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| http://winspoetry.blogspot.com/2011/02/lady-lazarus-by-sylvia-plath.html |
I read Plath's "Lady Lazarus" to students every quarter or semester (whatever the school calls it) over her more famous poem "Daddy," which is over-anthologized and over-done.
My video of reading "Lady Lazarus" appears below, but so does a video of Plath reading it among other poems. Her delivery differs from mine, but there's a quality to her voice that will require some study on my part before I can characterize it. I just found the video among all these other resources.
Welcome to another WRITERLY WEDNESDAY and the work of Sylvia Plath along with many resources and analysis. BTW, the one video of analysis of "Lady Lazarus" is a computer-generated video of the computer "reading" a power point. It has some good content but is pretty awful otherwise.
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| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1993/08/23/the-silent-woman-i-ii-iii |
https://www.biography.com/writer/sylvia-plath
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49000/lady-lazarus
Lady Lazarus
BY SYLVIA PLATH
I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it——
A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot
A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.
Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?——
The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.
Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me
And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.
This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.
What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see
Them unwrap me hand and foot——
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies
These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,
Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.
The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut
As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.
Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.
I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I’ve a call.
It’s easy enough to do it in a cell.
It’s easy enough to do it and stay put.
It’s the theatrical
Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:
‘A miracle!’
That knocks me out.
There is a charge
For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart——
It really goes.
And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood
Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.
I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby
That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.
Ash, ash—
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there——
A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.
Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.
Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.
Sylvia Plath, “Lady Lazarus” from Collected Poems. Copyright © 1960, 1965, 1971, 1981 by the Estate of Sylvia Plath. Editorial matter copyright © 1981 by Ted Hughes. Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
Source: Collected Poems (HarperCollins Publishers Inc, 1992)
MY VIDEO
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| https://www.saatchiart.com/art/Collage-Lady-Lazarus/209768/4536362/view |
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| http://scotdir.com/other/poetry-analysis-lady-lazarus-by-sylvia-plath |
Poetry analysis: Lady Lazarus, by Sylvia Plath
Silvia Plath (1932 – 1963) was an American Poet. She was also a novelist and short story writer. Her poem, ‘Lady Lazarus,’ is about, like the biblical character, coming back from the dead.
Unlike the Lazarus of the bible, the death she suffers from is depression. This resurrection is the feeling of elation Plath feels at coming out of her depressive state. It could be argued that these feeling are the up side of a bi-polar mental illness. This may be where the feeling of rebirth in her poem comes from. She also has the feeling she that cannot be beaten; she asks if she terrifies people and in the final stanza tells them that they need to beware of her. Clearly she is feeling brave and in control.
It is beyond the scope of this analysis to say whether she was in fact bi-polar; another possibility could be she was just a sensitive person who felt too much and suffered as a consequence (perhaps this is cost of listen to her heart), a common enough trait in poets. What readers can say is that by today’s standards, the psychiatric care she would have received could be seen as barbaric; it certainly involved Electrical Convulsive Therapy (ECT). Something reflected in lot of the phrases in the poem, such as: “[the pure gold baby] that melts to a shriek” and “I turn and burn.” Is suggestive her receiving Electrical Convulsive Therapy.
In the poem, she evokes the image of the concentration camp. She refers to a doctor as Herr Doctor and Herr Enemy. This has two meanings; firstly that she sees her doctors as being symbolic of doctors in the Jewish Holocaust and secondly, as a pronoun referring to her – her doctor and enemy. She acknowledges that they are concerned for her, but only as a prize or object, not a person, so she sees them as an enemy, her oppressor.
She is using the image of death to represent depression and the concentration camp to represent the mental health institution that presides over her illness. She uses this what many consider a shocking image to get the point across. It also makes for some powerful images in her prose, for example:
“A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,”
The reference here is to the practise of making things out out of human remains in the concentration camps, including lampshades from human skin. Here, it gives a creepy, dead, but living image of Plath’s emotions.
Her dying in the poem may also refer to her suicide attempts. She calls it an art that she does very well, that it is a theatrical thing. If this is true then she may have expected to survive the final suicide attempt. She thinks she has the nine lives of a cat. This would suggest she expected to live till she was ninety. She used one life up every ten years according to the poem.
Alternatively, it could be that the depression had felt to her so bad for so long she does not know why she was still living. Depression can be so traumatic and soul destroying; it can feel like dying. The only conclusion she can make is that she has the nine lives of a cat.
Plath’s poem, then, is a personal one. That tells of her feelings of rebirth after a period of depression. The harsh imagery she uses is to express her frustration and anger at the thing that dominates and mares her life. The poem itself is positive, but the thing that makes it sad for the reader is that they know that her life will be ending not long after she wrote this poem.
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| https://guncomic.com/reckless-eyeballs-press/2016/6/21/dark-phoenix-lady-lazarus-sylvia-plath |
In my continuing feature sharing material from the year that corresponds with the number of this post, in this case, 1975, here's some content.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975
http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/1975.html
What Happened in 1975 Important News and Events, Key Technology and Popular Culture
1975 In the UK inflation continues to spiral out of control reaching 24.2% the price of Petrol increased by nearly 70% in one year, but the US sees a start back down with US inflation going down to 9.2%, both governments use interest rates as a way of trying to control inflation with the US Federal Reserve at 7.25% and The Bank of England at 11.25%. Meanwhile one of the true success stories of modern times when Bill Gates and Paul Allen create the company Microsoft. The First of the new hobby computers are starting to appear including Altair 8800 and the battle for Video recorder standards of VHS and Betamax starts. This is also the year the Vietnam war finally ends. First disposable Razor, Jimmy Hoffa ex teamsters boss disappears, Suez Canal reopens, Dutch elm disease decimates Elm Trees in UK,Jump To 1975 Fashion -- World Leaders -- 1975 Calendar -- Technology -- Cost Of Living -- Popular Culture -- Toys
First blockbuster movie, Jaws, is released
- One of the very first blockbuster films, Jaws, is released during June.
The hit film Jaws had its theatrical release in June of 1975. It was one of the first blockbuster films and at the time of its release it had become the highest grossing film of all time. The film was directed by Steven Spielberg and starred Richard Dreyfuss, Roy Scheider, and Robert Shaw. The plot revolved around a killer shark terrorizing a small town and those who would hunt it. It was nominated for several Academy Awards and won three of them. Known for its dramatic score, superior editing and suspenseful premise, the film Jaws is considered by many critics to be one of the greatest films ever made.
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2007.15 - 10:10
- Days ago = 1839 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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