Pizarnik’s Canto
The poem Canto from La última inocencia/ "The Last Innocence" (1956) would be considered a ditty if ditties were this dark, this wrapped up in death, catastrophe, torture. Martínez, writing in Salgado's anthology, analyzes Pizarnik's obsession concerning death:
As attested by her poetry, death haunted her in the image of a female in many guises inhabiting a forbidden garden, some mysterious forest, a perilous riverbank, or the other side of the mirror: symbols of powerful unconscious drives forever dismantling her identity and unsettling her sense of univocal self, while threatening to thrust her into the abyss of definitive silence. (page 283)
As you might be able to tell, something is lost in my translation. The rhyme the poet pulls off in "miedo/ tiempo," I was unable to carry through into English. Plus, I dropped "the" from the first two lines, simply rendering "el tiempo," "el miedo," as time and fear; "the time," "the fear" seemed clunky to my ear.
| Canto Alejandra Pizarnik |
Song translated by ZJC |
|---|---|
|
el tiempo tiene miedo pasea por mi sangre destrucción de destrucciones y miedo |
time has fear takes a walk through my blood destruction of destructions and fear |