Alena Saucke
Sylvia Plath: On the "Edge" to another world
Scholary Paper
Dokument Nr. V30812
http://www.grin.com/
ISBN 978-3-638-31996-6
9 783638 319966
Universität Siegen
Sylvia Plath: On the edge to another world
New perspectives on “Edge”
Seminar: Can Poetry be fun?
Alena Saucke
Sommersemester 2004
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Table of contents:
I. Introduction: Thesis
II. Analysis of the poem
III. Biographical background
IV. “Edge as a gate to rebirth?
Mythological Models
V. Conclusion
Appendix
Bibliography
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I. Introduction
Sylvia Plath`s life and work have occupied the literary world like that of
hardly any female poet in the previous century. I include mys elf into the
group that has been gravitated towards her works, and her intense poetry for
several reasons. I was particularly fascinated by her supposedly last poem
“Edge ” which my essay focuses on.
Pic. 1. Sylvia at Cambridge
On gathering
information about Plath,
her work and
biography, I realized
that there exists a wide
range of approaches
with many different
aspects of analysis and
interpretation, most
often referring to her
suicide. Therefore, I
decided to start my
individual
approach to the poem,
attempting to compare
or enhance my own
results with those of
other critics, analysts or writers. My desire was to achieve a
multidimensional reflection of the poem. Not necessarily a final and
ultimate conclusion, but rather a dynamic concept amenable to negotiation.
Therefore, I needed to question my own first impressions and tried to dig
more deeply below the surface of what seems to be obvious when looking at
“Edge”.
Of course, it is almost impossible to ignore Plath’s biographical background
when discussing her work. Nobody can deny that her suffering from a
mental disorder was a central theme to many of her writings. However,
there is a danger of rushing into hasty interpretations, leaving little room for
other possible aspects. These immediate conclusions often labelled her
solely as the mad woman hungry for death. In my analysis of “Edge”, it is
my effort to draw attention to life rather than death as her central motivation
for writing this poem. The common and most frequent interpretations of
“Edge” support the belief that she was yearning for death all her life due to
earlier traumatic events. Truly one cannot deny the given facts, namely her
history of depressions and attempts to suicide, nevertheless it is not a proven
truth that this edge definitely means the border between life and death, and
that she wanted to cross it in order to leave life forever. So when I looked at
the poem once again, I noticed that it might as well be a sort of goodbye to
her suicidal thought, maybe the parting from her old encumbering life and
the mark for a recommencement of a new one. What seemed most
interesting to me were the questions, if the lyrical “I” actually crosses the
“Edge” and if so, what happens behind this edge and what is waiting there
for her? Moreover, it needs to be considered that an edge does not merely
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have the function of shutting someone off something, i.e. a separative effect,
but it might also have a connective power, a sort of link to something. With
emphasis on this new consideration, I will try to illuminate what the “edge”
means in this context. The fact that she wrote this poem is proof enough that
she wanted to communicate her conflicts, either to others or maybe just to
herself, in order to come to terms with her problems. Now it is my intention
to show that she did not consider herself as virtually dead when writing the
poem, even though the common analyses believe so. Furthermore, I will
refer to the idea of rebirth with a brief comparison of the Egyptian goddess
Isis, who might have served as a model for the poem. With this comparison,
I will attempt to reinforce another aspect of “Edge”, namely that of rebirth,
and the meaning of death in this context, which will hopefully render a
substantial view on, and offer new facets about the poem.
II. Analysis of the poem
“Edge” was written six days before Sylvia Plath committed suicide on
February 11th 1963 and it is supposedly her last piece. The form already
bears an interesting aspect: It consists of ten stanzas, which each only
contain two lines, which are held in an enjambement. The second line of
each stanza is always half of the construction and meaning of the first line
of the following stanza. So this break of verse is also an edge between the
stanzas, which builds another parallel between form and content of the
poem. The sentences are only completed if they cross this edge between the
two stanzas, and the person in the poem only seems to find tranquillity and
“accomplishment” when crossing an edge. This edge is, in the most frequent
interpretations, considered as the edge between life and death. The poem
does not follow a certain rhyme scheme, but it contains various impressive
internal rhymes or assonant constructions, e.g. sweet-bleed, rose-close,
child-coiled, flows-scrolls, toga-over. These words do not necessarily rhyme
in the strict sense but they contribute to the calm tone of the poem and
intensify the abundant images given.
Plath distances herself from the poetic “I” as she speaks of “the woman” or
“her”. So whoever speaks in the poem takes up the same perspective as the
reader can do. This creates a distances or detachedness between speaker and
object of the poem, which will later on be elucidated. The entire lines
present a sense of calm, imbued with drama. The tone is not hysterical or
unsettling but rather tranquil and relaxed. This effect is especially assured in
the choice of rhythm. The poem has a floating stream of words and this adds
to a balanced and serene atmosphere within the poem.
The opening line refers to the air of finality with which this person is
presented: “The woman is perfected”. This could either mean the aspect of
her time being over, i.e. in the perfect, but also the woman’s final
completion in crossing this edge. It seems obvious that the woman is not
perfect in the sense of consummate, otherwise she probably would not
choose death to finish her life, but the choice of words nevertheless has a
positive effect. This is due to expressions like “smile of accomplishment”,
“perfected”, “rose” or “sweet” which are placed in an unusual environment
next to rather disconcerting expressions. The following lines convey the
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feeling that she already has a prophetic vision of the impact of her death.
“Her dead body/ wears the smile of accomplishment” is often interpreted in
the way that Plath was almost sure of her posthumous success. This
withholds a strong parallel to her own life, since most of her works were
only paid attention to after her death, but I doubt that it was actually meant
that way, as I will explain later on. What does seem clear, is the fact that the
woman is secure of the upcoming relief that goes along with the self-chosen
death.
The visual image of tranquil joy of these words cannot be ignored either.
What seems ostentatious is the calm and serene tone of the poem, which is
unusual for a desperate woman, who is fed up with life. With “The illusion
of a Greek necessity/ flows in the scrolls of her toga”, Plath explains that
she does not regard the act of suicide as heroic, whereas the Greeks
considered it natural. The woman has another reason for ending her own
life, which can be interpreted in the following stanzas. There she says “her
bare/ feet seem to be saying/ We have come so far it is over”, which could
be decoded as the refusing attitude to keep on struggling and enduring this
painful life. Her experiences have lead to her final exhaustion and she now
seeks repose in death, however she does not sense it as something heroic or
honourable.
The next four stanzas are dedicated to her children, which she figuratively
wants to fold “back into her body”, afraid that someone might not treat them
properly during her absence. It is her sign of maternal tenderness seeking to
protect her descendants. She is also visually compared to a Cleopatra- like
figure with white serpents at each breast, the colour white standing on the
one hand for innocence, cleanliness and virginity but on the other hand
being connected with emptiness, absence, coldness and privation. The lines
“One at each little/ Pitcher of milk, now empty” show that she has nurtured
them with affection, but due to her long strain she has nothing more to give
and her source of giving is empty.
Some critics have also introduced a parallel to the classical heroine Medea,
who “on being deserted by Jason, slew her children for fear that a more
merciless hand may slaughter them”1). As we know, Plath did not involve
her children in her suicide, but kept them away from this act. However, we
do not know how long she could have gone on in this situa tion as a poor and
depressed single- mother, and maybe she would have harmed them if she
still were alive. Therefore, the threatening power might as well be the
person closest to them, their own mother. The “serpent” also brings in an
element of sin and whe n adding the word “garden” it evokes the image of a
biblical scene.
Das verbliebene Paradies ist zu einem überschaubaren Ort geworden,
der unerreichbar für die außenstehende, beobachtende persona, oder
aber unbewohnbar und Schauplatz des Todes geworden ist, gleichsam
ein Anti-Eden. Häufig fallen dessen Grenzen zusammen mit denen eines
menschlichen Körpers, dessen erlesenes Organ, die Seele durchgängig
als Rose erscheint.2)
The following lines contain a very complex phrase and the image of a
garden, which is depicted in a dangerous sense as well. One could draw the
parallel to the garden of Eden, where Eve crossed an edge ,too, and
committed a sinful act. However it is not clear, that the woman in the poem
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has really crossed the “Edge” or of she only came close to it. However Eve
wasn’t granted to go back to paradise after she had eaten from the forbidden
fruit, and this might be a hint for the woman, who, after having taken the
path of suicide, will not get the chance to return to life.
As we read the woman is compared to a rose, which closes her petals,
because the upcoming night harbours danger for them: “when the garden/
Stiffens and odors bleed/ From the sweet, deep throats of the night flower”.
The woman has been hurt and tries to prevent her children from this
experience. This is especially expressed in the contradictory image of the
words “bleed” and “odor”: Bleed in this case reminds of a wound, blood
usually runs down, whereas odor evaporates into the air, it goes up. Again,
we have a biblical element. Odor alludes to the breathing of the first human
beings given to by god, and this instantly refers to life. These two adverse
images unite in one sentence and might reflect the inne r conflicts of the
woman with being alive, but maybe at the gate of choosing to die.
The poem ends with the insight that her self-destruction is a universal
matter. Even the moon, which belongs to the realm of night and death,
watches the cycle of all women with a dispassionate and indifferent attitude
towards the woman’s self-chosen death. The ancient goddess and muse
keeps on rising in her regular manner: “Her blacks crackle and drag”.
Moreover she has seen things like that before as she is “staring from her
hood of bone”, when a woman gives up the struggle to juggle the many
facets of her life. Here a confusion appears when trying to figure out who is
meant by she: it could either be the moon or the woman, whose “blacks
crackle and drag”.
An earlier draft of “Edge ” was called “Nuns in snow” and the observers
were nuns travelling on a pilgrimage to watch the dead body of a woman.
What remains unclear is the identity of the speaker and its relation to the
addressee. Concluding from the third person narration, we could
characterize the speaker as some kind of bystander, people who witnessed
the death or maybe even a god-like figure who observes the act of dying.
What strongly drew my attention were the adverse images that are given in
the poem: Next to the contradictory meaning of “odor” and “bleed”, several
other thoughts seemed oppositional. For instance, “Child” and “dead” are so
rarely used together, as well as “sweet” and “bleed” or the rose that usually
symbolizes love or the soul, is this time in a harmed state. This evokes an
ambiguity of life and death itself, which I will later on refer to again.
Altogether, the poem presents a mood of resignation but the sincerity of
having escaped from the struggle of life is not depicted as heroic but rather
as a long awaited relief. In the literary world, “Edge” is considered as
Plath’s poetic suicide note to the world in simple language with strong
visual support. Five days after the composition of this work, the vision of
the poem proved true.
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III. Biographical background information
Sylvia Plath’s last period of her life was overshadowed by loneliness and
depression. The early death of her father and her ambiguous relationship to
him caused her severe emotional pain. Then in summer 1962, her husband
Ted Hughes had deserted her and had apparent ly started seeing another
woman. The ungrateful position of having to take care of two young
children as a single- mother, who also had to worry about their living
maintenance, obviously led Sylvia to a state of trauma and despair. Even
though she was a gifted young writer and had won several prizes and
scholarships during her life, she had devoted her promising career to her
family. In addition, while Ted kept on writing professionally, she had
supported the family by working as a secretary in the psychiatric division of
the Massachusetts General Hospital. Unfortunately, giving such singleminded attention to Ted's work meant that developing her own voice as a
writer, was difficult. So even though this painful change caused her personal
humiliation and devaluation of the image of marriage she had in mind, being
separated from Hughes also meant a positive turn concerning her writing.
Her poetic style improved gradually and she kept writing with an intense
effort, often having finished two or three poems before the kids got up in the
morning. Feeling more like a capable individua l rather than a man’s
accessory, the poems of this period mostly have a defiant, rebellious and
forthright tone. Pieces like “Lady Lazarus” or “Daddy” are no longer
written by a docile, self-effacing housewife but instead by a competitivespirited and self-assertive single-woman, whose emotional torture had
proved to be a creative impulse.
“Edge” probably best represents the ambiguity of this period, when she was
torn between hysteria and despair on the one hand, and the assertion of her
real authentic self in form of discovering her own talent on the other. It
seems as if she tried to adjust a constant conflict within herself. Many things
in her life have this ambiguous air. Her motherhood bore joy and peace but
she also felt a certain dissatisfaction with her role as a single- mother,
deserted by her husband, having to set aside her writing. In her last letter,
she complains about the hardship of dealing with her situation:
Ich habe keinem geschrieben, weil ich mich ziemlich
grauenvoll gefühlt habe- jetzt, wo der ganze Aufruhr
vorbei ist, sehe ich die Unwiderruflichkeit des Ganzen,
und aus dem kuhhaften Glück der Mutterschaft in
Einsamkeit und grässliche Probleme katapultiert zu
werden, ist wirklich kein Vergnügen.3)
Sylvia Plath poisoned herself with carbon monoxide at home in her kitchen
oven. The young poetess had tried to kill herself several times earlier, but
this final and successful attempt is supposed to be driven by the burden of
Hughes’ infidelity, which caused her severe emotional injuries. She once
declared that her own persona had become so emotionally dependent upon
Hughes that “if anything were to happen to him” she “would either go mad,
or kill herself.”4)
However, there are voices who assert that this attempt was not supposed to
end her life finally. Writing this poem, might have been the charge of being
7
alone, unable to cope with her situation an in need for emotional back-up.
So did Al Alvarez, who shared a friendship with both Hughes and Plath. He
affirms that on his last visit on Christmas Eve 1962, she was desperate and
lonely, but he holds the opinion that her suicide two month later was
actually not supposed to succeed. He brings up the fact, that she left a note
with her doctor’s phone number next to the oven, where she put her head in.
According to Alvarez, it was due to an unfortunate chain of coincidences
that she actually ended her life. She was expecting an Au-pair girl, who rang
the doorbell, but would not be answered. Even the man living in the flat
below Plath had been drugged by the gas, that had seeped through the
ceiling of his bedroom, which was situated below Sylvia`s kitchen.
Therefore, nobody was able to circumvent the misery, because the house
was shut off for the outside until construction workers arrived to repair
frozen conductions. She was discovered lying on the floor next to the note,
unfortunately too late.
Alvarez vermutet, das Sylvia Plath ein für allemal mit dem Todesthema
habe Schluss machen wollen. Das einzige Mittel, das sie gesehen habe,
um zu diesem Ziel zu gelangen, sei gewesen, wie schon im Gedicht “Papi“
angedeutet, die grässliche kleine Allegorie noch einmal auszuführen, ehe
sie frei wird von ihr.5)
Her upcoming success with her work in England and the increasing positive
feedback of her poems at the BBC could be another argument for her will
for living. In her last letter to her mother, written one day before she wrote
“Edge” she showed a healthy will for fighting against the struggles and
obstacles, telling her mother that she just had to deal with her situation.
“Dying/ is an art, like everything else/ I do it exceptionally well”, this quote
from “Lady Lazarus” is most often cited as her essential declaration. But if
we read on in the poem we might come near to the actual idea that her
attempts to kill herself were only intended to come close to this edge,
because she was in need of an emotional confrontation with herself. “I do it
so it feels like hell” stresses the fact that she is actually feeling about this
coming close to an edge and has strong emotions about this act and
decision. She is not over the edge yet.
IV. “Edge” as a gate to rebirth?
Biographical criticism is a complex genre in the field of literature because it
necessitates drawing conclusions about the author’s life, however fallible
these conclusions may be. The danger lies in equating the author’s life with
his or her literary accomplishments.
This is probably why there exists the common opinion that Plath herself is
this dead woman, seeing herself dying. Surely, her writings reflect her
emotional state, but the content of “Edge” might not necessarily equal her
own plans. The question is whom she addresses and why she communicates
these thoughts so intensely. As Tim Kendall notes, most readers find
retrospective premonitions hard to avoid, but he recalls that most of her late
poems need to be looked at with a more rational differentiation.
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‘Edge’ in particular, seems to demolish distinctions between
life and art. But biographical information must not be allowed
to overshadow analysis of the nature of Plath’s different, cooler
inspiration in her final poems. Paradoxically, the final crisis of
her life coincided with a style and vision more detached than
anything she attempted in Ariel12)
Looking closer at the style of writing, I realized that there is neither a lyrical
“I” nor an addressee clearly to be found. It seems as if she talks to herself,
trying to come clear with her own persona. She is in the position of the
speaker, who watches the woman from a detached and distant position.
Therefore, it might as well be possible that she was watching a part of
herself dying, not the dominant part, but a woman within herself that took
all the pain and depression, a woman, who needed to be shed. In her essay
“The Divided Self in the Poetry of Sylvia Plath”, Maria Theresa Ib writes
that Plath unfolded a sort of split personality in many of her poems. “In
Tape” for instance, reveals this struggle between her two sides:
‘I shall never get out of this! There are two of me now:
The new absolutely white person and the old yellow one,
And the white person is certainly the superior one’…
Note the desperation of the persona in these lines. As the poem
progresses, the tone of the persona changes from despondent, to
hopeful, to confident in the final line: ‘One day I shall manage
without her’. The true self is ready to break free of its
confinement and believes in its ability to stand on its own, i.e.
6)
without the superficial support of the false self.
The asocial voice with which “Edge” is written, strongly implies that she is
not talking to someone, there is no clear addressee, the reader is observer,
but not included in the event. The astonishing composure and awareness of
the narrator indicates that she must be at ease with the state she is in. The
attitude towards the reader seems indifferent. Edward Butscher expresses it
like this:
She writes with a hallucinatory, self-contained fervor. She addresses
herself to the air, to the walls. She speaks not as a daylight self,
with its familiar internal struggles and doubts, its familiar hesitations
before the needs and pressures of others. There is something utterly
monolithic, fixated about the voice that emerges in these poems, a
voice unmodulated and asocial.7)
This anticipation of relief does not have to rely in death, it could also be the
farewell to the struggling self, in order to clear the way for her real self. It is
left open, if she has to kill herself in order to loose this strain of her
personality or if she does this figuratively in a poem.
Now if she crosses this edge and stands on the verge of something new,
leaving the old life, what does she face or expect when crossing this edge?
As I have already mentioned in the introduction it needs to be emphasized
that, an edge does not only have a separative function but also it is a kind of
link as well. As Plath describes the woman in the poem, she refers to her
“dead body”, not to soul or mind. These elements of the human being seem
to be preserved or happen to live on somewhere. Her we come to the aspect
of rebirth or resurrection. The speaker of the poem seems to be aware of
what the realm behind the edge harbours and in this context, it is something
9
positive. Even though the suicide is nothing honourable or heroic, it was the
final solution to end her suffering, in order to start something new. There is
no exact description of where her soul will be after her body is dead, but the
“smile of accomplishment” of her body indicates that her self-chosen death
has a positive consequence for her. Maybe the death of the “false self” is an
attempt to establish an authentic existence of the “true self”. The poem says
that the rose closes when the night comes, and the moon keeps rising. But in
this case, the day will come soon and the flower will be able to open up
again.
Mythological models
In many of her poems, we experience her cultural education. Many poems
contain various allusions to biblical figures, ancient heroines or figures from
Greek mythology.
Critic Mary Kurtzmann noted that Plath relied on her knowledge of Tarot
cards (a Western Tarot based on the Hebrew Cabala, replicating the 22 paths
on the Cabalistic Tree of Life, each standing for a state of consciousness and
spiritual unfolding) while writing in her last years of life. She assumes that
the woman that is depicted in “Edge” refers to the High Priestess Isis, who
supposedly served as a role model for the figure of the poem. According to
Kurtzmann, “the role of the High Priestess was to experience the highest
possible union with the goddess or god…Such union is labelled Isis
perfected and…someone wrote ISIS on the final typescript of the poem
‘Edge’”.8)
Except for a picture of this goddess in Anne Stevenson’s biography of Plath,
(see Appendix for picture) there is rarely any other information about her
connection with Tarot cult. However after further research on Isis, I had
envisioned a woman, which actually resembled the character of the poem
and there were strong visual parallels.
No other Egyptian deity has stood the test of time as well as Isis. Her cult
was not extinguished with the other Egyptian gods, but was embraced by the
Greeks and Romans; her worship has even lasted into the present day.
According to heliopolitan genealogy, she was the daughter of the God Geb
(Earth) and the Goddess Nut (Sky). Her cult spread from Egypt to the
Greeks and Romans, even Christianity and Japanese religions echoed her
iconography. As Osiris’ sister and wife, she mourns over him when he is
killed, and lets him resurrect later on after having obtained magical
knowledge by Ra. She gives birth to their son and the future king Horus,
who seeks revenge for his killed father. In many illustrations, she is shown
sitting on a throne, suckling the child Horus, which reinforces the image of
the holy mother. This picture is also reminiscent of the iconography of Mary
and the child Jesus. Others depict her with wings, recalling the Phoenix to
mind, the female bird of resurrection, which is also alluded to in “Lady
Lazarus” (“Out of the ash I rise, with my red hair”). She was the embalmer
and guardian of Osiris. Isis is often rendered on the foot of coffins with long
wings spread to protect the deceased. Furthermore she is attributed with
titles like “Mistress of words”, “Goddess of the Underworld”, and “Goddess
of husbandry and seafaring”. In Greek mythology she is Demeter, her Latin
epithet was Stella Maris, meaning ‘star of the sea’. In the story “The Golden
10
Ass”, written by Lucius Apuleius (writer, philosopher born 125 years AD in
today’s Algier), Isis is described as following:
Her long thick hair fell in tapering ringlets on her lovely neck, and
was crowned with an intricate chaplet in which was woven every
kind of flower. Just above her brow shone a round disc, like a
mirror, or like the brightest face of the moon, which told me who
she was. Vipers rising from the left hand and right hand partings
of her hair supported this disc, with cars of corn bristling beside
them. Her many coloured robe was of finest linen; part was
glistening white, part crocus yellow, part glowing red and along
the entire hem a woven bordure of flowers and fruit clung swaying
in the breeze. But what aught and held my eye more than anything
else was the deep black lustre of her mantle. She wore it slung
across her body from the right hip to the left shoulder, where it was
caught in a knot resembling the boss of a shield; but part of it hung
in innumerable folds, the tasselled fringe quivering. It was
embroidered with glittering stars on the hem and everywhere else,
and in the middle beamed a full fiery moon…On her divine feet
were slippers of palm leaves, the emblem of victory.9)
In the previous description of the goddess, we find several elements that
appear in the poem similarly. The moon, the vipers at her sides, the colours
black, white and red, the flowers and the folded robe, which could equal the
toga that the woman in the poem is wearing. The palm leaves on her feet,
which indicate victory, also go along with the “smile of accomplishment”,
both being in the realm of success. Either description shares a festive tone
and the air of celebration. Furthermore, in both texts the Moon takes up a
major role, as the governing element. As I have mentioned earlier in my
analysis, there was a confusion whose “blacks crackle and drag”. This text
even presents the goddess as dressed in “the deep black lustre of her
mantle”. The most obvious difference between the two illustrations is that
Apuleius presents a vibrant image of a living person, whereas Plath creates
the cold and threatening severity of a dead woman. What characterizes this
mythical figure, is her extreme persistence and belief in eternity, when her
husband is killed she still watches over him and seeks for his body parts to
take him back to life. Various pictures of the Isis statue resemble the
goddess-like statue of the poem and Isis’ attributions definitely show up that
Plath might have geared to this archetype.
Plath is considered as a poet of the confessional movement. The term
confession implies personal admissions and refers to a religious topic. Poets
like Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton and WD Snodgrass used their own lives as
topics for their poetry and often dealt with their autobiographical material in
an obsessional manner. Maybe even as a way of asserting their real self in
order to overcome fears and inner conflicts. Topics like drug abuse,
sexuality and other shades of a life that was usually not presented to the
outside world, were published by authors of this current. Confessions imply
self-reflection and questioning oneself in order to find the truth about
oneself. This questioning of the self also includes the darker sides of one’s
character and also the conceding of mistakes, sins and conflicts. The self
needs to be investigated and questioned and this happens often in a time of
crisis, despair and conflict. “As they dare to explore the dark and obscure
realms of consciousness, such poets expose themselves to grave emotional
and psychological danger.”10) Although it seems as if she became clear
11
about her position when writing “Edge”, apparently this psychological
danger overpowered her artistic aims in the end.
V. Conclusion
Even though Plath was vulnerable and deranged she was willing to spread
out her life, admitting mistakes, sins and revealing something false she had
done. However, in “Edge” she speaks to herself, admits, and observes her
own demise for herself, not for others.
For most readers retrospective premonitions are hard to avoid, because
“Edge, in particular, seems to demolish distinctions between life and art.
The instant coordination of death and poem are almost inevitable. But while
reading the poem repeatedly, there seem to appear more and more doors to
open and possible spaces behind the “Edge”. One thing however remains:
right and straight answers cannot be given, and there is no such thing as a
finished reading t the poem, but isn’t that what poetry stands for? The
possible meanings of “Edge” remain innumerable, there is no one clear and
definite answer to what she wanted to express with that title.
It is the act of image-making -- horrific as well as beatific
images -- that liberates the troubled mind of the modern
artist and enables her or him to go on living. Since Sylvia
Plath could not and would not bear the loss of creative
imagination because of psychic paralysis, she was
compelled to imagine the worst (deformity, disease, death)
as eclipsed by the best (newborn children, woman-flowers,
sky-plasma). The act of juxtaposing the two was her reality,
her method of making order out of chaos.11)
With this quote, I finish my examination of Sylvia Plath’s last work,
concluding that among a variety of interpretations of this poem, I found that
“Edge” has an ambiguous meaning. Of course, it does express a certain
separateness, as it is shown in the cold, distant voice of the poem. It seems
as if Plath´s self splits and she observes her own parting from herself. Then
on the other hand, this separateness that comes along with crossing the edge
harbours something new. Rebirth can only be achieved through some kind
of death, be it literally or figuratively. It is not that she despised life itself,
but the insufferable conditions that oppressed he r caused a constant
ambiguity and imbalance, which is expressed at its best in her writings.
What can surely be stated is that Plath stood on an extreme emotional edge
while writing this and other poems. The edge between depression and
psychic breakdowns and the development of her art as a skilled craft.
29.07. 04
Alena Saucke
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Edge
The woman is perfected
Her dead
Body wears the smile of accomplishment,
The illusion of a Greek necessity
Flows in the scrolls of her toga,
Her bare
Feet seem to be saying:
We have come so far, it is over.
Each dead child coiled, a white serpent,
One at each little
Pitcher of milk, now empty
She has folded
Them back into her body as petals
Of a rose close when the garden
Stiffens and odors bleed
From the sweet deep throats of the night flower
The moon has nothing to be sad about,
Staring from her hood of bone.
She is used to this sort of thing.
Her blacks crackle and drag.
February 5, 1963
13
Appendix:
Pic. 2 A print of the Isis of Apulejus (Tarot Card), the great mother of
gods, which was hanging in Plath’s living room in London (Olwyn
Hughes)
Pic.5 Isis and Maat (Papyrus)
14
Pic. 3. Egypt ian Isis
Pic. 4. Isis and Horus
Bibliography:
Primary literature:
Hughes, Ted, ed. “Edge.“ The Collected Poems: Sylvia Plath. New York:
Harper and Row, 1981.
Schober-Plath, Aurelia, ed. Sylvia Plath:Briefe nach Hause. New York:
Harper& Row, 1975.
Secondary literature:
Bassnett, Susan. Women writers: Sylvia Plath. London: McMillan, 1987.
Butscher, Edward. Sylvia Plath: The woman and the work. London: Peter
Owen, 1979.
Hall, Caroline K. Sylvia Plath, Revised. London; Mexico City; Singapore;
Sidney; Toronto: Twayne Publishers, 1998.
Hetmann, Frederik. So leicht verletzbar unser Herz: Die Lebensgeschichte
der Sylvia Plath. Weinheim: Beltz& Gelberg, 1988.
Kendall, Tim. Sylvia Plath: A Critical Study. London; New York: Faber and
Faber, 2001.
15
Rajani, P. The Poetry of Sylvia Plath. London: Sangam Books Limited,
2000.
Stevenson, Anne. Sylvia Plath: Eine Biographie. Frankfurt am Main:
Fischer, 1994.
Wagner-Martin, Linda. Sylvia Plath: A Literary Life. New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 1999.
Werth, Wolfgang. Ikonographie des Entsetzens: Die Todeslyrik der Sylvia
Plath. Trier: WVT, 1990.
Articles:
Folsom, Jack. “Death and Rebirth in Sylvia Plath's Berck-Plage.“ Journal of
Modern Literature. XVII:4 (1991), pp. 521-535.
http://www.sylviaplath.de/plath/jfolsom.html
Jones, Emma. “ ‘Silence of another order’: Negativity and trope in the late
poems of Sylvia Plath”. Sydney studies in English. Vol. 28 (2002): 87-102 .
Leenaars, Anton A., Susanne Wenckstern. “Sylvia Plath: A protocol
analysis of her last poems.” Death Studies. Vol. 22. (1998): 615-635.
Moramarco, Fred. “ ‘Burned-up intensity’: The Suicidal Poetry of Sylvia
Plath”. Mosaic. Vol. 25 (1) (1982): 141-151.
Ib, Theresa Maria. “Mind over Myth?: The Divided Self in the Poetry of
Sylvia Plath.” Center for English. University of Denmark Kolding. 2001. no
pagination. http://www.sylviaplath.de/plath/dividedself.html
Internet sites:
http://www.crystalinks.com/isis.html
http://www.crystalinks.com/phoenix.html
http://faculty.cua.edu/pennington/ChurchHistory220/lectureone/TopicOne.h
tml
http://www.gym-cantor.bildunglsa.de/Projekte/Projektwoche2000/Italienfahrt/inhalt/vortraege/isis_kult/isis
_kult.htm
http://www.aloha.net/~ruth/Isis.html
16
Source of photographic material:
Pic. 1: http://dir.salon.com/books/feature/2000/05/30/plath1/index.html
Pic. 2: Mother Nature, or Syncretized Isis . From Athanasius Kircher, Oedipus
Aegyptiacus (Rome, 1652). http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/kinney/small/kircher.htm
Pic. 3: http://hegel-system.com/material/isis.JPG
Pic. 4: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2000/474/li1.htm
Pic. 5: http://www.egybazar.com/papyrus06.html
Footnotes:
1)
Rajani, P. The Poetry of Sylvia Plath. p. 202.
Werth, Wolfgang. Ikonographie des Entsetzens: Die Todeslyrik der Sylvia Plath. p. 88.
3)
Plath, Sylvia. Briefe nach Hause. Schober Plath, Aurelia, ed. p. 536.
4)
Rajani, P. The Poetry of Sylvia Plath. p. 203.
5)
Hetmann, Frederik. So leicht verletzbar unser Herz: Die Lebensgeschichte der Sylvia
Plath.
p.97.
2)
6)
Ib, Theresa Maria. “Mind over Myth?: The Divided Self in the Poetry of Sylvia Plath.”
Butscher, Edward. Sylvia Plath: The woman and the work. p. 233.
8)
Wagner-Martin, Linda. Sylvia Plath: A Literary Life . p. 105.
9)
http://www.aloha.net/~ruth/Isis.html
7)
10)
Hall, Caroline K. Sylvia Plath, Revised. p. 125.
Folsom, Jack. “Death and Rebirth in Sylvia Plath's Berck-Plage.“
http://www.sylviaplath.de/plath/jfolsom.html
12)
Kendall, Tim. Sylvia Plath: A Critical Study. p.189.
11)