Poetry, Anguish, and the Irreducible Real: Looking for feedback and ideas on this draft (feat. Alejandra Pizarnik & Lacanian Theory)

Hi everyone! I’m working on a draft/essay exploring how artists—specifically poets like Alejandra Pizarnik—use the artistic act to border and symbolize the overwhelming anguish caused by the Lacanian Real.

Draft: Anguish in the Face of the Irreducible Real

Throughout history, many artists seem to create out of moments overwhelmed by deep anguish. They turn to the artistic act—writing, painting, drawing—to appease and transform a suffocate experience felt directly in the body.

This is clearly visible in Argentine poet Alejandra Pizarnik, whose poetry feels born from a profound sense of drowning and overflowing suffering. In her journals, she writes:

>

This reveals how writing becomes her preferred medium to scratch at the urgent, painful sensation she lives through. It is no coincidence that when discussing her anguish, she highlights her limited oral resources alongside the richness she finds in writing, where she takes refuge. This passage illustrates not only her desperate need to express and release that feeling of suffocation, but also the crucial role symbolic tools play when facilitated by writing.

In her poem Approximations (Aproximaciones), she writes:

>

Her poetry emerges from profound pain—from an internal explosion that echoes bodily through her throat, heart, and skin. She writes less out of a desire and more out of an imperative need to channel and relieve this anguish.

Symbolizing the Irreducible

What interests us here regarding the relationship between poetry and anguish is not merely the root of Pizarnik’s personal pain, but the anguish experienced when confronting the irreducible Real, and how the poet creates the poem in an effort to put it into words, symbolize it, and find signifiers to name it. (Note: Expand later on Poetry vs. Prose according to Octavio Paz and Borges).

If psychoanalysis posits that anguish arises from the presence of Object a—an object whose very nature is to resist signification—it makes sense that the subject (in this case, the artist) uses whatever tools are at hand to symbolize this experience. (Note: Expand on the theoretical foundation of anguish using Lacan’s Seminar X/XX, Miller, etc.).

I find it compelling to reflect on the transformative power of the poetic word: how saying something actually brings it into existence. When Pizarnik writes Approximations, she isn’t just managing her own suffering; through writing, she borders a Real that erupts onto the scene. In writing her poems, she is inscribing a letter onto that goce (jouissance). (Note: Further develop the concept of 'the letter' and its articulation with the poetic act).

I’d love to get your thoughts, critiques, and ideas to expand on this. Here is the translated draft:

PD: Soy argentino, el borrador originalmente esta en español.

Poetry, Anguish, and the Irreducible Real: Looking for feedback and ideas on this draft (feat. Alejandra Pizarnik & Lacanian Theory)

Hi everyone! I’m working on a draft/essay exploring how artists—specifically poets like Alejandra Pizarnik—use the artistic act to border and symbolize the overwhelming anguish caused by the Lacanian Real.

Draft: Anguish in the Face of the Irreducible Real

Throughout history, many artists seem to create out of moments overwhelmed by deep anguish. They turn to the artistic act—writing, painting, drawing—to appease and transform a suffocate experience felt directly in the body.

This is clearly visible in Argentine poet Alejandra Pizarnik, whose poetry feels born from a profound sense of drowning and overflowing suffering. In her journals, she writes:

>

This reveals how writing becomes her preferred medium to scratch at the urgent, painful sensation she lives through. It is no coincidence that when discussing her anguish, she highlights her limited oral resources alongside the richness she finds in writing, where she takes refuge. This passage illustrates not only her desperate need to express and release that feeling of suffocation, but also the crucial role symbolic tools play when facilitated by writing.

In her poem Approximations (Aproximaciones), she writes:

>

Her poetry emerges from profound pain—from an internal explosion that echoes bodily through her throat, heart, and skin. She writes less out of a desire and more out of an imperative need to channel and relieve this anguish.

Symbolizing the Irreducible

What interests us here regarding the relationship between poetry and anguish is not merely the root of Pizarnik’s personal pain, but the anguish experienced when confronting the irreducible Real, and how the poet creates the poem in an effort to put it into words, symbolize it, and find signifiers to name it. (Note: Expand later on Poetry vs. Prose according to Octavio Paz and Borges).

If psychoanalysis posits that anguish arises from the presence of Object a—an object whose very nature is to resist signification—it makes sense that the subject (in this case, the artist) uses whatever tools are at hand to symbolize this experience. (Note: Expand on the theoretical foundation of anguish using Lacan’s Seminar X/XX, Miller, etc.).

I find it compelling to reflect on the transformative power of the poetic word: how saying something actually brings it into existence. When Pizarnik writes Approximations, she isn’t just managing her own suffering; through writing, she borders a Real that erupts onto the scene. In writing her poems, she is inscribing a letter onto that goce (jouissance). (Note: Further develop the concept of 'the letter' and its articulation with the poetic act).

I’d love to get your thoughts, critiques, and ideas to expand on this. Here is the translated draft:

PD: Soy argentino, el borrador originalmente esta en español.

https://preview.redd.it/btu7l2gpffgh1.png?width=332&format=png&auto=webp&s=f2ac1b0f9533621e0e5a7b0e1221bb5acafdf578

a continuacion queria compartir el prologo de "Libertad bajo la palabra" de Octavio Paz. Me parece muy interesante como resume la idea de muchos de sus poemas donde le adjudica a la palabra una capacidad creadora.

Allá, donde terminan las fronteras, los caminos se borran. Don- de empieza el silencio. Avanzo lentamente y pueblo la noche de estrellas, de palabras, de la respiración de un agua remota que me espera donde comienza el alba.

Invento la vispera, la noche, el día siguiente que se levanta en su lecho de piedra y recorre con ojos límpidos un mundo penosamente soñado. Sostengo al árbol, a la nube, a la roca, al mar, presentimiento de dicha, invenciones que desfallecen y va cilan frente a la luz que disgrega.

Y luego la sierra árida, el caserío de adobe, la minuciosa rea lidad de un charco y un pirú estólido, de unos niños idiotas que me apedrean, de un pueblo rencoroso que me señala. In- vento el terror, la esperanza, el mediodía padre de los deli- rios solares, de las falacias espejeantes, de las mujeres que cas- tran a sus amantes de una hora.

Invento la quemadura y el aullido, la masturbación en las letri. nas, las visiones en el muladar, la prisión, el piojo y el chancro, la pelea por la sopa, la delación, los animales viscosos, los contac- tos innobles, los interrogatorios nocturnos, el examen de con- ciencia, el juez, la victima, el testigo. Tú eres esos tres. ¿A quién apelar ahora y con qué argucias destruir al que te acusa? Inútiles los memoriales, los ayes y los alegatos. Inútil tocar a puertas condenadas. No hay puertas, hay espejos. Inútil cerrar los ojos o volver entre los hombres: esta lucidez ya no me aban- dona. Romperé los espejos, haré trizas mi imagen -que cada mañana rehace piadosamente mi cómplice, mi delator. La so- ledad de la conciencia y la conciencia de la soledad, el dia a pan y agua, la noche sin agua. Sequia, campo arrasado por un sol sin párpados, ojo atroz, oh conciencia, presente puro donde pasado y porvenir arden sin fulgor ni esperanza. Todo desem boca en esta eternidad que no desemboca.

Allá, donde los caminos se borran, donde acaba el silencio, in- vento la desesperación, la mente que me concibe, la mano que me dibuja, el ojo que me descubre. Invento al amigo que me inventa, mi semejante; y a la mujer, mi contrario: torre que corono de banderas, muralla que escalan mis espumas, ciudad devastada que renace lentamente bajo la dominación de mis ojos.

Contra el silencio y el bullicio invento la Palabra, libertad que se inventa y me inventa cada día.

Hola, busco recomendaciones sobre ensayos, artículos, cuentos o novelas sobre la nostalgia. Particularmente en las despedidas. Se me ocurrian autores como Dolina, Pessoa y Unamuno. Pero quiero ver que me recomiendan

Buenas, me recomendarian lugares donde poder festejar mi cumpleaños? Quiza algun club donde pueda alquilar una parrilla o algun bar copado.