De-coincidence in Poetry. Analysis of the Poem "The Pure No (El puro no)" by Oliverio Girondo

Abstract

This article presents an innovative reading of the poetry of Oliverio Girondo – one of the most prominent representatives of the Argentinian literary avant-garde – through the lens of Gaston Bachelard’s theory of poetic imagination. The starting point is the concept of de-coincidence, defined by François Jullien as a departure from coincidence and adequacy towards novelty and the discovery of the unknown, which enables a reinterpretation of the poet’s works. The analysis focuses on the poem The Pure No (El puro no), from the volume In the Moremarrow (En la masmédula), which marks the height of Girondo’s formal and semantic experimentation. The article highlights deep connections between the poet’s work and Bachelard’s concept of the four elements, with particular emphasis on earth. In the poem, earth – traditionally associated with fertility and permanence – is completely stripped of these properties and depicted as barren, dead and incapable of sustaining life. Girondo constructs negative material imagination:
a space of extreme negation, devoid of form, substance and even the possibility of decay. “No” becomes the dominant poetic category, transforming the materiality of the earth into “no-matter” and time into “no-time” – stagnant and unchanging. From this perspective, earth appears as the foundation of a poetics of radical negation.