Childhood in the Works of Silvina Ocampo and Alejandra Pizarnik.(Book Review)

Publication: The Modern Language Review

Publication Date: 01-JUL-05

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COPYRIGHT 2005 Modern Humanities Research Association

Childhood in the Works of Silvina Ocampo and Alejandra Pizarnik. By FIONA J. MACKINTOSH. Woodbridge: Tamesis. 2003. 190 pp. 45 [pounds sterling]. ISBN 1-85566-09-5.

Over thirty years and a wide social gap separated the childhoods of Silvina Ocampo and Alejandra Pizarnik, the first born into a wealthy and influential patrician family, the other to Yiddish-speaking Russian immigrants. And yet, as Fiona Mackintosh argues in her excellent monograph, the writers shared certain childhood sensitivities, particularly a sense of not belonging to the world that surrounded them. Chapter 1 explores the affective and aesthetic relationship between the two writers, both fascinated by childhood and attracted to its 'Alice in Wonderland' logic. The chapter's title, 'Sylvette and Sacha', underlines the infantilism, even erotic infantilism, of their private...

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