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The poetics of Alejandra Pizarnik : silence, self, translation
Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2025.
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
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Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University
2025
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| _version_ | 1867614055374520320 |
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| access_status_str | Open Access |
| author | Uheida, Sarah |
| author2 | Murray, Sally-Ann |
| author_browse | Murray, Sally-Ann Uheida, Sarah |
| author_facet | Murray, Sally-Ann Uheida, Sarah |
| author_sort | Uheida, Sarah |
| collection | Thesis |
| dc_rights_str_mv | Stellenbosch University |
| description | Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2025. |
| format | Thesis |
| id | oai:scholar.sun.ac.za:10019.1/132386 |
| institution | Stellenbosch University (South Africa) |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2026-06-10T12:45:56.159Z |
| license_str | Other — see source repository |
| provenance_str_mv | Harvested via OAI-PMH from SUNScholar — Stellenbosch University Repository |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| publishDateRange | 2025 |
| publishDateSort | 2025 |
| publisher | Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University |
| publisherStr | Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University |
| record_format | dspace |
| source_str | SUNScholar — Stellenbosch University Repository |
| spelling | oai:scholar.sun.ac.za:10019.1/132386 The poetics of Alejandra Pizarnik : silence, self, translation Uheida, Sarah Murray, Sally-Ann Murray, Sally-Ann, 1961- Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of English. Pizarnik, Alejandra, 1936-1972 -- Criticism and interpretation Poets, Argentine -- 20th century -- History and criticism Silence in literature Self in literature Identity (Psychology) in literature Argentine poetry -- 20th century -- History and criticism UCTD Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2025. Uheida, S. 2025. The Poetics of Alejandra Pizarnik: Silence, Self, Translation. Unpublished masters thesis. Stellenbosch: Stellenbosch University [online]. Available: https://scholar.sun.ac.za/items/c96c14d7-6460-4ace-8c03-0fa61e07aa01 ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Alejandra Pizarnik, a significant figure in twentieth-century Latin American poetry, fashioned a rare poetic language – "a sparse, paradoxical language of despair and desire drawn from the collective unconscious of Western mythologies and the fragmented dreamscapes of her manifold selves". It is a language of "luminous heat" volatile enough, as Octavio Paz noted, to "burn, smelt, or even vaporise its sceptics" (Rossi, Selected iv; Paz qtd. in Heinowitz 7). Despite her established reputation within Latin American literary studies, Pizarnik's poetry remains relatively unknown to many readers worldwide. This thesis aims to bridge this gap by drawing her oeuvre into sharper academic focus, examining how her poetry (con)tests the peripheries of the poetic, psychological, and existential dimensions of selfhood. Through this study, I trace the tensions in Pizarnik's writing, exploring how she constructs conceptual and creative frameworks that navigate the frailties of language while leveraging its potential to inscribe an expansive, liminal space where self-representation and self-censorship intertwine. Across three chapters, I position Pizarnik as poet, theorist, and translator, wielding language as both instrument and adversary. Each chapter explores her voice through distinct themes: silence, self, and translation – concepts that reveal her construction of an expansive, perpetually fragmenting self in language. Chapter One examines Pizarnik's notion of poetic silence, not as absence but as presence – a layered textual space where silence articulates the unexpressed and inexpressible. Here, silence emerges as the pulse of her poetics, a dwelling place for the elusive poetic 'I' that both dissipates and momentarily coheres. This self longs to exist through language, as she writes: "if only I could live in a continual state of ecstasy, / shaping the body of the poem with my own, rescuing every phrase / with my days and weeks" (Pizarnik trans. Siegert, Extracting 117). Chapter Two considers the precarious space poetry occupies in relation to autobiography, particularly for a woman poet whose writing is (mis)labelled as "confessional". In Pizarnik's poetry, the poetic 'I' is both a cohesive subject and a disintegrating multiplicity, flickering through autobiographical, ontological, and psychological impulses that alternately reveal and obscure – a radical 'I' that disperses, rather than dissipates, in the exhilarating textual process of selving. Chapter Three presents literary translation as a generative poetic act, where navigating between languages becomes an avenue for remaking the polyvocal self. Translation, here, acts as a poetic event that circumnavigates linguistic borders and facilitates new meanings and reinterpretations, inviting unexpected encounters among poet, text, translator, and reader. Through this thesis, I endeavour to present a layered portrait of Pizarnik's poetics, striving, in the poet's words, to "explain (as much as possible) with simple words (as much as possible), with good and secure words (as much as possible)" the vastness and brilliance of her poetic universe and its potential to inspire both creatively and theoretically (Extracting 79). AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Geen opsomming beskikbaar. Masters 2025-06-05T13:27:01Z 2025-06-05T13:27:01Z 2025-03 Thesis https://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/132386 en Stellenbosch University iv, 104 pages application/pdf Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University |
| spellingShingle | Pizarnik, Alejandra, 1936-1972 -- Criticism and interpretation Poets, Argentine -- 20th century -- History and criticism Silence in literature Self in literature Identity (Psychology) in literature Argentine poetry -- 20th century -- History and criticism UCTD Uheida, Sarah The poetics of Alejandra Pizarnik : silence, self, translation |
| title | The poetics of Alejandra Pizarnik : silence, self, translation
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| title_full | The poetics of Alejandra Pizarnik : silence, self, translation
|
| title_fullStr | The poetics of Alejandra Pizarnik : silence, self, translation
|
| title_full_unstemmed | The poetics of Alejandra Pizarnik : silence, self, translation
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| title_short | The poetics of Alejandra Pizarnik : silence, self, translation
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| title_sort | poetics of alejandra pizarnik silence self translation |
| topic | Pizarnik, Alejandra, 1936-1972 -- Criticism and interpretation Poets, Argentine -- 20th century -- History and criticism Silence in literature Self in literature Identity (Psychology) in literature Argentine poetry -- 20th century -- History and criticism UCTD |
| url | https://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/132386 |
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