Correspondance Alejandra Pizarnik et André Pieyre de Mandiargues: Paris-Buenos Aires 1961-1972

by Alejandra Pizarnik, André Pieyre de Mandiargues, Mariana Di Ció (Afterword)

208 pages, Paperback

Published September 19, 2018

About the author

Born in Buenos Aires to Russian parents who had fled Europe and the Nazi Holocaust, Alejandra Pizarnik was destined for literary greatness as well as an early death. She died from an ostensibly self-administered overdose of barbiturates on 25 September 1972. A few words scribbled on a slate that same month, reiterating her desire to go nowhere "but to the bottom," sum up her lifelong aspiration as a human being and as a writer. The compulsion to head for the "bottom" or "abyss" points to her desire to surrender to nothingness in an ultimate experience of ecstasy and poetic fulfillment in which life and art would be fused, albeit at her own risk. "Ojalá pudiera vivir solamente en éxtasis, haciendo el cuerpo del poema con mi cuerpo" (If I could only live in nothing but ecstasy, making the body of the poem with my body).

Reviews

[juanncorb · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cada vez que leo a Alejandra me adentro más en su universo personal y la siento cercana; obvio desde la distancia voyeur que conlleva leer la correspondencia de otros.