Sylvia Plath (1932 - 1963)
Created | Updated Mar 31, 2003
Sylvia Plath was born on 1932 to Otto and Azalea Plath, she would become a renowned poet and author despite a tortured depressed life. She was found dead - gassed by holding her head in an oven - in her London flat on February 11 1963. Her poetry often talked about suicide, most famously in the opening lines of Lady Lazarus where Plath talks about three suicide attempts at ten, eighteen and her succesful one at 30:
I have done it again
One year in every ten
I manage it...
And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.
Unsuprisingly her final poem, 'Edge' clearly reflects the pschological well she was in:
The woman is perfected
Her dead
Body wears the smile of accomplishment.
'Daddy'
Otto Plath was a college professor in German and Biology and self proclaimed bee expert. He died young following a stubborn refusal to consult a doctor regarding his self-diagnosed cancer. It was too late by the time he was diagnosed with treatable diabetes and he died shortly after Sylvia's eighth birthday following a leg amputation. The ordeal would be one of the recurring themes of Plath's poetry. In 'Daddy' she says:
I thought every German was you
And the language obscene
An engine, an engine,
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
Also several references are made to bee-keeping in Plath's poetry, most notably 'The Arrival Of The Bee Box' in which she is powerless over the bees she now controls:
I am not Caesar
I have simply ordered a box of maniacs
They can be sent back...
Tomorrow I will be sweet God, I will set them free.
Her mother was less often the source of inspiration, with a single noteworthy exception on the event of her death 'Electra On Azalea Plath' which opens:
The day you died I went into the dirt,
Into the lightless hibernaculum
Even here though, imagery of her father returns:
My mother said: you died like any man.
How shall I age into that state of mind?
Young and Abroad
Plath showed talent from a very early age and her first published poem 'Bitter Stawberries' shows how socially aware she is already, commenting on and empathising with the Cold War victims in Russia:
'We ought to have bombed them long ago.'
'Don't,' pleaded the little girl.
After completing her stateside education at Smith college she was awarded a scholarship to Newnham College, Cambridge where she met the man who would become both her husband and Poet Laureate, Ted Hughes.
Children and the Beginning of the End.
Sylvia and Ted had two children: Frieda (Apr 1 1960) and Nicholas (Jan 17 1962), for whom Sylvia wrote 'The Bed Book.' More significantly though was Sylvia's miscarriage which did not help her already depressive state. In 'Parliament Hill Fields':
I suppose it's pointless to think of you at all
Already your doll grip lets go.
She separated from Hughes in August 1962, he who she had previously described in 'Ode For Ted':
For his least look, scant acres yield:
Each finger-furrowed field
Heaves forth stalk, leaf, fruit-nubbed emerald;
Bright grain sprung so rarely
she now re-evaluated him and his lover in 'The Rival':
I wake to a mausoleum; you are here,
Ticking your fingers on the marble table, looking for cigarettes,
Spiteful as a woman, but not so nervous.
Shortly afterwards she commited suicide, as did Hughes lover Assia Wevill. Her novel The Bell Jar, which later won the Pulitzer Prize, was published posthumously and she is now celebrated as a creative genius.
I have done it again
One year in every ten
I manage it...
And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.
Unsuprisingly her final poem, 'Edge' clearly reflects the pschological well she was in:
The woman is perfected
Her dead
Body wears the smile of accomplishment.
'Daddy'
Otto Plath was a college professor in German and Biology and self proclaimed bee expert. He died young following a stubborn refusal to consult a doctor regarding his self-diagnosed cancer. It was too late by the time he was diagnosed with treatable diabetes and he died shortly after Sylvia's eighth birthday following a leg amputation. The ordeal would be one of the recurring themes of Plath's poetry. In 'Daddy' she says:
I thought every German was you
And the language obscene
An engine, an engine,
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
Also several references are made to bee-keeping in Plath's poetry, most notably 'The Arrival Of The Bee Box' in which she is powerless over the bees she now controls:
I am not Caesar
I have simply ordered a box of maniacs
They can be sent back...
Tomorrow I will be sweet God, I will set them free.
Her mother was less often the source of inspiration, with a single noteworthy exception on the event of her death 'Electra On Azalea Plath' which opens:
The day you died I went into the dirt,
Into the lightless hibernaculum
Even here though, imagery of her father returns:
My mother said: you died like any man.
How shall I age into that state of mind?
Young and Abroad
Plath showed talent from a very early age and her first published poem 'Bitter Stawberries' shows how socially aware she is already, commenting on and empathising with the Cold War victims in Russia:
'We ought to have bombed them long ago.'
'Don't,' pleaded the little girl.
After completing her stateside education at Smith college she was awarded a scholarship to Newnham College, Cambridge where she met the man who would become both her husband and Poet Laureate, Ted Hughes.
Children and the Beginning of the End.
Sylvia and Ted had two children: Frieda (Apr 1 1960) and Nicholas (Jan 17 1962), for whom Sylvia wrote 'The Bed Book.' More significantly though was Sylvia's miscarriage which did not help her already depressive state. In 'Parliament Hill Fields':
I suppose it's pointless to think of you at all
Already your doll grip lets go.
She separated from Hughes in August 1962, he who she had previously described in 'Ode For Ted':
For his least look, scant acres yield:
Each finger-furrowed field
Heaves forth stalk, leaf, fruit-nubbed emerald;
Bright grain sprung so rarely
she now re-evaluated him and his lover in 'The Rival':
I wake to a mausoleum; you are here,
Ticking your fingers on the marble table, looking for cigarettes,
Spiteful as a woman, but not so nervous.
Shortly afterwards she commited suicide, as did Hughes lover Assia Wevill. Her novel The Bell Jar, which later won the Pulitzer Prize, was published posthumously and she is now celebrated as a creative genius.
