Intimacy displays in Bestiarium, by Dulce María Loynaz: zoomorphic discoveries in her poetry

Abstract

The collection of poems Bestiarium, by the Cuban poet Dulce María Loynaz and who kept it unpublished for decades, delivers a fauna that appropriates what would later be seen as a contestatory discourse to challenge the power that underestimates the poet. If as a student she was suspended for not providing additional information, by this means, the chosen animals go, with their presence, to challenge authority and, at the same time, to approach the intimacy of the lyrical voice. It does not seem to be just an example of zoolatry on the part of Loynaz; the particularity of the faunal selection attached to the inscribed feeling warns that there is an ulterior motive that needs to be revealed. The poet’s word, transmuted into verse, affirms its originality and shifts the center of power to the periphery. Bestiarium would be subscribed, then, under three different registries: its social function, its didactic function and, not least important, its poetic function.