Árbol de Diana
1962
First Published
4.29
Average Rating
55
Number of Pages
Poetry. Translated from the Spanish by Yvette Siegert. In 1962, Pizarnik published her fourth collection, DIANA'S TREE, the book that would both change and establish her poetic voice, and it contained the slimmest verses the poet would ever write. It also carried a glowing introduction by Octavio Paz, who by that point served as a prominent Mexican diplomat in Paris and had become a leader of the city's expatriate literary circles. DIANA'S TREE, wrote Paz, was a feat of alchemical prowess, a work of precocious linguistic transparency that let off "a luminous heat that could burn, smelt or even vaporize its skeptics."
Avg Rating
4.29
Number of Ratings
1,116
5 STARS
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4 STARS
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3 STARS
13%
2 STARS
3%
1 STARS
0%
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Author
Alejandra Pizarnik
Author · 15 books
Born in Buenos Aires to Russian parents who had fled Europe and the Nazi Holocaust, Alejandra Pizarnik was destined for literary greatness as well as an early death. She died from an ostensibly self-administered overdose of barbiturates on 25 September 1972. A few words scribbled on a slate that same month, reiterating her desire to go nowhere "but to the bottom," sum up her lifelong aspiration as a human being and as a writer. The compulsion to head for the "bottom" or "abyss" points to her desire to surrender to nothingness in an ultimate experience of ecstasy and poetic fulfillment in which life and art would be fused, albeit at her own risk. "Ojalá pudiera vivir solamente en éxtasis, haciendo el cuerpo del poema con mi cuerpo" (If I could only live in nothing but ecstasy, making the body of the poem with my body).
