“Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars,
The trees and flowers have been strewing their cool odors.
I walk among them, but none of them are noticing.
Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping
I must most perfectly resemble them--
Thoughts gone dim.
It is more natural to me, lying down.
Then the sky and I are in open conversation,
And I shall be useful when I lie down finally:
The trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me.”
"I Am Vertical", March 28, 1961, Collected Poems
Sylvia Plath has a reputation for appealing to angsty teenage girls with literary aspirations. Like all cliches, there’s some truth here. In fact, I’m Exhibit A of the cliche. As a sixteen year old who liked to brag about reading Proust (I didn’t understand a word) and quoted Nietzche with shocking regularity1 (“for when you gaze long into the abyss the abyss gazes also into you”) I was primed to love and adore Sylvia Plath.
I read The Bell Jar and spent whole afternoons thinking wildly romantic and sad thoughts about existence. I wrote troubled poetry that mimicked “Mad Girl’s Love Song” (my favorite of Plath’s juvenilia poems). I both loved and hated Ted Hughes, Plath’s unfaithful husband. I found Hughes handsome and intelligent but I, along with most of Plath’s admirers, blamed him for Plath’s death.
(I’ve since come to appreciate Hughes. You can read a review of a Hughes biography I wrote here.)
In college I poured through The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath and when I finally finished I felt like I had lost an old friend. I had become so used to being apprised of the inner turmoil of Plath’s mind everyday. She had, over time, become a dear and important role model, an inspiration for a young girl obsessed with visions of ‘the literary life.’
My future husband and I worked on a summer research project together that featured four confessional poets. I focused on Plath and Anne Sexton. I found them both so gorgeously tragic, wonderfully romantic. We visited Smith College, Plath’s alma mater, and were shocked that with a few brief explanations about our research project we were given access to the Plath archives. I trembled as I touched her diary pages, her sketches, her drafts. She wrote this, she was here.
“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.”
Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
It’s uncomfortable to admit, but many people are fascinated with Sylvia Plath because she committed suicide. On a cold day in 1963, she prepared some food for her children. She closed the door, barricading it with towels to protect little Frieda and Nicholas from the toxic gas. Then she turned on the oven. She was only thirty years old.
The frenzied poems she wrote in the last months of her life would become the collection, Ariel, her most-famous literary contribution. No one can know what she would have gone on to create, how she would have developed as a writer and a poet. The “what-could-have-been” lends a romantic and tragic aspect to her life story that many find irresistible. The drama of her tumultuous marriage, the macabre details of her suicide, all of these have continued to enthrall the general public.
But here’s the thing about Sylvia Plath. She wasn’t just an artist. She was a mother, a lover, a friend, a daughter - she was a human being. And before and above all titles we have since assigned to her (“depressive,” “artist,” “confessional poet,” “crazy,” “tragic” etc., etc.,) she was and is a human soul.
Sylvia Plath, like all of us, had hopes, aspirations, dreams, doubts, and desires. She felt angry, disappointed and sad. She also fell in love, hiked in the mountains, laughed with her friends, and trembled with joy.
“I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, “This is what it is to be happy.”
Sylvia Plath, “The Bell Jar”
Sylvia Plath’s birthday is October 27th, 1932, just a few days shy of Allhallowtide, the Christian triduum of All Saint’s Eve (Halloween - Oct. 31), All Saint’s Day (Nov. 1), and All Soul’s Day (Nov. 2). While this time of year is now dominated by costume parties and trick-or-treating, it has its origins in the memento-mori2 ("remember you must die”) tradition that honors, remembers, and prays for the Dead.
While some might find the idea that Christians used to keep a skull on their desks (Sr. Theresa Aletheia Noble actually did this and wrote a memento-mori devotion out of the experience) or wear jewelry adorned with skeletons and body parts (the original punk rock goths!) a little strange, I always loved this aspect of the faith. The Danse Macabre (Dance of Death) artistic motif that came out of the Middle Ages shows all people, rich and poor, priests and laypeople, good and bad, dancing toward the grave. Because Death makes no exceptions, our shared mortality is an occasion for unity and a beautiful reminder of what it means to possess an eternal soul.
So this year when I was reminded of Sylvia Plath’s birthday, I immediately thought, I wonder if anyone has ever offered a Mass for her? Not religious herself (although she tried on-and-off for years to attend various churches), Plath also didn’t come from a religious family. Who is praying for her? I wondered.
In a day and age of incessant sharing and consumption of one another’s lives, we very rarely remember that beyond all the titles, labels, shares, and likes of this world, there is a very specific, very beautiful, very irreplaceable human soul.
(If you’re not familiar with the Catholic tradition of saying Mass for the Dead, here’s a good explanation.)
Sylvia Plath has been much more than a remote idea to me. She has been a mentor, friend, and inspiration.
I still think of the metaphor she used in The Bell Jar when I have a difficult choice to make: she describes a person sitting underneath a fig tree. Each piece of fruit represents a possible life choice. Unable to choose, she risks starving to death. I think of this metaphor whenever I need conviction to move forward with a decision.
I relate so much to her desire to be and do so much in life, to her simultaneous introversion and extroversion, to her deep and full love for her husband.
These people we admire aren’t abstract entities, open caskets for critics and gossip mongers and voyeurs to dissect. They are human beings that we can and should pray for.
“Can you understand? Someone, somewhere, can you understand me a little, love me a little? For all my despair, for all my ideals, for all that - I love life. But it is hard, and I have so much - so very much to learn.”
-The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Even if you’re not religious, or if the idea of Masses said for the Dead seems like a load of nonsense, I think Allhallowtide can still be an important reminder of our shared mortality.
Reading Sylvia Plath was one of the first times I felt the breath of life reach across the page. I felt I knew her. I still feel that way sometimes. It has been strange to think that my life has rushed passed hers… She was always my comrade in arms. The student, the writer, the young mother. But she died at 30. She never saw the years I am living now.
So this is my way of reaching back toward her, of remembering her, of saying, you mattered. You still matter.
Let me offer you this line from her journals as a sort of prayer -
“Let me live, love, and say it well in good sentences.”
Amen, amen.
This essay has been edited and was originally published online in 2019.
I was a hoot at parties.
I may or may not have asked for a memento mori sweatshirt for Christmas one year.
I love this so much. Thank you for remembering her and honoring her to us as a person. A human. A soul. Lord, bless Sylvia with your everlastinglovingkindness and glory.
What a beautiful tribute. Thank you for sharing.