed, an abstract building in the process of becoming ruins. If the palacios de papel fail to protect, the poet then has recourse to clothing as defence against the external. Some of the clothes metaphors come from unexpected sources, for example tangos. Tango is not something often associated with Pizarniks lyrical poetry by critics, who tend to see it as only pertaining to the more vulgar register of the humorous and obscene prose works.13 However, the tango lines Afuera es noche y llueve tanto/ . . . / hoy tu palabra es como un manto (Princeton, box 4, folder 9, p. 40) link directly to this protective clothing theme within the lyric poetry. Pizarnik is conscious that her collecting of words, in PV, is part of the poetic process leading to adornment, but her attitude towards it (like her attitude towards the poetic edifice) is ambivalent: coleccionar palabras, prenderlas en m como si ellas fueran harapos y yo un clavo (Diarios, p. 198). Pizarnik also positions herself abjectly as a poor naked girl waiting for beautiful words (with which to cover this nakedness): llegado el instante de escribir un poema, no soy ms que una humilde muchacha desnuda que espera que lo Otro le dicte palabras bellas y significativas (Diarios, p. 80). Frequently she alters or re-arranges the quotations in PV to make them suit her particular dilemmas like cutting the coat to suit her cuerpo potico. For example, in the poem En un ejemplar de Les Chants de Maldoror she uses the phrase triste como s misma, hermosa como el suicidio, which she has borrowed but adapted and transplanted from Lautramont, whose original phrase is: triste comme lunivers, belle comme le suicide (Chant 1, Strophe 13, referring sardonically to a toad). So where for Lautramont it is the universe which is sad, in the internalized world of Pizarnik, it is she who is sad. In a typical internal/ external mapping, the universe becomes the self and vice versa.
Jens Andersen, Scissor Writing, at http://www.kb.dk/elib/mss/hcaklip/intro-en.htm For a discussion of parodic dialogue with invented tangos in the person of Carol from Los perturbados entre lilas, see Evelyn Fishburns essay in this volume.
12 13
118
FIONA J. MACKINTOSH
Humour is not absent from this idea of language as clothing; since traditionally the diary is a space for more intimate, confessional revelations, Pizarnik amusingly refers to her diary as undergarments: En esa poca [1955] me levantaba y me pona la ropa y mi diario ntimo (una especie de prenda ntima) y antes de acostarme me desnudaba del diario y de la ropa (Diarios, p. 243). But in the late prose works, the idea of language as clothing becomes harshly satirized; in a reductio ad absurdum, the characters of Los posedos entre lilas are wearing literary clothing, as if the resultant cacophonous laughter will cover the naked void that the garments in the form of literary works could not cover. Segismunda sports a capa gris modelo Lord Byron o Georges [sic] Sand, along with pantalones de terciopelo rojo vivo modelo Keats, una camisa lila estilo Shelley, un cinturn anaranjado incandescente modelo Maiakovski y botas de gamuza celeste forradas en piel rosada modelo Rimbaud (Prosa, p. 166). Ultimately, the garments of words will never be perfectly-fitting, since borrowing Lichtenbergs phrase, noted by Pizarnik la expresin le queda a la idea como una prenda holgada (Princeton, box 4, folder 9, p. 85).
The internal: literary consumption and digestion

I have talked so far about the external, and the poets relationship to it; about creating a protective layer between inner self and outer poetic tradition in the form of a literary covering or edifice which will protect the poet and present a persona. I have also indicated the overlap or slippage between building and body metaphors. This overlap is particularly apparent in the poetic process of constructing a literary morada, since for Pizarnik it involves a process of ingestion of other literature, a taking-in of the work of other writers, which is then digested and transmuted into her own work; as Delfina Muschietti puts it, una gran obra como la de Pizarnik no hace sino fagocitar sus lecturas.14 Her reading process involves being alert to new things in her cocktail biblius (Diarios, p. 40), but particularly those which strike a chord with sensations she has experienced; what Jason Wilsons essay calls personal identificatory reading. Reading Proust she exclaims: Mi ser vibra con los sentidos erguidos, atentos en su puesto (Diarios, p. 36). However, the dangers inherent in drinking this cocktail biblius are clear to her: asking where the sweet poetry of Huidobro and Vallejo has gone, she says she has contributed to its loss, along with Millones de epgonos con cuadernillos indigestos que vagan junto a los prostitutos del arte a comprar una aprobacin (Diarios, p. 67). So the poet must guard against ingesting and internalizing literature but then not digesting it properly and failing to produce something new and original. We can see the digestion process at work in the poem Los pequeos cantos XIX (Poesa, p. 397), which is in fact constructed by a collage (or co-ordinated
14 Delfina Muschietti, Las tres caras de Alejandra Pizarnik, review of Pizarniks Poesa completa (Barcelona: Lumen, 2001), Pgina/12 (Argentina, July 2001). Reproduced at http:// www.lainsignia.org/2001/julio/cul_077.htm
119
separates, to continue the clothing metaphor?) of two quotations she copied out previously into her notebooks and PV:
triste msico entona un aire nuevo para hacer algo nuevo para ver algo nuevo Poesa oriental; copied out Princeton, box 4, folder 9, p. 68) ,, (Lichtenberg; copied out box 4, folder 9, p. 62; PV) ,,
So what might be perceived as coming from within, as interiority which is then externalized through expression, is always derived from a process of ingesting the external. Although, as Negroni says, el espacio en Pizarnik, vale la pena insistir, es siempre un interior (El testigo lcido, p. 34), nevertheless this interior is engaged in a continual exchange with the exterior. Thus the poetic process involves not only the external metaphor of shelter, but also a movement from external to internal in the creative process, followed by externalization once again. At its most parasitic, Pizarniks work feeds extensively off pre-existing texts, as noted by Mara Negroni and others. For example, Los perturbados feeds off Becketts Fin de partie, and La condesa sangrienta off La Comtesse sanglante by Valentine Penrose though also unacknowledged others, such as Jean Starobinskis essay LEncre de la Mlancolie (see Diarios, p. 397) and Thomas de Quinceys Sobre el llamado a la puerta en Macbeth (see Princeton, box 4, folder 5).15 These host texts are sometimes her own poems, but frequently those of others. Pizarnik is able to justify this by reference to a passage of Robert Lebel, quoted by Julio Cortzar: Todo lo que ve usted en esta habitacin o, mejor, en este almacn, ha sido dejado por los locatarios anteriores; por consiguiente no ver gran cosa que me pertenezca, pero yo prefiero estos instrumentos del azar (Princeton, box 5, folder 5). In this quotation the room or warehouse is a kind of debased version of the palais du vocabulaire, where previous occupants (of the language) have left random phrases, which become her chance objets trouvs. She spells out this interpretation by adding a parenthetical comment of her own: (otro pretexto para el plagio inaugurado por Pound y Eliot) (Princeton, box 5, folder 5).
Interior inspiration de algn lado

What is important, however, is that the Modernist borrowing should be balanced out by that which feels authentic, even if this idea of interiority is continually dissolving and collapsing. In order to avoid falling into the trap of being either clichd or derivative, Pizarnik highlights a need for naming things con palabras
15 Valentine Penrose, La Comtesse sanglante (Paris: Mercure de France, 1962). Noted by Mara Negroni in La condesa sangrienta: notas sobre un problema musical, Hispamrica, 68 (1994), 99110 (p. 100). The Starobinski essay is from Tel Quel, 10 (1962), and the de Quincey is published in translation in Sur, 28990 (1964).
120
FIONA J. MACKINTOSH
que nos surgen de algn lado, como pjaros que huyen de nuestro interior, porque algo los ha amenazado (Diarios, p. 79). Taking apart this statement, we have once again the external/internal problem: the poet must give of herself, from the interior, yet the words come from the nicely ambiguous algn lado, which calls to mind either the otro lado frequently invoked in her poetry, or the chapters of Cortzars Rayuela which are neither Del lado de ac nor Del lado de all but rather De otros lados, or even the nowhere place of PV whence all quotations are ingested, to then rise up and flee at the threat of loss of identity, of asphyxiation and poetic death or madness. Indeed, the fear of madness (seductively ever-present in Pizarnik) is experienced as a sensation of lack of distinction between the external and the internal: Ni mundo externo ni interno. Vaco absoluto (Diarios, p. 156). The idea of inspiration coming from a deliberately undefined place ties in with Pizarniks suspicious and scornful attitude both towards the question of nationalism in literature and towards her general sense of exile and rootlessness; the question of where her morada literaria will be built is a sensitive one and she utterly rejects stereotypical argentinidad:
Pampa y caballito criollo. Literatura soporfera. Una se acerca a un libro argentino. Qu ocurre? Viles imitaciones francesas, modismos en bastardilla, fotografas pesadas del campo. De pronto aparece un escrito rrrrealista [sic]. Magnfico! Encuentro entonces palabras como puta escrita cincuenta veces o diez variaciones ms made in Dock Sud: Descripcin de la viejita, del mate y de doa XX. . . . Siento que mi lugar no est ac! (ni en ninguna parte quisiera decir). Quiz mi queja contra mi patria sea agresin nacida en base a alguna impotencia literaria. (Diarios, p. 27)
There are five main points arising from this somewhat flippant dismissal: first, in general terms, the shadow of Borgess essay on El escritor argentino y la tradicin (which she quotes in her Reportaje para El Pueblo, Prosa, pp. 3078); secondly, the mention of vile French imitations, which indicates a certain anxiety of influence, since a large proportion of PV is composed of quotations from French writers Baudelaire, Nerval, Rimbaud, Proust, Breton and Blanchot; thirdly, the reaction against realism, which reminds us that for Pizarnik this outer ordinary world is both alien and threatening, ese mundo que no es mo, [d]el mundo exterior (Diarios, p. 67); fourthly, her sense of belonging nowhere; and finally, her persistent sense of, as she puts it, literary impotence, of doubting her own abilities. This doubt, both in herself and in the linguistic building blocks of the edifice she constructs, is what contributes to the perpetual crumbling of that edifice and the break-down of the cuerpo potico in the later prose.
Language as tomb or prison

Before the collapse of the poetic edifice, there is the stage of the poet no longer feeling protected but rather entrapped or entombed by it. The poets role then
121
becomes that of warning of this threat, but the space from which the poet speaks is precisely that of the threshold of the tomb, as expressed in these lines by Daro which Pizarnik transcribes: Voy a ponerme a gritar/ Al borde de los sepulcros (Princeton, box 4, folder 9, p. 61). Pizarnik also expresses this threatening, enclosing aspect of language via her notes on Blanchots reading of Lautramont:
Lo que vuelve amenazante su lectura: nos sentimos encerrados en el libro (es un libro cerrado, un bloque, sin fisuras, las palabras han tapado las salidas, el horizonte es de palabras y ms all hay todava palabras. Al mismo tiempo, el lenguaje se pone a existir como una cosa. Algo impenetrable, lleno de s mismo. (Maurice Blanchot, La part du feu (Gallimard, Paris, 19[49]) v. De Lautramont a Miller. Princeton, box 4, folder 5, p. 68)16
So the discourse that Pizarnik is producing (poetically) or reproducing (through her readings) is marked by metaphors of language as prison and entrapment. Like the Morellian wall of words in chapter 66 of Cortzars Rayuela, words can become dangerously constraining, trapping the poet.17 This leads to a further set of building metaphors in Pizarniks discourse, clustered around the image of the prison:
cuidado con las palabras (dijo) ... te hundirn en la crcel (Poesa, p. 307)
Three times in the poem Endechas the poet addresses herself directly as Aprisionada (Poesa, p. 289), and later, in a nightmarish reversion of the fairytale Abre ssamo!, words, instead of protecting, begin claustrophobically to enclose: Las palabras cierran todas las puertas (Poesa, p. 358). The image of the closed door, La horrible visin de la puerta cerrada (Diarios, p. 209), recurs obsessively in her diaries, from a cancin juda that she loved in her childhood (Adnde ir. Golpeo cada puerta y cada puerta est cerrada [Diarios, p. 178]) to a total enclosure which leaves no way out except through suicide: Veo cerrado. Ni afuera ni adentro (Diarios, p. 185). Struggling to open the door is simultaneously a struggle with the cage of the body, the bones: Alguien quiso abrir alguna puerta. Duelen sus manos aferradas a su prisin de huesos de mal agero (Desfundacin, Poesa, p. 221) and the room becomes una habitacin irrespirable (Diarios, p. 257). As with the Utopia of poetry, we do also see the humorous side of this crisis of exterior and interior, summed up in the figure of Doa Juana la Loca, whose
16 For the original, see Maurice Blanchot, De Lautramont Miller, in La part du feu (Paris: Gallimard, 1949), pp. 16072 (p. 163). 17 Julio Cortzar, Rayuela (1963), ed. Andrs Amors (Madrid: Ctedra, 1988), p. 531.
122
FIONA J. MACKINTOSH
surreal yet pathetic dialogue will find its echo in Pizarniks use of the reina loca figure and nonsense dialogues with Mme Lamort:
. . . dijo un da a su aya: Quisiera probarme mi esqueleto. El aya le contest: El esqueleto lo llevamos dentro, alteza. Llor toda una larga tarde al saberlo. (Princeton, box 4, folder 9, p. 162)
The tension of claustrophobia yet potential for expression is highly visible in the pair of poems El deseo de la palabra and La palabra del deseo. In the first, the poet hears laughter and the breath of los prohibidos from within the walls, and senses the imminent scattering of her childhood selves through some crack in the wall, yet she goes between muros que se acercan, que se juntan, as if closing in on the poet (Poesa, p. 269). In the second poem, the desire is to enter: (Yo no quiero decir, yo quiero entrar) (Poesa, p. 271); its non-specificity makes it sound like an existential longing, though it could also echo Piedra fundamental, where the poet wanted to entrar en el teclado para entrar adentro de la msica para tener una patria (Poesa, p. 265). She copies out Nervals Vers dors (Princeton, box 3, folder 9, p. 279), one line of which continues this vein of paranoia about walls: Crains, dans le mur aveugle, un regard qui tpie. The prison image and the sense of imprisonment and lack of air in the body become linked together: Si escucharas mi rumor a celda minscula/ poblada de agonizantes/ mi jadeo de asfixiada (Poesa, p. 310). Another phrase in the diaries indicates the body becoming trapped, the eyes (once entrance to the temple) now have bars across or in front of them, this very ambiguity highlighting the continual slippage between the body as imprisoned and as imprisoning: Las rejas en mis ojos o las rejas frente a mis ojos? (Diarios, p. 279). An even more extreme example is found in an unpublished prose poem, very much in the style of the de ultratumba poems such as Extraccin de la piedra de locura, Noche compartida en el recuerdo de una huida or El sueo de la muerte. In this, the confining room, as definitively closed as a coffin, is the backdrop for a nightmarish scene where a hydra-like monster obstructs the poetic personas throat, which cannot be distinguished from the prison. The only escape is the lava flow of language from the poets memory, via her throat and tongue to exteriority, which is now signified by Unamuno-like niebla, the very substance which had once been a positive yet ethereal part of her poetic edifice or landscape in the form of the cornisa de niebla in poem 12 of rbol de Diana. We know from Cristina Pias biography that Pizarnik was reading Unamunos existential nivola Niebla (in which the character Augusto Prez claims his right to commit suicide) a few months prior to her death.18 Of course the image of cornisa de niebla is
18 Cristina Pia, Alejandra Pizarnik (Buenos Aires: Planeta, 1991; 2nd edn, Corregidor, 1999), p. 199.
123
ambiguous; if meaning the cornice or eaves of a building, this is still under the protection of the roof, but if referring to a rocky ledge or outcrop, this is much less protected. This vaporous niebla with which the poet imagines becoming fused in the last line is figured as at once city and body, walled up but opening its great gates.
no puedo, adentro de las paredes . . . no puedo escribir. Y los armarios las puertas cerradas, no con llave sino claveteadas como la tapa de un fretro (no o los martillazos pero vi las rojas cabecitas de los clavos entre las sucias flores de papel y todas las noches oa rasguidos de uas detrs de las puertas, tal vez alguien quera salir fuera abrir las puertas claveteadas como un atad, y lo sent debatirse toda la noche sent que se debata el amurallado en mi cuarto, y cmo araaban sus dolan las manos de medusa, las del monstruo de siete caras en su prisin o en mi garganta, no discierno, no s separar los dominios. . . . la palabra se derrama de a slabas, hirviente, de tu memoria a tu garganta, de tu lengua a la exterioridad, a la niebla. . . . Morir, entrar en la niebla. Fusionarme con una figura de niebla que es una ciudad que es un cuerpo que se abre las grandes puertas de la ciudad amurallada. (Princeton, box 7, folder 44)
This apocalyptic sense of release and opening out, which is intimately and explicitly linked to death, is mirrored by the gradual break-down of the poetic edifice. We see this even in Piedra fundamental, as if to say that the very foundation stone on which the whole poetic edifice is constructed is one which contains within itself its own destruction.
The internal: from ingestion to asphyxiation

The link between the poetic body and the poetic edifice is also indicated by the other meaning of palais not simply palace, but palate (and related therefore to taste and to the process of eating, swallowing). The prevalence of imagery in her poetry associating words with the throat is striking, not simply the throats importance as the seat of the voice as she puts it, mi garganta es la capital de mi cuerpo (Diarios, p. 226) but in a harsh physical sense as a passage which may be blocked by language. For example, in En contra: Palabras en mi garganta. Sellos intragables. . . . El sabor de las palabras, ese sabor a semen viejo (Prosa, p. 22); or Anillos de ceniza: Y cuando es de noche, siempre,/ una tribu de palabras mutiladas/ busca asilo en mi garganta (Poesa, p. 181). These images echo a phrase by Konstantine Kavafis which she copied out in her notebook (Princeton, box 3, folder 9, p. 105): y sufra no poco por tener/ vocablos amontonados en su interior. Not only is the poet afflicted by asphyxiation, but also potentially by drowning but a drowning in silence rather than words: me ahogaba, era como si estuviera tragando silencio (Prosa, p. 40). The throat is therefore the vehicle for voicing a primordial sense of lack; as expressed in this quotation Pizarnik takes from Wilhelm Jensens Gradiva: jams haba conocido
124
FIONA J. MACKINTOSH
otra cosa que la estrecha prisin de su jaula, pero albergaba sin embargo el sentimiento de que le faltaba algo y expresaba esta necesidad de lo desconocido mediante su garganta (Princeton, box 4, folder 9, p. 56). Pizarnik perhaps also draws such imagery from the Swiss poet Andr Corboz. She copies out an extensive passage from him, which contains many of the elements key to the expression of her dilemmas and desires: the poets throat as a kind of threshold via which the voice can emerge from nightmarish enclosure; the wall; and the dwelling approached laboriously through language:
La materia misma del aire est constituida por un amontonamiento continuo de tneles, de pozos, de cmaras, de torres, de grutas y de escaleras que esperan la forma vehemente de tu voz. Ms all, est el espesor; ms ac, la transparencia. Pero el punto de encuentro fulgura en la garganta del poeta, que se encaja en el espacio como un pual, para dar su sentido a una poesa impaciente a travs de todos sus msculos, donde se empea la conquista inmensa, crispada an, de la altitud con cuatro puertas. El poder de las llaves. Todo poema comienza por el vaco. . . . Hasta el frente a frente final con el muro. . . . Hay que acercarse al hogar slaba por slaba. (Andr Corboz, Visin de la poesa: Princeton, box 3, folder 9, pp. 2545)
The violence of this imagery points out the central danger of Pizarniks desire for a literary language which will be a morada or a covering. In order to fashion this morada, Pizarnik has to ingest literary language of others, and these words may turn against her: Las palabras oscuras nos cierran la salida (J. Garcs; Princeton, box 4, folder 9, p. 83). It is therefore seen as incredible that poetry can be produced at all in the circumstances: as in this quotation she takes from Malraux: el mayor misterio es que en esta prisin extraigamos de nosotros mismos imgenes con potencia suficiente para negar nuestra nada (PV, Princeton, box 4, folder 5, p. 80). So, paradoxically, it may only be when the walls of this carefully constructed building are breached that poetic language can break forth: Cuando a la casa del lenguaje se le vuela el tejado y las palabras no guarecen, yo hablo (Poesa, p. 223). As Christian Gundermann puts it, the lyrical voice does not speak despite the flying roof but because of it.19 There is therefore always a conflict between inside and outside: inside the poet is asphyxiating, yet she has to be within to write. But expression can only be free beyond the walls. Comenc a asfixiarme entre paredes viscosas (y slo debo escribir desde adentro de estas paredes). . . . (Y luchas por abrir tu expresin, por libertarte de las paredes) (Prosa, p. 32). The protective shelter of literary language is therefore seen in various metamorphoses as a prison, a torture chamber, a cell, a hospital room, a corridor, a
19 Christian Gundermann, Occult Couches in the Pampa: Reviewing Three Recent Books on Twentieth-Century Argentina, Latin American Research Review, 41:1 (2006), 21121 (p. 221).
125
labyrinth, or a tomb (as in the Quevedo). Likewise, what were clothes may become a shroud: Las metforas de asfixia se despojan del sudario, el poema (Poesa, p. 289). She also noted this idea when reading the Lebanese surrealist poet Georges Schehad (Princeton, box 4, folder 9, p. 30). This in turn, in otra vuelta de tuerca, gives rise to the idea of death as ultimate shelter: al abrigo de la muerte (Princeton, box 3, folder 3, p. 5, under the heading palais V.). What was the poetic bodys sustenance and life blood may become something that drowns it, suffocates it, wounds or causes thirst: Sed sin desenlace. Separada del acto de beber, de saciar (Diarios, p. 166). The failure to quench thirst is a symbolic representation of a disjunction between the internal desires and the failure of the external to satisfy them. Stuttering and chronic asthma, both of which were concrete physical conditions suffered by Pizarnik, become part of this metaphorical tension, symbolising a radical difficulty with language and the production of language. Even the works which she feels are most interior to her, cause this kind of suffering. Siento un libro dentro de m. Un libro que me atraganta. Un libro que me obstruye la respiracin. Y yo no permito que salga. No! Pero por qu? (Diarios, p. 51). Yet the process of writing the diary, confessing this sense of strangulation, simultaneously relieves the sensation: Si no fuera por estas lneas, muero asfixiada (Diarios, p. 52). Thus the poetic act is a matter of life and death and is always intimately linked to the body; hence her often-quoted phrase, linked to Paz and the surrealists, about wanting the poetic act to be one with living: el sueo de morir haciendo el poema en un espacio ceremonial donde palabras como amor, poesa y libertad eran actos en cuerpo vivo (Prosa, pp. 401). Pizarnik adds to this the unattributed phrase cobrar cuerpo (las palabras cobran cuerpo) (Princeton, PV2, box 5, folder 6, p. 8), which seems at once to reveal the workings of the auto-didact, who is exploring linguistic phrases as objects, and those of the poet, who is extrapolating from this to the possibilities and limitations of all linguistic and literary endeavour. So the cuerpo potico is both the poetic personas body, and the body of language and literature upon which its risky enterprise draws, and by which it is simultaneously sheltered and confined.
Internal to external: birth

Confinement in its obstetric sense leads us to another metaphor commonly applied to the creative literary process, that of birth. Parallel to the release from the confining building, is that from the confining body, whereby the internal-toexternal movement of birth is seen both as a liberation and as an expulsion. In the poem El sueo de la muerte o el lugar de los cuerpos poticos, the poet gradually moves to speak from a place which is ms desde adentro (Poesa, p. 254) and proceeds to witness her own birth from within herself:
mi cabeza, de sbito, parece querer salirse ahora por mi tero como si los cuerpos poticos forcejearan por irrumpir en la realidad, nacer a ella, y hay
126
FIONA J. MACKINTOSH
alguien en mi garganta, alguien que se estuvo gestando en soledad, y yo, no acabada, ardiente por nacer, me abro, se me abre, va a venir, voy a venir. El cuerpo potico, el heredado, . . . un grito, una llamada, una llamarada, un llamamiento. (Poesa, p. 255)
This paradoxical birth of the poetic self that is also other (mi cabeza/ella) from the self, in an action which is simultaneously active (me abro) and passive (se me abre), and which produces a Joycean stream of self-conscious literary play on the word llama, seems to sum up the irreducible tension of the external and internal. Pizarnik returns to the birth image in the following diary extract: Es como golpear las paredes irrisoriamente hermticas de una cueva laberntica. Es como un feto batiendo las entraas de su madre y rogando que lo dejen salir, que se asfixia (Diarios, p. 87). Note that crucially, the context here does not make the subject of the main verb clear; perhaps es describes poetry or life, or both. Yet being born is not simply blessed release from the sensation of asphyxiation or from enclosure in the labyrinth; it is also expulsion and lack. As Pizarnik underlines in her notes taken from Blanchot on Freud, Nacer, es, despus de haber tenido todas las cosas, carecer de pronto de todas las cosas, y ante todo del ser. . . . Todo le es exterior [al nio], y l mismo es casi ese exterior: lo de afuera, la exterioridad radical sin unidad, la dispersin sin nada que se disperse; la ausencia que no es ausencia de nada es al principio la nica presencia del nio (Princeton, box 4, folder 5, p. 102). Such absence leads to an anxious desire to regress: from a casa de la mente we move to a Sala de psicopatologa where in desperation the poetic voice tries to re-enter the original place of security, the original morada prior to birth. However, the harsh words used to describe the womb speak the violent resentment of desperation: pero luego una quiere volver a entrar en esa maldita concha (Poesa, p. 412).
How to reconcile the internal and external?

Pizarniks discourse returns obsessively to these images of entrapment or obstacles, and to the idea of opening out to be free of them. But the opening out is always towards cosas tan interiores y espirituales, para las cuales comnmente falta lenguaje, as San Juan puts it in a passage copied out by Pizarnik (Princeton, box 3, folder 9, p. 23); the sense that the only language beyond this wall (or beyond its ruins) is a spiritual one is reinforced by the quotation she takes from Albertis Sobre los ngeles: Sumergindome, enterrndome profundo, profundo, en mis propias ruinas, echando los escombros sobre mi cabeza . . . Y entonces se me revelaron los ngeles . . . (Princeton, box 4, folder 9, p. 133). The liberating sensation as the prison or wall crumbles may remove barriers between internal and external in the sphere of the metaphors of building, but in terms of the parallel process in the sphere of the cuerpo potico, the body is damaged (by the filo of language, Poesa, p. 307) and there is no way of healing the resultant wound (Poesa, p. 415). Indeed, the whole textual body has become what Mara Negroni characterizes, paraphrasing Walter Benjamin, as
127
un cadver textual , or perhaps more appropriately given the link between body and building a cadaver room (pace Sylvia Plath).20 This impasse is reformulated yet again in terms of the external and internal by way of what Pizarnik calls, referring to La condesa sangrienta, un problema musical. In formulating this problem, Pizarnik draws on Jean Starobinskis writings on melancholy, but adds to them the element of music (with its associated qualities of rhythm and dissonance). Pizarnik feels that this musical problem might be resolved if she were able to write in prose, and she returns to the favourite morada idea (Diarios, p. 275).21 But she nevertheless realizes that this will not remove the internal/external aspect (Diarios, p. 353). So this problem of the internal/external, of the cover/asphyxiate dialectic, leads the poet to declare: Yo no miro/ nunca el interior de los cantos. Siempre, en el fondo, hay una reina/ muerta (Poesa, p. 425). Yet as Caldern would have us believe this interior is also source of the night: La puerta/ (mejor dir funesta boca) abierta/ est, y desde su centro nace la noche, pues la engendra dentro (Princeton, box 4, folder 9, p. 53), which is the ambiguous realm that is frequently associated in Pizarniks poetry with the creative process: Toda la noche hago la noche (Poesa, p. 215).22 The fact that in Pizarniks above-quoted poem it is the interior of song that is mentioned is significant; music cannot escape the problematics of language, because as song, it is indissolubly linked to language. Furthermore, music has rhythm, which, as we have seen in the case of the melancholic condesa sangrienta, can become distorted, leading to an incompatibility between the exterior world and the interior casa de la mente.23 All these contradictions come together in the ambiguous image of the Cantora nocturna; in the poem of that title, her song corrodes the distance between thirst and the hand that seeks the glass, but the singer is dead, with niebla verde on her lips and fro gris in her eyes (Poesa, p. 213). So, is the poetic body condemned to being, or being housed in, a place of transit? Can it only be a Casa de citas, literally built from quotations, site (cite) of promiscuous meetings and a place where one cannot dwell, but only pass through, always on the point of leaving or entering? Since a surrealistic fusion of external and internal is impossible, the only option for the poet is to try to keep the external
20 Mara Negroni, Alejandra Pizarnik: Melancola y cadver textual, Inti: Revista de literatura hispnica, 523 (200001), 16978 (p. 175); and also El testigo lcido, p. 19. I came to the Plath phrase through Shane Wellers article The Deaths of Poetry: Sylvia Plath and the Ethics of Modern Elegy, Textual Practice, 20:1 (2006), 4969 (p. 55). 21 See Susana Chvez Silvermans essay in this volume for a discussion of this genre question in terms of gender. 22 Note that Calderns lines, spoken by Rosaura near the beginning of his famous play La vida es sueo, link the body with a dwelling place (in this case a bleak rocky prison in the mountains of Poland) by the metaphor of door as fateful mouth. 23 An interesting internalization of music into the body can be seen in a sketch Pizarnik makes in her 1954 Diary, which consists of a stick person with a large body which contains a stave, a treble clef and some notes, as though the music were inside the body. In Princeton, Series I: Diaries, box 1, folder 1, Diary 1954, last page (unnumbered).
128
FIONA J. MACKINTOSH
and internal in productive tension, and perhaps Pizarniks poetic persona will thereby manage to achieve (albeit briefly) an insuring insecurity.24 The whole trajectory of this internal/external dilemma which I have been charting can be summed up in three unpublished poems:
no sirvo sino para acumular en migarganta letras terrores lonegroenlosojos delacto (Princeton, box 6, folder 6; word spacing [sic]) Quisiera investirme de m para poder ser otra. (Me estoy yendo al afuera del poema). (Esbozo, Princeton, box 6, folder 24) en ese jardn o muerte de que hablo escuch la msica interna de tu mirada, jardn, callejn sin salida, oscuro, silencio, silencio. 15-5-1970 (Princeton, box 6, folder 7)
From the piling up of words in the throat, the words of PV which threaten to stifle her creative voice, the poet then expresses a desire to escape beyond the confines of the self and the poem (the clothing metaphor at once containing or covering and releasing the cuerpo potico); the poet is in a continual process of movement towards the outside of the poem, a process underlined by the use of the gerund; but the final destination, the ultimate morada, is a garden which is death. In that final place the poet has heard the internal music (which is only a metaphorical music communicated visually) of the other, but this transcendent experience will not be communicated, since even the garden has become a place of enclosure, a callejn sin salida.
Bibliography
Aira, Csar, Alejandra Pizarnik (Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo, 1998) Blanchot, Maurice, De Lautramont Miller, in La Part du feu (Paris: Gallimard, 1949), pp. 16072 Catelli, Nora, Invitados al palacio de las citas, in Clarn: Suplemento Cultura y Nacin, 14 September 2002 [consulted online; n.p.] , Rfagas de Alejandra Pizarnik, in El Pas: Babelia, 3 January 2004, p. 5 Cortzar, Julio, Rayuela (1963), ed. Andrs Amors (Madrid: Ctedra, 1988) Dalmaroni, Miguel, Sacrificio e intertextos en la poesa de Alejandra Pizarnik, Orbis Tertius: Revista de teora y crtica literaria, 1:1 (1996), 93116 Graziano, Frank, Alejandra Pizarnik: Semblanza (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Econmica, 1984)
24 Paraphrasing the closing lines of Emily Dickinsons poem Go not too near a house of rose, which Pizarnik copies out in Spanish translation (Princeton, box 3, folder 9, p. 39).
129
Gundermann, Christian, Occult Couches in the Pampa: Reviewing Three Recent Books on Twentieth-Century Argentina, Latin American Research Review, 41:1 (2006), 21121 Lasarte, Francisco, Ms all del surrealismo: la poesa de Alejandra Pizarnik, in Revista Iberoamericana, 125 (1983), 86777 Moix, Ana Mara, La nia, la mueca y la muerte, in Clarn: Suplemento Cultura y Nacin, 14 September 2002 [consluted online; n.p.] Muschietti, Delfina, Las tres caras de Alejandra Pizarnik, review of Pizarniks Poesa completa in Pgina/12, July 2001; accessed at http://www.lainsignia. org/2001/julio/cul_077.htm [n.p.] Negroni, Mara, La condesa sangrienta: notas sobre un problema musical, Hispamrica, 68 (1994), 99110 , Alejandra Pizarnik: melancola y cadver textual, Inti: Revista de Literatura Hispnica, 523 (200001), 16978 , El testigo lcido: la obra de sombra de Alejandra Pizarnik (Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo, 2003) Pia, Cristina, Alejandra Pizarnik (Buenos Aires: Planeta, 1991) , Poesa y experiencia del lmite: leer a Alejandra Pizarnik (Buenos Aires: Botella al Mar, 1999) Rosenbaum, Alfredo, Un infierno centrfugo: glosas a Piedra fundamental de Alejandra Pizarnik, in Poticas argentinas del siglo XX, ed. Jorge Dubatti (Buenos Aires: Belgrano, 1998), pp. 195202 Sola, Graciela de, Aproximaciones msticas en la nueva poesa argentina: acerca de la obra de Alejandra Pizarnik, in Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, 73 (1968), 54553 Soncini, Anna, Itinerario de la palabra en el silencio, in Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos: Los complementarios, 5 (1990), 715 Venti, Patricia, Los diarios de Alejandra Pizarnik: censura y traicin, in Espculo, 26 (2004) [n.p.]; consulted online at http://www.ucm.es/info/especulo/numero26/ diariosp.html Weller, Shane, The Deaths of Poetry: Sylvia Plath and the Ethics of Modern Elegy, Textual Practice, 20:1 (2006), 4969 Wilson, Jason, Surrealism and Post-Surrealism, in the Cambridge History of Latin America, X: Latin America since 1930: Ideas, Culture and Society, ed. Leslie Bethell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995)
Alejandra Pizarniks Poetry: Translating the Translation of Subjectivity

Cecilia Rossi
Qu significa traducirse en palabras? Alejandra Pizarnik (Poesa, p. 253)
This essay was part of a PhD thesis, submitted in 2006, which comprises the translation into English of Pizarniks Poesa completa, with the exception of the disowned early work La tierra ms ajena (1955).1 In the first part, I explore Pizarniks subjectivity and her ambiguous positioning of the first-person subject in language. I then move on to a consideration of the practical difficulties that arise on a phonological and syntactical level for the translator of Pizarnik as a result of this often multiple persona. Toda la noche espero que mi lenguaje logre configurarme Pizarnik says in the poem LObscurit des eaux (Poesa, p. 285), from the last collection published in her lifetime, El infierno musical (1971). A few lines below, she adds: A m me han dado un silencio pleno de formas y visiones. For Pizarnik night is when language becomes her language, and hence poetry, and where, through this transformation of word into poem, she is configured, in the sense that she is gathered together, takes form, or, in other words, gains subjectivity. Pizarnik is concerned with the night and its silence; it is in the silence of the night that she chases the words that will make poems. It is there that she constructs her own subjectivity within her poetry. The poem is the place, the morada or dwelling, where this subject comes to exist and live:
Escribes poemas porque necesitas un lugar en donde sea lo que no es
(Poesa, p. 318)
In this respect, lo que no es can be read not only as her visions and dreams, but also as her own subjectivity.
1 All translations are mine and unpublished, except poems from rbol de Diana (1962), early versions of which appeared in Comparative Criticism, 22 (2000), 21123, and a selection from Los trabajos y las noches (1965) published in Modern Poetry in Translation, 3 (2005), 11927.
ALEJANDRA PIZARNIKS POETRY: TRANSLATION
131
This does not mean that at all times the passage from silence to language, or from vision to word, and hence to subject, is a smooth one. Many times the poet is perdida en el silencio/ de las palabras fantasmas (Poesa, p. 319), chasing what cannot be said: Yo era lo imposible y tambin el desgarramiento por lo imposible (Poesa, p. 358). My concern is not with the success or failure of this enterprise, but with this search for subjectivity in language. And the first issue to be addressed here is the understanding of subjectivity as different positions in language. This idea that the subject can be equated to a position in language, and in this particular case, poetic language, relates to Julia Kristevas discussions of the subject-in-process. It seems appropriate to refer to Kristevas theoretical explorations of the subject to analyse Pizarniks translation of subjectivity, since two of the starting points for Kristevas study are poets who occupied a pre-eminent position in the construction of Pizarniks oeuvre, namely, Mallarm and Lautramont. According to Kristeva this subject is questionable as to its identity, while the processes it undergoes are unsettling as to its place within the semiotic or symbolic order.2 The starting point for Kristevas understanding of the subject is that, contrary to what structural linguistics states, a subject of enunciation takes shape within the gap opened between signifier and signified that admits both structure and interplay within.3 Kristeva relies on Husserls discussion of the judging consciousness of the transcendental ego to affirm that the predicative (syntactic) operation constitutes this judging consciousness, positing at the same time the signified Being (and therefore the object of meaning and signification) and the operating consciousness itself (Kristeva, Desire in Language, p. 130). This predicative operation, as Kristeva adds, is a thetic operation because it simultaneously posits the thesis (position) of both Being and ego (Kristeva, Desire in Language, p. 130). So, the subject is neither a historical individual nor a logically conceived consciousness, but the operating thetic consciousness positing correlatively the transcendental Being and ego (Kristeva, Desire in Language, p. 130). In Revolution in Poetic Language, Kristeva states that all enunciation, whether of a word or of a sentence, is thetic, in that it implies a separation or break from the semiotic field or chora (linked to basic pulsions or drives and pre-Oedipal processes).4 This semiotic category is to be differentiated from the realm of signification, which is always that of a proposition or judgement, in other words, a realm of positions (the symbolic realm). Thus, in order for the subject to separate through its image and from its objects, image and objects
2 Leon S. Roudiez, Introduction to Julia Kristeva, in Desire in Language (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), p. 17. 3 Julia Kristeva, Desire in Language, ed. Leon S. Roudiez, trans. Thomas Gora, Alice Jardine and Leon S. Roudiez (Oxford: Blackwell, 1981), pp. 1278. 4 Julia Kristeva, The Thetic: Rupture and/or Boundary, in Revolution in Poetic Language, trans. Margaret Waller (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), p. 43.
132
CECILIA ROSSI
must first be posited in a space that becomes symbolic. In this way the process of signification for Kristeva is built upon this tension between the semiotic and the symbolic. In poetic language the thetic nature of the signifying act becomes more apparent. Such is the case in Pizarniks poetry and the positing of herself in poetry; the poem becomes the place where this tension between the semiotic and the symbolic is played out. One of the first steps in this positioning of the subject in language can be found in Pizarniks second collection, La ltima inocencia (1956), which ends with the three-line poem Slo un nombre:
alejandra alejandra debajo estoy yo alejandra
Slo un nombre in Pizarniks case is not just a name. She was born Flora, known as Blmele within the Jewish community of Eastern European immigrants who had settled in Avellaneda in the 1930s, and as a poet chose to call herself Alejandra. As Tamara Kamenszain says, the repetition of alejandra alejandra is already the start of versification, as it produces a heptasyllable through the elision of the final and first a, which acts as the girls christening as poet.5 The result is the creation of a new place where the poet comes into being: debajo estoy yo the poet lies below, underwriting every signature of the one who is in the world. She has now acquired a body with which to write el cuerpo del poema (Poesa, p. 269). Yet, this is a christening which ironically also functions as an epitaph, as hinted at by debajo estoy yo. This would indicate the early realization that this process of writing oneself into poetry, becoming one with it, would also lead to death. Pizarniks aesthetics revolved around the understanding of poetry in absolute terms. It can be said that, at this stage, Alejandra the poet has different aspirations from those of Flora: Alejandras desire to become a poet means she is ready to renounce everything else. Five years after the publication of La ltima inocencia she writes in her journal:
La vida perdida para la literatura por culpa de la literatura. Quiero decir, por querer hacer de m un personaje literario en la vida real fracaso en mi deseo de hacer literatura con mi vida real pues sta no existe: es literatura. (Diarios, p. 200)
It is clear from these words that there is a constant struggle and tension in her between writing and living, between obeying the desires she experiences, and making something out of them that can become literature. A few lines above the quoted entry, she admits not knowing what she wants, what will become of her,
5 Tamara Kamenszain, Historias de amor (y otros ensayos sobre poesa) (Buenos Aires: Paids, 2000), p. 103.
133
where shell be led to by este modo de vida, esta manera de morir (Diarios, p. 199). She is constantly bombarded by frases llenas de sentido, ritmo hastiado de mi silencio inquieto (Diarios, p. 199). It is not surprising, then, that her experience of being torn between life and death, between nothing and silence and the word, leads her to search for solace in literature; la muerte se muere de risa pero la vida/ se muere de llanto/ pero la muerte pero la vida/ pero nada nada nada (Poesa, p. 62). She writes in Poema para Emily Dickinson:
Del otro lado de la noche la espera su nombre, su subrepticio anhelo de vivir, del otro lado de la noche! (Poesa, p. 64)
That she should write at this stage that la espera su nombre on the other side of night is significant, since the nights silence is the espacio de revelaciones (Poesa, p. 156); on the other side of night, her name is no longer Flora but Alejandra, the poet, thus foregrounding this split between her person and her poetic being. The personaje alejandrino had been born.6 Thus, in the poem that follows in this collection, she signs her name as poet, Slo un nombre (Poesa, p. 65). What also becomes clear at the end of this volume is that she has chosen literary models to follow along the road to becoming a poet. In 1962 she published her groundbreaking collection rbol de Diana, where it becomes apparent that this leap from herself (He dado el salto de m al alba poem 1, Poesa, p. 103) has effectively taken place, so that she now positions herself in the text as different subjects.7 Thus, it is not uncommon to find phrases like la silenciosa en el desierto (Poesa, p. 105), la viajera con el vaso vaco (p. 105), la pequea olvidada (p. 106) and la que ama al viento (p. 109) throughout this collection.8 There are also among the brief poems in rbol de Diana those that refer directly to this split in the subject. For example, poem 13:
explicar con palabras de este mundo que parti de m un barco llevndome (Poesa, p. 115)
In line 2 the verb partir means to leave and to sail away. But it also means to break; the poet plays with this meaning, as she implies that the subject has been split. When translating this poem it was impossible for me to keep the pun on the Spanish verb partir; instead I aimed to imply the fragmentation of the subject
Csar Aira, Alejandra Pizarnik (Barcelona: Ediciones Omega, 2001), p. 13. For another discussion of this theme, see Florinda F. Goldbergs chapter El espacio fracturado del yo, in Alejandra Pizarnik:Este espacio que somos (Gaithersburg, MD: Hispamrica, 1994), pp. 6573. 8 For an exploration of the positive or negative charge attached to such gendered images by Pizarnik, see Susana Chvez Silvermans essay in this volume.
6 7
134
CECILIA ROSSI
elsewhere. In the case of English, ships take feminine pronouns, so the phrase sailed from me taking me with her ending in her and where me is repeated and twice refers to the voice of the poem allows for ambiguity and the identification of split/ship with split person/poet, or, split subject. The first line, explicar con palabras de este mundo, is smoother than the second line, que parti de m un barco llevndome, which has a broken rhythm. The use of sounds such as /k/ and /p/, on the one hand, and the unusual repetition of two forms of the first-person pronoun, m (dative) and me (accusative), on the other, contribute to this change in rhythm. These two personal pronouns, m and me (in llevndome), tag behind the verb like the wake of a ship. But there is also the form of versification chosen by Pizarnik: she has made use of the endecaslabo, the traditional verse form of the sonnet, except that here we have just two lines, not fourteen, carefully arranged into one stanza: two solitary lines, adrift in the open sea of the blank page. Both poem and poet have suffered fragmentation, thus intensifying the link between them, calling to mind haciendo el cuerpo del poema con mi cuerpo (Poesa, p. 269). This image of the break-up or fragmentation of identity, of the body as a ship that breaks up so that one part sails away from the other, is indeed poignant and calls to mind Rimbauds I is someone else, where poetry becomes the means to undertake the full exploration of ones subjectivity.9 The brevity of these poems has been discussed by Cristina Pia; Pizarnik herself commented on this in 1968: Cada da son ms breves mis poemas: pequeos fuegos para quien anduvo perdida en lo extrao (Prosa, p. 299). In this brevity, Pia sees a high concentration and compression of meaning, and a unifying effect on the subject. Traza una especie de crculo encantado , Pia says, where the subject maintains a principle or fiction of unity.10 In Kristevan terms this shows that the semiotic element in her poetry is being kept in check by the symbolic order. In later collections the poems are longer; they are often written in prose, where the lengthening of the line allows for a change in the pace and an extensive use of repetition. This appears to point to an inversion in the linguistic process, from the symbolic back to the semiotic field.11 In the longer poems it is clear that the splitting of the subject within the poem, seen in rbol de Diana, gives way to a de-structuring of subjectivity where the poet who she is and who she was coexist and enter into a dialogue. In the title poem of Extraccin de la piedra de locura (1968) we find these different subjectivities interacting with one another:
Si vieras a la que sin ti duerme en un jardn en ruinas en la memoria. All yo, ebria de mil muertes, hablo de m conmigo slo por saber
9 Arthur Rimbaud, Rimbaud Complete, trans. Wyatt Mason (New York: Modern Library, 2002), p. 365. 10 Cristina Pia, Poesa y experiencia del lmite (Buenos Aires: Botella al Mar, 1999), p. 110. 11 Pia, Poesa y experiencia del lmite, p. 110.
135
si es verdad que estoy debajo de la hierba. No s los nombres. A quin le dirs que no sabes? Te deseas otra. La otra que eres se desea otra. Qu pasa en la verde alameda? Pasa que no es verde y ni siquiera hay una alameda. Y ahora juegas a ser esclava para ocultar tu corona otorgada por quin? quin te ha ungido? quin te ha consagrado? El invisible pueblo de la memoria ms vieja. (Poesa, p. 247)
This multiplicity of subjects calls to mind the existence of a fragmented body and perhaps even the absence of a subject before the mirror-stage. This, as Pia explains, leads to a poetic rhythm which echoes the overlapping of voices in a fragmented dialogue.12 This interplay of subjectivities poses several problems for the translator, which are not, in my view, at all dissimilar to the problems that this type of poetic language poses for the poet herself. Where the poet is seeking to express the I in ways that mirror her own making or configuring as subject, the translator needs to find ways to mirror this search in the target language. So in terms of translation, this process of the poets making or configuring which I have discussed following Cristina Pias reading calls for different strategies, principally with reference to two main levels of linguistic analysis: the phonological, where I will be looking at rhythm, and the syntactical, where I will be looking at reference and the use of pronouns. I will divide this discussion into three stages; first I will look at examples from La ltima inocencia and Las aventuras perdidas, and discuss the positioning of the poet in various metaphors of subjectivity. Secondly, I will discuss examples from rbol de Diana and Los trabajos y las noches, looking at the continued use of metaphors of subjectivity and then at the problem of referentiality. Finally, I will look at examples from Extraccin de la piedra de locura, and at a small selection from her poemas no recogidos en libros, which span nearly two decades of the poets life, from 1956 to 1972, concentrating on the shift of her poetic language towards prose and the de-structuring of the subject.
La ltima inocencia and Las aventuras perdidas: The Making of the I through Metaphors of Subjectivity
In one of her last poems, dated 1972, the year in which she died, Pizarnik asks the question: Quin es yo? (Poesa, p. 430). Such departure from the usual grammatical form of quin soy yo and the switch to the third person have the disturbing effect of objectifying the I in the poem. The initial question is followed by another question: Solamente un reclamo de hurfana? which highlights the theme of orphanhood, very much present throughout Pizarniks works.13
Pia, Poesa y experiencia del lmite, p. 112. On the theme of orphanhood, see Fiona Mackintoshs Childhood in the Works of Silvina Ocampo and Alejandra Pizarnik (Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2003), pp. 14753.
12 13
136
CECILIA ROSSI
Indeed, this is a willed orphanhood that will allow her to break away from family and past in search of poetry. As mentioned earlier, not only does she decide to abandon her first name, Flora, in La ltima inocencia, but she tries out different names, or phrases with which to name herself, always carefully avoiding the use of the first person; it is what we can term an accusative subjectivity. In fact, it can be argued that the first time that the nominative pronoun yo is explicitly used in this collection is in the last poem, Slo un nombre, which can be read as the christening of the poet, as previously discussed. There are, in fact, two instances before the last poem, where yo is used, but both defy the sense of identification with the poetic persona or poet. In Noche the persona exclaims Qu s yo! (Poesa, p. 57), which is in itself a set phrase, and therefore does not result in an affirmation or statement of her identity, but renders the yo void of existential significance. The second use of yo is found in Siempre, in which the persona claims she is cansada de la espera del yo de paso (Poesa, p. 63), where de paso is another set phrase meaning just passing through/visiting or on the way (with the implication of to some other place). In conjunction with yo the effect is quite destabilizing, as it implies that the persona is waiting for herself, to be gathered together, or configured, while doing something else; another reading is that her self or identity is always just passing through, not stable or fixed. Both readings prove almost impossible to render satisfactorily in English. I opted for tired of waiting for myself on the way because it maintains the strangeness of the original image and creates a certain degree of ambivalence as to its possible meaning. The poet is waiting for herself (which can also be read as her self) while on the way possibly to some other place where she can vivirme/live myself, as she says in the second poem, called Origen, in Las aventuras perdidas. This absence of yo in her first collection is possible thanks to the use of sujeto tcito in Spanish, which allows for verbs to be conjugated in the first person but without actually including the pronoun yo in the body of the text. Nevertheless, the most common form of self-address is the third person through the use of the formula article plus noun, as if the noun chosen were a mask behind which she hides. Indeed, in the opening poem, Salvacin, the second line reads Y la muchacha vuelve a escalar el viento (Poesa, p. 49). We need to remind ourselves of Pizarniks own words regarding the meaning of the wind as metaphor to understand the full significance of this phrase. In an interview with Martha Isabel Moia, Pizarnik says tengo amor por el viento aun si, precisamente, mi imaginacin suele darle formas y colores feroces. Embestida por el viento, voy por el bosque, me alejo en busca del jardn (Prosa, p. 312). And it is only a few lines earlier that Pizarnik affirms we are all wounded by this fundamental desgarradura that writing attempts to heal, and that Moia considers to be caused by the wind, among other factors. The poem Salvacin closes with another reference to the muchacha, who halla la mscara del infinito/ y rompe el muro de la poesa (Poesa, p. 49). In these two instances I chose to translate muchacha as young woman, rather than girl, precisely with the intention of signalling her arrival at poetry: finds the mask of infinity/ and breaks the wall
137
of poetry. This is the girl who has become poet. In fact, Pizarnik uses the term la mujer solitaria only a few pages later, in Origen (the fourth poem), whose opening line is hay que salvar al viento (we have to save the wind). The decision to use young woman instead of girl led me to change the title of the third poem in the collection, La de los ojos abiertos, which in my first draft read as Girl with Eyes Open Wide. It is precisely this type of phrase that can be regarded as a metaphor of subjectivity, where again Pizarnik the little girl/poet seems to play hide and seek, challenging the world to find her, only to discover that she is the one behind the mask in the poem: She with Eyes Open Wide who looks on while la vida juega en la plaza/ con el ser que nunca fui (life plays in the plaza/ with the self I never was) (Poesa, p. 51). This example also illustrates the impossibility of avoiding I until the last poem in the collection, which the Spanish source text does, because of the grammatical constraint of English, which does not allow for the use of the sujeto tcito: so y aqu estoy becomes here I am. A further difficulty which I encountered with this poem, and which also relates to the idea of the split subject as a theme in Pizarniks work, is the use of the word ser as a noun in the second line of La de los ojos abiertos. As ser is both infinitive verb to be, and noun when used with the article, as in el ser, it leads to complications in translation. These complications are intensified given Pizarniks preoccupation with the idea of self or subject. In Extraccin de la piedra de locura she writes: mi cuerpo se abra al conocimiento de mi estar/ y de mi ser confusos y difusos (Poesa, p. 252), thus adding another layer of difficulty when separating estar from ser, both verbs-turned-noun and both translating into English as to be. My decision to translate estar and ser as being and self respectively was taken early on. The difference between my first version and the definitive translation in the case of the above line concerns the place of the adjectives confusos and difusos in the line. So my first version reads thus: my body opened to the knowledge/ of my confused and diffused being and self, which follows the sentence structure most commonly used in English, placing adjectives before nouns (an example of domestication), but this was changed for my body opened up to the knowledge of my being/ and self confused and diffused, where I have succeeded in keeping the emphasis on the split between being and self on account of the position of these two words in the poem, at the end of one line and at the beginning of the next. My translation of ser as self can be justified in that the verb ser points to an essence, something fixed or immutable, while estar relates to a state, which may shift, hence the use of being with the ing termination, suggestive of this difference. I have kept to this translation of ser and estar throughout the poems, for the sake of consistency. Another indirect way of addressing herself which Pizarnik uses in the first collection is by using the second-person pronoun. In La enamorada (which I translated as Woman in Love) the I addresses herself as alejandra and then as you: te arrastra alejandra no lo niegues/ hoy te miraste al espejo (Poesa, p. 53) (dragging you alejandra do not deny it/ today you looked at yourself in the
138
CECILIA ROSSI
mirror). It is interesting to note that at this stage Pizarnik needs to claim ownership of her name, challenging the irony posited by the phrase nombre propio (proper noun, but literally meaning own name), since our own name is probably the word we can claim least ownership of, unless we use it as Pizarnik does, a name that was not hers to begin with but that she grows to own. It is a form of address that precedes the repetition of her name in Slo un nombre, where she comes to own her name fully as poet.14 It is in her next collection, Las aventuras perdidas, that her journey towards her other self becomes clear through the repeated use of several metaphors of subjectivity, as Cristina Pia explains (Pia, Alejandra Pizarnik, p. 81). In the poem that opens the volume, entitled La jaula, she becomes angel, bird, and though the sun shines outside, she says Yo me visto de cenizas (Poesa, p. 73), showing an attraction to night and death. But the I in the opening poem also refers to herself as I when she says Yo lloro debajo de mi nombre (I weep underneath my name), thus establishing a clear link with the I in debajo estoy yo from Slo un nombre in her previous collection. Hence, my choice as a translator to keep the same preposition underneath and, in this case, create a further sound effect through assonance in the repetition of the phoneme /i:/ in weep a compensation for the repetition of the sounds in yo lloro, where yo and lloro alliterate in porteo Spanish through the repetition of the / / phoneme. In Hija del viento the use of the second-person pronoun t instead of yo is another device which has the effect of opening a gap between the person and the poetic persona, and can be likened to the effect of similes when the I addresses herself as someone else, someone like her, but not herself. In fact, it can be said the daughter of the wind is in itself another metaphor of subjectivity, where the poet sees herself as the daughter of this wind or force, the cause of this fundamental desgarradura or wound, which poetry attempts to heal. In Hija del viento, thus, it is this you who lloras debajo de tu llanto (Poesa, p. 77) (you weep underneath your weeping). It is interesting to note that in Pizarniks early poetry there is the occasional use of similes (or comparisons) alongside metaphors of subjectivity, but later on, these comparisons give way to metaphors. For example, in Las aventuras perdidas, the poem Cenizas opens with the first-person pronoun in the plural, though hidden in the verb (through sujeto tcito): Hemos dicho palabras (Poesa, p. 82), and only in the last stanza does the yo appear, followed by a simile: Yo ahora estoy sola/ como la avara delirante/ sobre su montaa de oro (Poesa, p. 82). The use of the linguistic sign of comparison here has the effect of creating a distance between the two terms of the comparison yo and avara. This is a rare instance, though, as Pizarnik tends to prefer the metaphor as a figure of speech. In creating an identification between the terms, the metaphor is absolute, and thus acts as a true substitute for subjectivity rather than as a
14 See Cristina Pia, Alejandra Pizarnik: una biografa (Buenos Aires: Planeta, 1991; 2nd edn, Corregidor, 1999), p. 44.
139
simple comparison. In Pizarniks journal entries we also see her understanding of metaphor as a trope that allows for the subject to identify with the others she is/was. This is because of the faith she places in the poem, as a place in which to be configured. For example, on 21 October 1963 she writes: Hablar de s en un libro es transformarse en palabras, en lenguaje. Decir yo es anonadarse, volverse un pronombre algo que est fuera de m (Diarios, p. 344). It is clear from these words that poetry, language, is the place where she allows herself to live herself, where I turned pronoun (reflexive), and thus outside herself, can be not only one but many, because to say yo for Pizarnik is merely an act of faith (Diarios, p. 308). These metaphors of subjectivity often pose problems for the translator, who has to juggle with meaning, sound and rhythm, as well as with the length of the lines. In the third and fourth collections especially, given the brevity of some of the poems, the surrounding space is as important as the body of the text. In the next section I will look at the problems of translating these metaphors into English in rbol de Diana, Los trabajos y las noches and in later poems.
Taking the Leap from Herself to Others in rbol de Diana and Los trabajos y las noches
rbol de Diana opens with a poem in which the I clearly states that He dado el salto de m (Poesa, p. 103), and as previously observed throughout the collection there are instances of metaphors for this elusive I that splits, leaves, travels, abandons her other self, or selves, and, most importantly, becomes fixed in the poem. As the poems are so brief, I felt these expressions needed to be kept concise in English, given that the poems have been conceived in a way that is related to visual art and to music, following the understanding of poetry as a space, with a musical conception of the poem that values silences, and with a certain philosophy of nakedness through words.15 The greatest difficulty for me as a translator was trying to abide by what I will call the word for word principle, where one word in Spanish finds its English correlative. I found this rule impossible to follow. Noun phrases such as la silenciosa or la viajera made up of a definite article followed by an adjective-turned-noun pose the greatest challenge. Thus, la silenciosa becomes the silent one and la viajera the traveller, both losing their gender specificity. In poems where these expressions are followed by possessive pronouns, which in English are gender-marked, as opposed to the Spanish su, this loss is soon made up for. But in the case of poem 4, la pequea olvidada becomes the forgotten little one since the insertion of either girl or young woman was to my mind textually heavier than one. It is important to remember that these poems are not usually read in isolation, but as part of a whole collection, and
15
Jaime D. Parra, Msticos y heterodoxos (Barcelona: March, 2003), p. 142.
140
CECILIA ROSSI
this fact is intensified not only by their individual brevity and terseness, but also by their thematic cohesion. Poem 7 posed a different kind of challenge, again related to the use of personal pronouns and gender specificity:
Salta con la camisa en llamas de estrella en estrella, de sombra en sombra. Muere de muerte lejana la que ama al viento. (Poesa, p. 109)
There is no reference to the gender of the subject until the very last line of the poem, where la que ama al viento is literally the woman who loves the wind. As in the instances discussed above, one of my concerns was to avoid the clumsy sounding woman so the one in love with the wind was my first option, since the gender was stated in the first line in the target text, through the inclusion of the possessive pronoun her: Her shirt on fire, she jumps. Going over this line again made me realize that I could do away with the possessive pronoun and thus start the poem not with the verb, but with a phrase that was not overtly gendermarked: Shirt on fire, she jumps. While in Spanish the verb occupies the emphatic position at the beginning of the line, at least in English I managed to place it at the end of the line, also a position of emphasis. But the last line, and the metaphor of subjectivity, still posed a problem, since I felt that expressions with one were to be one of my last resorts as a translator, as they added a considerable number of extra words. I eventually arrived at the following line: she who loves the wind. It is precisely this kind of noun phrase, made up of the nominative pronoun in the subject position, followed by a defining relative clause, that found its way again and again into the translation of other similarly constructed phrases in Spanish. For example, in a much later poem called Sobre un Poema de Rubn Daro (first published in La Nacin in 1972), she says: La que no supo morirse de amor y por eso nada aprendi (Poesa, p. 371), which becomes in English: She who never knew how to die of love and hence learned nothing. There are several more examples where this is the case, but I am more interested in discussing here those instances where I opted against using this phrase in the target poems. Poems 32 and 36 in rbol de Diana both contain the expression la dormida:
Zona de plagas donde la dormida come lentamente su corazn de medianoche. (Poem 32; Poesa, p. 134) en la jaula del tiempo la dormida mira sus ojos solos (Poem 36, first stanza; Poesa, p. 138)
141
In both cases I considered using she asleep instead of the one asleep, but decided against it for reasons of rhythm and sound. Thus, poem 32 reads:
Plague-zone where the one asleep slowly eats her midnight heart.
On the one hand, the one asleep alliterates with where through the repetition of the semivowel /w/. Alliteration is immediately followed by assonance through the repetition of /i:/ in asleep and eats, which echoes phonologically the typical Pizarnik combination game so often found in her poems.16 On the other hand, if we consider eats to be part of the first line this gives us a ten-syllable line whereas in Spanish we have a thirteen-syllable line.17 This is not a typical Spanish verse-form, yet in poem 36 la dormida mira sus ojos solos is a hendecasyllable line, the most common verso de arte mayor and also the typical line found in Spanish sonnets. Although Pizarnik was an advocate of vers libre and a follower of Mallarms idea that the use of traditional forms of versification were to be fractured to give way to new forms, we sometimes find in her poetry typical forms of Spanish versification.18 So I translated the hendecasyllable in poem 36 into an iambic pentameter: the one asleep looks at her lonely eyes. In poem IX of Los pequeos cantos a sequence of very brief poems or chants, first published in 1971 in the Caracas magazine rbol de fuego we find:
mi canto de dormida al alba era esto, pues? (Poesa, p. 387)
My translation reads:
my song of woman asleep at dawn was this it, then?
because other possibilities involving she or the one were either awkward, or failed to specify the gender. In poems from the Poemas no recogidos en libros, there are instances where it was necessary to use noun phrases containing woman. Such is the case of the prose poem called Cuadro:
16 Jaime D. Parra links Pizarniks passion for la combinatoria to her Jewish roots (see Parra, pp. 137 and 143). 17 It is worth noting that in Pias anthology of the complete works the adverb lentamente is part of the first line. It is one of several cases where there is no agreement between the various printed versions of Pizarniks poems; such discrepancies call for a careful study of Pizarniks manuscripts at Princeton University Library. 18 In this respect, see Ana Mara Rodrguez Francias study of Pizarniks poetry, La disolucin en la obra de Alejandra Pizarnik (Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 2003), pp. 812.
142
CECILIA ROSSI
Ruidos de alguien subiendo una escalera. La de los tormentos, la que regresa de la naturaleza, sube una escalera de la que baja un reguero de sangre. Negros pjaros queman la flor de la distancia en los cabellos de la solitaria. Hay que salvar, no a la flor, sino a las palabras. (Poesa, p. 353) Sounds of somebody going up a staircase. The woman of torments, the one who returns from nature, climbs a staircase down which flows a trail of blood. Black birds burn the flower of distance in the hair of the solitary woman. We must save, not the flower, but the words.
The one who returns from nature seemed the best option as I had already chosen the woman of for la de los tormentos. Something different happens with en los cabellos de la solitaria, since the prepositional phrase indicating possession excludes the use of the nominative pronoun she. So the only option was to echo woman in a sentence which flowed quite rhythmically in English thanks to the monosyllabic and alliterative black birds burn at the start. The poem La oscura (Poesa, p. 351) posed a similar challenge but in this case it was not the poem but its title that posed the problem. My first version which is also my last read thus:
And why did I talk as if silence were a wall and words the colours destined to cover it? And who said it feeds on music and cannot weep?
It seemed to me that the only way to avoid the negative connotations of the expression the dark one, as well as the structure the-[adjective]-one, or the word woman, was to introduce the nominative pronoun to mark the gender. The adjective obscure for oscura is closer in sound to the Spanish word and refers to a state of mind, rather than a physical characteristic; hence: She the Obscure. Obscure is highly suggestive, and works well in this context, if only because the title now calls to mind for an English readership Hardys novel Jude the Obscure. Apart from the translation problem posed by these metaphors of subjectivity, the brief poems in rbol de Diana and Los trabajos y las noches challenge the translator because of their condensation of image and meaning. An example of this condensation of poetic language is to be found in poem 24 (inspired by a drawing by Wols):
estos hilos aprisionan a las sombras y las obligan a rendir cuentas del silencio estos hilos unen la mirada al sollozo (Poesa, p. 126) these threads imprison shadows and force them to account for silence these threads tie sight to sob
143
The fact that neither a preposition nor an article is necessary in English in the opening line, causes the line to have a much shorter syllabic count. Also, the use of monosyllabic words, especially in the last line, results in a gentle, musical rhythm similar to that of the Spanish line. Moreover, I chose to translate mirada as sight to gain a further alliterative effect in the last line. This helps reproduce the gentleness of the rhythm, which leaps from tie to sight (linked by assonance) to sob (linked by alliteration). Another problem that poses a great challenge for the translator in these brief poems is the issue relating to referentiality and personal pronouns, especially when it comes to the translation of a subjectivity that is not gender-marked. In Pizarniks first collections, the strategy of looking at both text and context, at the poem as a whole and at the poems surrounding it, can easily solve most ambiguities in connection with gender. But in Los trabajos y las noches this is often not the case. In poems such as Duracin and Tu Voz, the use of the third-person singular pronoun he in the opening line in Duracin seems to be justified by the use of the masculine pronoun implied in the adjective emboscado in the opening line of the next poem, Tu Voz: emboscado en mi escritura (Poesa, p. 165). While Tu voz announces the masculine presence it is addressing right at the beginning of the poem, my target text remains unspecific as to the gender of who sings in my poem, applying the principle of compensation. But the poem Sentido de su ausencia is too far from Tu Voz in the collection to justify the use of the masculine pronoun. So, the target text is, as the source text, unmarked from the point of view of gender, yet slightly more abstract in nature:
si yo me atrevo a mirar y a decir es por su sombra unida tan suave a mi nombre all lejos en la lluvia en mi memoria por su rostro que ardiendo en mi poema dispersa suavemente un perfume a amado rostro desaparecido
(Poesa, p. 172)
And the final version in English:

if I dare look up and speak it is because of the shadow so gently bound to my name
144
CECILIA ROSSI
far away in the rain in my memory by its face that burning in my poem beautifully disperses the scent of a dear face gone
In order to translate the Spanish possessive pronoun su, which could be either his or hers or its, I opted for the definite or indefinite article and thus retain in the target text the intrinsic ambiguities of the poem in expressing the subjectivities in question. I chose to use the possessive pronoun its in the ninth line as a way to refer back to the shadow. My rejection of the first version of this poem, which used the masculine possessive pronoun, was informed by a refusal to read the poem as a conventional love poem. I briefly considered the use of the second-person pronoun you but soon rejected this idea as the poem is clearly not addressing someone else as do other poems in Los trabajos y las noches. It is true that the poem can be read as a love poem, but given the fracture and split of the poets persona, it can also be read as a melancholic appeal of subject to shadow. We hardly need remind ourselves of how charged the word shadow is in the Pizarnik corpus with its references to Lautramont, and the frequent use of Sombra as a character in poems such as El entendimiento (Poesa, p. 405) and Escrito cuando sombra (Poesa, p. 406) to see the plausibility of this reading. Donde circunda lo vido (Poesa, p. 168) is another poem where the indeterminacy of gender causes several problems in translation. To begin with, the abstract nature of the title seems to resist translation and for the translator invokes Ezra Pounds much-revered dictum go in fear of abstractions.19 It was clear that the avid could simply not be used, as an adjective anteceded by the definite article is nominalized, and thus the implication would have been that lo vido referred to people. Encircled by avidity sounded strange but was soon familiarized by the context of the poem, especially the more I translated Pizarnik and created a special language for her poetry that worked in English for individual poems and across the body of her poetry as a whole. Donde circunda lo vido, however, posed a series of problems due to the use of sujeto tcito: cuando s venga suggests the arrival of someone or something. It is rooted in ambiguity, so any marks of gender would imply a specific reading. If the third-person masculine or feminine pronoun were used, then the poem would become a sort of love poem, when it could also function self-referentially, speaking of the problem of writing and the poems arrival, especially
19 Ezra Pound, A Retrospect, in Jon Cook, Poetry in Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), p. 85. In connection with the problem of poetry in translation and the use of abstractions, see Seamus Heaneys essay The Impact of Translation in The Government of the Tongue (London: Faber & Faber, 1998).
145
when the desire implied by avidity could be read, within the Pizarnik corpus, as desire for the word, the poem, the language that will make her. The use of the third-person pronoun it could imply the following: when the poem or language comes, her eyes will shine, whereas now, waiting, at the core of things, there is just a rumour, a mere hint of this flight implied in naming, which is alentado (kindled in my version) by this mysterious it. So in my final version the poem reads thus:
When it does come my eyes will shine with the light of whom I weep but now it kindles a rumour of light in the heart of every thing.
It is clear then that personal pronouns have an important role to play in Pizarniks poems. The absent ones those implied by the verb form but not explicitly included in the poem often bear more meaning than those in the text. Apart from pronouns in the subject position in the sentence, Pizarniks poetry uses reflexivity to suggest the splitting of the I: the I becomes both subject and object. These verb forms with the reflexive pronoun attached come across as strange and estranging, as Pizarnik often uses a verb which is not normally used reflexively. This is a characteristic of her early collections which intensifies in the later volumes. For example, she says in the third stanza of Mucho ms all from Las aventuras perdidas: A qu, a qu/ este deshacerme, este desangrarme,/ este desplumarse, este desequilibrarme (Poesa, p. 95), which becomes in my last version: and so why, why/ this unmaking of myself, this bleeding to death/ this plucking of my feathers/ this losing my balance. Keeping the repetition of myself would have rendered the lines too long and awkward. At other times the reflexive pronoun occurs in the title, such as En un lugar para huirse (Poesa, p. 184) (from Los trabajos y las noches), leading to a rather lengthy title in English: In a Place to Escape Oneself. In rbol de Diana, poem 17 also makes use of the reflexive pronoun se with the resulting difficulty in English: la hermosa autnoma se canta, se encanta, se cuenta casos y cosas (Poesa, p. 119) (the beautiful automaton charms and chants to herself, telling herself tales and things). In order to avoid a clumsy rhythm, I opted to minimize the use of myself and where I could not keep the assonance, I sought to introduce alliteration elsewhere. This sentence is immediately followed by nido de hilos rgidos donde me danzo y me lloro en mis numerosos funerales (a nest of rigid threads where I dance and mourn myself at my numerous funerals). The phoneme // is repeated in things and threads, while the vowel sound /e/ in myself is echoed in telling and thread. It is worth highlighting, as a concluding remark to this section, that although in the first four collections we see the subject splitting into two, being reflected, named and addressed by metaphors, and even becoming an object, it is always an interplay between I and the other. In the later collections, it is a concert of voices that we hear speaking, sometimes at the same time.
146
CECILIA ROSSI
I Voices / I the Big Leap

In Pizarniks later works, starting with the poems in Extraccin de la piedra de locura, the influence of, or desire for, the semiotic chora becomes more apparent, which means that the rhythmic flow is intensified. This happens particularly through the use of repetition, not only of words or phrases, but of the sounds in the words themselves. El sueo de la muerte o el lugar de los cuerpos poticos is a good example of this change in the rhythmic structure:
me abro, se me abre, va a venir, voy a venir. El cuerpo potico, el heredado, el no filtrado por el sol de la lgubre maana, un grito, una llamada, una llamarada, un llamamiento. S. Quiero ver el fondo del ro, quiero ver si aquello se abre, si irrumpe y florece del lado de aqu, y vendr o no vendr (Poesa, p. 255) I open, am opened up, shell come, Ill come. The poetic body, inherited, never reached by the sun of the dismal morning, a cry, an outcry, a crying out, bright fire. Yes. I want to see the bottom of the river, I want to see if that thing opens, bursts, and blooms here, this side, will it wont it come
In order to achieve the dream-like quality of the repetition, the incantation of this kind of poetic language, I needed to juggle with the various elements of the sentence, making more changes on the syntactic level than the lexical. But undoubtedly, it is the phonic repetitions mentioned at the end of the previous section, in connection with poem 17, that pose the greatest challenges for the translator. For example, in Sous la Nuit, a poem dedicated to her father, Pizarnik writes: Grito mentalmente, el viento demente me desmiente (Poesa, p. 420). However much I played around with this phrase, I could only maintain the repetition of the vowel /e/ twice, while I managed the alliteration of /m/ in three instances: Mentally I shout, demented winds belie me. One-line poems where this repetition is of utmost importance to the pace of the sentence can also seem, at a first glance, to resist translation: entrar entrando adentro de una msica al suicido del nacimiento (Poesa, p. 421). In my English version it becomes to enter entering inside music to suicide to birth, a much shorter line and, sadly, far less musical owing to the high incidence of one-syllable words in the target language. Or again, in . . . Del silencio, a poem from the manuscripts that Pizarnik took to the home of the poet Perla Rotzait in 1971, she says lo que se ve, lo que se va, es indecible (Poesa, p. 358). This repetition of syntax and sound proved almost impossible to capture effectively in English: what we see, what goes, cannot be said, is my final version, but it is still rather unsatisfactory. Previous versions include: What can be seen, what has gone, is unsayable, and What we see, what goes, we cannot speak/cannot be said. It is precisely because Pizarnik has de-structured and dislocated her own subjectivity that her poetic language plays such discordant notes. It moves inexorably
147
towards its own demise, towards a poem that speaks the unspeakable, or simply silence. This search for the maximum expression of language leads her to despair, to saying things like escribiendo/ he pedido, he perdido (Poesa, p. 427). In the translation process I have tried to minimize the loss of these phonic and rhythmic features, without sacrificing the semantic level, aiming to create in English a poetic language that would configure a distinct Pizarnik voice in harmony with the concert of voices of her texts.
Bibliography
Aira, Csar, Alejandra Pizarnik (Barcelona: Omega, 2001) Cook, Jon, Poetry in Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004) Goldberg, Florinda F., Alejandra Pizarnik: Este espacio que somos (Gaithersburg, MD: Hispamrica, 1994) Heaney, Seamus, The Impact of Translation, in The Government of the Tongue (London: Faber & Faber, 1988) Kamenszain, Tamara, Historias de amor (y otros ensayos sobre poesa) (Buenos Aires: Paids, 2000) Kristeva, Julia, Desire in Language, ed. Leon S. Roudiez, trans. Thomas Gora, Alice Jardine and Leon S. Roudiez (Oxford: Blackwell, 1981) , Revolution of Poetic Language, trans. Margaret Walker (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984) Mackintosh, Fiona J., Childhood in the Works of Silvina Ocampo and Alejandra Pizarnik (Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2003) Parra, Jaime D., Msticos y heterodoxos (Barcelona: March, 2003) Pia, Cristina, Alejandra Pizarnik (Buenos Aires: Planeta, 1991; 2nd edn, Corregidor, 1999) , Poesa y experiencia del lmite: leer a Alejandra Pizarnik (Buenos Aires: Botella al Mar, 1999) Pizarnik, Alejandra, Obras Completas, ed. Cristina Pia (Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 1994) Rimbaud, Arthur, Rimbaud Complete, trans. and ed. Wyatt Mason (New York: Modern Library, 2002) Rodrguez Francia, Ana Mara, La disolucin en la obra de Alejandra Pizarnik (Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 2003)
The Complete Works of Alejandra Pizarnik? Editors and Editions

Cristina Pia
The dead are indeed weak. A few days later Valry is already allowed to look at the papers and, for fifty years now, with a constant and surprising regularity, important and indubitable, previously unpublished manuscripts keep coming to light, as if Mallarm had never written more than since his death. Maurice Blanchot1
Throughout the twentieth century there are numerous examples of polemics arising from posthumous editions of texts by culturally significant authors. Some of these polemics relate to what we as Jacques Derrida puts it conventionally call literature, and others to what we tend to denote as intimate genres, encompassing that peculiarly ambiguous space inhabited by correspondence, diaries, memoirs, notes and even marginal notes.2 Pizarniks work and I use that term in a Foucauldian sense,3 fully aware of the fact that we have no absolutely fixed idea of it has joined the long list of examples, basically since the publication of her Diarios in Lumen, which their editor Ana Becci refers to as un libro ms en la obra de Pizarnik (Diarios, p. 7). A polemic surrounds not only this text and the two previous volumes edited by Becci, but also other texts, and its theoretical implications are far-reaching. Indeed, shortly after the long-awaited publication of the Diarios in Spain, Ana Nuo who wrote an enthusiastic prologue to the Prosa completa, which had appeared two years earlier (Prosa, pp. 79) published a somewhat negative review in La Vanguardia, outlining certain shortcomings of the edition, which may be summarized in two basic points.4 First,
1 Maurice Blanchot, The Book to Come, in The Book to Come (1959), trans. Charlotte Mandell (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), pp. 22444 and 2636 (p. 265, note 6). 2 Jacques Derrida, Before the Law, in Acts of Literature, ed. Derek Attridge (New York: Routledge, 1992), pp. 161220; see also The Double Session (1970), in Dissemination (1972), trans. Barbara Johnson (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1981), pp. 173286. 3 Michel Foucault, What is an Author?, in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon, 1984), pp. 10120, especially pp. 1034. 4 Ana Nuo, Esperando a Alejandra: Diarios, in La Vanguardia Digital, 31 December 2003 [n.p.].
THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ALEJANDRA PIZARNIK?
149
there is a question mark over Beccis interpretation of the censorship imposed by Pizarniks sister Myriam on any reference to the writers private life; Becci subsequently presented the cuts she had made as artistic choices, stemming from a desire to offer a literary diary along the lines of the now legendary diary of Virginia Woolf (edited by her husband Leonard). Secondly, it is not clear why Becci only decided to explain a few of the many abbreviations which occur in the text; unless the reader is from Buenos Aires, and of a certain age and cultural background, he or she is faced with what Nuo terms a sopa de letras, lacking explanatory notes with regard to places, books, and poems cited. This review was followed by Patricia Ventis article on Pizarniks diaries, which is more specific about what was excluded from the published version, bringing to bear information from the material deposited by Aurora Bernrdez in Princeton University Library in 1999. The following extract gives an indication:
Con los diarios de Pizarnik, han ocurridos [sic] dos cosas: primero, cuando la autora regres a Buenos Aires, quiso reescribir algunas entradas para publicarlas en revistas literarias y segundo, despus de 30 aos de su muerte, su albacea ha suprimido ms de 120 entradas, adems de excluir casi por completo el ao 1971, y en su totalidad el ao 72. Las omisiones estn distribuidas a lo largo del diario, cuya materia suele referirse a temas sexuales o ntimos. Tambin se excluyeron fragmentos de textos narrativos que muestran las costuras de la escritura, que a posteriori sern reelaborados para su publicacin.5
Furthermore, Venti questions the editors apparently unjustified decision (see Diarios, p. 8) to make a kind of collage out of the three existing versions of the diary for 196264, comprising the version in diary entries, the notebook 1962 1964, and folders of revisions from the same period. Despite negative critical reception of the editing of Diarios, critics appear not to have objected to the Poesa completa and Prosa completa (also edited by Becci), although they too present certain problems, and confront us with unresolved theoretical issues and critical inconsistencies, which I propose to investigate in this essay. These issues, and the radically uncategorizable nature of Pizarniks writing which they highlight writing which demonstrates an extreme subversive juridicity (Derrida, Before the Law, p. 216) mean that the problem can be addressed even without having consulted the Pizarnik archives in Princeton. Regarding this concept of subversive juridicity, Derrida points out that on the one hand it requires that self-identity never be assured nor reassuring, and on the other hand it supposes also a power to produce performatively the statements of the law, of the law that literature can be, and not just the law to which literature submits (Derrida, Before the Law, p. 216). In this sense,
literature itself makes law, emerging in that place where the law is made. Therefore, under certain determined conditions, it can exercise the legislative
5 Patricia Venti, Los diarios de Alejandra Pizarnik: censura y traicin, in Espculo, 26 (2004) [n.p.]; accessed at www.ucm.es/info/especulo/numero26/diariosp.html
150
CRISTINA PIA
power of linguistic performativity to sidestep existing laws from which, however, it derives protection and receives its conditions of emergence. (Derrida, Before the Law, p. 216)
Nuo and Venti are justified in signalling the bad faith of pretending to make a virtue (in this case a Woolf-style literary diary) out of necessity (Myriam Pizarniks prohibition), and they are right to call for a critical edition setting out as far as is possible a reliable corpus which would dispel some of the doubts cast on Pizarniks published work by the Lumen editions. Nevertheless, and in relation to the Derrida quoted above, such an edition would still not solve the problem stemming from the very nature of this writing as extreme. It is articulated at the limits of what is historically understood to constitute literature, at the limits of genre and the aesthetic. This said, however, I consider it important to flag up certain problematic aspects of both publications, which provoke questions both of a critical nature, and also regarding the very status of writing, criticism and the editorial process. Since these in turn are related to the earlier publication of Correspondencia Pizarnik (1998) compiled by Ivonne Bordelois, I shall begin by considering this text. The publication of Correspondencia Pizarnik had already confronted Pizarniks readers with an issue linked to the aforementioned subversive juridicity, one which has implications for the production, reception and legitimization of literary texts, and foregrounds the roles of author, reader and critical editor. Here it is not a case of the editor choosing not to apply academic criteria, which was Beccis approach in the Poesa completa (p. 455), and implicitly also in the Prosa completa. Bordeloiss knowledgeable editorial work is loyal and respectful towards Pizarnik, and also follows impeccable academic criteria of contextualization, explanation and justification. Nevertheless, leaving aside the validity and correctness in principle of Bordeloiss editing, her task forces us to consider the paradoxes of extreme writing (into which category Pizarniks writing falls) and the related minefield of critical legitimization. Indeed, faced with the correspondence sent by the poet to Osas Stutman, many of us would wonder whether they were in fact simply letters. Our lingering modern mentality requires us to establish such ways of classifying texts; thus, letters are personal communications belonging to the private sphere, and therefore not officially part of Pizarniks work, whilst providing valid material for investigating aspects of that work. We can compare, for example, Maurice Blanchots fine studies of Kafkas diaries and Mallarms correspondence, and the productive way in which Yves Bonnefoy appropriates the latter to go deeper into Mallarms poetics.6 Bordelois says, in her introduction to this particular group of missives:
6 Maurice Blanchot, De Kafka Kafka (Paris: Gallimard, 1981); Maurice Blanchot, The Work of Fire (1949), trans. Charlotte Mandell (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995); Maurice Blanchot, The Space of Literature (1955), trans. Ann Smock (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982); Yves Bonnefoy, La potica de Mallarm: Dos ensayos, trans. Cristina Pia (Crdoba: Ediciones del Copista, 2002).
151
Como observa Stutman en su excelente nota introductoria [the letters were published in the Revista Atlntica of Cdiz in 1992], el estilo de estas cartas coincide con el de La bucanera de Pernambuco y Los posedos entre lilas . . . Algunos fragmentos exhiben inclusive concordancias textuales. (Correspondencia, p. 154)
This overlap generates uncertainty about the status of these letters, bringing them closer to texts in a Barthesian sense, or criture as understood by Blanchot and Derrida. This is also a characteristic of La bucanera de Pernambuco and Los posedos entre lilas, which exceed any generic or discursive classification. We could of course take the practical approach of following the authors explicit desire not to consider them as literary texts, in the sense of texts which are ultimately intended for publication; she simply uses them as letters to communicate with Stutman. This was Bordeloiss approach and also that of Stutman who did publish them, but as letters and in principle I would agree with their criteria. But Bordeloiss next phrase opens up a new perspective, since she points out that un estudio sobre estas correspondencias ha sido emprendido por Mara Negroni . . . que desarrolla en este momento un concurrido Seminario sobre Pizarnik en la UBA (Correspondencia, p. 154). Although the editor does not give further details, it is clear that Mara Negroni, as a scholar and critic of Pizarniks work, is implicitly attributing a literary character to texts which the author did not consider or at least did not use as literary texts. I would nevertheless also agree with this practice, in view of the previously mentioned closeness to the texts of La bucanera de Pernambuco. On this point, however, it is fundamental to take two things into account. First, these letters present a totally different scenario from the correspondence of Kafka and of Mallarm, and from Blanchot and Bonnefoys approach to them. Indeed, both critics use the correspondence to look at the respective writers reflecting on their writing practice, and not as examples of that practice per se.7 Secondly, we have to address this ambivalence on the part of the critic or editor as regards the nature of a text; attributing literary status and therefore an aesthetic function to a piece of writing which was not conceived of as literary by the person who wrote it, returns us to Derridas notion of subversive juridicity. One possible solution to this issue might be to address it from a socio-institutional perspective along the lines of Jan Mukarovsky.8 Mukarovskys theory allows us to go beyond the fallacy of authorial intention and a notion of specifying what is artistic, by asserting that it is the collective receiving public that decides whether or not to construct an aesthetic object from any given artefact. Such recourse to the receivers of a text clearly functions when
7 I use the term critic here in a broad sense, since both Blanchot and Bonnefoy are philosophers and writers, and Blanchot inaugurates the French tradition of thinking with literature or with art, a tradition subsequently adhered to by writers from Gilles Deleuze to Jacques Derrida. 8 Jan Mukarovsky, Aesthetic Function, Norm and Value as Social Fact, trans. Mark E. Suino (Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press, 1970).
152
CRISTINA PIA
we consider the different readings of a text over time, as they variously accord or deny it an aesthetic function; the same thing happens if we look at readings by people from different cultural groups. Nevertheless, the theory cannot resolve the undecidability of a text which is read by various members of the same collective social community of receivers (in this case, Bordelois, Stutman and Negroni) as simultaneously literary and non-literary. In relation to this, it is useful to go back to Derrida and to his reflections on the untimeliness of asking What is literature?, since there is no essence of literature, no truth of literature, no literary-being or being-literary of literature (Derrida, Dissemination, p. 223), but rather it is linked at least in the Western world and between the end of the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries with the history of the law. As a result, texts are considered literary by consensus and according to apparently self-evident conventions, which in fact relate to a notion of literature that remains obscure. Such an approach therefore presents us with two questions regarding legitimization: Who decides, who judges, and according to what criteria, that this relation [for which, read text or any other synonym] belongs to literature? (Derrida, Before the Law, p. 187). Going beyond Mukarovskys proposition, this approach highlights the always open space of subversive juridicity which literature has historically occupied, even if it has only occasionally been subversive with relation to the Law (in the sense both of natural law and of its own literary law, which it enunciates). In the particular case of these texts by Pizarnik and strictly speaking, in all of her texts, given their character as criture this subversive power is forcefully apparent, since the texts enunciate two contradictory laws simultaneously: read me as a letter / read me as a literary text. These simultaneously de-authorize and authorize the author and critics/editors as unlawful withholders of their sense and function, making it possible to bring before the law whoever uses them as literary texts without the authorization of their receiver as letters, and likewise whoever uses them as literary texts without the authorization of Pizarniks literary executor. The ambiguous status of these texts becomes even more problematic when we link it to doubts regarding the editions of the Poesa completa and Prosa completa. Indeed, the question which gives rise to our disturbing sense of the out-ofplace-ness of these particular texts is this: we as critics have a socially constituted role as privileged readers and legitimizers, and we have recourse to consensually valid criteria. Does the fact that we might consider a group of private letters by Pizarnik to be literary texts imply that they ought to have been incorporated into the Humour section of the Prosa according to Beccis classification along with La bucanera de Pernambuco o Hilda la polgrafa? Or to put it another way, following what Foucault says about the inexistence of a concept of the work in his article What is an author? and following Derridas affirmation about the non-essence of the literary: How far can the current concept of the literary work be extended? Can it include private correspondence, personal notes, incidental annotations or even the proverbial laundry lists? (Foucault, p. 103). And, most importantly, whose criteria apply? Obviously such questions bring us face to
153
face with the figures of the author, the critic/editor and the power of the text or writing simultaneously, referring us in this particular case to the subject of the editorial decisions made about Pizarniks posthumous texts. This applies not only to the two books I am considering, but also to the Textos de sombra y ltimos poemas published in 1982, which Becci compiled with Olga Orozco; this was the first book to include previously unpublished material by Pizarnik, material which she had not explicitly intended for eventual publication. The two cases of posthumous publications which pre-date Textos de sombra, the first of which was the anthology El deseo de la palabra (1975), published in Spain, are very different. Antonio Beneyto, editor of this anthology and author of the Epilogue, explains that it includes published and previously unpublished poems selected by Pizarnik herself over a period between 1970 and shortly before her death on 25 September 1972. The anthology was only published posthumously because of editorial delays. The situation was rather similar in the case of the pamphlet Zona Prohibida (1982) published by the Universidad Veracruzana (which I shall consider in more detail below), although there was a much greater gap between the selection of material to be included and the actual publication. Pizarnik chose the poems at some point towards the beginning of the 1960s, and in 1962 Octavio Paz sent it from Paris, with his prologue, to the Mexican publishing house where it apparently languished in a cupboard until 1982. Unlike such publications, where the author determined the content, and pure editorial chance determined its posthumous character, Textos de sombra is the first volume where decisions were fully out of Pizarniks hands since it was put together after her death. As a result, its significance as a book of poems configured through the selection and organization of a sequence of heterogeneous texts into a single artefact, which nevertheless has a peculiar kind of homogeneity is alien to the author.9 Its homogeneity is constructed a posteriori of the production of individual texts, and therefore relies on the unity of contiguity, exploiting possible similarities between its textual fragments, and imaginatively creating others through paratexts or scansion which hide differences in favour of continuity. In the writers lifetime, this quasi-architectural task of over-writing in the sense of organizing the writing to which Mallarm accorded such importance in his idea of the architectural and premeditated Book, and which can be considered as equivalent to the process of correction or revision at the level of individual texts is done by the author himself or herself, according to his or her own personal criteria.10 In this way, the author exercises an irrefutable form of control over his/her production, albeit that on another level as Blanchot notes the text possesses a power which directly annihilates the writer (Blanchot, The Book to Come, pp. 226 and 229). Such control inevitably passes into the hands
9 For a discussion of this point, see my article Una esttica del deshecho, in El puente de las palabras: Homenaje a David Lagmanovich, ed. Ins Azar (Washington: Intramer 50, 1994), pp. 33340. 10 See Stphane Mallarm, Correspondance. Lettres sur la posie, ed. Bertrand Marchal (Paris: Gallimard, 1995), pp. 5856.
154
CRISTINA PIA
of whoever is responsible for posthumous publications, hence the ethical commitment and importance of the task of editing, since on the level that I have just highlighted, the editor is the over-writer of the edited volume. As a result, his or her decisions especially when they involve the inclusion of unpublished texts, making corrections, determining the order of texts and how they are to be homogenized, and adding paratexts go beyond questions of loyalty. They confer a different meaning on the book, a meaning which over-writes and is superimposed upon that of the author. In relation to this, perhaps the most notable aspect of Correspondencia from an academic point of view is the fact that Bordelois assumes this authority, clearly demonstrating her consciousness of what it implies to be the author of the book. From this awareness she takes responsibility for the book as her own, despite the fact that it largely consists of letters by Alejandra Pizarnik. So in relation to the question of authorship, Textos de sombra is, simultaneously, a book of des(h)echos and of not-Pizarnik; des(h)echos because it comprises texts un-made from previous books, texts not yet made in that they still lack the corrective over-writing of the author, and texts which join together both debris from other peoples texts and debris from her own earlier texts, in a collage where the seams are obvious. Ultimately it is not a book by Pizarnik but a book by not-Pizarnik (which is very different from saying that it is not a book by Pizarnik or that it is a book by Olga Orozco and Ana Becci), because it is a book made with texts by Pizarnik and configured as such via methods of homogenization and architectural or paratextual over-writing established by the compilers. In over-writing the text, they abide by the usual principles of ordering anthologies and critical editions: chronological ordering of poetic texts and short prose pieces, and generic or typological organization of the volume overall. In view of the level of importance invested in the task of an editor, as I have outlined above, I feel that I must draw attention to the brevity of the editors note to Textos de sombra. Likewise, the note to the new edition of the Poesa completa is comparatively short, and it has to double as an introduction to the Prosa completa, since this has no editorial note. This is particularly significant since up until the moment of their publication, there had only been one edition of her complete works, which had by default become the accepted corpus.11 Making significant modifications (as Beccis editions do) to what had become familiar to readers of Pizarnik, calls for some editorial justification.12 So with respect to the three books under consideration, there are three questions that have to be asked: What did Orozco and Becci publish in 1982, and
11 Obras completas: poesa completa y prosa selecta, ed. Cristina Pia (Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 1993; repr. 1994, 1999). This edition corrected and expanded Silvia Baron Supervielles edition of 1990 (also in Corregidor). 12 Gustavo Zuluagas edition of Pizarniks Obra completa (Medelln: rbol de Diana, 2000) is selective rather than comprehensive, and changes the order of poems within each collection. It contains fewer of Pizarniks critical works, but is unique in including part of her translation of luard and Breton, La inmaculada concepcin (Pizarnik, Obra completa, p. 261).
155
what were their criteria? What did Becci publish in her 2000 and 2002 editions respectively, and again what were her criteria? And finally, following on from these questions, what validity do the authors wishes have with respect to the publication or non-publication of her texts? To answer the first two questions, I will begin by transcribing in its entirety the note which precedes the edition of Textos de sombra y ltimos poemas:
Poemas y textos en prosa ordenados y supervisados por Olga Orozco y Ana Becci. Para esta edicin se han utilizado los manuscritos fechados por A.P. en 1972 y varios textos, algunos hallados dispersos en cuadernos, otros previamente publicados en revistas y que no fueron recogidos por A.P. en sus libros publicados hasta 1972.
This reference, by not alluding explicitly to any kind of selection on the part of the compilers, gave the impression that all available material had been included, or at least everything that was not thought to be a rough draft, considered unfit for publication by the author in the stage of writing it had reached at the time of her death. Such an impression is backed up by the fact that all of the material from the period 196368 included in the volume is without exception already published in magazines. I point this out because it shows an implicit respect, on the part of the editors, for Pizarniks publication criteria. No texts are included that she had not either published in a magazine or intended for the Spanish anthology, as is the case for the poem A tiempo y no, although its inclusion in the anthology is not pointed out. As regards the material from the last two years of her life, since there is no clarification vis--vis the unpublished poems, there would be no reason to suppose that it didnt include all extant material. However, eighteen years on, the edition of the Poesa completa on which I will focus, though in dealing with the topic of corrections I shall also refer to the Prosa completa in the hands of one of the authors of Textos de sombra, holds certain surprises for the attentive reader. In particular, that it should include so many unpublished poems approximately equivalent to one and half books, going by the average number of poems that Pizarnik incorporated in her books as well as a significant number of corrections to the 1982 compilation. Both facts, apparently positive in themselves, when we go deeper into the matter once again present us with problems not only regarding theoretical issues linked to the author and the extent of authorial control over manuscripts, but also with respect to other issues of an ethical/academic nature, linked to the critic/editor and his or her functions of legitimization and determination of the corpus. First, let us take the issue of corrections, since it is simplest to deal with. The editor amends through footnotes a series of errors which apparently found their way into the 1982 publication, without mentioning her participation as compiler of said volume until the afterword Acerca de esta edicin (Poesa, p. 455), and mis-quoting the title of the book, which figures here as Textos de Sombra y otros poemas [alterations highlighted in bold]. As an example, I reproduce the note which accompanies the poem Jardn o tiempo:
156
CRISTINA PIA
Esta versin es la que figura en carpeta bajo ACABADOS. Por error, en Textos de Sombra . . ., 1982, la estrofa final fue editada como poema aislado. Existen otras tres versiones: una manuscrita con el ttulo La sombra de su imagen fechada 15-5-1970, otra a mquina sin fecha, en papel carta, y otra a lpiz en un cuaderno. (Poesa, p. 441)
The phrase Por error seems to me to be characteristic of the way in which Becci puts a distance between herself and the numerous and in some cases substantial alterations. On the one hand it is fair enough not to go into minutiae, given the intervening years and the different circumstances of publication: a different publishing house in another country and without the presence of the other editor, Olga Orozco, who had died in 1999. But it is a different matter not to explain the circumstances of publication in 1982, the nature of the manuscripts, and how it became possible to correct the errors detected, which suggests access to the material. In the article Los avatares de su legado, included in the special edition of Clarn Cultura y Nacin devoted to Pizarnik 30 years after her death, Becci does recount how she came to edit Textos de sombra y ltimos poemas at the request of Alejandras mother. However, the piece besides appearing two years after the publication of the Poesa completa and various months after that of the Prosa completa in Spain, and being aimed exclusively at an Argentine readership gives little information on the subject of the corrections, despite its length. Indeed, in view of the detailed account of Pizarniks incredible fastidiousness and forethought with regard to her manuscripts and the infinite care taken by the editors, it remains puzzling why there should be so many and such substantial corrections. In the case of the Prosa completa these corrections are quite serious; Becci not only changes the familiar title of Pizarniks only dramatic work from Los posedos entre lilas to Los perturbados entre lilas but she also presents the sections of La bucanera de Pernambuco o Hilda la polgrafa in a different order. The only paragraph of the note which could explain the original exclusion of drafts published in the Spanish edition and I shall discuss these drafts presently does not really shed much light on the motives for these modifications and amendments:
Hubo que esperar a las Malvinas y la presidencia de Alfonsn13 para que Sudamericana publicara Textos de Sombra [sic] y ltimos poemas, la recopilacin de inditos de Pizarnik que habamos preparado diez aos antes. Pero la prisa, el lmite de pginas impuesto por la editorial y nuestro miedo a que sta cambiara de idea, haban dejado mucho material en el tintero.
Either this edition left a little to be desired or perhaps something happened in the intervening years which determined subsequent textual variations. In addition to the significant series of corrections I refer to pages 411, 423, 426, 435, 452 of
13 The dictatorship ended conclusively on 10 December 1983, when Dr Alfonsn became president, having been elected on 30 October; the date of printing of the book is the month of August 1982.
157
the Poesa completa and to pages 91 and 165 of the Prosa completa the editorial silence or contradictory information surrounding the circumstances of publication (in 1982, and again in 2000 and 2002) leaves the three books in an ambiguous position. Questions arise not only on the subject of corrections and faithfulness but also on the more delicate issue of the exclusion or inclusion of texts, in other words, the criteria by which the corpus is delimited. Before turning to the problem of what has been included and what left out, a final observation on the question of the amendments as regards the Prosa completa; as I mentioned, the 2002 publication presents a different order of La bucanera de Pernambuco o Hilda la polgrafa from that with which readers had become familiar, and this re-ordering is not justified by the editor. Indeed, if we look closely at the introductory note to the section, we find in the first part a confusing passage, and at the end the following phrase, which also fails to clarify the situation: Aunque no en este orden, estos textos fueron publicados pstumamente en Textos de Sombra [sic] y ltimos poemas, Sudamericana, Buenos Aires, 1982 (Prosa, p. 91). If I call the first part confusing it is because after reading it several times I still do not understand whether the two groups of relatos to which it alludes comprise the same relatos in a different order or two different groups of texts, as we can see (I quote the passage in full to illustrate my point):
Carpeta con dos conjuntos de relatos. El primero, abundantemente corregido a mano; el segundo mecanografiado y con correcciones. En la presente edicin se respeta el orden de los textos segn el segundo conjunto incluido en la segunda parte de la carpeta, seguidos del primero en el orden que figura en la primera parte de la carpeta. (Prosa, p. 91)
Since the compiler does not clarify which relatos appear in each of the groups, it is not quite clear what she means and what this primero in the last sentence refers to. Does it refer, as the grammar suggests, to the first group of relatos, which would therefore be different from the second? Or does it refer to the different order of two identical groups? The second amendment has to do with the title given to Pizarniks only theatrical work, known to readers until this edition as Los posedos entre lilas and which the editor now entitles Los perturbados entre lilas. If, as she says in the explanatory note, Pizarniks typed sheet has Los perturbados entre lilas as the title, the change would seem rational, notwithstanding the fact that the author herself included its final fragment in the Spanish anthology published posthumously under the title Los posedos entre lilas. The problem arises because in the 1982 compilation with Orozco, Becci had opted for the title Los posedos entre lilas, presumably because of Pizarniks choice in publishing the fragment under that title. As a consequence, since 1982 the piece has been known, has circulated, been staged and has been the object of critical studies with that title, in view of which, changing the title amounts to a major editorial decision. As such, it would require explicit justification in the introductory note, and whilst in the note Becci does refer to the pieces partial publication in El deseo de la
158
CRISTINA PIA
palabra, she does not register its first complete publication in her 1982 volume, under the opposite title to that subsequently chosen by her in 2002. Having pointed out the changes to the Prosa, I return now to the problem regarding the criteria for delimiting the corpus, in view of the alterations I have indicated. It is impossible not to wonder despite Beccis article in Clarn, which is itself contradictory if in preparing the 1982 publication Orozco and Becci did not have all the material at their disposal. If, on the other hand, they did have the material but decided not to publish it, what were their criteria for including or excluding texts and, consequently, what determined that Becci should now publish them eighteen years later? And finally, does what is presented to us in this edition under the titles of Poesa completa and Prosa completa really include all of Pizarniks extant unpublished material? Or in a few years time, will we see her corpus change once again as a result of the process of producing a critical edition (the urgency of which has already been pointed out with regard to the Diarios)? This is a rhetorical question; of course not all the material is there, as the editor herself makes plain, saying in the last paragraph of Acerca de esta edicin that este volumen no es definitivo, en un sentido acadmico; es slo una compilacin, hecha, eso s, con lealtad a Alejandra Pizarnik, y devocin a su obra, nica e irrepetible (Poesa, p. 456). Taking this into account along with what is said in the second paragraph of the Afterword about the texts which appeared in Textos de sombra y ltimos poemas and which would then go into the volume entitled Prosa completa, we can see that the qualification of no definitivo could well refer to the fact that there are texts missing from the Poesa that will appear in the later volume, the Prosa. For texts where this is not the case, one could certainly argue that the value of texts omitted from the selection is a matter of personal opinion; it makes no claim to be an academically definitive volume, and they are all still accessible to the dedicated scholar of Pizarnik in the Princeton collection. Nevertheless, to leave out of the complete works pieces which the author herself intended to publish risks appearing disloyal. I turn now to the poems which only appeared once in published form, in Zona prohibida. The subsequent offprint published in 1982 by the Universidad Veracruzana of Mexico contains thirty-one poems, of which twenty appeared either in identical form or with varying levels of correction in rbol de Diana, and four in Los trabajos y las noches (1965) with the titles Comunicaciones, Silencios, Mendiga voz and Moradas. It is likely that Becci had access to this offprint,14 yet she apparently overlooked the fact that there are six poems there which were never republished nor rewritten by Pizarnik: Abandonada en
14 I say it is likely because Frank Graziano (from whom I learnt of the existence of this offprint) points out in the Editors Note of his book Alejandra Pizarnik: A Profile (Durango, CO: Logbridge Rhodes, 1987) that before publishing his volume he was in contact with the following people, and thanks them for their assistance: in Buenos Aires . . . Olga Orozco, Juan Gustavo Cobo Borda, Enrique Pezzoni, Arturo Carrera and Cristina Pia. Ana Becci and Aurora Bernrdez in Paris.
159
el alba . . .; Ha muerto la que . . .; El martirio de beber . . .; Inolvidada: las cosas . . .; Mi pueblo de ngeles . . .; Lucha feroz entre . . .. The question then arises why the editor did not include them in the Poesa completa, above all when she included drafts from 1956 a move with which I disagree, but only on grounds of inconsistency. Indeed, in the section Poemas no recogidos en libros the whole group of poems included in the subsection 19561960 are drafts of poems written in those years. It seems to me that to accord them the same status of legitimacy as those published in magazines or newspapers, and as those which can be dated more or less between the completion of the manuscript of her last book published in her lifetime, El infierno musical (1971), and her death, is rather irregular, since it implies an ignorance or dismissal of the authors intent to publish or not to publish. If Pizarnik had considered them worthy of publication or simply if she wanted to publish them, aside from any intrinsic textual merit she would have included them in one of her previous books, or in what became the posthumous anthology published in Spain. The earliest of these poems, for example, coincide with the publication of her second book, La ltima inocencia, after which she would publish a further six books of poetry. To ignore in this case her desire not to publish them is at odds with the decision not to include those from Zona prohibida (which Pizarnik did want to publish) and with the decision to incorporate La tierra ms ajena, which the author explicitly disowned in a letter to Antonio Beneyto, partially reproduced in the Eplogo to the anthology El deseo de la palabra (p. 254). I write perfectly conscious of the fact that as soon as one broaches this subject, the inevitable example of Max Brods happy infidelity to the last will of Franz Kafka springs to mind, thanks to which we have been able to enjoy one of the most significant collections of literary texts of the first half of the twentieth century. Also, closer to home and in a similar vein to the republication of La tierra ms ajena despite Pizarniks repudiation of it, we have the controversy surrounding the republication by Borgess widow Mara Kodama of three early books which Borges had explicitly excluded from his Obras completas.15 Lastly, and also bearing comparison with the publication of Pizarniks draft poems, we have the publication of texts by Mallarm on the part of Doctor Bonniot, Jean Pierre Richard and Jacques Scherer, who published posthumously Igitur, Pour un tombeau dAnatole and Livre respectively.16 Not only was it the poets express
15 I am referring to Inquisiciones (1925) (Buenos Aires: Seix Barral, 1993); El tamao de mi esperanza (1926) (Buenos Aires: Seix Barral, 1993); and El idioma de los argentinos (1925) (Buenos Aires: Seix Barral, 1994). 16 As Yves Bonnefoy indicates in his edition of Mallarms prose, it was Doctor Bonniot, Mallarms son-in-law, who in 1925 established the text of Igitur, this cuento metafsico, for printing. Stphane Mallarm, Igitur, Divagations, Un coup de ds (Paris: Gallimard, 1976). Jean Pierre Richard established the text of Pour un tombeau dAnatole, which was handed to Henri Mondor, editor of the Pliade complete works, as he says in the Foreword to his edition: Stphane Mallarm, Pour un tombeau dAnatole (Paris: ditions du Seuil, 1961). Jacques Scherer produced the revised and augmented edition of Le Livre de Mallarm (Paris: Gallimard, 1977).
160
CRISTINA PIA
desire that all of his papers should be burned in this respect he was more decided than Kafka, as Blanchot observes (The Book to Come, pp. 2645); the three texts in question were still in draft state, since Mallarm had not established a text for printing, exactly the same as occurred with Pizarnik and the poems to which I have alluded. These poems were simply el contenido de una carpeta con 41 hojas de poemas mecanografiados y corregidos a mano por AP (Poesa, p. 299). At this point I am eager to clarify that, quite apart from my individual position in the matter in my 1993 edition I chose not to include Pizarniks first book my criticism of Becci for publishing them does not arise from my belief in the absolutely decisive value of the authors opinion about his or her own work (I have already referred to the subversive juridicity which Derrida discerns in writing, and I will presently focus on the power attributed to it by Blanchot); rather it stems from the apparent inconsistency of invoking loyalty to the author, whilst alternately respecting or ignoring her wishes regarding publication. In such a case, it seems to me that the only real way to prove loyalty is to go for all or nothing, in the sense of rigorously adopting one of two positions: either publish everything, because in the absence of a secure theoretical concept of what constitutes a literary text, where literature just is, and we cannot define what it includes and what its limits are (as I pointed out previously using Foucault and Derrida), it is necessary to publish everything; or take the will of the author as an absolute guideline, and apply it rigorously, editing exclusively what the author herself published or prepared for publication and that which, once published, she did not disown. In another sense, although we may not like it, getting into the business of including and excluding material is, in the final analysis, pointless, owing to the transgressive potential of extreme writing like that of Pizarnik. As a result, whatever is excluded will appear, sooner or later, in the same way that whatever is included will end up being absent. Because, I repeat, writing which does not simply exist has the ability always to be absent, to be lacking. Or to use Blanchots words, it is a power against which the writer is powerless, as he affirms in the following memorable passage:
I know the rule formulated by Apollinaire: Publish everything. It makes a lot of sense. It attests to the profound tendency of what is hidden to lean toward the light . . . This is not a rule or a principle. It is the power under the sway of which whoever sets out to write falls, and falls all the harder if he opposes it and contests it. The same power confirms the impersonal nature of works of art. The writer has no right over them, and he is nothing in the face of them, always already dead and always suppressed. Let his will not be done, then. Logically, if we judge it suitable to misunderstand the intention of the author after his death, we should also accept that it is not to be respected during his life. Yet while he is alive, what happens is apparently the opposite. The writer wants to publish and the publisher does not want to. But that is only surface appearance. Think of all the forces secret, personal, ideological, unexpected that are exercised over our will to force us to write and publish what we do
161
not want to. Visible or invisible, the power is always there, it pays no attention to us and, to our surprise, hides our papers from us in our very hands. The living are indeed weak. (Blanchot, The Book to Come, p. 265 note 6)
However, since recognizing this does not imply renouncing the critic/editors role of legitimizing and delimiting the corpus, I should like to point out just two aspects of the Prosa which seem to me to be particularly relevant in the light of other inconsistencies, such as the contravention of chronology in the ordering of the section of Relatos, or the errors in indicating the origin of these texts. I am referring in general to the persistently subjectivist position adopted by the editor, resistent to any kind of academic theorizing; this attitude leads her on the one hand to scorn labels which precisely deal with hybridization or undecidability of genre (as is the case with the Barthesian concept of text) in her classification of the material, and on the other hand to fall back on a mythical, inexplicable and highly exclusive knowledge, obtained merely by contact with the poet, as to the difference between prose poems and prose. Thus without wishing to fall into the stupidity of criticizing Beccis edition for distorting the classification of the material which would be inexcusably ingenuous after reading Borgess El idioma analtico de John Wilkins I consider that to remain faithful to the category of text already used by the editor in her 1982 volume, albeit with a different sense, she should perhaps have avoided such polemical decisions as including La condesa sangrienta amongst the Artculos y ensayos, or Descripcin and En contra amongst the Relatos. Regarding the first text, of course if we pay attention to the first three paragraphs, this in principle presents itself as a commentary on the poetic biography of Erzsbet Bthory published by Valentine Penrose in 1963, but already by the fourth paragraph, Pizarniks text goes in a different direction, which displaces her writing from any specific genre, oscillating between narrative, portrait, prose poem, reflection and poetic essay. In this case, using the Barthesian concept of text would have been more faithful to the transgressive nature of Pizarniks writing. Putting it in with the essays because, as Becci says in her previously-cited Clarn article he podido comprobar que Pizarnik lo escribi como un ensayo: un ensayo sobre el mal algn da habra que escribir otro sobre el bien, deca, y sealaba como referencia a Nitoshka Nezvanova, la novela de Dostoievsky, risks simultaneously getting tangled up in authorial intention (which should be distinguished from the authors wishes regarding publication), incorrectly privileging her reading of her own text over those of other readers and critics, and contributing to the mystique of knowledge received by direct contact with the author, to which I referred earlier.17
17 See also Diarios, p. 392, for reference to Nitoshka Nezvanova, and pp. 3978 and 41516, for Pizarniks comments on writing La condesa sangrienta, to which she does refer twice as ensayo, but also as el artculo and implicitly as one of her comentarios bibliogrficos.
162
CRISTINA PIA
Regarding the difference between poems in prose and prose per se, Becci says in the Afterword to the Poesa completa: Me dej guiar por el tratamiento muy particular del ritmo que Alejandra Pizarnik daba a los textos en prosa (p. 455). Likewise in her article in Clarn:
La frecuentacin, durante aos, de estos manuscritos me ha hecho comprender algunos aspectos que en aquella primera edicin de Sudamericana del ao 1983 [sic] no habamos ceido bien: la diferencia que Alejandra estableca entre un texto en prosa y un poema (aunque estuviera aparentemente escrito como prosa). Los recuerdos del escritor Alberto Manguel han sido muy valiosos para ubicar ciertos textos en el volumen de poesa o el de prosa. Alejandra haba empezado a concebir su propia manera de relatar un cuento y diferenciaba un poema de un relato. La diferencia es siempre sutil, pero existe.
Strictly speaking, in neither of these passages is this mysterious difference clarified. We are not told what this tratamiento muy particular consists of. The same happens with the second rather hollow phrase: La diferencia es siempre sutil, pero existe. However, these phrases are not hollow from a semantic point of view; rather they point us towards the value placed on personal access to the manuscripts above any other means of arriving at this elusive knowledge. But such mythification cannot be sustained as an intellectual basis for the difference between prose and prose poetry. Indeed, there is no convincing theory about the prose poem which goes beyond the pioneering but vague reflections of Baudelaire, who nevertheless undoubtedly knew how to write them. The category of the prose poem is explored by Pizarnik in her diaries, where she expresses the desire to copiar, para mi uso, una antologa del poema en prosa (Diarios, p. 418), but then immediately counters this with Gran error. Por ahora sera mejor leer mucho (p. 418). It is as if she senses that one cannot easily categorize or delimit the prose poem, neatly anthologizing it for imitation; it has to be approached more intuitively, almost as if by reading one could absorb the essence of a prose poem by osmosis. She does have certain convictions about the prose poem, but these are more to do with spacing on the page than rhythm per se: Poemas en prosa: necesidad de los espacios dobles. Al menos, para mi estilo (Diarios, p. 419). So to include, for example, Textos de sombra in the poetry volume and the previously mentioned Descripcin and En contra in the prose volume, amongst the Relatos (in itself an ambiguous category when contrasted with the more appropriate and established category of text), appears arbitrary, given the lack of justification. Through examining these recent editions of Pizarnik I have hoped to show on the one hand the theoretical and critical difficulties they present us with, and on the other hand, the need for a declaredly academic critical edition (notwithstanding the irreducibly subversive juridicity of Pizarniks writing) which would explain, in a less subjective and more transparent way, the conditions of editing, the degree of access to the manuscripts and criteria for inclusion/exclusion of
163
different texts. Beyond these issues, it has also been my intention to foreground the potency of Alejandra Pizarniks writing, which ends up overwhelming critics, editors and even the author herself. Her writing has the potential to speak and be spoken, to be endlessly absent from any place or law and to draw the reader inexorably to a space of linguistic pleasure reached by very few works.
Bibliography
Barthes, Roland, From Work to Text, in The Rustle of Language, trans. Richard Howard (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), pp. 5664 Becci, Ana, Los avatares de su legado, Clarn Cultura y Nacin, Buenos Aires, 14 September 2002, p. 5 Blanchot, Maurice, The Work of Fire (1949), trans. Charlotte Mandell (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995) , The Space of Literature (1955), trans. Ann Smock (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982) , The Book to Come, in The Book to Come (1959), trans. Charlotte Mandell (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), pp. 22444 and pp. 2636 , De Kafka Kafka (Paris: Gallimard, 1981) Bonnefoy, Yves, La potica de Mallarm: dos ensayos, trans. Cristina Pia (Crdoba: Ediciones del Copista, 2002) Catelli, Nora, Invitados al palacio de las citas: los diarios inditos, in Clarn Cultura y Nacin, Buenos Aires, 14 September 2002, p. 5 Derrida, Jacques, Before the Law, in Acts of Literature, ed. Derek Attridge (New York: Routledge, 1992), pp. 161220 , Dissemination (1972), trans. Barbara Johnson (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1981) Foucault, Michel, What is an Author? in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon, 1984), pp. 10120 Graziano, Frank, Alejandra Pizarnik: A Profile (Durango, CO: Logbridge Rhodes, 1987) , Alejandra Pizarnik: Semblanza (Mxico: Fondo de Cultura Econmica, 1996) Mallarm, Stphane, Correspondance. Lettres sur la posie, ed. Bertrand Marchal (Paris: Gallimard, 1995) , Igitur, Divagations, Un coup de ds (Paris: Gallimard, 1976) , Pour un tombeau dAnatole, intro. Jean-Pierre Richard (Paris: ditions du Seuil, 1961) , Un Coup de ds jamais nabolira le hasard (1914) (Paris: Gallimard, 1998) Moix, Ana Mara, La nia, la mueca y la muerte: acerca de Prosa completa, in Clarn Cultura y Nacin, Buenos Aires, 14 September 2002, p. 4 Mukarovsky, Jan, Aesthetic Function, Norm and Value as Social Fact, trans. Mark E. Suino (Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press, 1970) Nuo, Ana, Esperando a Alejandra: Diarios, in La Vanguardia Digital, 31 December 2003 [n.p.] Pia, Cristina, Una esttica del deshecho, in El puente de las palabras: homenaje a David Lagmanovich, ed. Ins Azar (Washington: Intramer 50, Serie Cultural, 1994), pp. 33340
164
CRISTINA PIA
Pia, Cristina, La desprolijidad y la riqueza, in Fnix: Poesa, crtica (Crdoba), 12 (2002), 1337 [Review of Alejandra Pizarnik, Prosa completa, ed. Ana Becci (Barcelona: Lumen, 2002)] , Las transformaciones de un corpus potico, in Fnix: Poesa, crtica (Crdoba), 10 (2001), 1315 [Review of Alejandra Pizarnik, Poesa completa (19551972), ed. Ana Becci (Barcelona: Lumen, 2000)] Pizarnik, Alejandra [Flora Alejandra], La tierra ms ajena (Buenos Aires: Botella al Mar, 1955) , El deseo de la palabra (Barcelona: Ocnos, 1975) , Textos de sombra y ltimos poemas, ed. Olga Orozco and Ana Becci (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1982) , Obras completas: poesa completa y prosa selecta, ed. Cristina Pia (Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 1993; repr. 1994, 1999) , Obra completa, ed. Gustavo Zuluaga (Medelln: rbol de Diana, 2000) Scherer, Jacques, Le Livre de Mallarm (Paris: Gallimard, 1977) Venti, Patricia, Los diarios de Alejandra Pizarnik: censura y traicin, in Espculo, 26 (2004) [n.p.] www.ucm.es/info/especulo/numero26/diariosp.html
AFTERWORD
Owing to the wealth of material newly available, Pizarnik scholarship is now in a position to examine the poets working methods in greater detail. As this volume shows, Pizarniks intense activity as a reader in particular as revealed through the notebooks of the palais du vocabulaire and her critical essays underpins all of her poetry, which is constantly entering into dialogue with the authors she read and reread, but which also cites itself repeatedly. As is also shown here, the diaries both those published in 2003 and those in the Princeton archives not included in that selection provide many useful insights into Pizarniks reflections on her creative processes and on the relationships literary or otherwise which influenced her work. These diary entries have also enabled us to learn more about her Borges y yo double, the mythologized personaje alejandrino. The essays in this volume have sought to offer a broader perspective on Pizarniks many voices through readings focused on gender, humour, translation and philosophy. Ultimately, however, rbol de Alejandra: Pizarnik Reassessed reflects the poets growing stature within the canon of Latin American poetry; in so doing, it highlights the fact that the time is ripe for a full scholarly critical edition of her fascinating works. Fiona J. Mackintosh and Karl Posso
SUBJECT INDEX
Absurd 4, 8, 17 n.13, 37, 38, 4041, 43 Aira, Csar 5, 23 n.22, 44 n.17, 778, 79, 81, 83, 133 Alberti, Rafael 126 Aldana, Francisco de 116 Alexandrian, Sarane 85 Alfonsn, Ral 156 and n.13 Andersen, Hans Christian 11617 Apollinaire, Guillaume 160 Artaud, Antonin 1, 7, 10, 2021, 41, 47, 78, 79, 81, 84, 91 n.2, 94, 107 Bajarla, Juan Jacobo 51, 54 n.36, 85 n.22 Barnes, Djuna 116 Baron Supervielle, Silvia 154 n.11 Barrenechea, Ana Mara 39, 100 Barthes, Roland 6, 161 Bassnett, Susan 5 n.11 Bataille, Georges 18 n.14, 46 n.23, 61, 72, 79, 86 Bthory, Erzsbet 4, 15, 245, 27, 289 and n.29, 606 n.17, 6873, 81, 112, 161 Batlle Planas, Juan 87 Baudelaire, Charles 1, 7, 81, 112, 120, 162 Baudrillard, Jean 60 Beauvoir, Simone de 82 Becci, Ana 17, 60 n.3, 148, 149, 1528, 16162 Beckett, Samuel 17 n.13, 40, 44, 68 n.22, 119 Bguin, Albert 104 Beneyto, Antonio 93 n.9, 153, 159 Benjamin, Walter 126 Bergson, Henri 71 Bernrdez, Aurora 149, 158 n.14 Bible, the 43, 53 n.31 Bioy Casares, Adolfo 37, 54, 102 Blanchot, Maurice 110, 120, 121, 126, 148, 1501, 153, 1601 Bonnefoy, Yves 88, 107, 1501, 158 n.16 Bordelois, Ivonne 7, 19, 23 n.23, 51, 77, 79, 91 n.2, 93 and n.8, 94, 98, 99, 1502, 154 Borges, Jorge Luis 7, 26, 37, 49, 54, 60, 73, 78, 81, 83, 84, 102, 104 n.28, 112, 120, 159, 161 Borinsky, Alicia 5 n.10, 534 Bosch, Hieronymus 1, 79, 857, 89 Bosquet, Alain 104 Brecht, Bertolt 116 Breton, Andr 7, 8, 10, 26, 37 and n.4, 41, 78, 79, 804, 86, 878, 111, 112, 120 Breughel, Pieter the Elder 95, 97 Brod, Max 159 Buddha 47 Byron, Lord 118 Cadalso, Jos 92 n.4 Caldern de la Barca, Pedro 42, 127 n.22 Calvino, Italo 82 Carrera, Arturo 158 n.14 Carroll, Lewis 423 Carter, Angela 61 Catelli, Nora 113 Caulfield, Carlota 93 n.9 Cernuda, Luis 95, 105, 106 Cervantes, Miguel de 114 Chagall, Marc 1, 52 Char, Ren 10, 115 Chvez Silverman, Susana 6, 8, 9, 21 n.17, 64 n.15, 115 n.10, 133 n.8 Claudel, Paul 112 Cobo Borda, Juan Gustavo 158 Coloma, Padre Luis 40 Corboz, Andr 124 Cortzar, Julio 1, 2, 7, 26, 27, 37, 43, 46 n.22, 54, 61, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 84, 93 n.7, 99103, 119, 120, 121 cummings, e.e. 91 n.2 Dadaism 44 Dalmaroni, Miguel 113 Daro, Rubn 5, 105, 121, 140 Daumal, Ren 81 Deleuze, Gilles 10, 60, 623, 66, 69, 70, 71, 72
168
SUBJECT INDEX
Depetris, Carolina 8, 71 n.25, 77 n.5 Derrida, Jacques 14852, 160 Descartes, Ren 87 Di Giorgio, Marosa 41 n.12 Dickinson, Emily 128 n.24, 133 Dobry, Edgardo 77 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor 161 Ducasse, Isidore see Lautramont Duchamp, Marcel 44 Eliot, T.S. 1, 5 n.8, 80, 81, 84, 102, 112, 119 Eluard, Paul 91 n.2 Erasmus, Desiderius 47 Espina, Concha 48 Fernndez, Macedonio 7 Fishburn, Evelyn 8, 15 n.6, 49 n.25, 103 n.25, 117 n.13 Fitts, Alexandra 71 n.25 Flaubert, Gustave 116 Ford, Anbal 101 Foster, David William 68 n.23 Foucault, Michel 67, 148, 152, 160 Fourier, Charles 80 Freud, Sigmund 37, 42, 43, 489, 55, 62 n.9, 69, 71, 72 n.30, 126 Galtier, Lysandro 79 Garcs, J. 124 Garca-Serrano, Mara Victoria 63 n.12 Garcilaso de la Vega 91 n.2, 96 Garro, Elena 78 Gauthier, Xavire 82 Girri, Alberto 95, 96, 97, 99, 106, 107 Glass, Alain 82 God 478, 86 Goldberg, Florinda 7, 37, 51 n.28, 57, 80, 84 n.20, 104 n.30, 107, 110 n.1, 133 n.7 Golden Age 1, 3 Gombrowicz, Witold 81 Gngora, Luis de 3 n.4, 7, 10 Gorriti, Juana Manuela 47 Goya, Francisco de 1, 44 Graziano, Frank 71, 113 n.5, 158 n.14 grotesco criollo 41 Guilboa, Amir 116 Gundermann, Christian 124 Hardy, Thomas 142 Haydu, Susana 5 n.11, 71 n.25 Heaney, Seamus 144 n.19 Heidegger, Martin 104
Heine, Heinrich 54 Herrera, Ricardo 88 Hita, Arcipreste de 84 Hlderlin, Friedrich 104 Hugo, Victor 112 Huidobro, Vicente 118 Husserl, Edmund 131 Ionesco, Eugne 40 Jarry, Alfred 40 Jensen, Wilhelm 123 Jesus Christ 70 Jitrik, No 101 Jouve, Pierre Jean 81 Joyce, James 126 Juan de la Cruz, San 3 n.4, 10, 126 Juana la Loca 12122 Jung, Carl 111 Kafka, Franz 1, 10, 5254, 56, 60, 6772, 150, 151, 159, 160 Kamenszain, Tamara 132 Kant, Immanuel 66, 70 Kavafis, Konstantin 123 Keats, John 16, 42, 118 King, John 97 Klee, Paul 1, 117 Klossowski, Pierre 6364, 65 Kodama, Mara 159 Koestler, Arthur 43, 56 n.38 Koremblit, Bernardo Ezequiel 77 Kristal, Efran 7 Kristeva, Julia 1617, 1312, 134 Lambert, Jean Clarence 78 Lautramont, Comte de 84, 85, 93 n.7, 102, 105, 117, 121, 131, 144 Lebel, Robert 119 Lvi-Strauss, Claude 56 Lichtenberg, Georg Cristoph 7, 118, 119 Liscano, Juan 29 n.29, 79, 97 n.12 Lispector, Clarice 1 Lpez Velarde, Ramn 105, 106 n.31 Lpez, Aras 39 Mackintosh, Fiona J. 10, 22 n.21, 38 n.5, 43 n.16, 101 n.21, 136 n.13 MacLeish, Archibald 16 Mayakovsky, Vladimir 118 Mallarm, Stphane 7, 16, 40, 87, 112, 113, 131, 141, 148, 150, 151, 153, 15960 Malraux, Andr 124
SUBJECT INDEX
169
Mandiargues, Andr Pieyre de 2, 78, 82, 94, 96, 107 Marx, Karl 87 Mateo del Pino, ngeles 61 n.7 Michaux, Henri 7, 37, 54, 78, 79, 80, 84, 87, 88, 93, 95 Milln, Eduardo 79 Milosz, Oscar 81 Minotaur 15, 23, 24, 29, 30, 31, 33, 34, 65 Modernism 20, 114, 119 modernismo 5, 105 Moia, Martha I. 9899, 136 Moix, Ana Mara 40, 111 n.3 Molire 4446 Molina, Elsa 61 n.7 Molinari, Ricardo 96, 107 Molloy, Sylvia 89, 15 n.6, 19 n.15, 36, 64 n.15 Mondragn, Sergio 79 Mukarovsky, Jan 1512 Murdoch, Iris 66 n.18 Murena, Hctor A. 96, 989, 107 Muschietti, Delfina 6, 118 Negroni, Mara 1314, 1617 and n.13, 44, 47 n.24, 71 n.25, 110 n.1, 119, 1267, 151, 152 neobarroco/neobarroso 41 neogrotesco 41 Nerval, Grard de 26, 120, 122 Nicholson, Melanie 72 n.31 Nietzsche, Friedrich 67 n.20 Nuo, Ana 14850 Ocampo, Silvina 9 and n.23, 1620, 31, 37, 38, 54, 103, 107 Oedipus 55, 131 Orozco, Olga 80, 153, 154, 155, 156, 158 Ostriker, Alicia 20 Ostrov, Len 24 n.24 Parra, Jaime D. 139 n.15, 141 n.16 Paris 2, 7, 56, 7782, 84, 85, 100, 103 n.26, 158 n.14 Paz, Octavio 2, 4, 6, 7, 9, 16 n.8, 17, 20, 212, 26, 78, 79, 80, 812, 84, 88, 92, 945, 98, 1037, 111, 113, 125, 153 Parker, Charlie 84 Pellegrini, Aldo 13 Pellettieri, Osvaldo 41 n.12 Penrose, Valentine 4, 17 n.13, 602, 63, 65, 72, 73, 81, 92, 119, 161 Pezzoni, Enrique 94, 103, 158 n.14
Picabia, Francis 44 Piglia, Ricardo 81 Pia, Cristina 3 n.5, 4 n.6, 6, 7, 8, 15 n.6, 16 n.11, 36, 42, 46, 52, 54, 57, 64, 77, 78, 122, 134, 135, 138 n.14, 141 n.17, 153 n.9, 154 n.11, 158 n.14 Pirandello, Luigi 39 Pichon Rivire, Enrique 85 Pessoa, Fernando 104, 105, 106 Pizarnik, Alejandra and visual art 1, 44, 85, 87, 89, 95, 117, 139 and Jewishness 1, 8, 507, 70, 114, 115 and sexuality 89, 1320, 2334, 38, 419, 64, 87, 88, 149 and madness 21 n.17, 847, 120 and plagiarism 60, 72, 84, 102, 119 and intertextuality 57, 16, 21, 27, 435, 47, 113, 154 and music 139 Pizarnik, Alejandra Works A tiempo y no 155 A un poema acerca del agua, de Silvina Ocampo 1619 Abandonada en el alba. . . 1589 Alguien cae en su primera cada 104 Amantes 1819 Anillos de ceniza 123 Aproximaciones 114, 122, 1301 rbol de Diana 1, 2, 6, 18, 23, 28, 82, 103 n.26, 116, 117, 122, 130 n.1, 1334, 135, 13942, 145, 158 Balada de la piedra que llora 133 Caminos del espejo 3 Cantora nocturna 127 Casa de citas 127 Casa de la mente 114 Cenizas 2, 138 Comunicaciones 158 Correspondencia 1, 9, 18 n.14, 19, 23 n.23, 29 n.29, 37, 38, 423, 51 n.29, 55, 56, 79, 80, 81, 91, 92, 93, 94, 97 n.12, 103, 1501, 154 Cuadro 1412 cuidado con las palabras. . . 121, 126 [. . .] Del silencio 121, 131, 146 Desconfianza 50 Descripcin 22, 23, 161, 162 Desfundacin 121 Diana de Lesbos 9 Diarios 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 16 n.10, 18 n.14, 20, 21, 22 n.21, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 31, 334, 38, 50, 512, 53, 54, 60,
170
SUBJECT INDEX
80, 82, 83, 84, 85, 90, 92, 93 n.5, 94, 106, 112, 113, 114, 115, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 126, 127, 132, 133, 139, 1489, 158, 161 n.17, 162 Donde circunda lo vido 1445 Duracin 143 El deseo de la palabra 153, 157, 159 El deseo de la palabra 122, 132, 134 El despertar 24 n.24 El entendimiento 144 El escorial 27 El hombre del antifaz azul 21 n.18 El infierno musical 34, 15, 28, 104, 130, 135, 159 El martirio de beber. . . 159 El ojo de la alegra 52 El poeta y su poema 134 El sueo de la muerte o el lugar de los cuerpos poticos 3, 122, 1256, 146 En contra 123, 161, 162 En esta noche, en este mundo 4, 105, 115 En un lugar para huirse 145 Endechas 121 entrar entrando. . . 146 Escrito cuando sombra 144 Extraccin de la piedra de locura 23, 15, 28, 31, 71, 77, 78, 82, 85, 89, 134, 135, 146 Extraccin de la piedra de locura 3, 313, 77, 849, 122, 130, 1345, 137 Fragmentos para dominar el silencio 3, 124 Fronteras intiles 2 Ha muerto la que. . . 159 Harta del principio femenino 9 Hija del viento 138 Inolvidada: las cosas. . . 159 Jardn o tiempo 1556 La bucanera de Pernambuco o Hilda la polgrafa 4, 5, 8, 10, 15, 29, 37, 479, 545, 91, 102, 151, 152, 156, 157 La condesa sangrienta 4, 10, 14, 15, 17 n.13, 24, 289, 30, 31, 6073, 80 n.10, 91, 92, 127, 161 La de los ojos abiertos 137 La enamorada 1378 La luz cada de la noche 2 La mscara y el poema 117 La mesa verde 105
La noche 2 La oscura 142 La palabra del deseo 122 La tierra ms ajena 1, 23 n.22, 130, 159 La ltima inocencia 2, 132, 1356, 159 La ltima inocencia 2, 5 La nica herida 31 La verdad del bosque 117 Las aventuras perdidas 2, 135, 136, 138, 145 Linterna sorda 3, 127 Lobscurit des eaux 130 Los muertos y la lluvia 50, 52 Los pequeos cantos 118, 141 Los perturbados entre lilas 4 n.6, 8, 15, 36, 40, 416, 117 n.13, 118, 119, 1567 see also Los posedos entre lilas Los posedos entre lilas 4 n.6, 17 n.13, 40 and n.8, 151, 1567 see also Los perturbados entre lilas Los trabajos y las noches 2, 18, 23 n.22, 130 n.1, 135, 139, 1425, 158 Los trabajos y las noches 2, 18 Lucha feroz entre. . . 159 Mendiga voz 158 Mi pueblo de ngeles. . . 159 Moradas 158 Mucho ms all 50, 145 Nia entre azucenas124 no, la verdad no es la msica 104 Noche compartida en el recuerdo de una huida 117, 122 Noche 2, 136 Ojos primitivos 51, 127 Origen 136, 137 Piedra fundamental 3, 51, 11516, 123 Poema para el padre 52 Poema para Emily Dickinson 133 Poesa completa 6, 16, 19, 118 n.14, 130, 14863 Prosa completa 6, 36, 40 n.8, 52, 60, 79, 84, 91, 92, 96, 103 n.27, 111 n.3, 14863 Puerto adelante 1, 2 Quin es yo? 114, 135 Recuerdos de la pequea casa del canto 114 Relectura de Nadja de Andr Breton 824 Reloj 28
SUBJECT INDEX
171
Revelaciones 133 Sala de psicopatologa 52, 126 Salvacin 136 Sentido de su ausencia 143 Silencios 158 Sobre un poema de Rubn Daro 140 Solamente las noches 147 Slo un nombre 2, 50, 104, 1323, 136, 138 Sous la nuit 146 Textos de sombra 162 Textos de sombra y ltimos poemas 104, 1538 Tu voz 143 Un boleto objetivo 1 Una traicin mstica 123, 125 Vagar en lo opaco 2 Violario 301 Yo soy 2 Zona prohibida 153, 1589 Pizarnik de Nessis, Myriam 149, 150 Plath, Sylvia 127 n.20 Plato 66, 70, 71 Poe, Edgar Allan 83 potes maudits 1, 5, 21, 51 Porchia, Antonio 7 Porra, Francisco 99, 100 n.17 Posso, Karl 10, 15 n.6, 80 n.10, 81 n.14 Pound, Ezra 119, 144 Princeton 3 n.4, 4, 5, 6 and n.12, 7 n.16, 9 and n.2324, 52, 53 n.33, 79, 81 n.15, 11028, 141 n.17, 149, 158 Proust, Marcel 54, 120 Quevedo, Francisco de 3 n.4, 7, 10, 110, 112, 116, 125 Quincey, Thomas de 119 Quinquela Martn, Benito 1 Quixote, Don 84, 89 Redon, Odilon 1 Rich, Adrienne 13 Rimbaud, Arthur 1, 42, 78, 81, 83, 84, 86, 889, 112, 118, 120, 134 Rodrguez-Francia, Ana Mara 45 n.21, 82 n.18, 141 n.18 Rossi, Cecilia 9 Roth, Philip 54 Rulfo, Juan 26 Running, Thorpe 4, 81 Rodrguez-Monegal, Emir 79, 101 Romanticism 17, 21, 78 n.5, 105, 111 Ruysbroeck, Jan van 856 Rosenbaum, Alfredo 116
Saavedra, Carlos Castro 79 Sacher-Masoch, Leopold von 63 Sade, Marquis de 61, 63, 64, 65, 68, 702, 81 Snchez Robayna, Andrs 79 Sand, George 118 Sartre, Jean-Paul 78, 81 Sayers, Dorothy L. 81 Scarafia, Silvia 61 n.7 Schehad, Georges 7, 125 Schor, Naomi 25, 115 n.10 Schubert, Franz 52 Schulz, Bruno 80 Schulze, Alfred Otto Wolfgang see Wols Scobie, James R. 51 n.27 Seabra Ferreira, M. A. 61 n.6 Senghor, Lopold Sdar 79, 91 n.1, 106, 107 Senkman, Leonardo 8 n.21, 51, 57 Sergio, Jorge 92 Shaw, George Bernard 48 Shelley, Percy Bysshe 42, 118 Shultz de Mantovani, Frida 56 Sierra, Marta 71 n.25 Singer, Ester 82 Soncini, Anna 111 n.2 Starobinski, Jean 119, 127 Stevens, Wallace 114 Storni, Alfonsina 5 Stutman, Osas 39, 55, 57, 1501, 152 Surrealism 1, 5, 7, 10, 20, 21, 30, 36, 38, 40 and n.9, 44, 7782, 845, 879, 98 n.13, 102, 111, 125, 127 Symbolists 20 Talmud, the 52 and n.30, 54, 115 tango 42, 117 and n.13 Tanning, Dorothea 85 Telaak, Anastasia 53, 54, 57 Unamuno, Miguel de 39, 122 Ungaretti, Giuseppe 10 Valente, Jos ngel 79 Valesio, Paolo 1516, 20, 32 Valry, Paul 112, 148 Vallejo, Csar 37, 118 Varela, Blanca 789 Valle-Incln, Ramn del 113 Verlaine, Paul 112 Venti, Patricia 114, 14950 Vige, Claude 104 Vlad the Impaler 61
172
SUBJECT INDEX
Weiss, Jason 7 Wilson, Jason 7, 8, 37, 79 n.9, 95, 118 Wols 1, 142 Woolf, Virginia 14950 Xirau, Ramn 79 Zeppelin, Count Ferdinand von 47 Zuluaga, Gustavo 6, 154 n.12

Arbol de Alejandra Pizarnik Reassessed Ed Fiona J Mackintosh Karl Posso

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Arbol de Alejandra Pizarnik Reassessed Ed Fiona J Mackintosh Karl Posso

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Coleccin Tmesis SERIE A: MONOGRAFAS, 248

RBOL DE ALEJANDRA PIZARNIK REASSESSED

Founding Editor J. E. Varey

General Editor Stephen M. Hart

Editorial Board Alan Deyermond Julian Weiss Charles Davis

RBOL DE ALEJANDRA PIZARNIK REASSESSED

Gender, Sexuality and Silence(s) in the Writing of Alejandra Pizarnik

Different Aspects of Humour and Wordplay in the Work of Alejandra Pizarnik

Alejandra Pizarnik, Surrealism and Reading

Alejandra Pizarnik, the Perceptive Reader

Alejandra Pizarniks palais du vocabulaire: Constructing the cuerpo potico

Alejandra Pizarniks Poetry: Translating the Translation of Subjectivity

130 148 165

The Complete Works of Alejandra Pizarnik? Editors and Editions

FIONA J. MACKINTOSH AND KARL POSSO

FIONA J. MACKINTOSH AND KARL POSSO

Tradition and Voices

FIONA J. MACKINTOSH AND KARL POSSO

FIONA J. MACKINTOSH AND KARL POSSO

FIONA J. MACKINTOSH AND KARL POSSO

FIONA J. MACKINTOSH AND KARL POSSO

Gender, Sexuality and Silence(s) in the Writing of Alejandra Pizarnik

SUSANA CHVEZ SILVERMAN

GENDER, SEXUALITY AND SILENCE(S)

SUSANA CHVEZ SILVERMAN

GENDER, SEXUALITY AND SILENCE(S)

que emana toda la noche profecas.

SUSANA CHVEZ SILVERMAN

GENDER, SEXUALITY AND SILENCE(S)

SUSANA CHVEZ SILVERMAN

GENDER, SEXUALITY AND SILENCE(S)

SUSANA CHVEZ SILVERMAN

GENDER, SEXUALITY AND SILENCE(S)

SUSANA CHVEZ SILVERMAN

GENDER, SEXUALITY AND SILENCE(S)

SUSANA CHVEZ SILVERMAN

GENDER, SEXUALITY AND SILENCE(S)

SUSANA CHVEZ SILVERMAN

GENDER, SEXUALITY AND SILENCE(S)

SUSANA CHVEZ SILVERMAN

GENDER, SEXUALITY AND SILENCE(S)

SUSANA CHVEZ SILVERMAN

GENDER, SEXUALITY AND SILENCE(S)

SUSANA CHVEZ SILVERMAN

GENDER, SEXUALITY AND SILENCE(S)

Different Aspects of Humour and Wordplay in the Work of Alejandra Pizarnik

DIFFERENT ASPECTS OF HUMOUR AND WORDPLAY

Essays, Diaries, Correspondence

DIFFERENT ASPECTS OF HUMOUR AND WORDPLAY

Theatre: Los perturbados entre lilas

DIFFERENT ASPECTS OF HUMOUR AND WORDPLAY

DIFFERENT ASPECTS OF HUMOUR AND WORDPLAY

DIFFERENT ASPECTS OF HUMOUR AND WORDPLAY

DIFFERENT ASPECTS OF HUMOUR AND WORDPLAY

The Late Prose Work: La bucanera de Pernambuco o Hilda la polgrafa

See Mara Negronis discussion of this phrase in El testigo lcido, p. 92.

DIFFERENT ASPECTS OF HUMOUR AND WORDPLAY

Pizarnik and Jewishness

In a later poem she laments

DIFFERENT ASPECTS OF HUMOUR AND WORDPLAY

DIFFERENT ASPECTS OF HUMOUR AND WORDPLAY

DIFFERENT ASPECTS OF HUMOUR AND WORDPLAY