Alfonsina Storni: ”I’m going to sleep too”

Photographer: ThoughtCatalogue via Pixabay.

LIFE. On October, Saturday 22nd, 1938, a 46-year-old woman wanders in Buenos Aires towards the train station; she buys a one-way ticket to Mar del Plata. She moved to a modest boarding house, having the blurry fate of committing suicide. It is said – the incident is obscure- that she is sick, tired and longs for death to set her free. Perhaps her time goes by in an old bench thinking about her life. Maybe She spends time writing her poem ”I’m going to sleep too”.

I’m going to sleep, my nurse, tuck me in. Put a flashlight on the headboard; a constellation, the one that you like they are all good; dim it a little. She goes to the post office and sends the poem to ”La Nación” newspaper. She stays awake the whole Monday night because of her moral confusion. Probably screams of rebelliousness and words of submission were heard. She talks to herself. She writes a letter to the only son she had, Alejandro, 26 years old.

She goes out and heads to the sea at 1:00 am. Her biographers assured she jumped into the sea from a breakwater. The myth, however, more poetic and with more spirituality, was that she slowly walked into the water.

Hours later, two young workers who were strolling down La Perla beach found her body. She was Alfonsina Storni, one of the most important poets of the century. Alfonsina Storni was immortalised in the song ”Alfonsina y el mar” (Alfonsina and The Sea) by Luna and Ramírez.

Through the soft sand that the sea laps against

Your little footprint will not ever come back

A path full of pain and suffering

Reaches the deep water

A path only of silent grief Reaches the surf.

Alfonsina Storni was a Gemini of 1892. Fire Dragon. She once said: ”I was called Alfonsina, which means willing to anything”. She was born in a canton of Switzerland. Her family settled in San Juan, later on, in 1901, they moved to Rosario. When Alfonsina was 10 years old the ”Café Suizo” is her family business, where the girl works as a dishwasher and waits the tables. Her father, depressed and alcoholic dies in 1906. Alfonsina, who does not stop writing poems, works as a cook and as a labourer in a workshop of caps. She dedicated some time to the theatre too. She finally graduated as a teacher.

They were seen together. The photographs show them happy. Her friend Nora Lange says that she witnessed an erotic game for children: Quiroga holds in the air a chain clock they both had to kiss in the opposite faces; in the right moment Quiroga raised the clock. Naughty boy.

At age 19, She already writes, recites and publishes in magazines. And then came love. It is said that in a literary soiree in Santa Fe, Alfonsina had an affair and from the affair, she had a son, Alejandro, in 1912. From birth, another verse appeared: I am like a she-wolf, I walk alone, and I laugh…the son and then I, and then…whatever! In spite of the years Alejandro´s father name remains unknown, he was a journalist, older, and married.