130 Hirmawan Wijanarka

The Aspects of Modernism

in Sylvia Plath’s “Lady Lazarus”
Hirmawan Wijanarka

Abstract
This article is a brief discussion of the aspects of modernism in
the intrinsic elements of Sylvia Plath’s “Lady Lazarus”. Aside from the
fact that this poem is biographically related to the poet, this article
observes how the spirit of modernism is expressed in “Lady Lazarus.”
The result shows that there are five points related to the intrinsic
elements of the poem that reveal the spirit of modernism. These points
are related to rhyme, diction, metaphor, theme, and moral teaching.

Keywords: modernism, Sylvia Plath

Introduction: A Glimpse of Modernism

As generally understood, the term modernism usually refers to the first

phase of twentieth century literature, after which came the second phase:
postmodernism. Many people agree that modernism started a few years before
World War I and ended with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World
War II. As a movement in literature, modernism is sometimes seen as “the
reaction to realism and naturalism” (Williams, ed., 1992: 232). The base for
the definition of modernism, according to Bradburry and McFarlane (1991: 26),
is the movement towards sophistication and mannerism, towards introversion,
technical display, internal self-skepticism.
In a broad sense modernism in literature is characterized by “a strong
and conscious break with tradition” (Harmon and Holman, 2003: 318). Thus,
modernism implies rejection of traditional values and assumptions, and at the
same time it encourages individual self-consciousness. Though many experts
have different arguments on the emergence of this movement, Bradburry and
McFarlane are of the opinion that it was essentially “a celebration of
technological age and a condemnation of it; an excited acceptance of the
belief that the old regimes of culture were over, and a deep despairing in the
face of that fear” (1991: 46).
The attribute modern in literary works, especially poetry, usually means
a combination of particular aspects seen in the works (Timpang and Watts,
2001: 120). The most dominant aspects are, first, experimentation and
invention in the way of writing. For modern writers, the old ways of writing
literary works could not accommodate the complexity of modern life. This
notion leads to the second aspect of modernism, i.e. the radical break with

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the past. The third aspect is the writers’ new interest in psychology and
history. The fourth aspect deals with the form of poetry. Many modern writers
promote the use of free or open-form verses as opposed to the traditional
forms. Finally, the fifth aspect of modernism is related to the issues presented
in the works. What used to be forbidden aspects of life, such as homosexuality,
became common in modern works.
In the United States, the production of poems in the modern period
represents an explosion of creativity. The variety of forms, styles, and themes,
is so amazing and are captivating in their rhetorical inventiveness. This
includes “the play of the words deployed for their sounds, the almost
palimpsestic thickness of imagery, the wit” (Kalaidjian, ed., 2005: 71). Such
characteristics can be seen in the poems of T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and
Gertrude Stein.
“Lady Lazarus” is a poem expressing Plath’s individual bitter experience
of her own attempt to end her life. This poem is a “wild lyric” (Alexander,
1999: 302) spoken by a thirty year old woman who each decade tried to
commit suicide. Plath’s life was quite short (1932 – 1963) and full of
psychological pressures. However, during her short life she produced
astonishing poems which colored the life of the American modern poetry of her
period.
Baym, et al (1985: 2561) noted that Plath attempted to commit suicide
the first time in 1951, when she was only nineteen. As a brilliant girl—she
attended Smith College on a scholarship and she graduated first in her class;
she won a Fulbright grant to Cambridge University in England—she was not
satisfied with American society in the 1950s which placed a lot of pressures
and restrictions upon women and their activities. Women, for instance, could
not show anger or ambitiously pursue a career. Instead, women should find
fulfillment attending their husbands and children (VanSpanckeren, 1994: 83).
Under the light of modernism, Plath’s spirit of freedom and intelligence
already reflected the spirit of rejection of traditional values.
Plath’s family and personal problems also added to the burden she had
to bear. This included the break-up of her marriage which forced her to work
against the clock to keep her two children, her personal problem concerning
her parents’ marriage, and her repressed sympathy for her father’s incurable
disease before he finally died. Unable to cope with her full-of-hard-struggle
life, Plath took her own life by gassing herself in the kitchen on February 11,
1963, (VanSpanckeren, 1994:83).
This article, however, will not specifically examine the poem as Plath’s
personal expression. Instead, this article aims to observe the aspects of
modernism seen in the intrinsic elements of Plath’s “Lady Lazarus.” The
observation is expected to offer another perspective in seeing the poem, and,
thus, to give additional insight to the attempt to understanding the poem more
thoroughly.

Five Aspects of Modernism in “Lady Lazarus”

Strictly speaking, “Lady Lazarus” was written after the modern period
(1962). However, the poem exhibits several aspects of modernism which

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132 Hirmawan Wijanarka

center on the spirit of invention and, at the same time, on rejection of what
has been so far traditionally settled, recognized, and accepted. The first
aspect of modernism is seen in its form and structure. Plath’s arrangement of
stanzas leads the readers to consider them as triplets or tercets (stanzas of
three line) which are broadly used in traditional poems to form a sestet (a six-
line division) in a sonnet or used as a variation in heroic couplet. Here is an
example of a traditional triplet:

Whenas in silks my Julia goes,

Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows,
The liquefaction of her clothes.
(Harmon and Holman, 2003: 506)

However, unlike traditional tercets in which each line of the tercet

should end with the same rhyme (goes, flows, clothes), the lines in Plath’s
stanzas do not form a certain pattern of rhyme. The number of syllables in
each tercet does not show a pattern, either. The first three stanzas of “Lady
Lazarus” may serve as an example:

Stanza 1 I have done it again.

One year in every ten
I manage it—
Stanza 2 A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot
Stanza 3 A paperweight
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.

In stanza 1 the lines end in again, ten and it which do not make a rhyme. This
also happens in stanza 2 (skin, laughed, foot), in stanza 3 (paperweight, fine,
linen), and in the next twenty-five stanzas of the poem. Although the poem
maintains one characteristic of a traditional pattern (i.e. the use of tercets),
there is also a clear indication of modernism in term of the form and structure
of the tercets.
The second aspect of modernism lies in the choice of words and the
diction which includes the vocabulary (meaning of word) and syntax (word
order). Traditionally, Louis Simpson says, poets tend to choose carefully words
that evoke mental pictures and appeal to our senses of hearing, touching,
smelling, and tasting (1967: 3-4). Believing that there are no true synonyms,
poets usually take great consideration in choosing the words which convey
precisely their feeling. Hall states that some “words resemble each other in
meaning, but they are not identical. Poetry happens in the minute
differences” (1971: 9).
In contrast to this traditional assumption which pays much consideration
to the choice of words, Plath explores ordinary words used in daily-life
communication, either spoken or witten. Even readers who are not familiar
with the convention of poetry will find it easy to understand the meaning of
the words in “Lady Lazarus”. In addition to the easy and simple choice of

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words, Plath uses a narrative style. Thus, the readers will have no difficulty in
understanding the literal meaning of the poem, and the ease of understanding
the literal meaning will be a good start for the readers to understand the poem
in depth. Because of the narrative style, a reader who reads “Lady Lazarus”
will feel like reading a short story.
This style is different from the style used by conventional poets which
very often emphasize the euphony of the rhyme and the beauty of sentence-
order (or the arrangement of words) rather than the sequential relation
between one line and the next or previous line. As a result, traditional poems
often present gaps between the lines, and this will require that readers
imagine and fill the gaps (missing links) when trying to understand the meaning
of the poem. For ordinary readers, this certainly creates difficulty.
Plath’s lines in “Lady Lazarus” have more obvious sequential relations.
Readers do not have to straighten up the sentences (the syntax) to understand
the literal meaning. Written in a narrative style, stanza 1 up to stanza 3, for
example, will read “I have done it again. One year in every ten (year) I
manage it—a sort of walking miracle. My skin is bright as a Nazi lampshade.
My foot is a paperweight. My face is featureless fine Jew linen”. Here is
another example:

Stanza 11 These are my hands

My knees
I may be skin and bone.
Stanza 12 Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened when I was ten
It was an accident

Written in a narrative style, the above lines will read “These are my hands
(and) my knees. I may be skin and bone. Nevertheless, I am the same,
identical woman.”
The third aspect of modernism found in the poem is the use of common
metaphors—or similes—i.e. an analogy identifying one object with another.
Rather than using complicated metaphors, Plath presents the ones which are
familiar to the readers. Observe the following stanzas:

Stanza 2 A sort of walking miracle, my skin

Bight as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot
…………......
Stanza 3 A paperweight
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen
……………..
Stanza 7 And I a smiling woman
I am only thirty
And like the cat I have nine times to die
……………..

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Stanza 10 Them unwrap me hand and foot—

The big strip tease
Gentlemen, ladies
………………
Stanza 14 As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.
………………
Stanza 23 I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

Nazi lampshade (stanza 2) is definitely a modern allusion referring to the time

when Hitler ruled Germany. Jew linen (stanza 3), the cat (stanza 7), the big
strip tease (stanza 10), a seashell (stanza 14), the pure gold baby (stanza 23),
are all common metaphors readers are familiar with. As a comparison, observe
the following metaphor taken from Stephen Spender’s “Not palaces, an era’s
crown”. Here, eye is metaphorized as gazelle.

Eye, gazelle, delicate wanderer,

Drinker of horizon’s fluid line
(in Abrams, 1991: 67)

Those allusions and metaphors are then combined with conventional

allusion which are usually taken from or referring to figures in the Bible or
Greek mythology. Lady Lazarus (taken as the title of the poem) is certainly a
Biblical allusion referring to the brother of Mary and Martha who was restored
to life by Jesus after four days in the tomb (Grolier Encyclopedia of
Knowledge, Vol. 11, 1995: 211). The last stanza refers to story of the Phoenix,
a mythical bird said to live in the Arabian desert:

Stanza 28 Out of the ash

I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air
.
Six years after the bird had died by fires, so the myth says, the bird was reborn
out of its own ashes (Baym, et al., 1985: 2567). This combination indicates
that there is a spirit of experimentation and of breaking “the conventional”
which then gives the sense of modernism in the poem.
The fourth aspect of modernism concern the non-structural element,
that is the theme of the poem. Dean Curry (1988: 200) wrote that modern
American poems usually have the themes of introspection and social criticism
which are inspired by ordinary personal experiences rather than by some
unusual or spectacular happening or encounter. This includes the interest in
psychological and historical issues. Further, Curry added that modern American
poets “express themselves with the emotional and the personal.”
Although assuming that a poem directly reflects the personal experience
of its author is naive, studying Plath’s biography, readers will easily see that in
“Lady Lazarus” Plath expresses her personal bitter experience of life which
eventually leads her to attempting to commit suicide. During her life she

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experienced so much pressure that she tried to kill herself several times.
“Lady Lazarus” was written just a few months before Plath killed herself,
fulfilling her death wish implied in the poem. The use of “I” as the narrator of
the poem strengthens the interpretation that this poem is Plath’s self-
expression.
Borrowing Kennedy and Gioia’s term, such a poem is included in what
they call “confessional poetry” (2002: 308). This kind of poetry contributes
another characteristic of modern poetry in that it expresses frank self-personal
experience as candidly as possible, even sharing confidences that may violate
social conventions or propriety—adultery, family violence, suicide attempts.
Most poets of the earlier periods would try to suppress or at least not proclaim
them to the readers and the world, considering them as forbidden issues. The
danger of proclaiming such issues, however, is that the poem would be more
interesting to the author than its readers.
Plath’s bitter experience can be observed from the first line of the first
stanza: I have done it again. The word again implies that this is not her first
attempt to commit suicide. In fact This is Number Three (stanza 8). The
narrator undergoes so depressing a situation that death seems to be the only
way out, but death is what the narrator is looking forward to. The narrator
says:

Stanza 6 Soon, soon the flesh

The grave cave ate will be
At home on me
……………….
Stanza 8 This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

The narrator’s frustration is also apparent in the following lines:

Stanza 22 …………….
So, so, Herr Doctor.
So, Herr Enemy.

Stanza 23 I am your opus,

I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

Plath’s problem is a personal problem that might happen to anyone. She

describes her problem for the readers so it can be contemplated, introspected,
and evaluated. The theme of introspection (which is one of the preferred
themes of modern poems) is, thus, observable in “Lady Lazarus.” This poem
also implies Plath’s view of or attitude towards life: that life (represented by
Plath’s life) is highly complicated and not always agreeable; and we should
describe life as it is. In this point, Plath’s view is different from the view that
commonly appears in the poems of older periods, especially that of the love
poem of the seventeenth century when the principle of “carpe diem” (seize
the day) was generally applied in lyrical poems.

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In “Lady Lazarus” Plath takes a different stand. Life is hard and hostile
for her as seen in the following stanzas:

Stanza 9 What a million filaments.

The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see
Stanza 10 Them unwrap me hand and foot—
The big strip tease.
Gentleman, ladies,

The world is like the peanut-crunching crowd (stanza 9) that shoves in to

see her unwrapped (naked). She feels herself as an object to be despised, to
be treated unjustly, as if she were a “strip-tease” dancer (stanza 10). In short,
her life is not that easy and pleasurable, and for this kind of life Plath has her
own way of coping.
The atmosphere of despair which is a very common atmosphere in
modern poetry can also be observed in the poem. Nazi lampshade (stanza 2)
definitely brings readers to the atmosphere of cruelty or violence. It is broadly
believed that in Nazi death camps, the skins of victims were often used to
make lampshades (Baym, et al., 1985: 2625). Stanza 15 and 16 emphasize the
atmosphere of despair built from the beginning of the poem:

Stanza 15 Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.
Stanza 16 I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I’ve a call

The narrator sarcastically and bitterly says that Dying is an art, an art that the
narrator masters exceptionally well. Readers can feel that the narrator is in a
serious state of despair in facing life.
Finally, the fifth aspect of modernism can be seen in the fact that the
poem does not intend to give moral teaching. Unlike traditional poems which
are usually intended to give some “lessons” to the readers (didactic poetry),
“Lady Lazarus” does not imply morality or the teaching of it. What Plath gives
to readers is her personal experiences and her attitude towards them. Readers
are invited to judge the message of her poem. Whether or not readers take her
experiences seriously, and whatever interpretation readers may give, is not
the point of the poem. This statement can be proved by the fact that there is
no sentence or line in the poem that directly (or indirectly) gives advice or a
message. Thus, readers may conclude that Plath expects them to discover the
meaning of the poem by themselves, based on what they can observe.

Conclusion

Referring to the notion that modernism denotes a combination of

certain aspects in a work of literature, and based on the points previously

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discussed, some conclusions on Plath’s “Lady Lazarus” can finally be drawn. In

general, the poem reveals the spirit of experimentation, invention, and
rejection which can be observed in its intrinsic elements. Firstly, the spirit of
modernism is seen in the form of the poem, i.e. the use of lines without
rhyme, although stanzas are arranged in tercets or triplets. Secondly, the
same spirit lies in the choice of words (diction) which exploits the words used
in daily communication. This indicates Plath’s modern attitude towards the
readers, i.e. she pays particular attention to the readers’ ease in
understanding the poem. Thirdly, following the use of common and daily
words is the use of common metaphor. Fourthly, the theme implies a modern
interest in the personal and in a psychological problem which is one
characteristic of modern poems. And fifthly, the absence of direct moral
teachings, i.e. the absence of didactic tone, emphasizes the aspects of
modernism in the poem.

The Poem
Lady Lazarus

Stanza 1 I have done it again.

One year in every ten
I manage it—
Stanza 2 A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot
Stanza 3 A paperweight
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.
Stanza 4 Peel of the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?—
Stanza 5 The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.
Stanza 6 Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me
Stanza 7 And I a smiling woman
I am only thirty
And like the cat I have nine times to die
Stanza 8 This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.
Stanza 9 What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see
Stanza 10 Them unwrap me hand and foot—
The big strip tease
Gentlemen, ladies
Stanza 11 These are my hands
My knees

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138 Hirmawan Wijanarka

I may be skin and bone.

Stanza 12 Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened when I was ten
It was an accident
Stanza 13 The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut
Stanza 14 As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.
Stanza 15 Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.
Stanza 16 I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I’ve a call
Stanza 17 It’s easy enough to do it in a cell.
It’s easy enough to do it and stay put.
It’s the theatrical.
Stanza 18 Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shot:
Stanza 19 “A miracle !”
That knocks me out.
There is a charge
Stanza 20 For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart—
It really goes.
Stanza 21 And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood
Stanza 22 Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doctor.
So, Herr Enemy.
Stanza 23 I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby
Stanza 24 That melts into a shriek.
I turn and burn
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.
Stanza 26 A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.
Stanza 27 Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.
Stanza 28 Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

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