Alejandra Pizarnik (1936–1972) was an Argentine poet whose
technical innovation transformed brevity from a limitation into an art form,
using sparse language to evoke powerful emotional and existential depths. Her
minimalist approach concentrated meaning, where each word—and the silences
between them—carried immense weight. Through her fragmentary forms, Pizarnik
gave voice to collective experience, delving into themes of death, silence, and
the unconscious with remarkable intensity. In her most notable collection,
Diana’s Tree, she synthesized vivid, sparse imagery with a polyvocal structure,
where the dead and the living, the conscious and the unconscious, intertwine.
Pizarnik's lyrical exploration of these realms establishes her as one of Latin
American literature’s most important voices.
The fragmentary poetry of Alejandra Pizarnik presents us
with a fundamental paradox: how does language that appears to dissolve meaning
actually intensify it? Her collection "Diana's Tree" operates as both
linguistic experiment and necromantic practice, transforming the act of reading
into a conversation with the dead.
"I hear my voices, the chorus of the dead," she
writes, positioning herself not as individual author but as medium for voices
beyond singular consciousness. This line reveals the true architecture of her
work—each sparse poem functions as a jumping off point into a sea of voices. Like
listening to a conch shell the sound reverberates long after the shell is gone.
Pizarnik's poetry invites us to abandon conventional
rationality, asking us to find meaning not within words themselves, but in the
silences and gaps between them.
The minimalism challenges traditional approaches to literary
meaning. Where earlier critical frameworks sought to illuminate darkness
through rational analysis, Pizarnik writes in a
darkness that provides its own light. Her line "I have made the leap from
me at dawn" resists conventional parsing—the self becomes a location one
might depart, rather than a fixed point of consciousness. In this description
of a dissolution process her identity transforms into something that exists
between lives.
"Death is no mute. I hear the song of the mourners
sealing the clefts of silence," she declares, positioning death as
actively communicative rather than simply absent. This understanding transforms
her fragmentary style from limitation into strategic reduction to essential
forces. Her poems create spaces where meaning may emerge as an encounter rather
than a reading. When she writes "Silence speaks of you," silence
becomes a thing, a force, within the maw the ordinary meaning dissolves.
The multiplicity of voices throughout her work—"I
cannot speak with my voice, so I speak with my voices"—indicates an
understanding of poetry as fundamentally polyvocal. Her references to "a
tribe of mutilated words looks for refuge in my throat, so that they won't
sing—the ill-fated, the owners of silence" suggest she saw herself as
giving voice to silenced or destroyed voices. The dead she channels include her
own past selves, represented through frequent references to dolls and "dead
girls" that function as versions of her own consciousness.
On one side precious words on the other splinters of thoughts
Her relationship to those of the dead walking beside her, "Death always at
my side. I listen to what it says. And only hear myself," she notes,
positioning death as constant companion and source of communication, even when
that communication loops back to self-knowledge. Her eventual suicide becomes comprehensible
as the ultimate dissolution of her suffering.
"And how many centuries has it been since I've been
dead and loved you?" she asks, collapsing temporal boundaries between life
and death, speaker and spoken-to.
What emerges from "Diana's Tree" is construction
of heterogeneous assemblage—Spanish language, French surrealist influence,
Argentine geography, feminine experience, alchemical tradition, voices of the
dead—all connected through transformative processes that change each component
while maintaining productive differences. This isn't synthesis but
consistency—elements functioning together through mutual transformation.
Alejandra Pizarnik's exploration of dreams, the
subconscious, and automatic writing is integral to understanding the nature of
her poetic voice. Her work is deeply influenced by surrealist techniques, with
an emphasis on accessing hidden or unconscious realms of thought. She often
spoke of her writing as a means of channeling voices, not always her own, and
of receiving words from places beyond the conscious mind.
In her diaries and interviews, Pizarnik discussed the
automatic, almost involuntary nature of her creative process. For example, she
wrote:
“I wrote and I write automatically, without thinking, with
the same passion with which one speaks when dreaming.”
Alejandra Pizarnik, The Diaries of Alejandra Pizarnik
This reveals her belief that her writing was a kind of
dreamwork—an extension of the unconscious, rather than a premeditated or
constructed act of creativity. She acknowledged that writing was a way of
receiving and transmitting voices, suggesting that words came from external
sources:
"I hear my voices, the chorus of the dead."
Alejandra Pizarnik, Diana’s Tree
In this line from Diana’s Tree, Pizarnik speaks of the
voices that infiltrate her work, often interpreting them as echoes of
otherworldly presences. This aligns with her tendency to view poetry as a
bridge between the conscious and the unconscious, where language is both a
medium of expression and a means of connection to realms beyond the ordinary.
Her exploration of automatic writing can also be tied to the
surrealist movement, which she admired, particularly in the way it aimed to
bypass the restrictions of logical, conscious thought. The famous surrealist
practice of writing or drawing without a preconceived plan resonated with
Pizarnik's method:
“The words come out of me as if I were dreaming them.”
Alejandra Pizarnik, The Diaries of Alejandra Pizarnik
This quote further underscores her belief that her writing
was closely tied to the dream state—an arena where boundaries between the real
and the imagined blur, and where language becomes an untethered tool of
exploration.
In her poetry, the subconscious often emerges as both a
realm of freedom and a place of deep, unresolved tension. Her fascination with
silence, absence, and emptiness in language reflects her attempt to express the
unspeakable elements that arise from the unconscious mind.
Her work thus becomes a testament to the power of dreams and
the subconscious, not merely as sources of inspiration but as mediums through
which she could access something deeper than words can ordinarily convey.
Her poems lodge themselves in consciousness, continuing to
irritate long after reading. Perhaps this is their purpose: not to satisfy
understanding but to perpetually unsettle it, creating space for encounters
with forces beyond rational discourse.
"But the silence is certain. This is why I write. I am
alone and I write. No, I am not alone. There is someone here who is
trembling," she concludes, acknowledging the fundamental paradox of her
method.
Apparent solitude contains multitudes; silence speaks; the
dead offer guidance to the living. Her poetry constructs desiring-machines that
produce new subjectivities through systematic dissolution and reconstitution,
proving that innovation often exists at the margins, in spaces between
languages, traditions, and states of being.
In the end, Pizarnik's fragmentary work creates meaning
through apparent meaninglessness by refusing to stay within prescribed
boundaries of language, style, or subject matter. Her "Diana's Tree"
grows in a medium where conventional interpretation cannot take root, offering
instead a laboratory for transformation where readers encounter not poems about
experience, but experience itself, crystallized into language that trembles
between silence and speech, life and death, self and other.
In Pizarnik’s poetry, silence doesn’t merely follow or
accompany words; it inhabits the same space, becoming a force that disrupts the
flow of language, creating an encounter that resists closure or easy
understanding. This resistance to closure is perhaps the entire intention, if
not intended it is a direct result of the fragmentary nature. Like a partial
morse message we strain down the copper wire searching for more meaning.
Intrigued by what I perceive as this conflict between sparseness
of language and the richness of the words I searched for something from the
poet about the collection, perhaps some elaboration on the fragmentary or
terseness or her intention. At this juncture I discovered that the Pizarnik
family sold her papers to Princeton University.
While Pizarnik’s poetry invites readers to engage with
voices and silences that transcend boundaries, her own work is now subject to
boundaries that limit access to the very materials that could illuminate the
depth of her creative process.
While the Pizarnik collection at Princeton is open for
research the ‘Conditions Governing Use’ specify: No photocopying, photography,
or microfilming of the diaries or notebooks is permitted. Written permission is
required for publication of selections from the diaries and notebooks.
This represents a troubling example of how literary estates
can inadvertently create scholarly exclusivity. When the Pizarnik family sold
her personal materials—diaries, manuscripts, correspondence, drawings, and
notebooks spanning nearly two decades—to Princeton's Firestone Library, they
placed crucial primary sources beyond the reach of most researchers, particularly
those in Latin America where her work is most studied and valued. The archive's
restrictions compound this problem: no photocopying, no photography, no
microfilming of any diary or notebook material, with written permission
required for any publication of selections. This means that even the privileged
few who can travel to Princeton to examine the materials cannot document their
discoveries or share them with the broader scholarly community.
The implications become even more disturbing when we
consider what may remain unexamined in the collection. Series 7 contains
"Clippings of AP's writings, dates not examined"—suggesting that
potentially crucial material, including possible interviews or statements where
Pizarnik discussed her own work, sits uncatalogued and unstudied. Series 6
references poems published in "Dialogos" in July-August 1972, just
weeks before her death—material that could provide unique insight into her last
creative period. The notation "dates not examined" serves to give
rise to an important question,
have researchers systematically indexed the collection?
This creates an absurd situation where primary source materials that could
revolutionize our understanding of one of Latin America's most significant
poets.
Perhaps most troubling is the commodification of cultural
heritage this arrangement represents. Pizarnik wrote extensively about
marginalization, about voices that couldn't speak, about being silenced by
establishment forces—and now her own voice, including her visual artwork and
most intimate creative expressions is locked away in an American institution.
The irony is devastating: a poet who challenged bourgeois respectability and
institutional power has had her most personal expressions transformed into
institutional property, accessible only to those with the economic privilege to
travel to Princeton and the academic credentials to justify access.
It would seem that insights into Pizarnik's creative
process, including potentially her direct commentary on works like
"Diana's Tree," may remain forever inaccessible to the very
communities and scholars who could best understand and interpret them. This
arrangement raises concerns about the accessibility and democratization of
Pizarnik’s work, turning what could be a rich resource for scholars into an
exclusive possession.
It is ironic that they are more afraid of her dead
When Pizarnik was alive, she was a struggling poet battling
mental illness, financial instability, and literary marginalization. The
establishment largely ignored her - she could write whatever she wanted in her
diaries, create her "little monsters" in her drawings, pour her most
subversive thoughts onto paper, because she wasn't considered dangerous enough
to matter. She was just another troubled young woman whose radical voice
carried little institutional threat.
But now that she's dead and her reputation has grown,
suddenly her words require strict institutional control. Now her diaries are
too dangerous to photocopy. Now her notebooks need written permission for any
quotation. Now her drawings must be locked away where only a select few can see
them. The same thoughts that were dismissed as the ravings of a depressed young
woman are now treated as cultural artifacts requiring maximum security
protocols.
It's the classic pattern of how radical voices get
neutralized: ignore them while they live, then control them once they're safely
dead. Princeton gets to own a piece of literary history without having to deal
with the messy reality of supporting living, breathing, difficult artists. They
can collect her rebellion like a museum specimen, studying her subversion under
controlled laboratory conditions.
The institutions that failed her in life now ‘profit’ from
controlling her in death, turning her resistance into cultural capital.
Pizarnik’s voice, once marginalized, is now imprisoned in an archive, silenced
by the very forces she wrote against. Yet perhaps, from the ‘other side,’ her
voice will continue to tremble—articulating the final paradox.
“It doesn’t matter if, when
love calls, I am dead. I will come. I will always come if ever love calls.”
Almost unknown poem by Alejandra Pizarnik
Poem II
It doesn’t matter if, when love
calls,
I am dead.
I will come.
I will always come
if ever
love calls.
“This poem, which I think merits a preliminary comment, was first and only published in the Buenos Aires magazine Poesía=Poesía in 1959. Two more poems appeared in that same publication, which were later included in the book Árbol de Diana , specifically in the "1959" section. We will never know why Pizarnik left this short text aside.” From https://alejandrapizarnik.blogspot.com/
Poema casi
desconocido de Alejandra Pizarnik
Poema II
No importa si cuando llama el amor
yo estoy muerta.
Vendré.
Siempre vendré
si alguna vez
llama el amor.
Este poema, que me parece merece un comentario previo, apareció publicado por primera y única vez en la revista bonaerense Poesía=Poesía en el año de 1959. En esa misma publicación, aparecieron dos poemas más que luego fueron incluidos en el libro Árbol de Diana, específicamente en el apartado "1959". No sabremos nunca por qué razón Pizarnik dejó a un lado este pequeño texto.
I am indebted to Laura and her most comprehensive blog for
this poem from 1959.
https://alejandrapizarnik.blogspot.com/
Further Reading
1.
Zoran Rosko – Review of Alejandra Pizarnik,
Extracting the Stone of Madness: Poems 1962–1972, Trans. by Yvette Siegert, New
Directions, 2016.
https://zorosko.blogspot.com/2016/03/alejandra-pizarnik-outstanding.html
2.
Patricia Venti - Invisible Writing: The
Autobiographical Discourse of Alejandra Pizarnik
https://patriciaventi.blogspot.com/2014/07/la-escritura-invisible-el-discurso.html
3.
Fiona J. Mackintosh - Self-Censorship and New
Voices in Pizarnik's Unpublished Manuscripts
https://www.pure.ed.ac.uk/ws/files/11605694/Self_Censorship_and_New_Voices_in_Pizarniks_Unpublished_Manuscripts.pdf
4.
Fiona J. Mackintosh with Karl Posso - Arbol de
Alejandra - Pizarnik Reassessed
5.
An Alejandra Pizarnik (blog) by Laura
https://alejandrapizarnik.blogspot.com/
6.
Christine Legros - A Form to Dwell In: Narrative
and ‘Rhetorical’ Unreliability in Alejandra Pizarnik’s Diaries
https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/10.3828/bhs.2022.19#bibliography
7.
Boston review - Three Poems
https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/npm15-yvette-siegert-alejandra-piznarik-translation-three-poems/
8.
Memoria Iluminada Alejandra Pizarnik
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Memoria+Iluminada+Alejandra+Pizarnik
9.
Alejandra Pizarnik Papers, 1954-1972 (mostly
1960-1972) Princeton University Library
https://findingaids.princeton.edu/catalog/C0395
10.
The Diana Tree by Wilhelm
Homberg (1652-1715). Cyclopedia (Chambers) - Volume 1 by Ephraim Chambers 1728
https://archive.org/details/Cyclopediachambers-Volume1
Wilhelm Homberg:
“Take four drams of filings of fine silver, with which make an amalgam, without
heat, with two drams of quicksilver. Dissolve this amalgam in four ounces of
aqua fortis, and pour the solution into three gallons of water. Stir it for a
while until mixed, and then keep it in a glass vessel well stopped. To initiate
the experiment, take about an ounce of the substance, and put it in a small
vial; add to this a quantity the size of a pea of the ordinary amalgam of gold,
or silver, which should be as soft as butter. Let the vial rest for two or
three minutes. Immediately after this, several small filaments will visibly
arise perpendicularly from the little bulb of the amalgam, which will grow and
thrust out small branches in the form of a tree. The ball of amalgam will grow
hard, like a pellet of white earth, and the little tree will be bright silver
in color.”
