How Many Ways to Leave your Country? On Exile and Not-Belonging in the Work of Alejandra Pizarnik

Author: Bollig, Ben¹

Source: The Modern Language Review, Volume 104, Number 2, 1 April 2009 , pp. 421-437(17)

Publisher: Modern Humanities Research Association

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Abstract:

Intense sensations of not-belonging mark the poetry of the Argentine writer Alejandra Pizarnik (1936-1972). Her early poems propose a poetic subject who is existentially `exiled' yet engaged in creating a literary genealogy based on Romanticism and Surrealism. Her poems written in Paris examine the split subject of writing, alongside the possibilities of aesthetic rebellion in language. This paper interrogates the political potential of such a notion of poetic belonging, within the dual context of exile in Argentine literature and the perceived split in Argentine poetics of the 1960s between socially and aesthetically committed writing.

Keywords: Alejandra Pizarnik; Romanticism; Surrealism; exile; Argentine literature; poetics

Document Type: Research article

Affiliations: 1: University of Leeds

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