Will Sylvia Plath always be defined by her death? | Hacker News Reader

Will Sylvia Plath always be defined by her death?

bbc.com

35 pointsDrNuke41 comments

I really like the poetry of Sylvia Plath, the powerful, but sometimes cryptic imagery and how she plays with language, the use of alliterations.... Sorry, that's very generic things to say about poet, but there's something in her poems that resonates with me - not necessarily on the level of content, but in how she writes - and right now I can't express better what it is.

Maybe a bit off topic, but can anyone recommend other poets, which someone who loves Plath might like?

Ted Hughes. Plath was a great admirer of his work.

This comment seems disingenuous.

Hughes and Plath were lovers. You know that, others mightn't.

Bit weird suggestion. He literally beat her (one time she had a miscarriage after).

Anne Sexton

Speaking for myself, it was sometime in 2011 when I first heard of Sylvia Plath. Never knew she was dead until this headline 10 years later. She's not defined by her death for me, anyways.

I think the headline is referring to how people who are familiar with Plath think of her. Not sure how relevant your lack of familiarity is...

Yes, just like Emily Dickinson's poetry will be defined by her isolation, and Vincent Van Gogh's art by his mental illness. Our cultural interpretation of an artist's work, particularly for those with iconically unique lives, is inextricable from how they lived.

Beethoven and his deafness is another example. His condition profoundly effected his music, listen to Moonlight Sonata 3rd movement, when played by the right pianist you can feel his loss and frustration.

That's interesting because I think his Ninth (most famous for his use of the poem Ode to Joy) is just incredible, well, so does everyone else in the world too I guess. But he was already at his peak deafness in 1812, six years before the Ninth. I always thought of it as a big ol' F-U to his deafness. On the other hand, perhaps the Moonlight Sonata, in 1802, was sad because that's when he started to lose his hearing, and by 1818 he had accepted it.

I think this depends on the artist (though perhaps you're already conceding this point with your "particularly for" qualifier). Caravaggio had masterful control of lighting and form, but was a murderer (manslaughterer). Someone who knows of DFW's interactions with Mary Karr would likely interpret Infinite Jest the same way as one who doesn't. I don't think ESR's politics have any bearings on cathedrals vis-à-vis bazaars.

If anyone has the chance to visit Hampshire College they have her diary in the rare book collection. One of the most amazing visits to a library was when I got the chance to hold it and read it.

Dunno. Will John Berryman or Randall Jarrell, or Anne Sexton, or Breece D'J Pancake?

Given that more readers are likely to have heard of Plath than of the four just mentioned, I'd say, No, not really. There's a reason that we remember Plath and Stevie Smith better, and that is their poetry.

What about Kurt Cobain, Buddy Holly, Tupac? All get remembered disproportionately for their deaths.

Not just because they died young - you could pick equally famous artists who died young but whose life is more famous than their death. Try Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley or Hank Williams.

I don't see anything that clearly links the artists "defined by their death". But despite the BBC's efforts, it's probably not sexism.

I wonder how much of that is generational. For me, Kurt Cobain’s suicide or Tupac’s murder don’t overshadow their music.

Buddy Holly I know about more from Don McLean’s song, so his death does overshadow his music, but the opposite is likely true for my parents because they lived with his music in a way that I never did.

>>For me, Kurt Cobain’s suicide or Tupac’s murder don’t overshadow their music.

I don't know what "overshadow" means here. They were both considered top artists in their genres, and their untimely deaths are massive parts of their legacy. I don't think people know them more for their deaths than their songs, but I feel like there are very few people who would consider themselves fans of Nirvana that don't know about how Cobain's mental health/relationship affected and influence their sound or who love Tupac and don't know about the East vs. West coast feud in rap at the time and Pac's place in it.

I feel the exact opposite about Buddy Holly. He died in a tragic plane crash. I don't know what that means about his legacy other than "he died in a plane crash". It obviously didn't influence his art other than him not being able to make any more

(I'm 36 fwiw.)

I meant overshadow in the sense of how they’re remembered/casually described by people.

“Pretend I’ve never heard about Person X; tell me what you know about them.” For me, Buddy Holly’s death gets mentioned in the first or second sentence. None of the others do, including Sylvia Plath. (Kurt Cobain might, depending on how long I go in my description.)

> What about Kurt Cobain, Buddy Holly, Tupac? All get remembered disproportionately for their deaths.

Fwiw, Cobain and Tupac's deaths are pretty far from mind when I think about them.

> But despite the BBC's efforts, it's probably not sexism.

Sure, this is practically a new Betteridge's Law. Journalism has been consumed by a bizarre ideology that fixates on a couple of social ills, so "no, it's not sexism" is a reasonable response a good chunk of the time.

> The 2003 biopic Sylvia, starring Gwyneth Paltrow as Plath and Daniel Craig as Ted Hughes

Wow - never heard of this one! Somehow, I have a hard time imagining Pepper Potts and James Bond as Sylvia and Ted.

Yes because I don't see her coming out of retirement to do anything else to change it.

Of course. In the same way that Isadora Duncan will be defined by her death.

“Woolf's novels and Kane's plays are dubbed as being manifestations of mental illness …”

I’ve never heard this of Woolf but I’m now reminded of repeated descriptions of death by drowning. My favorite example is in Jacob’s Room; a scene of some people at a party is interrupted suddenly with a description of men drowning in a World War I naval battle before returning to the scene. To The Lighthouse has similar fragments and stories.

These are two of my favorite novels. If I accidentally notice she did go on to drown herself, am I doing a sexism? Reading contemporary English press is so tiresome. “Remember how you noticed a thing while reading Virginia Woolf novels? You may be a misogynist!”

Your personal feelings to art are just that. Yours.

Especially something as sensitive as poetry or Woolfe's novels.

On the other hand, this article is about society's collective understanding of an artist or a class of artists (female).

It raises valid questions, which are orthogonal to yours or my reading of their art.

The author claims that society collectively feels something, that Woolf is defined by her death - based on what? - her gut feel that unspecified others feel in some way. Who? Maybe she has encountered it. I haven’t. She offers nothing to back up the claim, so I am happy to dismiss it with equal carelessness, because the claim is used to jump to the next claim, sexism, which is effectively an accusation of malice. It’s not malice if I noticed something noticeable.

> am I doing a sexism?

Is it necessary to be so dismissive of a serious topic?

Good question.

Yes, sometimes it is necessary, if that topic is relentlessly pounded into you as the parent commenter suggests. Hearing about something again and again is tiresome. Some people can and will grow irritated with that. And so they push back. Being mildly dismissive is probably the least you could hope for in that circumstance.

I disagree. It sounds more to me like "I haven't thought about this much, but I caught a wind of someone who might be casting judgement upon me or people like me (those of us who haven't thought about it much). I do not like this, and rather than thinking about it, I'm going to mock the idea." ... which is all too common.

IMO, legit questions:

  - Is Sylvia Plath defined by her death? Or just by the tragedy she wrote about, and lived?

  - Is she thought of differently due to her sex, or to the very dramatic way (and circumstances under which) she took her life?

I lean toward this not being sexist as much as circumstantial. There's something about "killed self with gas in sealed room next to sleeping children" that strikes people as more tragic than "killed self with shotgun alone in mansion" -- i.e. the first sounds more like protracted desperation, and the second might be an act of brief despair. Of course the truth (such as we know it) is more complicated than that, but complication doesn't survive contact with general awareness.

Well, rather than "sounds like" you could always ask the parent commenter if they are being dismissive because they are worn out of the topic. Why not do so?

I used to hang in some very lefty circles and nothing makes me mentally check out of a conversation now more than those sorts of angles, because everything we talked about just ... went that direction.

They actually said "sounds more like to me". Two unmentioned qualifiers.

> the first felt that suicide was their only option, whereas the second could have acted in a brief moment of despair.

Please consider that you have no concept of the brain chemistry imbalances that can be the cause of suicide.

What actions you choose don't necessarily have an anchor to what panic or pain is inside of you.

I think I edited to clarify before you commented, but it might have been a casualty of page-load-delayed-read.

I agree with you.

> Being mildly dismissive is probably the least you could hope for in that circumstance.

I don’t even know what to say to this except that it is not only ridiculous but wholly inappropriate.

To you, sure.

Have you ever fallen in with a bunch of recently converted Christians? And conversation after conversation turns to Jesus? And you then become absolutely sick of it? Once someone has had their fill of something, you're gonna get pushback. Some people just ... don't want to talk about Jesus that much.

But then imagine that you just can't seem to get away from them. Jesus on the radio. Someone brings up a movie and someone else has to discuss it from a Christian values standpoint. And it just never stops.

Put yourself in the shoes of someone who doesn't need that much Jesus. You can do empathy, right?

I don't know that they meant that flippantly.

But at the same time I am glad you said something because if we objectively look at the world there IS rampant sexism and there IS rampant racism and we DO need to call it out.

"Am I doing a sexism?" is dismissive, or at least sounds so.

"Am I being sexist?" would be neutral.

It's unfortunate that the meta-discussion is necessary, because it's way less interesting than "Is Plath's tragedy viewed differently due to her sex?".

It does sound dismissive (and flippant). lol

> [...] repeated descriptions of death by drowning. My favorite example is in Jacob’s Room; a scene of some people at a party is interrupted suddenly with a description of men drowning in a World War I naval battle before returning to the scene. To The Lighthouse has similar fragments and stories.

I don't recall anything similar in To the Lighthouse. What have I forgotten?

like this struck me.

“poor man! who had no wife, and no children and dined alone in lodgings except for tonight; and in pity for him, life being now strong enough to bear her on again, she began all this business, as a sailor not without weariness sees the wind fill his sail and yet hardly wants to be off again and thinks how, had the ship sunk, he would have whirled round and round and found rest on the floor of the sea.”

It’s just a little metaphor but it’s drowning again, specifically a feeling in a common situation (they are at dinner) is likened to a sailor feeling as though he’d prefer to have drowned. Or

“he relished the thought of the storm and the dark night and the fishermen striving there. He liked that men should labour and sweat on the windy beach at night; pitting muscle and brain against the waves and the wind; he liked men to work like that, and women to keep house, and sit beside sleeping children indoors, while men were drowned, out there in a storm.”

I feel like there’s another passage I’m forgetting.

Really though the author only needs to use the imagery of drowning a few times before it looks like a tic. It can be that she is English. They’re so very nautical!

Thank you —- these are good examples.

Not aplogising for society's understanding of how relvance to art vs artists' life is different between the sexes. The article is right and society can and should be plastic.

However, the single relevant data point that for me has been most surprising and most enduring is this:

Of all the female humans that have ever lived, 80% have living descendents today. For males, the equivalent number is 40%.

If this data is factually correct (sorry I don't have sources right now), then it goes a long way to explaining though not justifying, why people tend to focus more on early death in females: "What an unnecessary waste."

Edit: I still don't have a very strong source for this data, but the discussion here is relevant.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cHEQSEPz4eipGHFy9/differenti...

Yes, no one focuses on or is sad that Tupac, John Lennon, Kafka, Percy Bysshe Shelley or John Keats died young...

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