ALEJANDRA PIZARNIK, UN EJEMPLO DE CORRECCIÓN SÁDICA

The purpose of this paper is to examine, through a study case, the successive steps of correction and rewriting that Pizanik’s texts undergo, in order to discuss a widespread idea (often encouraged by Pizarnik herself) of her writing as being “automatic” or spontaneous, the result of inspiration rather than perspiration and suffering, as the different and painful phases of correction would imply. I will first consider three writing mechanisms, which generally appear combined among themselves, that play a key role in the transformation process of her texts: selecting, crossing-out and erasing. I will then study in detail the genetic dossier for the sixth poem of the “Los pequenos cantos” series, in order to clarify the way in which Pizarnik brutalizes and systematically mutilates her texts, according to a certain logic of correction that is close to what Roland Barthes will call “the little sadist machinery”.