Pizarnik’s Salvación
I have finished translating Garcia Lorca for now. He is always a joy, but there are over a dozen collected works of his poetry in English and even as I labored with my beloved English-Spanish Dictionary, I wondered: does the world really need yet another translation of Federico? So I wandered out yesterday and went to the Michigan State University library and discovered Alejandra Pizarnik, an Argentine poet, who needs to be read. Wikipedia has this to say about her:
[She was] born to Russian Jewish immigrant parents on April 29, 1936, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. A year after entering the department of Philosophy and Letters at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, Pizarnik published her first book of poetry, La tierra más ajena (1955) … From 1960 to 1964 [she] lived in Paris … Pizarnik followed her debut work with two more volumes of poems, La última inocencia (1956) and Las adventuras perdidas (1958) … She died in Buenos Aires on September 25, 1972 of a self-induced overdose of seconal.
It is from La última inocencia/ "The Last Innocence" (1956) that I have begun working from. Looking over the Internet I discovered that while several poets speak highly of her and the Princeton University Library has a Special Collection of her letters, there is very little of her opus in circulation. Strange, considering the slender, psychological, surrealistic nature of her verse.
Of course, I am an amateur translator. I do not hold that my translations are the end-all or be-all of Pizarnik's work. What I can hope for, however, is that one day someone who is a master poeta del español will read this and say: "these poems need to be released from their cages." Until then, I welcome you along for the ride.
| Salvación Alejandra Pizarnik |
Salvation translated by ZJC |
|---|---|
|
Se fuga la isla. |
Flight from the island. |