Aspects of Modernism in Sylvia Plath
Aspects of Modernism in Sylvia Plath
Aspects of Modernism in Sylvia Plath
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.
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.
Strictly speaking, “Lady Lazarus” was written after the modern period
(1962). However, the poem exhibits several aspects of modernism which
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:
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
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:
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:
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 22 …………….
So, so, Herr Doctor.
So, Herr Enemy.
In “Lady Lazarus” Plath takes a different stand. Life is hard and hostile
for her as seen in the following stanzas:
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
The Poem
Lady Lazarus
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