Self-Censorship and New Voices in Pizarnik`s Unpublished
Contents
1. As me quer a despe ada sobre la hoja en blanco deseosa s lo de lo bello de hacer lo bello Pero alguien en m observaba y condenaba Est s huyendo dec a te escapas no te aceptas no te aceptas imperfecta y con deseos como todo el mundo Ni siquiera te aceptas el hambre o la necesidad de amar con toda crueldad seleccionaste en t y expulsaste lo que se parece a lo que tienen todos box 7 folder 38 Creo que me obligo Edgardo Dobry La poes a de Alejandra Pizarnik una lectura de Extracci n de la piedra de locura Cuadernos hispanoamericanos 644 2004 33 43 p 33 20 So we see again why such pieces as the canto to Martha Moia could not be published it expresses all too clearly la necesidad de amar which as Pizarnik acknowledges she forcibly banishes from her self image along with anything else that makes her part of this world One other aspect of the particular which is rigorously censored even from her nueva po tica is that pertaining to the political She believed that un poema pol tico no s lo es un mal poema sino una mala pol tica Prosa 308 and Grant observes that in the posthumously published version of La bucanera few real political figures and certainly no contemporary ones are alluded to Per n the most obvious contemporary reference was in fact present but then censored from an early draft of La polka in L2. after her death with the result that although as Catherine Grant observes changed conditions of production and reception allowed the transgressive work La bucanera de Pernambuco o Hilda la pol grafa to be published posthumously in 1982 other prose texts particularly those with a lesbian focus have to this day remained unpublished Nevertheless it is still viable to talk of self censorship within the overall ongoing process of self editing since there is clear manuscript evidence of deletions and suppressions clustering around particularly sensitive and intimate issues Grant s conclusions about why the majority of La bucanera was not published in Pizarnik s lifetime are further supported by the Princeton material that has subsequently become available to scholars to be discussed here As Grant argues Pizarnik managed to alienate her literary advisors or at least made the m unwilling to consider this collection of texts as worthy of literary publication and of taking up their place alongside the poet s earlier consecrated body of work Carolina Depetris analysing Pizarnik s deliberate rutina po tica diferente after 1968 which includes La bucanera likewise documents how this viraje incluso una revulsi n en el trabajo po tico de Pizarnik brings her into conflict with her potential readership Contemporary reviewers were certainly making negative judgements about the change in direction Pizarnik s w
3. according to her aesthetic of the publishable must be an object from which almost all traces of the speaking subject as an individual self are erased almost asphyxiated hence the proliferation of poetic images of stones in the poet s throat Even within the context of linguistic excess which is La bucanera where proper names abound Pizarnik is still careful to censor those which are neither universal nor purely fictional for example she crosses out Anita B presumably her friend Anita Barrenechea and replaces her with the ludic fictional character Bosta Watson The contrast between this aesthetic which rigorously excludes the everyday and that of Pizarnik s recitas en prosa box 7 folder 38 could not be greater These 90 or so pages of short prose pieces whose titles including various called Encuentro El encuentro Encuentros reveal their literary heritage of the surrealist rencontre impr vue highlighted in Pizarnik s notes on Breton box 8 folder 14 are almost all quasi autobiographical This opening of the floodgates of the personal and particular is surely a contributory factor to Pizarnik s withholding them from publication Although in third person rather than first their focus is always on the reactions of ella to such mundane situations as life in a student residence or looking for a room to rent The longest Oto o o los de arriba refers to her neighbours mention
4. of personal risk and authenticity Yet este mundo also refers to the mundane the particular and everyday with which she tries to compromise in her recitas only to reject it in the brutal linguistic play which is La bucanera What emerges through the unpublished material studied here a fraction of the Princeton archive is that in the late sixties and up to her death in 1972 Pizarnik subjects herself to rigorous self editing and censorship whilst and as a direct consequence of going beyond her previous self imposed limits in terms of genre reference to sexuality and to the concrete and particular What she is wrestling with having been the poeta de lo inefable is her increasing need for a nueva po tica which will express her tortuously evolving and contradictory notions of the literary and of her own ambivalent sexual identity in an authentic way But in her literary context with the texts she has as models and with the largely hostile reception of friends and literary critics alike there is as yet no place for such expression Pizarnik therefore simultaneously censors unfitting aspects of her nueva po tica whilst resenting and writing against her own censorship 65 Michel Leiris De la literatura considerada como una tauromaquia translated by Alejandra Pizarnik and Silvia Delpy Sur 315 1968 12 21 p 20 29
5. Download date 25 Nov 2015 Self Censorship and New Voices in Pizarnik s Unpublished Manuscripts Fiona J Mackintosh University of Edinburgh I A x 1 Ya no es eficaz para m el lenguaje que hered de unos extra os n t 2 2 Dir n que andas por un camino equivocado si andas por tu camino This article analyses self censorship within the broader context of self editing in a range of unpublished manuscript material by Argentinian poet Alejandra Pizarnik 1936 72 Pizarnik s self editing in part influenced by anticipation of negative critical reception is determined by her own restrictive concepts of what constitutes publishable literature From the mid sixties onwards her letters and diaries bear witness to her increasing difficulty in continuing to write in what had become her trademark and categorizable mode that of the poeta l rico amenazado por lo inefable y lo incomunicable She repeatedly expresses desires to write in prose and her manuscripts of the time experiment with many prose voices ranging from ludic to erotic from Parisian fl neur to self chronicler Yet these new voices inevitably force Pizarnik to confront and transgress her own previous notions of literature and of what is appropriate for publication in her literary context The outcome of these internal conflicts is anxious self editing which particularly as regards sexuality shades into self censorship Determining which texts the poet herself
6. Ediciones de la Flor 1972 25 47 Juan Jacobo Bajarl a cites the insult mala hija mujer de la calle used of Pizarnik by her mother Alejandra Pizarnik anatom a de un recuerdo Buenos Aires Almagesto 1998 138 48 Evelyn Fishburn Different Aspects of Humour and Wordplay in the Work of Alejandra Pizarnik in rbol de Alejandra 36 59 pp 55 56 Different Aspects of Humour 57 22 conjunction with various other unpublished pieces specifically addressing her Jewish identity such as F bula del coito box 7 folder 32 the continuation of Oto o o los de arriba box 7 folder 31 However the point here is that in projecting onto the mother figure this criticism of her work Pizarnik oscillates between attacking perceived repression and revealing insecurities about the reception of her writing La Morral amp Nicht C mique refers to Section 9 of the Indice ingenuo to La bucanera which is entitled Abstrakta o Moral and Nicht C mike Prosa 92 The allusion to Aristotle s Organon and Poetics reinforces the link with La bucanera which includes among its characters el hada Arist teles Prosa 108 making it clear that the self criticism is directed at La bucanera in particular the very work from which the whole passage has subsequently been deleted As the quotation underlines not only the issue of writing in a pornographic mode but also the chaotic nature of these prose
7. En l el corredor me hac a adulta mi esp ritu se elevaba mi fantas a irracional se calmaba mis im genes mis alucinaciones todo se reun a en un orden hermoso Pero era s lo en el corredor Cuando llegaba a mi pieza ya no hab a m s orden Volv a a la de siempre a las de siempre a las que est n en m y pelean a muerto todo el d a y toda la noche box 7 folder 38 Pizarnik frequently comments on artists who need to be in extreme situations to be able to work giving Nerval and Baudelaire as examples Necesitan de perspectivas catastr ficas pour donner tout leur mesure sic box 8 folder 2 Le for at du vouloir Pizarnik s own catastrophic perspective comes from the severe limitation of her own poetic boundaries Yo morir del m todo po tico que me cre para mi uso y abuso Diarios 335 She remains reluctant to abandon this restricted perspective and its associated Malte Brigge lifestyle fearing loss of poetic integrity This dilemma is worked through in a prose narrative where after grudgingly accepting her T o Alain s offer of financial assistance she dreams about being barred entry to a house with the words Esta casa es para los desnudos y los despose dos box 7 folder 38 Presumably this is her former casa del lenguaje from which her new bourgeois financial security has now banished her 27 Although Depetris is right to question the normative reading of Pizarnik s late works as mere i
8. describes her Correspondencia 289 in La motociclette make for less congenial literary models Significantly in her largely literal translation of La mar e where a man narrates obliging his younger cousin to have oral sex in a cave at high tide Pizarnik modifies the narrator s claim to power over Julie je pouvais tout lui faire 22 to pod a intentar 27 See Ana Mar a Rodr guez Francia La disoluci n en la obra de Alejandra Pizarnik Buenos Aires Corregidor 2003 375 82 Jason Wilson Alejandra Pizarnik Surrealism and Reading in rbol de Alejandra Pizarnik Reassessed ed Fiona J Mackintosh with Karl Posso Woodbridge Tamesis 2007 77 90 p 78 2 Published in Mascarets Paris Gallimard 1971 109 50 12 todo 23 Furthermore when he states Py resterai aussi longtemps que la mar e montera referring to his penis in Julie s mouth Pizarnik translates Permanecer en ella en tanto la marea suba objectifying the penis and distancing it grammatically from the narrating I This disputing of phallic power reappears more humorously in Otofo o los de arriba where Pizarnik and her neighbour Max s whistling contest implicitly offers Max s wife as the sexual prize era como un falo de aire que Max y yo nos disputabamos en honor de Saaaaaara sic Box 7 folder 31 Whether humorously or otherwise Pizarnik is clearly searching for a more actively woman centr
9. m gico o un animal sagrado algo para ampararme Like a comic strip version of her earlier published poetry the elements are there but utterly changed in tone register and impact It is like a distorted echo of Reconocimiento Tu hiciste de mi vida un cuento para ni os en donde naufragios y muertes son pretextos de ceremonias adorables Poes a 161 The wealth of prose experimentation contained in Pizarnik s unpublished manuscripts is amply eloquent of her aesthetic dilemmas as she sought new modes of expression Pizarnik could not benefit from the reassurance of hindsight that some of her later prose work would finally find its place in authorized discourse so she experienced the anguish of censoring that which she felt was unpublishable thereby betraying her new voices Mar a Negroni s images of the besieged medieval castle and of an ars impo tica communicate this dilemma very vividly Este mundo for Pizarnik 62 Alejandra Pizarnik despu s de 1968 64 Grant A Private Revolution 72 Mar a Negroni El testigo l cido la obra de sombra de Alejandra Pizarnik Rosario Beatriz Viterbo 2003 11 15 28 spells established gender politics and literary modes an other world would be one without restrictive gender roles where she could write the body in its ambivalent advances and retreats from lesbianism with freedom of genre committed only to Michel Leiris notion of the g nero mayor
10. she underlines the phrase la necesidad de reconstituci n del Androgyne primordial box 8 folder 14 Amongst the typescripts for La bucanera we find Novedades er ticas para mi t a Marta Tiresias box 7 folder 1 this text was excluded from Becciu s posthumously established sequence presumably on the grounds that since it only appears in one of the four groups of unpublished texts from which La bucanera was subsequently assembled whereas a core of other texts reappear in all four drafts it might be supposed that Pizarnik had already decided not to include it Novedades consists of a dialogue between la t a and la ni a Josefina who titillates her aunt with punning erotic descriptions of her encounter with a man The aunt s name Tiresias blind prophet of Greek Ivonne Bordelois Correspondencia Pizarnik Buenos Aires Planeta 1998 15 referred to subsequently in the text as Correspondencia This happened to Carol in Los perturbados entre lilas as Pizarnik comments to Ivonne Bordelois Sab s que Carolina se convirti en un hombrecito ahora se llama Carol Correspondencia 295 Perhaps referencing Guillaume Apollinaire s surrealist drama Les Mamelles de Tir sias 1918 or as the BSS reader of this article kindly suggests T S Eliot s The Waste Land 1922 26 In her unpublished diaries box 3 folder 1 under the heading textos m os Pizarnik puts the cryptic not
11. texts un mish mash causes anxiety leading to censorship The question of genre is recurrently problematic for Pizarnik Writing extended prose confronts her with the need to develop and sustain larger narrative structures which is something she finds difficult One of her manuscript corrections to the section preceding that quoted above also reveals this generic ambiguity felt by her as she refers to el euente texto de Pizarnik box 6 folder 45 and this genre trouble recurs throughout the unpublished piece Pero este cuento es como el siglo un cambaleche sic The punning reference to Disc polo s famous 1935 tango Cambalache underlines the chaotic and anarchic nature of her prose Pizarnik received little literary encouragement for her generically unclassifiable texts and frank disapproval from some friends such as Laure Bataillon box 8 folder 21 and Cristina Campo box 9 folder 1 although H ctor Bianciotti does mention a proposed collection of textos inclasificables as an enthusiastic response to Pizarnik s amusing description of her texticulos box 8 folder 23 Pizarnik copies out a phrase 50 In this piece Pizarnik s self positioning vis vis her Jewish neighbours is uncertain C mo imaginar que estos pr speros jud os que ni siquiera hablan en idish son en verdad pobres inmigrantes que todav a no bajaron del barco para ellos que se asustan ante la perspectiva de bajar en la gran m
12. 3 but then exclaims Oh el disco ha cambiado y Lotte Lenya se revela envejecida Prosa 44 activates the dangerously cursi image of 2 For an analysis of this canto todo entero para M box 6 folder 35 see Fiona J Mackintosh Auto censura y la imposibilidad del amor en Alejandra Pizarnik 1936 72 in the forthcoming Actas del VIII congreso de la AEELH A trav s de la vanguardia hispanoamericana or genes desarrollo transformaciones 2 David William Foster The Representation of the Body in the Poetry of Pizarnik Hispanic Review 62 3 1994 319 47 339 5 a couple holding hands the trap into which love had led her Pizarnik evokes that bygone happiness with reference to her old familiar images of shelter quedan las canciones que escuchamos con las manos juntas yo temblando de alegr a porque vos eras mi casa mi cueva mi mad sic riguera mi patria mi puerto reposaba en tus ojos mir ndome The difference is that in the aesthetic which ruled Los trabajos y las noches and other poetry from which these well worn images stem the refuge could be sought but never attained whereas here the poet had found that refuge in the loved one only to lose 1t We are reminded of En esta noche en este mundo and of the lines la sinceridad absoluta continuar a siendo lo imposible when she goes on to say he querido vivir un poema sobre lo imposible te transform en mi imposible aun t
13. But she resents this dependency saying me duele esconderme detr s de un libro para decir lo que yo quiero Diarios 451 and therefore she censors traces of her source texts For example in parallel to her essay Humor de Borges y Bioy Casares on their book Seis problemas para don Isidro Parodi we have Pizarnik s Microantolog a box 7 folder 26 a five page collection of unattributed quotations which are largely drawn precisely from Bustos Domecq the pseudonym used by Borges and Bioy in this and other co authored works The stylistic assessment Pizarnik makes of Seis problemas could apply equally to her La bucanera los personajes y los actos est n y acontecen s lo por obra y gracia del lenguaje que los sustenta Prosa 279 making it plausible that this mode of humour was a model for La bucanera as Cristina Pi a has suggested Indeed the word poligrafo is used in the introduction to describe Bustos which may have given Pizarnik the idea for La bucanera s subtitle Hilda la poligrafa Pizarnik censors the only explicit reference to her source in the Microantolog a under the subheading Un compadrito she has crossed out the phrase T piee persenaje earo a Borges box 7 folder 26 So as with her palais du vocabulaire which was a treasure trove of phrases from other writers which then were transmuted and incorporated invisibly into her own poetry Pizarnik anthologizes these snippets of humorous
14. THE UNIVERSITY of EDINBURGH Edinburgh Research Explorer Self Censorship and New Voices in Pizarnik s Unpublished Manuscripts Citation for published version Mackintosh FJ 2010 Self Censorship and New Voices in Pizarnik s Unpublished Manuscripts Bulletin of Spanish Studies vol 87 no 4 pp 509 535 10 1080 14753820 2010 483141 Digital Object Identifier DOI 10 1080 14753820 2010 483141 Link Link to publication record in Edinburgh Research Explorer Document Version Author final version often known as postprint Published In Bulletin of Spanish Studies Publisher Rights Statement O Mackintosh F J 2010 Self Censorship and New Voices in Pizarnik s Unpublished Manuscripts Bulletin of Spanish Studies 87 4 509 535 10 1080 14753820 2010 483141 General rights Copyright for the publications made accessible via the Edinburgh Research Explorer is retained by the author s and or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights Take down policy The University of Edinburgh has made every reasonable effort to ensure that Edinburgh Research Explorer content complies with UK legislation If you believe that the public display of this file breaches copyright please contact openaccess ed ac uk providing details and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim OPEN ACCESS
15. a F Goldberg Alejandra Pizarnik the Perceptive Reader in rbol de Alejandra 91 109 pp 99 103 58 Ultimo Round 1969 16 edn 2004 vol 2 110 11 Cort zar borrowed text culo from Raymond Queneau s Exercices de style Paris Gallimard 1947 Pizarnik was also familiar with Queneau Prosa 279 See also material for this article in box 8 folder 15 According to his letters by September 1970 Cort zar had already written some 200 pages of what would become Libro de Manuel see letter to Graciela de Sol in April 1971 presumably Pizarnik knew of it 25 Podes salir con Julite Cort zar chico tan serie c mo gana pero c mo ahorra en el Cr dit Lyonais cada centavo Y es un si or escritor Y no le vergoinsa ahumade scribir Cartas a M mele box 6 folder 45 Humour aside Pizarnik s jibe about money resentfully implies that Cort zar has somehow sold out as a writer In her unpublished prose text Dos visitas Pizarnik seems enviously to mock the kinds of rebellion associated with Cort zar s prose as ephemeral and inauthentic perhaps as a way of justifying her own pure poetic rebellion her utterly apolitical volc nvelorio del lenguaje Prosa 109 In Dos visitas the narrator s friend Beb is proud of her filiaci n violencia gritos jazz v rtigo beatniks Henry Miller la verdadera vida est ausente los paseos a las tres de la mafiana por el quai de Bra
16. a bucanera Domingo Peron inventor del poror y del peron dije reconoci Cojota haci ndole justicialicia y su mujer Evita Bara antigua cabaretera del generalife como bien lo declar vox lori Chiche Ongan n primo del Estaginita y madre de Juan Domingo Il y a pas de quoi se vanter box 6 folder 43 Per n becomes Peron a legbone fibula as well as inventor of maize flowers poror Cojota derived from la Coja ensimismada authorial alter ego throughout La bucanera sounds as if she is dressing down in flip flops ojotas and does Per n justice by alluding to the partido justicialista yet subverts it through proximity to the topsy turvy world of Alicia en el pa s de las maravillas one of Pizarnik s private obsessions Evita s mythicized low life origins are proclaimed by the voice of parrots instead of the vox populi and the names of other political figures are similarly distorted Ongan a becomes Ongan n Illia is gallicized as Il y a there is nothing to be proud of Likewise the following is cut Vos conserveta mierda sos id ntico a vos peroneta de mierda id ntico a vos radidcaca de mierda id ntico a vos sucialista y a vos comunosta democrista de mierda de mierda y a todos los que los pari y que son la miesma o la mierda de las mierdas box 6 folder 43 In this blackly humorous take on equality all political persuasions are distorted conservative peronist radical so
17. actively witheld from publication and which were simply considered unfinished is problematic Pizarnik s family and Ana Becciu clearly exercise censorship of her diaries existing manuscript diary entries for much of January 1970 box 2 folder 9 pertaining to Pizarnik s relationship with Silvina Ocampo are omitted from the published Diarios as is her diary for 1972 box 3 folder 1 which centres on her relationship with Martha I Moia and it is likely that similar external censorship was in operation with Pizarnik s prose and poetry texts gratefully acknowledge the support of the AHRC Research Leave scheme Grant Ref AH F014813 1 in undertaking this research and the helpful comments of the BSS anonymous reader Alejandra Pizarnik Prosa completa ed Ana Becciu Barcelona Lumen 2001 61 referred to subsequently in the text as Prosa Antonio Porchia Voces Buenos Aires Hachette 1978 1943 26 Material from the Alejandra Pizarnik Papers C0 395 Department of Rare Books and Special Collections Princeton University Library See http diglib princeton edu ead eadGetDoc xq id ead mss C0395 EAD xml amp query kw 3 A Pizarnik Subsequent references will be in the form box folder with handwriting distinguished from typewriting by fonts I thank AnnaLee Pauls at Princeton for bibliographical assistance Alejandra Pizarnik Diarios ed Ana Becciu Barcelona Lumen 2003 413 referred to subsequently in the text
18. agined in its most violent and transgressive form indicates the degree to which Pizarnik represses it Indicative of this repression is the fact that me linking the difficulty to her personal experience is a later addition to the original less personal statement Stylistic censorship is also in operation When trying to find the words to express orgasms the poet says me desdoblo me destriple Presumably me destriplo is cut out because it veers towards the punning humorous mode of La bucanera rather than to this text which is serious in its erotic intent and indeed subsequently seeks legitimacy through allusion to that erotic classic the Kama Sutra Yet the kind of rhetorical play found in her early prose poems such as Se cerr el sol se cerr el sentido del sol se ilumin el sentido de cerrarse Poes a 346 is acceptable here dejo me dejo te dejo te me dejo que juegue mos todos los roles imposibles o no Note once again the uncertainty about what is possible and what is not as with Moia s love mi imposible aun tanto posible but the emphasis here is clearly on shifting roles rather than assuming a fixed lesbian identity Patricia Venti La dama de estas ruinas un estudio sobre La condesa sangrienta de Alejandra Pizarnik El Escorial Dedalus 2008 83 6 4 From Sappho to Baffo 256 7 17 The first version of Diana de Lesbos finishes as follows repeating the leitmotif of being not
19. anto posible Because of this impossibility her impossible love with Martha which nevertheless had become something possible and the impossibility of living this experience as a poem according to her restricted notion of poem she has no option but to effectively censor her new poetic self by returning to the circumscribed poetic world which Martha had encouraged her to abandon This sterile world is evoked by the desert and emptiness which recall the iconic personae la silenciosa en el desierto and la viajera con el vaso vacio Poes a 105 from Arbol de Diana ahora vuelvo a la escritura debilitada por un a o de d as de esperarte vuelvo a la two words deleted al desierto y al vac o The process of seeking refuge from reality in familiar poetic tropes is cyclical some ten years earlier she had declared a causa de mi sentimiento de abandono me encierro en m alentada por cierta literatura que me dice de la imposibilidad del amor Diarios 232 Another unpublished poem which Pizarnik appears to have held back from publication since it too like the canto and the dernier po me avec M I M transgresses the aesthetic limits of her published poetry is the untitled poem beginning thus fuiste mi nica patria mi lugar de reposo mi espacio adorable ahora m desconcierto alegr a de haberte encontrado agon a de saberte lejos al alcance de cualquier criatura que no sea yo yo que me quedo
20. ara quemarla yo el espiritu de la bondad Y a Si vina hubie se aplicado un consolador para ning omanos de manerla de hacerla doler vida m a de que mjef muera despiertta de sue o y no habiendo aprendido todo a medias u a cua cuartas pero solo se que amo a marta con o dil n sexxo con o sin la amor box 6 folder 35 Distinguishing between typing errors and verbal play is hazardous in this text The splitting of words such as sospd pecho sa for sospechosa or es trangbulada for estrangulada may be accidental or may reproduce what Ivonne Bordelois characterized as Pizarnik s idiosyncratic diction entrecortaba imprevisiblemente sus palabras Jouce may be an error for Joyce but may also be a Joycean word play with jouir The symbol repeatedly appears where there should be an acute accent presumably an accident of Pizarnik s skills with an Olivetti but Un carnicera may be a mistake or may deliberately add to the gender confusion already created by the phallic reina cristina the muchachita vestida de muchachito and the reference to Woolf s Orlando famous for changing sex in the course of the novel Such androgynous elements are a feature of various of Pizarnik s unpublished erotic texts revealing Pizarnik s exploration of different aspects of sexuality in parallel to different voices and aesthetics Indeed when making notes on Breton s Du surrealisme en ses oeuvres vives 1953
21. c de Triomphe la Sorbonne la rue Furstenberg all in En un principio names of individuals as we saw in the liminal text un ramo such as Mart n Julio and Susana Th non in Tres en una motoneta and events such as a visit to un cabaret de fama dudosa porque lo frecuenta gente sexualmente indecisa also in Tres en una motoneta Pizarnik s published poetry where en vano buscaremos alg n indicio de esa estad a en Par s finds its contracara in this female fl neur this errar todo el d a por Paris and Caminar caminar junto al Sena box 7 folder 38 However as we saw demonstrated in her anxious censorship of the new sexual voice here too Pizarnik undergoes an internal struggle Her earlier poetic ideals feel increasingly like a pose but although this causes her distress she persists in a certain reluctance to make concessions to the mundane and prosaic which in this case would entail the indignity of bajar hasta el Self service de al lado y comprar papas fritas Summing up her dilemma she writes Me sent a contenta Me identificaba con Balzac y con Malte Brigge y con todos los que escribieron en una miserable piecita de un quinto piso de Paris Sab a que mi identificaci n era infantil que mi contento respond a a que ve a y tocaba la imagen que me hab a hecho de m misma cuando era una adolescente sola pobre escribiendo y nada m s
22. ci n probable de comunicaci n con l I shall argue that Pizarnik oscillates between these positions experimenting with escribir para la mierda but then self censoring this writing MUNDOINMUNDO El no amor box 7 folder 38 ineffability and the impossibility of love the most poetic is precisely that which cannot be written down un testimonio que yo dar sebr debo dar sobre la imposibilidad del amor Pizarnik Box 6 folder 27 unpublished The characteristic consecrated style largely favoured by Pizarnik s critics presupposed a notion of poetry in which love is not possible both it and language being doomed to failure to ineffability or 19 Depetris Alejandra Pizarnik despu s de 1968 62 Clar n 12 March 1972 12 lt A Private Revolution 74 Alejandra Pizarnik despu s de 1968 66 P Alejandra Pizarnik despu s de 1968 68 14 Virginia Woolf Orlando London Virago 1993 1928 165 incommunicabilit las palabras no hacen el amor hacen la ausencia The poem quoted En esta noche en este mundo was published in Pizarnik s lifetime and epitomizes this view of poetry whereas Solamente las noches which contains an uncharacteristically positive and intimate image en esta noche en este mundo abrazada a vos Poes a 427 dated 1972 remained unpublished in her lifetime In the here and now of this night Pizarnik s adoptive realm and
23. cialist communist and democrat are all insistently linked to shit and dirt They are made obscene in the strictly etymological sense caenum mud or filth OED Pizarnik s new lt A private revolution 70 45 See Fiona J Mackintosh La peque a Alice Alejandra Pizarnik and Alice in Wonderland in Fragmentos Revista de Lingua e Literatura Estrangeiras Florian polis 9 1 1999 41 55 21 voices may permit aligning her with certain growing feminist neobaroque or neobarroso trends but she censors any tendency to become directly political Censorship by genre para nosotros el ensayo de simulaci n de enfermedades antisociales reemplazar a ventajosamente a la balada al A s A 46 soneto a la epopeya al poema sin pies ni cabeza y otros g neros caducos I have reiterated how Pizarnik s critical reception which consecrated the aesthetic epitomized in En esta noche en este mundo was one of the restrictive factors in her search for new voices and modes of expression Pizarnik s rebellion against this paternalistic authority of literary critics is curiously channelled through resistance to the mother figure with whom her relationship was admittedly difficult In an unpublished 9 page continuation of Helioglobo from La bucanera end of box 6 folder 45 we see how Pizarnik ferociously caricatures the mother presenting her stereotypically as an uneducated Jewish immigrant but then ventriloquizes h
24. cibido el don del Sexo del modo en que yo BL Ne te amo pero me calient s y esto a vos que me amas te hace sentir Angela de Foligno Me gusta echarte de espaldas y meterte dos o tres dedos en tanto tu culo merecedor tambi n el de uno de los dedos da cuentas por tu dolor de mi identidad soy la que conduce las posturas de un juego sexual interpretado por dos ni as laber ntieas monstruos Y como el dolor de tu culo me excita tambi n te excit s per tu parte y vas cediendo princesita de la m s 4 A thirteenth century Italian woman who committed confessed and atoned for a shameful sin 15 alta torrre sic del castillo de mis los sue os m s depravados y candorosos vives vives vivos y sobretodo m sticos m s peligrosos Associating their shared bed with a grave version one links lesbianism to death but perhaps it is only a fixed lesbian identity that has this negativity since in the revised version which adds in the notion of varied sexual games Pizarnik refers to the two of them as ni as laber ntieas 00er recalling the poem Para Janis Joplin where the poet positively places her trust in precisely una ni a monstruo Poes a 422 La trampa del lenguaje acts as shorthand for her earlier poetic aesthetic which has now been substituted by the trap of the physical and erotic metonymically represented by the tongue which composes a kind of poetry of the body me hund
25. d a en ochenta mundos for her El text culo de la cuesti n in La bucanera Having reviewed his Historias de cronopios y de famas she later tries writing Instrucciones para box 5 folder 5 notebook dated 1970 as exemplified in the Manual de instrucciones section of Cort zar s text Where Cort zar has the text Instrucciones para cantar Pizarnik gives us merely the title Instrucciones para bostezar and her equivalent of his Instrucciones para dar cuerda al reloj preceded by Pre mbulo a las instrucciones para dar cuerda al reloj is Instrucciones para escribir un manual de instrucciones followed by the rebellious Instrucciones para recibir instrucciones para no escribir un manual de instrucciones This parodic homage continues when she alludes to his Libro de Manuel and its quasi situationist group la joda in La bucanera Pericles y Ch juntaron sus ahorros y compraron un MANUAL PARA LLAMARSE MANUEL Se diplomaron por carta Un cuarto de d a despu s fundieron una fundici n de ense anza de la joda Prosa 140 All is not homage however She makes a slightly mocking reference to Cort zar in the Yiddish mama section discussed earlier having mama hold him up as an example to her of a serious boy who saves money and isn t embarrassed to write letters to mother perhaps a humorous reference to his short story Cartas de Mam 7 See Florind
26. e p 8 censura de texte erotique Ma Tiresias archiv 10 mythological fame who was a woman for seven years gives rise to gender confusion throughout the text with Josefina unsure whether to refer to herself and her aunt as nosotros or nosotras Marta Tiresias has testiculas sic rather than test culos which elicit curious questioning from Josefina in the style of Little Red Riding Hood T a para qu ten s pel The implied pelotas are deftly avoided by the aunt completing the question as pelos but Josefina insists T a Y si te preguntase por qu ten s el equipo de mina piola y adem s un purretito reo y dos bolas Stylistically the text differs from La bucanera in attempting to create pyschologically consistent albeit sexually indeterminate characters which may explain Pizarnik s own exclusion of it Other texts treating heterosexual eroticism humorously have likewise remained unpublished for example the seven page vignette DE ASPID su lengua de ar spice inspirado en La maledicencia del P Coloma which details the erotic adventures of a Duque and Duquesa box 6 folder 45 and Lunf the last text in box 6 folder 45 which is a five page description of a voracious sexual encounter between a pibe and a mina told entirely in lunfardo There are various possible reasons for why these diverse texts focusing primarily on sex and eroticism re
27. ed in Diarios 442 she describes the situation in a letter to Mandiargues then adds a footnote j ai fais sur cette histoire un conte box 6 folder 35 As well as venturing into autobiographical terrain Pizarnik is clearly going beyond her own poeta maldita aesthetic limits in pieces such as El Gran Cambio which talks about a positive life change waking early going to breakfast like a normal student and talking to other students about everyday things Sara Cohen El silencio de los poetas Pessoa Pizarnik Celan Michaux Buenos Aires Biblos 2002 54 See box 7 folder 1 and Prosa 134 error introduced between manuscript and published version which has Eatson 19 Y ella se fue a su cuarto aturdida ebria confusa porque todo hab a sido tan f cil las palabras hab an salido de sus labios tan ligeras tan sin cortejos f nebres que se pregunt si tambi n ella no tendr a posibilidades de vivir en este mundo dijo s dijo que era s y siempre dir a s box 7 folder 38 Once again the leitmotif en este mundo is there tempting Pizarnik with the possibility of this world beyond the aesthetic of linguistic failure a world in which she can say yes in contrast to the dama peque sima of Reloj who says NO Poes a 183 The many other short prose vignettes held in box 7 folder 38 are striking for the inclusion of particular details place or street names such as el Ar
28. ed voice yet it is in the territory of specifically lesbian eroticism that Pizarnik s self editing in its acute ambivalence becomes particularly self censoring Susana Chavez Silverman has noted an internalized homophobia in Pizarnik s published work which leads to instances of horrific lesbian sexuality and traces of lesbian autobiography as horror whilst Sylvia Molloy describes Pizarnik as both honouring and defacing the sapphic monument Grant observes many indirect references to lesbianism in La bucanera whilst according to Juan Jacobo Bajarl a el tema del lesbianismo le interesaba tanto como el del ocultismo Ambos seg n ella serv an para descubrirse The discoveries Pizarnik makes through writing lesbian sexuality are as much about her own notions of publishable literature as about her conflictual sexual identity There are many prose pieces with lesbian sexual encounters as their focus none of which were published by Pizarnik nor by her literary executors In Harta del principio femenino Pizarnik at times expresses stark repulsion towards lesbianism yet the handwritten corrections and additions indicate violent ambivalence Estey Harta del principio femenino ara a lugubre o ara a maravillosa y no es que me considere salvada fer de cualquier posible tentaci n de entrar en el nido de ara as de lor mam las lesbianas de Buenos Aires Ne me siente lesbiana NO Me siento com
29. er mother s voice to criticize herself and her work This passage was cut only appearing in one early draft of La bucanera De d nde nacieron sus padreses dijo la gliicklije mame de Freudele de Marxele y de Einsteinle Ch mame cu ndo pens s cerrar esa putaboca que est metaparlar que me quem s delante de los compa eros de la Facultad Y qu pedase de mierde Te vergoinsanl tus p dresis Si no g stante bastante buscate un general de la armierde nasionalishe As te hac es bien la promosionishe y hac s imp cte con tu feia filosof e doinde no se pega una cosa mit di otre cosa Un mish mash Lei tu Organe lei tu Po tishe lei la Morral amp Nicht C mique Pf Por qu pon s t talej porno cuashe i Sos demasiade pornecusher permit que m mele opine por tu bien Arrist tale querride This is part of a much more extensive passage also cut of punning Jewspeak which could profitably be analysed purely for its Yiddish inspired linguistic humour as Evelyn Fishburn analyses Pizarnik s letters to Os as Stutman Fishburn highlights the void that the absence of Jewspeak leaves in the humorous prose this absence is due to Pizarnik s relentless censorship of precisely this element from one version of La bucanera to the next The passage could also be read in Paul luard and Andr Breton La inmaculada concepci n translated by Pizarnik Buenos Aires
30. erio vaginal gradually becomes a more psychoanalytical exploration of the writer s attitude towards lesbian encounters which she admits is altamente parad jico The only way in which Pizarnik really feels free to render homosexuality attractive is by cloaking it in otherworldly myth La homosexual de La sed Sus ojos ten an un brillo tan m tico una fijeza tan terrible que hubiera querido levantarme e introducirme en la pantalla Una mujer as no es homosexual no es 14 nada Es de otro mundo Por eso a n vibro y me disuelvo de deseos de encontrarla Diarios 150 my emphasis This notion of otro mundo is crucial as with the poems for Martha Moia speaking love and particularly lesbian love is taboo within the publishable poetic world summed up in En esta noche en este mundo To speak lesbian love requires another poetic world one which only fully comes into being in literary historical terms after Pizarnik s death This trope of a necessary otherworldliness resurfaces in the unpublished poem Diana de Lesbos box 7 folder 10 which exists in two versions the second reduced by half in length Pizarnik s self censorship as she revises is clearly in evidence in this text since some of the most sexually explicit passages are erased some passages are rendered illegible represented here by xx and other corrections betray ambivalence DIANA DE LESBOS revisar evero 1972 Nuestra cama es una f
31. etr poli ellos venidos de Minsk o de Pinsk qu signific una escritora que silba cada vez que pone un disco para participar de la m sica para simular tambi n ella que tiene una patria This recalls the previously cited passage from Piedra fundamental Poesia 265 This is also apparent in Leika box 6 folder 45 which appears in the Indice piola Prosa 93 but was excluded from later drafts of La bucanera despite being finished It too contains a caricatured Yiddish mama who the narrator character defies Cierre ese pico luso napolitano que el cuento es m o y si me canta les pongo una bomba de pl stico a todos mis persopejes dijo Alejandra Pizarnik 23 from Octavio Paz s El arco y la lira which lends a certain post surrealist authority to this anxiety about genre Si reducimos la poes a a unas cuantas formas picas l ricas dram ticas qu haremos con las novelas los poemas en prosa y esos libros extra os que se llaman Aurelia Los cantos de Maldoror o Nadja box 8 folder 15 These strange books named by Paz were all key texts in Pizarnik s legitimizing genealogy and none is easily classifiable in generic terms In order to try to legitimize her writing in prose therefore Pizarnik once again sought models on which to base her work as she had done previously with La condesa sangrienta nico m todo de trabajo tener delante un modelo Diarios 480
32. gical Breton and luard s La immacul e conception which she translated may have been a model here particularly in the obsessive punning section Essai de simulation de la manie aig e The unpublished text which begins por qu lleueve sic en forma tan mojigata box 7 folder 34 is one of her most automatic but even this reveals a censorious control me salen idioticas frasezuelas 26 porwue me pica la existencia dassein and it ends with the kind of self questioning which also punctuates La bucanera see Prosa 133 134 por que jodiste tanto tratando de dialogar como si plat n no hubiera existido para alejandrita del ca caso A similar self critical voice is present in almost all of her efforts at prose Very near the beginning of Oto o o los de arriba she reveals her anxiety about the genesis and selective detail of a quasi realist narrative Mi punto de partida mentira no tengo ninguno o esta ansiedad acaso o esta inminencia por decirlo todo sabiendo que de ning n modo etc etc box 7 folder 31 This aspect of her self editing stems from desperation associated with writing which harks back to the ineffability topos The censorious self becomes a block to writing as we see in El corredor where at first the hospital whiteness of the corridor in the student residence appalls and frightens her but gradually it becomes a space of liberation from these debilitating internal struggles
33. ic world Sexuality and Eroticism Nada de lo que publiqu hasta ahora me expone He suprimido mis temas centrales el orgasmo poes a y orgasmo Diarios 489 Not only is the notion of love subject to aesthetic self censorship in Pizarnik sexual references are likewise censored in the revision process For example the typescript of Escrito en el crep sculo is reduced by half before publication Poes a 437 and most of the deletions are of material which is either lavatorial punning like that which characterizes La bucanera Se amp eras y se amp eres eultos Vosotros los que entr is dejad toda castidad se oras y se ores eutos or explicitly sexual Que parece morir el d a que eoje Que parezco agonizar entante eyacula El angel del retrete consol al que Horaba centa verga enmare box 6 folder 35 There is a clear struggle going on here between the acceptable aesthetic of the published poetry and the nueva Po tica Prosa 153 in which sex will become as insistent a presence as 1t was previously absent or latent By publishing without editorial notes the purified version of such poems Becciu s clean edition of the Poes a tacitly reinforces the sense of a stark aesthetic contrast between the public and private faces of Pizarnik whereas in the unpublished material we see significant overlaps transitional texts at the interface between the two aesthetics One such unpub
34. icular mis propias fantas as desligadas de todo detalle concreto Diarios 465 The problematic relationship to sexuality revealed in such unpublished texts and the dissatisfaction with the restrictive gender demarcations of este mundo parallel Pizarnik s resistance to this world in terms of particular identifiable details hence her difficulties in writing sustained narrative prose In a letter to Mandiargues she claims to be Sang amour ein car jai voulut toute ma vie abolir les bas fondy de la r alit box 6 folder 35 The word layout reveals her primary instinct for the abstract and universal poetic state sans amour before reluctantly correcting to the more particular sans un amour continu this instinct is confirmed in wanting to eliminate the sordid details of life As Sara Cohen observes No deja de ser llamativo 18 que Pizarnik haya dejado tanto fuera del acceso de la palabra In the published poetry her enforced eliminations cover almost any detail which verges on the specific and individual Proper names do occur as dedicatees or in epigraphs but these tend to belong to universal culture or occur only as initials The exceptions generally have a clearly defined and therefore in some sense public relationship to Pizarnik for example Le n Ostrov Pizarnik s first psychoanalyst Poes a 47 or Y Yv n Pizarnik de Kolikovski mi padre Poes a 420 The Work
35. is of the monstrous see Susana Ch vez Silverman Gender Sexuality and Silence s in the Writing of Alejandra Pizarnik in rbol de Alejandra 13 35 pp 29 31 36 Depetris detects a po tica del cuerpo in La bucanera responding to Artaudian cruelty Alejandra Pizarnik despu s de 1968 74 Gender Sexuality and Silence 25 38 From Sappho to Baffo 255 16 Venti confirms such a reading finding close textual links between this passage La condesa and unpublished sections of Pizarnik s diary Seeing La condesa s influence on this late unpublished erotic text confirms La condesa s pivotal role in Pizarnik s poetic trajectory All such explicit detail is largely censored in the shorter version of Diana perhaps because here Pizarnik cannot hide behind a literary model as she did with Valentine Penrose s La comtesse sanglante However the word aleteo which in Harta del principio femenino had been used with disgusted revulsion is now in the first version of Diana used positively to describe the poet s own erotic lesbian experience vibro con la vibraei n 9 de nuestros clitoris box 7 folder 10 One of the more graphic passages climaxes with the exclamation es tan dif cil el eamino en ebeseeHe del safismo implicitly linking Sapphism with naufragio a throwback to her poetry This difficulty accords with Molloy s reading of La condesa in which the fact that lesbian sexuality has to be im
36. ity as being a poeta de lo inefable On the one hand her urge for a nueva Po tica and for escape from asphyxiating ineffability can be read contextually as a reaction to patriarchal models of literature in which gender politics are not problematized But on the other hand she does not wish to be fixed as a lesbian hence her anxious scorn towards artistic women who have been categorized in this way Gabriela Mistral y Marina N ez del Prado Ambas feas lesbianas y voluntariosas Diarios 164 Harta del principio femenino then describes one Madame X who is seen as abhorrently decrepit compared to the narrator and her female companion who are tan frescas tan lindas sobre todo en relaci n a ella Madame X s flirtatious attentions arouse disgust in the narrator reminding us of the published poem Violario Prosa 33 who explicitly imagines her aleteos de vieja concha como para morirse de asco Even the pity she finally feels for the older woman is cut abruptly short in the final line Artimafias de las ara as Que se vaya a la mierda Madame X is thus the demonized lesbian and this fixity together with her age causes repugnance yet an ambiguous note remains as we remember from the opening line of the text that the ara a of the feminine principle can be either l gubre or maravillosa The text nota 2 homos box 7 folder 38 which begins with a poeticized description of the mist
37. lished text reproduced below inhabits this liminal zone where key tropes of her published poetry such as the night as el lugar de la cita poetry as her substitute for religion and experience as inadjetivable give way to an insistence on sexuality particularly androgynous or lesbian sexuality via an eroticization of her admired prose writers Death childhood and silence also recurrent topoi in her published poetry are along with love and life associated with a masturbatory fantasy which results in sexually explicit encounters I quote this one text in full since it is so representative of this violent transitional space in which we see Pizarnik speaking with her new voice This voice is voraciously sexual and ambiguously gendered still alludes to universal literary figures though their names are now distorted as they are relentlessly in La bucanera but also deliberately situated in a concrete place Buenos Aires and in intimate relation to individuals given by their first name Silvina Ocampo Cristina Campo and Marta Moia Such intimate details were rigorously excluded from her earlier more universal aesthetic except in titles attribution of epigraphs or dedications un ramo de siemprevivss pknzonosas siemprevivas ponzo osas un nudo de escorpione para cogitar a solas con mis queridos muertos la noche al principiob mi claustro mi cordero mi inri fue la poesia dicho de otro modo unico modo de recon
38. mained unpublished perhaps Pizarnik s literary executors exercised an aesthetic value judgement on them in the light of her published corpus which is not a specifically erotic much less a pornographic poetry Foster 339 Or perhaps for Pizarnik herself in this crucial transitional phase of her own conception of publishable literature an insistence on individualized eroticism and sexual explicitness connotes a lesser literature than Poetry or the Novel She sees that it has a literary role and she is familiar with examples ranging from John Cleland s Fanny Hill to Andr Pieyre de Mandiargues erotic r cits including his La mar e which she translates but what she had published previously did not include this and moving publicly into this area requires boldness That she was determined to write erotic prose is not in doubt however As she forcefully puts it Ir hasta el fondo de lo er tico es mi nica necesidad es tal que no la diferencio de mi Diarios 349 This uncompromising statement made as early as 1963 foreshadows the poem fetishized as Pizarnik s last no quiero ir nada m s que hasta el fondo Poes a 453 which fuelled the 11 Pizarnik suicide poet myth since it is usually read as a desire to plumb the depths of the ultimate mystery death But this much earlier desire to ir hasta el fondo de lo er tico my emphasis underlines that the obsession for almost the las
39. mon ni lo contrario Qu podria sentir si tu s lo estes yaces s tus ojos llas mataron sw Uama furiosa ew St Paul de Vince sic box 7 folder 20 La mar e in Mascarets 9 27 p 18 La marea Di logos 30 1969 20 24 p 22 Susana Ch vez Silverman The Autobiographical as Horror in the Poetry of Alejandra Pizarnik in Critical Studies on the Feminist Subject ed Giovanna Covi Italy Universita di Trento 1997 265 77 pp 270 3 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 NYUP 1997 250 8 p 250 32 lt A Private Revolution 69 3 Juan Jacobo Bajarl a Alejandra Pizarnik Anatom a de un recuerdo Buenos Aires Almagesto 1998 94 13 The spider traditionally associated with female creativity is seen both positively and negatively but the poet s lingering attraction to lesbianism is couched entirely in negative syntax The manuscript insertion however endows the text with a frame which allows us potentially to read its message as a riposte to the t whose eyes no longer blaze with reciprocated desire The heavily erased phrase about neither feeling lesbian nor the contrary is key for reading all of Pizarnik s unpublished sexual material What she apparently objects to is being categorized as a lesbian which has the same stifling fix
40. ncapacidad po tica it is nevertheless undeniable that Pizarnik s fears about loss of poetic integrity within her nueva po tica are not always unfounded since many tropes or images which worked well within the perspectiva catastr fica become distended unconvincing even cursi when expanded in prose For example the topos of orphanhood see Poes a 191 430 becomes a journalist s sob story in El reportaje Yo no me olvido que llor diez a os todas las noches en el asilo de hu rfanos lo siniestro lo s rdido lo terrible de una soledad no solitaria The notion of partir watch word from La ltima inocencia onwards Poes a 61 and 433 443 resurfaces in Titulo but the zeal for leaving loses its existential angst rapidly becoming an exaggerated tropical fantasy Mir bamos los barcos El olor del agua podrida era una promesa de aventuras como las que cuentan los libros para ni os Alg n d a nos iremos me dijo Johncito Nos iremos a los tr picos a Europa al Oriente Iremos nos internaremos en las selvas Tendr s todos los salvajes que quieras La posibilidad de hacerme desvirgar por un individuo cubierto de plumas y de tatuajes me colm de alegr a box 7 folder 38 This fantasy concludes with the imagined maravillosa ceremonia of her deflowering in front of the whole tribe me penetra yo gozo tanto que rompo la noche con mis gritos Luego me regala un objeto
41. nly which conjures up the Parisian atmosphere of Cort zar s Rayuela complete with translated reference to Rimbaud s Une saison en enfer The narrator puts a superior ironic distance between herself and such facile rebellion Alguna vez la he acompa ado falsos edenes peque itos para sos min sculos pockets eden le ciel dans votre poche les anges dans votre sac box 7 folder 38 yet we note that Pizarnik censors what began as a very similar passage in her manuscript Historia del tio Jacinto je rencontre par azar le bazar de la rue du Regard en donde se hacinan Hvidas mu ecas abrazadas a puercoespines Esto seHama Paris bymight oHe soleH dans votre poche with precisely those elements of the fl neur in Paris and le soleil dans votre poche box 7 folder 21 Her debt to Cort zar in her search for an authentic prose voice is thus obscured The evident unevenness of Pizarnik s prose texts in stylistic terms gives rise to uncertainty and self criticism of her own powers as a prose writer Horrible confusi n en mis escritos Todo a medio hacer Poemas en verso Poemas en prosa Cuentos de humor Cuentos sin humor Diario Textos autom ticos Diarios 328 This diary entry suggests that contrary to our previous conceptions of Pizarnik s working methods she does even try automatic writing indeed the manner of developing the narratives in La bucanera is clearly freely associative rather than lo
42. o arte de la obscenidad verbal Una voz detr s de las voces La Nacion Section 4 7 July 1991 p 5 established myth of Pizarnik herself conflating her with the ni a extraviada who wanders disconsolately through the pulcro trabajo l rico of her earlier poems A review of El infierno musical the last major collection published in her lifetime is similarly critical el resultado parece inferior al de sus anteriores libros ya que ste carece de la precisi n casi alucinante matem tica tan ee 11 caracteristica de la autora By framing the criticism in terms of not matching up to what has become her characteristic style the reviewer effectively strait jackets her into that mode and concept of poetry Pizarnik s desire to explore different voices not surprisingly increases in reaction to such critical pressure but so too does self censorship This combination of defiance and lingering deference to the aesthetic order to which she had formerly subscribed can be seen by comparing how Grant and Depetris interpret a group of quotations from La bucanera addressed to the reader Both critics begin by quoting the following representative sentence Lectoto o lecteta mi desasimiento de tu aprobamierda te har leerme a todo vapor Prosa 94 Grant reads through this and other challenges to the reader a mocking unease whereas Depetris sees absoluto desinter s por el receptor de sus escritos y por una rela
43. of this world and having sapphic adventures whilst not being categorizable as lesbians me pongo triste puesto que no hay nada m s tr gico que las aventuras s ficas entre dos criaturas que no son lesbianas en eL sentido eom n delt rmino Pene son de este mundo Mi peque a princesa ye s que te mor s de amor por m Pere Yo no Nunca te har da o este ten s que saberlo Pero me matar pronto mi peque ita Adoro tu modos de eeger amarres pero espero mucho m s de la oscura se ora del t mulo y la casa de los muertos enero 1971 The passage therefore ends by censoring the preceding sexual explicitness replacing coger with the more euphemistic and tender amarnos Such tenderness is nevertheless also subject to censorship since this disappears from the later version Aesthetically Pizarnik finishes by reining herself back into her familiar territory of proximity to death via the hyperfeminine diminutive princess in a funereal landscape like that of Los muertos y la lluvia Prosa 43 44 She avoids the bluntness of me matar in favour of ir which echoes poem 33 of rbol de Diana me ir sin quedarme me ir como quien se va Poes a 135 but also foreshadows a poem of 1972 which shows utter resignation and a radically split self Todo ha sido demasiado y ella se ir Y yo me ir Poes a 433 Censorship of este mundo excluding the personal and part
44. ork was taking A review of Extracci n de la piedra de la locura 1968 urges Pizarnik to be more self critical una autocr tica debe imponerse como coherente acci n del est mulo m s profundo As lo pide la poes a y tantos admiradores frecuentes que se interesan por la eternidad de Alejandra Pizarnik This reviewer invokes an abstract and undefined notion of poetry to imply that Extracci n the last three texts of which turn towards surrealistic extended prose is aesthetically inferior and will not elevate her to poetic immortality Note the potential ambiguity of la eternidad de Alejandra Pizarnik perhaps such admirers are equally anxious to preserve the Catherine Grant A Private Revolution Alejandra Pizarnik s La bucanera de Pernambuco o Hilda la poligrafa Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 5 1 1996 65 82 pp 72 3 76 5 lt A Private Revolution 75 7 Carolina Depetris Alejandra Pizarnik despu s de 1968 la palabra instant nea y la crueldad po tica Iberoamericana 31 2008 61 76 p 62 La Naci n 10 April 1968 This attitude persists in a review of Pizarnik s Obras completas Buenos Aires Corregidor 1991 Mar a Rosa Lojo comments that Corresponde hablar de lenguaje m s que estrictamente de poes a porque hay textos como Los pose dos entre lilas o La bucanera de Pernambuco que desbordan lo estrictamente po tico y despliegan un extra
45. osa Sos el pretexto de mi ltimo pacto con el silencio Por gracia de tu concha no escribo m s poemas O tal vez me enga o De la trampa del lenguaje a la de la lengua Diana soy peligrosa no estoy en el mundo ne quiere no puede estar en el mundo Xx XGOXOCXXX XXXxx asusta pere Pronto me matar Tal vez a causa de mi lengua Tal vez porque en verdad no me gusta tu concha ni la de nadie Sos bella Diana y deber as estar XXXXXXXXXxxxxxx con una pija caliente adentro Pero no hay muchas criaturas tan infusas de deseos sexuales como yo Adem s me gusta violarte me gusta echarte de espaldas y meterte a la fuerza dos o tres dedos en tanto tu culo da cuentas por el dolor y eso me excita y esto te excita y despacito vas cediendo como una tiern sima princesita de la m s alta torre del castillo medieval de mis sue os m s depravados quiere decir m sticos The equivalent passage in the revised and self censored version of Diana which drops the de Lesbos identificatory tag and tones down the sexual content by substituting sexo or abertura for concha is as follows Sos el pretexto de mi ltimo pacto con el silencio Por tu seee no escribo m s poemas Cree que No soy precisa De la trampa del lenguaje a la de la lengua Diana soy peligrosa no estoy en 1 el mundo En Laverdad no me e gusta tu abertura ni la de ninguna Pero no us xonicfias criats que hayi t
46. prose in a quasi See Miguel Dalmaroni Sacrificio e intertextos en la poes a de Alejandra Pizarnik Orbis Tertius 1 1 1996 93 116 5 Regarding more general models Depetris sees Antonin Artaud s Le Th tre et son double as un referente medular to Pizarnik s new aesthetic 70 74 p 71 Elizabeth Zeiss sees this dynamic in terms of palimpsested texts which represent the literary tradition with which Pizarnik is in a conflictive relationship See The Subject Between Texts in Alejandra Pizarnik s Poetry unpublished doctoral thesis University of Texas at Austin 2001 153 Alejandra Pizarnik 193 Sus cuentos policiales descubren una veta nueva del fecundo poligrafo Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares Seis problemas para Don Isidro Parodi Buenos Aires Emec 1984 1 publ Sur 1942 10 24 autodidactical effort to learn the techniques of humourous prose see Diarios 446 but then covers her tracks Julio Cort zar is another prose model the debt to whom Pizarnik obscures with an uneasy mixture of homage parody and rejection There are similarities between Pizarnik s nonsense works and pieces such as Cort zar s La inmiscusi n terrupta from Ultimo Round whose protagonists la se ora Fifa and la Tota call to mind Pizarnik s Santa Fifa Prosa 189 or Fifina box 7 folder 19 She borrows his term Text culo from ltimo round and La vuelta al
47. puras y yo tenemos sentido tenemos destino Its recurrence in this unpublished poem however seems to suggest that dos que van juntos succeeded in fulfilling her previously unfulfilled poetic striving after sense and purpose The demonstrative adjective este in este mundo is very important since precisely because of the mutual support and shared adventure which is here associated with this world Pizarnik cannot publish this poem It goes beyond the strict aesthetic parameters of Pizarnik s circumscribed world and although she now wishes to escape this 7 asphyxiating world she has doubts that the result can be publishable literature and it is therefore subject to self censorship Such internal struggles often emerge rhetorically in her published poetry for example Ay dame a no pedir ayuda Poes a 222 But the earlier manuscript draft of a similar poem the published version of which ends with y no es verdad que pedir socorro Poes a 329 shows that what has been deleted in the revision process is precisely the linking of love with este mundo y no es verdad que pedir socorro per un vele n reci n naeido en la tierra promisoria y no es verdad que te amar en este mundo box 6 folder 27 Pizarnik s deliberate rhetorical ambivalence of forcefully assertive negation further negated through erasure communicates to us that writing about love must be censored in this poet
48. s la lengua en las orejas hasta que siento que me dec s un poema muy puro version one Indeed the whole poem perhaps presciently expresses a writing of the body which will come to prominence with H l ne Cixous et al during the 1970s The princess in the highest tower recalls Pizarnik s published poetry for example the last line of Formas reads princesa en la torre m s alta Poes a 199 an image which Ch vez Silverman analyses as hyperfeminized enclosed in her fairytale lack of agency It also encourages identification with Pizarnik s self construction if we look at her diary for 28 July 1962 tu memoria de princesa loca encerrada en tu torre de furia y de silencio Diarios 244 This image linked to dreams which are auto censored from depraved to mystical sits uneasily with the otherworldliness of lesbianism and death and with the adult sexual explicitness of the rest of the passage most reminiscent of the activities of La condesa sangrienta who in her medieval castle likewise derives her identity from causing pain From here onwards the first version features increasingly erotic descriptions of stimulation and orgasm recalling the section El espejo de la melancol a of La condesa sangrienta interestingly Molloy reads El espejo as one of the most personal pages of Pizarnik s work one that might be seen both as an autobiographical statement and as an aesthetic program Patricia For analys
49. sin patria en mi patria vuelta repentinamente mi lugar de exilio forzoso box 6 folder 14 This image of exile from the homeland and by extension of searching for a homeland recalls Piedra fundamental Yo quer a entrar en el teclado para entrar adentro de la m sica para tener una patria Poes a 265 The difference is that never in her published poetry was the homeland so explicitly situated in another person in earlier poems exile had a vague sense of existential and according to some critics post holocaust rootlessness but here the poet has lost her emotional homeland and is paradoxically an exile within the patria the patria of her desolate earlier poetic aesthetic The bond described elsewhere in the poem between the poet and her addressee had allowed an interpretation of and interaction with this world en este mundo cuyo sentido y destino solo lo descubren dos que van juntos The wordplay on the anagram sentido destino had occurred several times in Pizarnik s published poetry but always in accordance with her established aesthetic of incommunicability and failure For example as the last line of Fragmentos para dominar el silencio Poes a 223 Y yo no dir mi poema y yo he de decirlo Aun si el poema aqu ahora no tiene sentido no tiene destino and in Sala de psicopatolog a Poes a 411 aqu estoy persuadi ndome d a a d a de que la sala las almas
50. sly situated on the border between private communication and public literature being called a canto borrowing a key line from Garcilaso s third Egloga quoting her own published poem Origen and visually evoking a poetic style with deliberate spacialization of short lines Also unpublished was the untitled text charting the end of this relationship with Moia footnoted as dernier po me avec M I M ag o sept 1972 box 6 folder 39 This intimate and raw poem traces the trajectory of Pizarnik s relationship not only with Martha but with her own ability to overcome her previous aesthetic strictures It begins with the notion of loss figured as the physical presence of an absence so much a trope of her earlier public poetic persona which makes the poet s speaking body vanish escribo con la ausencia la presencia de la ausencia que de pron sic pronto encarna y me hace de humo The new poetic voice which at Moia s urging was coloquial humorous and spontaneous and was able albeit with difficulty to speak about love is gone leaving the utter vulnerability of unrequited love perdido el humor solo queda mi amor rid culamente inaceptado bajo ning n punto de vista The poignancy of re hearing the same music in changed circumstances reminiscent of Los muertos y la lluvia where on listening to an old record after her father s death the poet says nada ha cambiado para Lotte Lenya y mucho para mi Prosa 4
51. sta noche en este mundo which was explicitly dedicated to Moia she goes beyond her own previous aesthetic boundaries by succeeding in P Depetris term Alejandra Pizarnik despu s de 1968 63 Alejandra Pizarnik Poesia 1955 1972 ed Ana Becciu Barcelona Lumen 2000 398 9 referred to subsequently i in the text 10 A review of Los peque os cantos Caracas rbol de fuego 1971 calls this poem hermoso y logrado and says that la colecci n bien vale por s lo esos versos verdaderos La Naci n 30 April 1972 17 Moia perhaps also encouraged Pizarnik s Fulbright application as Coordinadora de Becas for the Fulbright Commission Moia wrote to inform Pizarnik of an award to participate in the Iowa Writers Workshop box 8 folder 25 8 June 1971 but Pizarnik did not feel able to make the journey Cristina Pifia Alejandra Pizarnik una biograf a Buenos Aires Corregidor 1991 2nd edn 1999 195 8 Alejandra Pizarnik despu s de 1968 70 P The interview was published in La Naci n 11 February 1973 and Plural 18 1973 8 9 writing more colloquially and speaking about love This is a radical departure from the earlier Pizarnik whose poetry is hardly characterized by an interest in anything that could be called romantic or sentimental motifs Such aesthetic transgression in addition to the intimate contextual frame explains why Pizarnik did not publish it nevertheless 1t is ambiguou
52. sttituci 2on de lo divino la noche no es m s el lugar de la citsa cita znterd dormia con una mis manitos adiestrada en escalas musicales como lsa torre m s alt con mis manos derecha entre las piernas entonces empez ba la novel a rodeada de bs1zac Balzac de flubauert Flaubert de rpount Proust de v ooolf Woolf y de jouce Joyce q ue me me digaban escenas de una delicadez inadje6ible Me manualizaba durante hojras entonctrabs al amo5 encontraba al amor a la vida a a la muerte a la il nfancia todo en silemcio b yo era deseado por u la reina cristina munida de un falo que la hac a sospd pecho sa de un pripapismo demon iaco vpero me cojoa em tamtp en tanto upyoo le succion gba las tetas y obten 21a un liquido que no era leche ni vino sin j una droga a veces v me dol ia cuando me aculaba y luego ven ia una muchachita vestida de muchachito v woolf u or lando no s e s e w que la coj 2ia como un carnicera hasta unos miniyos antes debdespedirnos en qje e p ermit 2ia tgratarme a como a heliodiasa Mis palabras fin ales antes de gritar como una es trangbulada en el espasmo concluyente si para iniciarse 5 minu6os despu exs yo le dec a movi ndo h bilmentev mi peque o cu o Quiero ser tu puta Eso la enlowuec ia No conseguiamos consoladores en 22 All text sic with occasional tentative clarifications thus esta puta ciu ad de buenos aires lo hubiera llenado de leche hirvien te p
53. t decade of her life was as much eros as thanatos Responding to texts such as those of Mandiargues was part of the process of seeking to define her own erotic voice Described as a fringe surrealist Mandiargues was known for his literary eroticism and Pizarnik commented enthusiastically on his erotic r cit Adive which involves the surrealistic chance encounter of a bisexual female fl neur St phanie with another woman Adive Symbols of androgyny and of animalian female sexuality suggested by the name Adive which means dog exoticize the anticipated lesbian encounter which culminates with St phanie being mysteriously pleasured by une chienne According to Pizarnik le mot erotisme a t vid comme la caparace dune tortue morte cause de ceux qu ne peuvent pas le reconnaitre chez ceux qui wont pas peur de lw box 6 folder 35 She identifies Mandiargues as one of the latter in his ability to configurer ce for t de symboles orgasmales qu est Adive and her response to it is suitably charged jai errag e de ne pas pouvoir aller la f ret et w owvrir comme une chienne Nevertheless in the same way that Pizarnik occasionally found Octavio Paz to be too virile a model in her earlier poetry when it comes to eroticism she can enthuse about Adive with its shifting plural sexualities but the submissive gender role of the female protagonist in La mar e or the mujer objeto as Pizarnik aptly
54. this world literature carefully crafts and precisely corrects the expression of what escapes words and cannot be written an unsatisfied and unsatisfiable desire whose emblem is la sed que no se refiere al agua la que s lo se sacia en la contemplaci n de un vaso vac o Diarios 342 But although by the mid sixties Pizarnik is finding this view increasingly asfixiante Diarios 355 reader reception confirms En esta noche en este mundo as one of her most powerful and successful poems effectively trapping her within this aesthetic of ineffability and the impossibility of expressing love Among those close to Pizarnik who encouraged her defiant efforts to explore new voices was her one time lover Martha I Moia As Depetris points out Moia interviewing Pizarnik draws attention to Pizarnik s change in aesthetic saying ya no buscas esa exactitud Pizarnik s responses are cagey when Moia presses her about lo mucho que escrib s as if wanting Pizarnik to expound her new aesthetic Pizarnik s self censoring silence about her current writing is eloquent Nevertheless elsewhere Pizarnik rises to the challenge placing a question by Moia as an epigraph to one of the three manuscript versions of Diversiones p bicas Por qu no escrib s como habl s box 7 folder 1 then proceeding to dedicate a fifteen page canto to M in which with clear intertextual reference to En e
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