Let Us Eat Cake February 22, 2007
Posted by amanda in : Uncategorized , trackbackIt’s been a while since i posted and I have blog-guilt.
My internet is down so I’m having to write this in word, which I really don’t like because then I know just how terrible my spelling and grammar are. Nevertheless, I had to blog about this article I just read (thank you Dr. Scanlon). It is called “Daddy, I Have Had to Kill You”; Plath, Rage, and the Modern Elegy” by Dr. Jahan Ramazani. This article claims Plath as one of the major contributors to the modern elegy, in particular the modern feminist elegy. He discusses three of her elegies in Ariel (“Full Fathom Five”, “Little Fugue”, and “Daddy”) as elegies to her late father Otto Plath. Ramazani says that while typical male elegies regard the dead with a sense of mourning and bonding culminating in a kind of celebration, Plath opened the door for criticism and the expression of rage towards the deceased subject. He also discusses the idea of “melancholia” where the poet (specifically female) turns her rage towards herself both as an act of connecting with the deceased and of revenging against the deceased. He writes, “While all Plath’s elegies are angry, her early ones turn rage inward, resulting in poems of bitter self-reproach, and only the later ones directly attack her father” (1143). Ramazani goes on to describe the new elegiac form Plath employs in the three poems listed above, and how they do become increasingly directed at her father and less at herself and yet she is still in some ways sadistic in her confused desire to relate and revolt from her father’s memory.
Altogether this is a very VERY convincing article and I like that it is able to marry both Plaths’ poetic skill and autobiography in a way that gives her an intense amount of agency not just in her own poems but likewise in an entire contemporary poetic movement. He discusses poets who influenced or took steps in preceding her (very bold) moves, including Emily Bronte! And he also discusses poets who followed her lead, imitating her new elegy, including: Lowell, Sexton and Rich. The problem I’m having is that ALL of the articles I’ve read are convincing, they all make very different claims, and in most cases these claims are mutually exclusive.
I’ve now read articles that attribute her poetry to PMDD, an article that says you can’t really know Plath or her autobiography at all through her poems because she used her poetry as a means of trying alternate personalities, several articles that accuse her poetry as being written publishable revenge against Ted Hughes, and some that say I should forget her autobiography and look at how she wrote. My fascination with Sylvia Plath is in no way diminished by these varying opinions and in fact the opposite is happening; I am possibly more obsessed than when I began this study, but now I feel scattered, like I don’t know which viewpoint to follow. This is in some ways a very lucky problem because I can’t go wrong, and I still hope to come up with my own argument although it is becoming quite apparent that the odds of finding something new to say (something new and not completely ludicrous) will be nearly impossible. In a way I wish this were a year long project because even though I’ve read a tremendous amount about and by Plath I am mystified that the semester is nearly half over and there is still so much I could and plan on reading. I have a meeting tomorrow that will hopefully help me get past/sort out some of these ideas and through with the bee poems and possibly encountering some new poetry will do me some good. I feel very ADD right now and I’m sure it shows in this post.
On a more focused note: I made the Sylvia Plath Tomato Soup Cake that I mentioned in the last post and it turned out pretty good!!! So come by tomorrow afternoon if you want to try some.
I am also really excited with all of the connections I am making between Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickinson and The Brontes. The only thing better than studying one poet is being able to subtly sneak in the study of other great poets and Plath really lends herself to this pursuit. I am beginning to connect these writers to the quote I have for the title of this blog and see them as synonymous with Plath’s “mushrooms”. These marginalized, reclusive, “crazy”, feminist writers are taking over the world, or at least the Mary Washington English department….and I, for one, couldn’t be happier!
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