Words by Alejandra Pizarnik

Eponine Howarth

Palabras (1965)

Se espera que la lluvia pase. Se espera que los vientos lleguen. Se espera. Se dice. Por amor al silencio se dicen miserables palabras. Un decir forzoso, forzado, un decir sin salida posible, por amor al silencio, por amor al lenguaje de los cuerpos. Yo hablaba. En mí el lenguaje es siempre un pretexto para el silencio. Es mi manera de expresar mi fatiga inexpresable. Debería invertirse este orden maligno. Por primera vez emplear palabras para seducir a quien se quisiera gracias a la mediación del silencio más puro. Siempre he sido yo la silenciosa. Las palabras intercesoras, las he oído tanto, ahora las repito. ¿Quién elogió a los amantes en detrimento de los amados? Mi orientación más profunda: la orilla del silencio. Palabras intercesoras, señuelo de vocales. Ésta es ahora mi vida: mesurarme, temblar ante cada voz, temblar las palabras apelando a todo lo que de nefasto y de maldito he oído y leído en materia de formas de seducción.

El hecho es que yo contaba, yo analizaba, yo relacionaba ejemplos proporcionados por los amigos comunes y la literatura. Le demostraba que la razón estaba de mi parte, la razón de amor. Le prometía que amándome iba a serle accesible un lugar de justicia perfecta. Esto le decía sin estar yo misma enamorada, habiendo sólo en mí la voluntad de ser amada por él y no por otro. Es tan difícil hablar de esto. Cuando vi su rostro por primera vez, deseé que fuera de amor al volverse hacia mi rostro. Quise sus ojos despeñándose en los míos. De esto quiero hablar. De un amor imposible porque no hay amor. Historia de amor sin amor. Me apresuro. Hay amor. Hay amor de la misma manera en que recién salí a la noche y dije: hay viento. No es una historia sin amor. Más bien habría que hablar de los sustitutos.

Words (1965)

The rain is expected to pass. The winds are expected to arrive. It is hoped. It is said. For love of silence, miserable words are said. A forced, forced saying, a saying with no possible way out, for love of silence, for love of the language of bodies. I was speaking. In me, language is always a pretext for silence. It is my way of expressing my inexpressible fatigue. This evil order should be reversed. For the first time using words to seduce whoever I want thanks to the mediation of the purest silence. I have always been the silent one. The intercessory words, I have heard them so many times, now I repeat them. Who praised the lovers to the detriment of the beloved? My deepest orientation: the shore of silence. Intercessory words, lure of vowels. This is now my life: to measure myself, to tremble at every voice, to tremble at the words appealing to everything nefarious and cursed that I have heard and read in terms of forms of seduction.

The fact is that I was telling, I was analysing, I was relating examples provided by mutual friends and literature. I showed him that reason was on my side, the reason of love. I promised him that by loving me a place of perfect justice would be available to him. I was telling him this without being in love myself, having only the will to be loved by him and not by an other. It is so difficult to talk about this. When I saw his face for the first time, I wanted it to be one of love as he turned to face me. I wanted his eyes falling into mine. This is what I want to talk about. Of an impossible love because there is no love. Love story without love. I hurry. There is love. There is love in the same way that I just went out into the night and said: there is wind. It is not a story without love. We should rather talk about substitutes.


Alejandra Pizarnik (29 April 1936 – 25 September 1972) is an Argentine poet. She studied philosophy at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, and she lived in Paris between 1960 and 1964, where she translated writers such as Antonin Artaud, Henri Michaux, and Aimé Cesairé. Three of her major works include: Los trabajos y las noches, Extracción de la piedra de locura and El infierno musical as well as a prose work titled, La condesa sangrienta.

Eponine Howarth

Eponine Howarth is co-editor-in-chief of La Piccioletta Barca.

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