Sylvia Plath is shorthand for talented, emotionally fragile and ultimately doomed artists. I’ve found her name generally illicits blank stares or occasionally a snicker. While sticking one’s head in an unlit gas oven isn’t the most romantic of deaths, give her credit for creatively departing this mean old world – “the road not taken” so to speak. Her final act became a lasting legacy. Sad.
Like most mildly-informed English majors I knew she was a writer, but what she actually wrote about was anyone’s guess. Like anything else though, one thing leads to another thing and then another and another and I read a few lines penned by Ms. Plath.
“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.”
Didn’t expect that. What else?
“I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between.”
“I like people too much or not at all. I’ve got to go down deep, to fall into people, to really know them.”
And the more I read, the more I imagine her as someone I could talk to over cups of coffee. Had she lived she’d be older than my mother by 10 years. Age aside, her poetry speaks.
Who was she as a person? Turns out she was born and raised just a few miles away. On a whim I drive by her home. Modest in scale, tidy and decidedly middle class. The white house with the black shutters is un-extraordinary. What was I expecting? She writes about living in that house and yearning to experience the world, to express herself. She also possessed a death wish and tried to take her own life as a teenager. Strange when you consider she was someone who wanted to embrace life to its fullest. Maybe it was an unfulfilled need to connect and to experience on an intimate level so few of us posses.
“How we need another soul to cling to, another body to keep us warm. To rest and trust; to give your soul in confidence: I need this, I need someone to pour myself into.”
She followed up asking, perhaps rhetorically, if anyone understood. That was years before I was born, half a life time ago. And half a life time later, I answer. Yes, Sylvia – you beautiful, dreadful narcissist. I understand you … completely.