Female literature: a shelter from life and a desengao.

A
poetry portrait of Antonia Pozzi and Alfonsina Storni
Maria Cristina Cataldo (University of Athens)

The British writer Virginia Woolf once stated1 I have often been told
that Sappho was a woman, and that Plato and Aristotle placed her with
Homer and Archilocus among the greatest of their poets.
We are here reunited in the inspiring land of knowledge and
civilisation, where a woman managed to ascend the Olympus of writers,
though she is still an exception in the entire world. I would like to
dedicate my intervention to all women who, along the centuries, tried to
free themselves from prejudices and stereotypes in order to achieve the
status of writers. The way to become women writers it is still a steep
street, one can see the top of it far away in the horizon, but the same
prejudices and worse stereotypes hinder the way.
Writing is a mangnifying glass that gives the possibility of
communicating the self up to different degrees of truth. Writing is also
a shelter where the real world can be replaced by pure beauty, and to
escape from the illusion - sometimes - is not advisable. This is the case
of the Argentinian Alfonsina Storni and the Italian Antonia Pozzi, two
poetesses who committed suicide in 1938.
1

Woolf,Virginia, Women and writing, ed. Michle Barrett,USA, Harcourt Brace & Company, 1980

In what follows I will raise several questions about female writing,

trying to stress the fact that it is seen as a negative term. Then I will
analyze the considerations of Antonia Pozzi about the art for the sake of
art, and the disillusion of Alfonsina Storni with regard to the themes of
poetic language.
The social achievements of women date not so far away from our time.
In the beginning of the 20th Century, it should be taken into account that
women had no rights as citizens and in several parts of the world they are
still waiting to have some. Women were not allowed to vote, and were
expected to get married and have children. A woman should be an
unselfish, fragile, pure creature who accepted her status ruefully.
Since the 19th Century, women had to fight against conventions in order
to emerge. There was a scandalous contrast between females slavery and
the intellectual superiority of women writers. But even the superior
minds had to work hard to find the time to write. Harriet Beecher Stowe,
the author of the novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, was the mother of seven
children.
Elisabeth Gaskell, in her biography about the Life of Charlotte Bront,
notes that in order to be accepted as an author Mrs. Bront signed her
works as Mr. Currer Bell. Living in two realities that are difficult to be
reconciled was particularly stressful:
2

Quote: When a man becomes an author... another merchant or lawyer,

or doctor, steps into the vacant place, and probably does as well as he.
But no other can take up the quiet, regular duties of the daughter, the
wife, or the mother... a womans principal work in life is hardly left to her
own choice; nor can she drop the domestic charges devolving on her... for
the exercise of the most splendid talents that were ever bestowed. And yet
she must not shrink from the extra responsibility implied by the very fact
of her possessing such talents. 2
The life of women who wanted to write poetry was even harder. As
Rachel Phillips in her essay on Alfonsina Storni3 put it, women were
accused of being boring, due to their excessive harping on sentimental
themes. And indeed how could it be different? Since they were deprived
of the free will of planning their future! The Spanish philosopher Ortega
Y Gasset was not thinking of a woman when he said: I am myself and
my circumstances. Using a metaphor from the Victorian era that was
used by Alfonsina Storni herself, the woman looked like a beautiful bird
in a gilded cage
Sentimental themes were privileged by poetesses as a response to the
lack of social fulfillment, since the roles were rigidly separated. But, apart
2

Gaskell Elizabeth, The Life of Charlotte Bront, London, Routledge, 1997, vol.II, p.50

Phillips Rachel, From Poetess to Poet , London, Tamesis Book Limited, 1975, p.3

from what they were able to write, women had to accomplish certain
criteria that were determined by the critics themselves. As Harriet S.
Turner4 argues in her essay on Nobel Prize in Literature Gabriela Mistral,
the male critics rewarded only poems that were closer to female
stereotypes, and were about, love of God, nature, the mother, the
worlds just causes, the humble, persecuted, suffering, and forgotten.
Women were and are accused of speaking too much. In his critical
review on Antonia Pozzis collection Words, the Italian poet Eugenio
Montale5 stresses that the term spontaneity is the main obstacle that is
encountered in womens writing. He describes Antonia Pozzi as a
musical soul easily lost in the sonorous wave of her sensations. Thus, he
admits that she was already overcoming the rock-cliff of female
writing, obstacle that made a lot of people to doubt whether female
writing could exist at all!
In the same article Montale prizes Antonia Pozzi for her will of
reducing words to the minimum wage as if her genuine attempt would

Turner, H.,S. (1995): Moving Selves , , in In the Feminine Mode Essays on Hispanic Women Writers,
ed. Valis, N. and Maier, C.,USA, Bucknell University Press, p. 232
5

Montale Eugenio, Sulla Poesia, Milano, Mondadori, 1997

il desiderio di ridurre al minimo peso le parole.

lead to reduce6 that generic female gratuitousness that is the dream of

many male critics.
Unfortunately Antonia Pozzi was already dead when Montale wrote
about her. Apart from her poems and from the difficult relationship with
her father, who destroyed part of her writings after her death because they
did not suit the moral behavior of a woman, we are left with a fragile,
intellectual person who was asking too much from literature.
She was a well educated woman who studied at the University of
Milan, guided by Professor Banfi, the one who used to introduce his
students to Kafka, Dostoevsky, Mann, Joyce and many others. Antonia
and her schoolmates considered Art as something that transcends the
limits of communication and becomes the only hope that it is left to
human beings. As Rebecca West argues such an attitude was due to an
intense need for some counter values in opposition to the materialistic,
militaristic, and decidedly unspiritual worldview of the (fascist) regime. 7
The degree of truth in Antonia Pozzis work seems to be a crucial issue.
In other words was she pretending all the time or was she aware of her

ibid: quella generica gratuit femminile, ch il sogno di tanti critici maschi

West Rebecca(1994): Antonia Pozzi in Italian Women Writers a Bio-Bibliography Sourcebook, ed.,
Russel Rinaldina, USA, Greenwood Press

role as a poetess? Her answer is self contradictory, as if she was aware

that she was just pretending.
On the one hand, the best role played by Antonia Pozzi seemed to be
that of the devoted daughter who talked about her mothers handmade
curtains, who travelled, liked photography and horse-riding, could speak
French, English and German...
On the other hand, Antonia as a poetess was a completely different
person. The term confession recurs in her writings as a motive of
embarrassment, because she was attracted by transgression, though she
was not able to disobey. Antonia the poetess lived in the condition of a
dreamed life, where she could fantasize about her priorities: to be loved
and to celebrate the aesthetic beauty of the simple things. But reality was
to become more and more oppressing and poetry could not protect
Antonia from the authoritarian methods of her father who wanted her to
remain an eternal child. Antonia tried to open her eyes and she discovered
the sense of guilt for being a privileged person who had to tolerate the
miserable conditions of living of the poor and the race laws against the
Jewish people.
She became the character of her own poetry, where the I did not
correspond to the self. Perfection was to her a mere exercise of style. In
her diary on February 1935 Antonia wrote: I made my pain as an
6

abstraction and Since my pain was not meant to be anymore, [...] I had
to start living again. She chose death instead.
Alfonsina Storni seemed to be stronger, but the same doubts about her
value and the same searching for death as an ultimate solution seem to
dominate the themes of her poetry. Anderson Imbert reports her own
words: The pain of my tragedy is to me more important than the desire
of writing poetry.
In the 20th Century the highest sublime of beauty that had been
achieved by DAnnunzio - who was well known in Latin America - could
only turn versification into the ugliest sublime. In this sense we should
rediscover Alfonsina Storni as the one who set on fire her poetry8
because she suffered several damages.

As Giuseppe Bellini9 put it

Alfonsina Stornis poetry starts from a fight against reality that

generates the sense of disillusion, a sense that will accompany the
woman till the end of her life. Such a fight is to be found in the
subversion of the traditional roles: the man becomes pequeo hombre,

Anderson, Imbert, E., Historia de la Literatura Hispanoamericana II Epoca contemporanea, Mexico,

Breviarios, 1954.
9

Bellini Giuseppe (1996):, La Poesia di Alfonsina Storni, o lattrazione della mortein Tradizione,
innovazione, modelli. Scrittura femminile, del mondo iberico e americano, Bulzoni, Roma, pp. 181195. Nasce da qui la poesia della Storni: dallo scontro con la realt sorge quel senso di desengao
che si prolunga sino alla fine della sua vita e si accentua negli ultimi anni.

a little man who is incapable of feeling love and who is going to let her
down.
Alfonsina Storni portrayed reality for what it is, without adding
anything that could make it better. Antonia Pozzi was damaged as well,
but she was not able to fight. She rather created her own reality, where
things looked perfect, like in a photograph.
One year after her death, Alfonsina Stornis memorial had to take
place in Rosario, the town where she had grown up. The ladies of the
town decided that it was not advisable to prize a single mother like her
who had written indecent poems about men. Once again a woman was
humiliated, not because of men, but because of their victims!
In concluding I would like to say that female writing is not a question
of either-or, it is not a dichotomy between the strict rules set by men
and the fragile souls of the female protagonists. It is not feeling
sympathy with the victims of male fantasies. What really counts is
that a woman should think whether a great poetess who achieved the
status of a poet had to be happy or not about that.

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8

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