Top 7 Quotes & Sayings by Alejandra Pizarnik

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an Argentinian poet Alejandra Pizarnik.
Last updated on December 18, 2024.
Alejandra Pizarnik

Flora Alejandra Pizarnik was an Argentine poet. Her idiosyncratic and thematically introspective poetry has been considered "one of the most unusual bodies of work in Latin American literature", and has been recognized and celebrated for its fixation on "the limitation of language, silence, the body, night, the nature of intimacy, madness, [and] death". Pizarnik studied philosophy at the Universidad de Buenos Aires and worked as a writer and a literary critic for several editorials and magazines. She lived in Paris between 1960 and 1964, where she translated authors such as Antonin Artaud, Henri Michaux, Aimé Cesairé an Yves Bonnefoy. She also studied history of religion and French literature in La Sorbonne. Back in Buenos Aires, Pizarnik published three of her major works: Los trabajos y las noches, Extracción de la piedra de locura and El infierno musical as well as a prose work titled, La condesa sangrienta. In 1969 she received a Guggenheim Fellowship and later, in 1971, a Fulbright Fellowship. On September 25, 1972, she died by suicide after ingesting an overdose of secobarbital. Her work has influenced generations of authors in Latin America.

To write is to give meaning to suffering.
I redo the body of my poem like someone who tries to cure her own wound.
An unchangeable colour rules over the melancholic: his dwelling is a space the colour of mourning. Nothing happens in it. No one intrudes. It is a bare stage where the inert I is assisted by the I suffering from that inertia. The latter wishes to free the former, but all efforts fail, as Theseus would have failed had he been not only himself but also the Minotaur; to kill him then, he would have had to kill himself
But, who is Death? A figure that harrows and wastes wherever and however it pleases. This is also a possible description of the Countess Bathory. Never did anyone wish so hard not to grow old; I mean, to die. That is why, perhaps, she acted and played the role of Death. Because, how can Death possibly die?
You've built your homeyou've fledged your birdsyou've beaten the windwith your bonesyou've finished alonewhat no one began
I don’t know about birds nor do I know the history of fire. But I believe that my solitude should have wings
Because no one has more thirst for earth, for blood, and for ferocious sexuality than the creatures who inhabit cold mirrors — © Alejandra Pizarnik
Because no one has more thirst for earth, for blood, and for ferocious sexuality than the creatures who inhabit cold mirrors
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