The keys of the body: a reading of the erotic poetics of Cristina Peri Rossi

Abstract

Much of the lyrical and narrative work of Cristina Peri Rossi (Montevideo, 1941) seems to be articulated with the modulations of an erotic poetics. It is, in effect, a particular and very special way of conceiving, carrying out and expressing the literary fact, keeping in mind the body, desire, the intermittence and realizations of sex and sexuality, as well as singular resources, forms and contents that, triggered by fiction or poetry, they emerge to propose postures, positions and perspectives on the human condition. With this sign, the emergence, novelty and roundness of Peri Rossi's work in Latin American and Spanish letters (not to mention the impact of her translations in other countries) will be extremely valuable; well because by assuming her own voice, autonomous and unprotected - that of a woman, writer, dissident and lesbian - she seeks her space and dares to say precisely what, about desire, the body, sex or the dismantling of essences identity, throbbed excluded, in the margin. In this sense, this essay addresses from a very personal point of view the keys to figuration of the body and its desire in the work of Peri Rossi, looking at that body in the madness of erotic swallowing, in the conjunction of the human and the animal, in the blurring of bodies and identities as forms of political contestation, in the vivification of the female body that navigates as a metaphor for the sexual and loving bond.