15/08/2025
“Je me tends sur le temps d’un galop, des cris me traînent, la captive d’une seule trace, j’entends le bruit de ce qui détruit le vent. Cheval de la colère, amenez-moi loin de moi. Loin de ce cri qui est à la place de la nuit.” — Alejandra Pizarnik, Paroles du Vent
Alejandra Pizarnik was an Argentine poet and author who extensively wrote about her obsessions with insanity, intimacy, obligation, and death—often explored in her diaries of which most were posthumously published. Her work was shaped by her experiences of poverty and literary pilgrimages while in France, where she met and befriended renowned writers such as André Pieyre de Mandiargues and Yves Bonnefoy. Though she primarily wrote in French, her breakthrough book, Árbol de Diana, consists of poems and prose poems written in Spanish.
Pizarnik later returned to Argentina, where she never wrote in French again. She continued writing in her diaries: “La verdad: tengo miedo. El de siempre. Tengo miedo y no puedo vivir en este mundo y lo quiero, claro que lo quiero, pero no sé cómo se hace. Todo lo hago mal. Algo se destruyó. Demasiadas pérdidas. Nadie las soporta.” As her writing reveals, Pizarnik remained haunted by her deepest obsessions, which stayed with her until her untimely death.
This particular excerpt you’re hearing is from Extracción de la Piedra de Locura. In it, Pizarnik creates elaborate labyrinths of metaphors: the push and pull of shame and obligation, the light that never seems to reach the depths, the madness that slowly unravels the self. Pizarnik weaves together her own experiences to construct timeless works whose whispers for help still resonate among artists of our time.
Snapshot by Stephen Reuel Capugan
