Early life Flora Pizarnik was born on 29 April 1936, in
Avellaneda in the
Greater Buenos Aires metropolitan area of
Argentina, to Jewish immigrant parents from
Rovno in the Russian Empire (now Rivne,
Ukraine), Elías Pizarnik (Pozharnik) and Rejzla Bromiker. Her parents left the Soviet Union and arrived in Argentina in 1934, the same year in which her older sister, Myriam, was born. She had a difficult childhood, struggling with acne and self-esteem issues, as well as having a
stutter. She adopted the name
Alejandra as a teenager. As an adult, she had a clinical diagnosis of
schizophrenia.
Career A year after entering the
University of Buenos Aires, Pizarnik published her first book of poetry,
The Most Foreign Country (1955). She took courses in literature, journalism, and philosophy, but dropped out in order to pursue painting with
Juan Batlle Planas. Pizarnik was bisexual/lesbian but in much of her work references to relationships with women were self-censored due to the oppressive nature of the Argentine dictatorship she lived under. Between 1960 and 1964 Pizarnik lived in Paris, where she worked for the magazine
Cuadernos and other French editorials. She published poems and criticism in many newspapers, translated
Antonin Artaud,
Henri Michaux,
Aimé Césaire,
Yves Bonnefoy and
Marguerite Duras. She also studied French religious history and literature at the
Sorbonne. There she became friends with
Julio Cortázar,
Rosa Chacel,
Silvina Ocampo and
Octavio Paz. Paz even wrote the prologue for her fourth poetry book, ''Diana's Tree
(1962). A famous sequence on Diana reads: "I jumped from myself to dawn/I left my body next to the light/and sang the sadness of being born." She returned to Buenos Aires in 1964, and published her best-known books of poetry: Works and Nights
(1965), Extracting the Stone of Madness
(1968) and The Musical Hell'' (1971). She was awarded a
Guggenheim Fellowship in 1968, and in 1971 a
Fulbright Scholarship. == Death ==