The Journals of Sylvia Plath

Product Information

Stevenson, Anne, Bitter Fame: The Undiscovered Life of Sylvia Plath, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1989.

a b c Axelrod, Steven (April 24, 2007) [2003]. "Sylvia Plath". The Literary Encyclopedia. Archived from the original on October 11, 2007 . Retrieved June 1, 2007. Dalrymple, Theodore (2010). Spoilt Rotten: The Toxic Cult of Sentimentality. London: Gibson Square Books. ISBN 978-1-906142-61-2. How did I ever live in those barren, desperate days of dating, experimenting, hearing mother warm me I was too critical, that I set my sights too high and would be an old maid. Well, perhaps I would have been if Ted hadn’t been born Heinz, Drue (Spring 1995). "Ted Hughes, The Art of Poetry No. 71". The Paris Review. Spring 1995 (134): 98, cited in Ferretter 2009, p.15Badia, Janet; Phegley, Jennifer (2005). Reading Women: Literary Figures and Cultural Icons from the Victorian Age to the Present. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 0-8020-8928-3. Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) was an American author and poet. Plath is primarily known for her poetry, but earned her greatest reputation for her semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar, published pseudonymously weeks before her death. Letters Home: Correspondence, 1950-1963, selected and edited with a commentary by mother, Aurelia Schober Plath, Harper (New York, NY), 1975. We walked by Ginny, Sally, and a crowd of kids keeping dry in the tractor shed. A roar went up as we passed. A singsong, "Oh, Sylvia." My cheeks burned.

It seemed of no significance then, but now I remember how Ilo had shut the door, had turned on the radio so that music came out. At times, Plath was able to overcome the “tension between the perceiver and the thing-in-itself by literally becoming the thing-in-itself,” wrote Newman. “In many instances, it is nature who personifies her.” Similarly, Plath used history “to explain herself,” writing about the Nazi concentration camps as though she had been imprisoned there. She said, “I think that personal experience shouldn’t be a kind of shut box and mirror-looking narcissistic experience. I believe it should be generally relevant, to such things as Hiroshima and Dachau, and so on.” Newman explained that, “in absorbing, personalizing the socio-political catastrophes of the century, [Plath] reminds us that they are ultimately metaphors of the terrifying human mind.” Alvarez noted that the “anonymity of pain, which makes all dignity impossible, was Sylvia Plath’s subject.” Her reactions to the smallest desecrations, even in plants, were “extremely violent,” wrote Hughes. “Auschwitz and the rest were merely the open wounds.” In sum, Newman believed, Plath “evolved in poetic voice from the precocious girl, to the disturbed modern woman, to the vengeful magician, to Ariel—God’s Lioness.” Hughes, Frieda (2003). "My Mother". The Book of Mirrors. Archived from the original on May 28, 2012. Jernigan, Adam T. (January 1, 2014). "Paraliterary Labors in Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar: Typists, Teachers, and the Pink-Collar Subtext". Modern Fiction Studies. 60 (1): 1–27. doi: 10.1353/mfs.2014.0010. OCLC 5561439112. S2CID 162359742.Throughout this period, Plath’s two-headed demon of self-doubt and ambitious perfectionism never leaves her: “ Again, I feel the gulf between my desire and ambition and my naked abilities.” The phrase “a life is passing” forms a motif, and she puts great pressure on herself to write, thereby re-creating her life. Such re-creation makes her feel godlike, gives her the aura of immortality and control. In this period of transition, she wants to succeed in the adult literary world, not in the adolescent markets where she has experienced what she now characterizes as facile success. At the same time, she admits that she depends too much on having poems published in The New Yorker. She is often frankly envious of and acidly humorous about more successful writers. Nevertheless, Plath continues to fight her demon, the one who “wants me to think I’m so good I must be perfect. Or nothing.” Viner, Katharine (October 20, 2003). "Desperately seeking Sylvia". The Guardian. London. Archived from the original on March 12, 2017. Axelrod, Steven Gould. (1992). Sylvia Plath: The Wound and the Cure of Words. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University. ISBN 0-8018-4374-X. Editor) American Poetry Now (supplement number 2 to Critical Quarterly,) Oxford University Press (Oxford, England), 1961.

The entries from December 12, 1958, through June 20, 1959, are filled with penetrating questions, self-analyses, and remarkable insights, during a period in which Plath underwent therapy with the psychiatrist who treated her after her suicide attempt in 1953. These entries weave a tapestry in which readers can discern the pattern of recurring conflicts and problems: the issues of father-search, mother-guilt, hostility, and manipulation, as well as Plath’s concern with rebirth, a desire to remake herself as a strong woman and writer. Apparent is her urge to become independent, both from Hughes—to show him none of her poems—and from her mother—to avoid confiding in her. a b Wilson, Andrew (February 2, 2013). "Sylvia Plath in New York: 'pain, parties and work' ". The Guardian . Retrieved October 5, 2023. Plath, Sylvia, The Journals of Sylvia Plath, edited by Ted Hughes and Frances McCullough, Ballantine (New York, NY), 1983. Brain, Tracy (2001), The Other Sylvia Plath, Longman Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature, Singapore: Longman Publishing Group, pp.118–120, ISBN 0-582-32730-X And there is the fallacy of existence: the idea that one would be happy forever and aye with a given situation or series of accomplishments. Why did Virginia Woolf commit suicide? Or Sara Teasdale – or the other brilliant women – neurotic? Was their writing sublimation (oh horrible world) of deep, basic desires?” – Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia PlathUnder pseudonym Victoria Lucas) The Bell Jar (novel), Heinemann (London, England), 1963, published under real name, Faber (London, England), 1965, Harper (New York, NY), 1971. The Colossus, Heinemann (London, England), 1960, published as The Colossus and Other Poems, Knopf (New York, NY), 1962. Los Angeles Times, March 25, 2000, Marjorie Miller, "Sylvia Plath's Uncensored Journals, to Be Published in April, Shed Light on Her Dark Moods and Tumultuous Marriage," p. A2.

Padnani, Amisha (March 8, 2018). "Remarkable Women We Overlooked in Our Obituaries". The New York Times . Retrieved March 24, 2018. Before her death, Plath tried several times to take her own life. [37] On August 24, 1953, she overdosed on sleeping pills, [38] then, in June 1962, she drove her car off the side of the road into a river, which she later said was an attempt to take her own life. [39] Ted shone: the room dead still for his reading – he came third: and I felt the genuine gooseflesh, the tears filling my lids, the hair standing like quills. I married a real poet, and my life is redeemed: to love, serve and create.” – Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath I don’t believe in God as a kind father in the sky. I don’t believe that the meek will inherit the earth: The meek get ignored and trampled. They decompose in the bloody soil of war, of business, of art, and they rot into the warm ground under the spring rains.” – Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia PlathIn 2018, The New York Times published an obituary for Plath [103] as part of the Overlooked history project. [104] [105] Portrayals in media [ edit ] Observer, June 1, 1986; February 18, 1996; March 19, 2000, Kate Kellaway, "The Poet Who Died So Well," p. 21.