A poetical itinerary of a body in vertigo: the persona of Alejandra Pizarnik and the ontological function of depersonalization of the poetical self

Abstract

In this article we take as our starting point the bond between the corporeal and the word and use this to analyse the process of depersonalization and the creation of the poetical persona in the works of Alejandra Pizarnik. We seek to define the disappearance of the subject engendered by the writing process itself with reference to individual poems by Pizarnik. As a result of the continual disappearance of the subject and of the inadequacy of language, the act of writing can be understood as an unrepeatable experiment as well as a reflection of a failed attempt by the poet to merge the corporeal and the word as well as life and poetry as a post-death experience, since the subject alienates its own corporeality by writing as if deceased. This conceit has the effect of enabling poem to be seen as an eternal invocation of the absent.