Loneliness and Exile in María Zambrano

Abstract

A reading of some of María Zambrano's texts written in Spain and in exile reveals a way of thinking about solitude through a series of oxymoronic formulations, from "communicable isolation" to "prophetic solitude". The paradox of the loneliness that is necessary to communicate truth can be read as a theory of literary reception or as a re ection on the social limits of authorship. The two dimensions can be contrasted with earlier and contemporary visions of solitude to highlight Zambrano's own ideas: the attention to the other and the transcendental care that differentiate her from egocentric eulogies or sociological analyses of solitude. The experience of exile is interpreted on the basis of these ideas, not from the author's own biography, but as a tragic exacerbation of this paradox of solitude.