Sylvia Plath's transformations of modernist paintings

In most of these poems Plath conflated details of a painting with social, familial, and emotional forces in her own life to produce works of enormous power and complexity. These works are not mere recapitulations of the paintings. Nor do the paintings serve as mere springboards or catalysts to poems in which the painting might be briefly alluded to and then ignored as a poet created a work that had little or nothing to do with the its visual source. Instead, for Plath, something in a painting sparks a vital insight into her own life-insight that is highly charged emotionally, in words that are innovative and distinct in subject matter and theme from that of the painting. Thus a symbiotic relationship develops between the influencing painting and the resultant poem, which moves the reader with its highly charged emotion.

Notes

1 During the period she was writing these poems, she even wrote "six ... Dole Pineapple Jingles," in hopes of winning "a car, $4, or $15,000!" (Hughes 1982, 337).

2 She continues, saying that she "will try arbitrarily, one a day. Each subject appeals, deeply, to me. Must drop them in my mind and let them grow rich, encrusted. Yesterday: sat in the art libe [sic] soaking and seeping in pictures. I think I will try to buy the Paul Klee book" (Hughes 1982, 208).

3 In some of the poems based on paintings, which include "Battle-Scene," "Snakecharmer," "Virgin in a Tree," "The Disquieting Muses," "Perseus: The Triumph of Wit over Suffering," and "The Ghost's Leavetaking," she acknowledges the work that inspired it. Other Plath poems provide enough detail to identify the source.

4 In contrast, Klee's equally charming "Cat and Bird" (1933) communicates a real sense of danger for the cat's prey, the bird.

5 The writer's expression or "fable," i.e. the order of events which take place in the story.

6 The content or events which take place in the "world" being created in the work of fiction.

7 Plath feels that, like her mother, these women invade her life.

8 Syrinx, like Daphne, wanted to remain a virgin. When Pan pursued her to the river Ladon and she was unable to cross, she too prayed to be saved. The river gods heard her plea and transformed her into marsh reeds.

9 Christopher Isherwood, in "I Am a Camera," Katherine Anne Porter, in "The Leaning Tower" and Ship of Fools, and Fritz Lang, in The Cabinet of Dr Caligari demonstrate similar attitudes, attitudes which led to National Socialism, World War II, and the Holocaust.

10 Plath thought of herself and describes her protagonists as having red hair, for example in "Lady Lazarus."

11 Plath may very well have seen this painting, which is owned by Musee Communnale, La Louviere, Belgium. But she almost certainly knew it, as most people

interested in surrealist art do, from reproductions. Given that she had studied modern art and that she alluded to and created variations of other modern and surrealist paintings, it is not surprising that Magritte's painting should also serve as a source for her.