A few words about Sylvia Plath

SYLVIA PLATH (1932-1963)

THE BELL JAR

Publicada bajo seudónimo, la creación de esta novela, muestra en su totalidad la vida de Sylvia Plath. Bajo esa locura envolvente aunque fuertemente creativa, la autora logra plasmar de una manera ejemplar como “escribir sus experiencias de una forma violenta, con una fuerza ineludiblemente desgarradora”. Una novela construida bajo el manto de una apariencia frágil donde los pensamientos de una persona se vuelcan en un mundo singular, su mundo de locura. En un paisaje interior, el suyo, donde la frontera entre “locura y cordura” resulta vaporosa, nos introducimos posiblemente en una novela que puede considerarse como un postulado feminista. El ser una de las escritoras que más ha contribuido a cambiar el modo en que se piensa en la identidad de las mujeres, más allá de estereotipos y clichés le ha servido para, a través del bosque adusto de la locura, abrirse paso, firmemente, hacia la luz. Así, su muerte trágica, deja abierta brechas, las cuales le han llevado a pertenecer al Olimpo literario, llegando a ser uno de los grandes mitos literarios femeninos del S.XX.


(Lía Madrid - 28/02/2008)

Sylvia de pequeña con su gato Daddy You do not do, you do not do  Any more, black shoe  In which I have lived like a foot  For thirty years, poor and white,  Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.   Daddy, I have had to kill you.  You died before I had time--  Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,  Ghastly statue with one gray toe  Big as a Frisco seal  And a head in the freakish Atlantic  Where it pours bean green over blue  In the waters off beautiful Nauset.  I used to pray to recover you.  Ach, du.   In the German tongue, in the Polish town  Scraped flat by the roller  Of wars, wars, wars.  But the name of the town is common.  My Polack friend   Says there are a dozen or two.  So I never could tell where you  Put your foot, your root,  I never could talk to you.  The tongue stuck in my jaw.   It stuck in a barb wire snare.  Ich, ich, ich, ich,  I could hardly speak.  I thought every German was you.  And the language obscene  An engine, an engine  Chuffing me off like a Jew.  A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.  I began to talk like a Jew.  I think I may well be a Jew.   The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna  Are not very pure or true.  With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck  And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack  I may be a bit of a Jew.   I have always been scared of you,  With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.  And your neat mustache  And your Aryan eye, bright blue.  Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You--   Not God but a swastika  So black no sky could squeak through.  Every woman adores a Fascist,  The boot in the face, the brute  Brute heart of a brute like you.   You stand at the blackboard, daddy,  In the picture I have of you,  A cleft in your chin instead of your foot  But no less a devil for that, no not   Any less the black man who   Bit my pretty red heart in two.  I was ten when they buried you. At twenty I tried to die  And get back, back, back to you.  I thought even the bones would do.   But they pulled me out of the sack,  And they stuck me together with glue.  And then I knew what to do.  I made a model of you,  A man in black with a Meinkampf look   And a love of the rack and the screw.  And I said I do, I do.  So daddy, I'm finally through.  The black telephone's off at the root,  The voices just can't worm through.   If I've killed one man,I've killed two--  The vampire who said he was you  And drank my blood for a year,  Seven years, if you want to know.  Daddy, you can lie back now.   There's a stake in your fat black heart  And the villagers never liked you. They are dancing and stamping on you.  They always knew it was you.  Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.