NÉSTOR PERLONGHER AND MYSTICISM: TOWARDS A CRITICAL REAPPRAISAL.

This paper attempts a reappraisal of last poems of Argentine poet, anthropologist, and human-rights activist Néstor Perlongher who lived during 1949-92. Many previous critics have either dismissed his mystical poems or explained them in esoteric terms. However, in this paper, Néstor Perlongher's last poems are related, through the application of recent critical assessments of sexuality after AIDS, to earlier masochist aesthetics in his writing, and to socio-political changes that occurred in Argentina and Brazil following the spread of AIDS in the late 1980's.