Alejandra Pizarnik
Alejandra Pizarnik was an influential Argentine poet born in Buenos Aires in 1936 to Russian Jewish parents who fled Europe to escape the Holocaust. From an early age, she grappled with feelings of being an outsider, exacerbated by physical challenges and a complicated family dynamic. Pizarnik pursued her literary ambitions while studying philosophy, journalism, and literature at the University of Buenos Aires, where she was inspired by the Surrealist movement. Her talent led to a Guggenheim Fellowship that allowed her to spend four years in Paris, where she became part of a vibrant community of Spanish-speaking expatriate writers and more openly explored her sexuality. Despite these successes, Pizarnik's mental health struggles, which included a diagnosis of schizophrenia, deeply affected her life and work.
Throughout her tumultuous life, she produced several notable poetry collections, including "Árbol de Diana" and "Los trabajos y las noches." Tragically, Pizarnik's life ended in suicide in 1972, reflecting her profound sense of alienation and the conflict she felt between life and art. Although her work was not widely translated into English until the 2010s, her impact has gained recognition, particularly among feminist critics who draw parallels between her experiences and those of other troubled poets, such as Sylvia Plath. Pizarnik's legacy continues to resonate, particularly within the Spanish-speaking literary community.
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Alejandra Pizarnik
Writer
- Born: April 29, 1936
- Birthplace: Avellaneda, Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Died: September 25, 1972
- Place of death: Buenos Aires, Argentina
Biography
The parents of poet Flora Alejandra Pizarnik were Russian Jews who fled Europe for Buenos Aires, Argentina, to escape the Holocaust. Pizarnik was born in Buenos Aires in 1936. She grew up in a household where Russian and Yiddish were spoken along with Spanish and where her parents emphasized the importance of the arts and music. Even as a girl, Pizarnik seemed to suffer from a sense of being an outsider because she was Jewish and because, unlike her pretty sister Myriam, was somewhat unattractive, overweight, and burdened by acne, asthma, and a stutter. Pizarnik dealt with her physical liabilities in two ways: by resorting to pills (she became a lifelong addict) to help control her weight, and by becoming outrageous in her dress, manner, and self-expression. Later she would be diagnosed with schizophrenia, but the sense of being self-divided clearly had some roots in her early biography.
Her literary gifts became apparent when she was at the University of Buenos Aires studying philosophy, journalism, and literature. She found herself particularly drawn to the Surrealists, whose attempts to explore the unconscious mirrored her own. The award of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1959 allowed Pizarnik to realize her dream of traveling to Paris, where she lived for four years and produced the influential poetry collection Árbol de Diana (1962; Diana's Tree, 2014). Welcomed by Paris's community of Spanish-speaking expatriate writers, including Julio Cortázar, Rosa Chacel, and Octavio Paz, she came into her own socially, open and able to explore her sexuality for the first time with both men and women. She also became acquainted with some of the leading literary lights. Yet despite the apparent success of these years, Pizarnik’s diaries are filled with references to being haunted by the “other,” as madness began to overtake her.
Her return to Buenos Aires was anticlimactic, but her life there was made bearable by a stable relationship with a woman who understood her illness. Her father’s death in 1966 removed one of the only stable aspects of Pizarnik’s life, and her mental health began to decline precipitously. A second Guggenheim Fellowship permitted Pizarnik to return to Paris in 1968, but the trip proved disastrous, and Pizarnik returned home prematurely. Following a period of voluntary confinement, she attempted suicide and was subsequently institutionalized in 1970. Despite the tumult in her life, Pizarnik published three more well-received collections of poetry during this time: Los trabajos y las noches (1965), Extracción de la piedra de la locura (1968; Extracting the Stone of Madness, 2015), and El infierno musical (1971; A Musical Hell, 2013). In 1971, Pizarnik met the woman she considered the love of her live, but when her lover left for the United States, Pizarnik once again became suicidal. In September,1972, while on a weekend pass from the mental institution where she was living, Pizarnik took a lethal dose of barbiturates. She had finally achieved the goal she had scribbled on a slate earlier that month, her desire to go nowhere “but the bottom,” illustrating with her suicide not just her alienation from self, but also her contention that life and art are incompatible.
Despite her influence in the Spanish-speaking world and a growing interest in her work among English-speaking feminist critics in the 1990s, the majority of her works were not translated into English until the 2010s. although By 2016 nearly all of her poetry collections were available in English, as well as a collection of her correspondence. English-speaking critics have often compared her to Sylvia Plath, another female poet who lived a short, troubled life.
Bibliography
Bassnett, Susan. "Speaking with Many Voices: The Poems of Alejandra Pizarnik." Knives and Angels: Women Writers in Latin America. Ed. Susan Bassnett. Atlantic Highlands: Zed, 1990. 36–51. Print.
Bowen, Kate. "Alejandra Pizarnik: The Darkest Legacy Left." Argentina Independent. Argentina Independent, 17 May 2012. Web. 8 Mar. 2016.
De Feo, Ronald. "On Alejandra Pizarnik." Other Press. Other, 10 Apr. 2013. Web. 8 Mar. 2016.
Fagundo, Ana Maria. "Alejandra Pizarnik (1936–1972), Argentina." Spanish American Women Writers: A Bio-bibliographical Source Book. Ed. Diane E. Marting. Westport: Greenwood, 1990.
Pizarnik, Alejandra. From the Forbidden Garden: Letters from Alejandra Pizarnik to Antonio Beneyto. Ed. Carlota Caulfield. Trans. Carlota Caulfield and Angela McEwan. Lewisburg: Bucknell UP, 2003. Print.