Pizarnik y carrol (ingles)

LA PEQUEÑA ALICE:
ALEJANDRA PIZARNIK AND
ALICE IN WONDERLAND
FIONA J. MACKINTOSH
University of Warwick

Since its publication in 1865, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has
captivated generations of children and adults alike. The numerous translations
into Spanish published in Buenos Aires testify to the fact that Alice was, and
remains, highly popular there. For example, Peuser, Sigmar,Codex, Acme
and Molino have all published translations or adaptations of Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland, some going into more than 10 reprints. A few
other examples provide further evidence of Alice’s presence in Argentine
culture: there was sufficient interest in Alice in the seventies for Liliana
Heker, a contemporary novelist, to publish a translation into Spanish of thebelatedly-discovered extra chapter of Through the Looking-Glass (Heker,
1977). Heker also uses a picture of Alice as a key symbol of childhood in
her novel Zona de clivaje: “incontaminada y radiante […] Alicia sonríe en
el mejor de los mundos, parece venir de tardes apacibles bajo las glicinas y
de labores de aguja junto a la ventana” (Heker, 1997: 92-93); a recent study
of Argentine women writers isentitled “Las mujeres y la escritura: el gato
de Cheshire” (in Piña, 1997: 15-48); the contemporary Argentinian painter,
Alicia Carletti, is fascinated by Alice and has produced a prize-winning series
of pictures transposing certain of Tenniel’s illustrations into a surreal world
Fragmentos, número 16, p. 41/55 Florianópolis/ jan - jun/ 1999

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of gigantic eroticized flowers and pubescentgirls. Most significantly, the
theatre director Sergio D’Angelo created a piece of theatre combining Lewis
Carroll with Alejandra Pizarnik, which depended on Alice for its form and
on Pizarnik’s poetry for its content (with the Compañía Fantasma Argentina;
source: Clarín archives, no further details available). Alice forms an
important intertext to the work of the Argentinian poet AlejandraPizarnik
(1936-1972) and in this article I shall explore which aspects of Lewis Carroll’s
masterpiece are reworked by Pizarnik in her poetry, and to what effect.
Pizarnik’s sister, Myriam Pizarnik de Nessis, comments that Alejandra
loved Alice and often used to read it to her nephews, Mario and Fabián.
Apparently Alejandra’s own copy of Alice in Wonderland has been lost,
but Myriam had theAtlántida edition, translated by Constancio L. Virgilio.
We can imagine how the still-adolescent Alejandra, in the ferment of
developing her poetic imagination, would read these adventures aloud whilst
mentally re-reading with her own poetic preoccupations as a backdrop. She
also urged her close friend Ivonne Bordelois to read the Carroll stories;
Ivonne confesses that “me arrastraron a la lecturade L. Carroll la admiración
y el fervor demostrados por Alejandra” (Correspondencia, p.263, note 66).
Neither could Ivonne stop at Alice and Through the Looking-Glass; Pizarnik
required further reading: “Tratá de leer del mismo La caza del Snark. Es
otra cosa; es lo otro, lo que nunca leímos antes ni después”
(Correspondencia, p.260).
Two main articles have treated the subject of connectionsbetween
Pizarnik and Carroll: Isabel Cámara analyses Pizarnik’s strategy of hiding
behind Carroll’s text in her short episodic story “El hombre del antifaz azul”
but does not cover references made to Alice in other poems; Cecilia Propato
has analysed Pizarnik’s debt to Lewis Carroll in terms of nonsense language,
but she concentrates exclusively on Pizarnik’s play Los poseídos entre lilas(Propato, 1998: 203-212). It is therefore my aim to present more of an
overview of the impact of both Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and
Through the Looking-Glass on Pizarnik’s work as a whole. A glance
through Pizarnik’s Obras completas suffices to reveal that the impact is
considerable, and is felt in two particular ways: firstly, through direct quotation
and secondly through the more...