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Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath This line is from Sylvia Plath's poem "Lady Lazarus", one of many that helped make her an icon of modern American poetry. They have an eerie, prophetic quality, seeming to foreshadow the tragic death of this young writer. Understanding Sylvia Plath's words require a closer look at both her life and a few of her works. Though critics have described her writing as "governed by negative vitalism", her distinct individuality has made her a conversation piece among those familiar with her. (Pollitt 338) However, it is not "negative vitalism" that controls her writing, but simply her approach to dealing with her feelings. She writes from her experiences, she writes from her soul. Sylvia Plath's poems reflect the torrential reality of her life and weave together the multiplicity of her emotions. Born in Boston on October 27, 1932 to Otto and Aurelia Plath, Sylvia had a pleasant start in life. She grew up in Winthrop, a seaside town outside of Boston, with her younger brother, Warren. When she was eight years old, her father died as a result of pulmonary embolism following an injury complicated by diabetes. His death had such an impact on her that she eventually became obsessed with dying and wrote many pieces on the subject. In her works, he became a Nazi, a devil, and a demon lover, calling her to the grave. In school, Sylvia proved to be an outstanding writer, winning numerous awards. In 1950, entering college, her first short story, "And Summer Will Not Come Again" was published in Seventeen magazine. She attended Smith College with a double scholarship from Wellesly Smith Club and a private fund endowed by Olive Higgins Prouty. In 1952 she won a guest editorship in Mademoiselle's College Board Contest in New York. Everything seemed perfect, but she sank into a serious depression from disappointments that outweighed her achievements. In the summer of 1953, she hid herself in a hole in her cellar after overdosing on sleeping pills but was found and saved. After a hospitalization, she was given electroshock treatments and psychotherapy and released to go back to school for a successful last year. She won many prizes and publications and even a scholarship to the University of Cambridge. At Cambridge she met Ted Hughes, an English poet who later became her husband in 1956. They moved to Boston a year later and Plath became an instructor at Smith. After a series of failed attempts to publish poetry books, the couple moved back to England where they had their children, Freida and Nicholas. However, Plath's medical problems and miscarriage left her distraught. Finally, her book of poetry, The Colossus and Other Poems (1960) was accepted and published by William Heinemann Limited. Also, she received a Eugene F. Faxton Fellowship to complete the novel she had begun about her nervous breakdown called The Belljar, "Which happened to be published under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas, due to Plath's insecurities." (Magnusson 1170) Unfortunately, her marriage was deteriorating, and her husband was having an affair. She and Ted separated in 1962. During the time between her separation and her suicide in 1963, she was extremely depressed and often ill from the cold and draughty apartment where she and her children lived. With no telephone and frozen pipes, her despair was intense, but these things fueled her furious writing. Often, she would write every morning before the children woke. Her emotions revealed in her writing directly before her death explain her painful struggle to stay alive. On February 11, 1963 she used towels to prevent gas seepage into the children's room and killed herself quietly while they slept. Her painful autobiographical poems were published in Ariel (1965), Winter Trees (1971), and Crossing the Water (1971). Her Collected Poems, edited by Ted Hughes, was published in 1982. Sylvia Plath's life, and even sometimes foremostly her death, have not been fully considered by many critics. Her recognition should certainly place her among the most significant female poets of the twentieth century. Plath's success was definitly posthumous. Ironically, many of her popular poems share a common thread -- a theme that deals with death, the dead, and dying. However, death featured in her work as both a theme and a device must be treated as more than a mere fixation. She saw death as a treatment and a process in her poems. Her view of death was from her personal experiences of failed suicide attempts, a sort of trial death for her. Frank Magill's analysis of Plath's death-themed poems offer an insight, "It could be said that Plath's basic subject is the art of dying." (1628) In addition, "Plath's strongest poems invoke archetypal figures and stories in a way that re-energizes early childhood images of the evil parent, the human sacrifice, and all forms of death-bringers." (1630) In one of her more popular poems, "Daddy", she addresses her dead father, she proceeds to exorcise him, banish him from herself, telling him that she is through with him. Also her poem, "Lady Lazarus", which was writen around the time of "Daddy", deals with death, but this time it is her own. In "Lady Lazarus" she dies many deaths, commenting on how she "does it well". She continues to rise again, having a number of lives to use up simply to die. "Throughout her career, Plath worked with a tightly connected cluster of concerns -- metamorphosis, rebirth, the self as threatened by death, the otherness of the natural world, fertility and sterility -- and applied them all to what she was as the central situation of her life, the death of her father, and the complex emotions of loss, guilt and resentment it aroused in her even as an adult." (Katha Pollitt, 342) During Plath's most productive month, October 1962, she wrote a letter to her mother saying, " I am a genius of a writer; I have it in me. I am writing the best poems of my life; they will make my name..." Her husband later published her journals stating, "She knew she had made the leap." (Hughs 357) "Plath's acerbic wit that informs and propels the group of poems: "Daddy", "Medusa", "Cat", "Ariel", and "Lady Lazarus" among them. With "Daddy" and "Medusa" written back to back in a sort of dual exorcism, the self is once again at war." (Austin, 420) In "Medusa", like "Daddy", Plath displays wounds, then moves from a state of psychological bondage to freedom. Plath's suicide was not entirely caused or induced by events in her life. She was subject to numerous bouts of depression and breakdowns, one very significant breakdown she made the subject of her only novel, The Bell Jar. Her poetry is distinguishable in that is it often written from a voice -- and at times, when it is not, the cadence of a voice is present through the very stuff of a poem. The poem is then issued upon the reader from a speaker, from a speaker who is identified and characterised by what they say. The process of suicide thus fits well into that concept when we consider as Plath does, the complexities of the idea of suicide -- and the idea that the will of death, something man often struggles to understand in any way, can be present in man himself -- its implications and also the reality of it. It can be said that Plath's writings were in fact, her own story. Saturated with emotion, her poems relay deep feeling of many topics. Her versital style, which evolved to its peak near the end of her life, is quite unique, putting her in an elite class with such poets as Poe and Keats. It was once said that what Sylvia Plath most feared was what she most desired -- death. One cannot properly criticise her writing without first psychologically analyzing her to a point where she can be understood. In order to understand her pain in some of her works, it is important to know where the pain originates. Sylvia Plath's life was not very long, but she was accomplished in her most important concern, her writing. She gave all she had to her poetry and at the time of her death, there was not much more for her to give. Even though she was a mother, she felt she had no reason to continue living. She was a star that simply burned into exhaustion. However, her contribution to poetry was immense and as long as her literary work continues to be read and absorbed, so will new thoughts, puzzles, and questions be raised in regards to her death, her view of it, and ours. Bibliography: Primary: Kat, Jonny."My Tribute to Sylvia Plath".[available online] http://members.tripod.com/~jonnykat/sylvia.htm.3/9/99. Secondary: Austin, David Craig."Sylvia Plath".Modern American Women Writers.Elaine Showalter. New York:Charles Scribner's Sons, 1991.411-423. "Biography of Plath".[available online] http://www.kutztown.edu/faculty/reagan/plath.html.3/11/99. Hughs, Ted ed.The Journals of Sylvia Plath. New York, NY:The Dial Press, 1982.357-361. Magill, Frank,ed.Magill's Survey of American Literature.Vol.5. North Bellmore, NY:Marshall Cavendish Corp., 1991.1626-33. Magusson, Magnus,ed.Cambridge Biographical Dictionary. New York, NY:Cambridge University Press, 1990.1170. Pollitt, Katha."A Note of Triumph".in The Nation, New York.Vol 234.No.2.January 16,1982,pp52-55.Rpt in CLC.Vol 51.Eds.Daniel G. Marowski, Roger Matuz.Detroit, MI:Gale Research Inc.,1989.338-45.

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