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Chapter 27 - Alfonsina Storni and Alejandra Pizarnik

from Part III - Literary Names

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 May 2024

Alejandra Laera
Affiliation:
University of Buenos Aires
Mónica Szurmuk
Affiliation:
Universidad Nacional de San Martín /National Scientific and Technical Research Council, Argentina
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Summary

Primarily poets, writers Alfonsina Storni and Alejandra Pizarnik had in common being daughters of immigrants, and both committed suicide. Storni’s poetry during her lifetime was popular and accessible, with topics of women, love, and modernity. Poet, journalist, dramatist, and maestra (schoolteacher), she gained early fame but only partial critical success. She crafted a defiant public image and even staged her suicide after a long struggle with cancer. She protested the stigma of being an unwed mother and other injustices borne by women. In contrast, Pizarnik initially reached a smaller but influential reading public; many young readers identify with her elusive and fractured poetry-theater of interiority. Rebellious and bisexual, she was the daughter of Jews who had escaped the Holocaust but lost their world. Loss, mourning, and sometimes violence, abjection, and terror are recurring topics, as in The Bloody Countess. As with Storni, there is confessionalism, but Pizarnik’s “I” is not a stable subject but a wandering marker, emphasizing the body, sexual desire, and fragmentation. Pizarnik’s struggle with language becomes a battle against the breakdown of the world.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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References

Works Cited

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