Happy Birthday Sylvia Plath
On 27.10 Sylvia was born, she took life in her hands and played with death until she was caught by it.
I tried to write today. I tried once. I failed. Then I realized it was Sylvia Plath's birthday. One of the writers I discovered very late, but the one I found closest to my soul. I don't know how to explain it, birthdays and deathdays are important for me. It's as if when someone is born or dies, you have to celebrate their soul. I want to celebrate Sylvia's soul today. Sylvia was a complicated woman, a woman whose soul was scattered, whose heart was intense and tired. At least that's what I understand from her words. The things she said to me made me feel sad for her yet made sense of my feelings. I feel understood when I read what she wrote, and that is probably my biggest motivation for reading or writing. Now I would like to talk about a few notes Sylvia wrote in her diary.
"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 - "
SP's problem was to be understood, like me, like many of us, maybe like all of us. Being understood brings with it being loved, but sometimes it is not that simple. Trying to understand is hard enough, but loving at the same time can be exhausting. It requires a lot of giving, it requires to be selfless. To be understood and loved. What else can a person want? At the same time as wanting this, she is trying to solve the dilemma of life; she wants to live life to the fullest, but she can’t accept that life is so difficult.
"What is my life for and what am I going to do with it? I don't know and I'm afraid. I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want to? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones, and variations of mental and physical experiences possible in my life. And I am limited. Yet I am not a cretin: lame, blind and stupid. I am not a veteran, passing my legless, armless days in a wheelchair. I am not that mongoloidish old man shuffling out of the gates of the mental hospital. I have much to live for, yet unaccountably I am sick and sad."
This diary entry is similar to the one above. It's about wanting to live life to the fullest but having limited time, not having time to do most of the things you want to do, and the impossibility of choices. She wants to do everything, be everyone, and live everything. Here desires are endless but she knows that life is limited. And this causes her pain. When she wants to live life to the fullest she has no energy to live. One of my favorite things about her is that she manages to exist amid all these contradictions, even if it's difficult, and she's not afraid to expose all these contradictions of her soul.
"I want so obviously, so desperately to be loved, and to be capable of love. I am still so naive; I know pretty much what I like and dislike; but please, don't ask me who I am.
"A passionate, fragmentary girl," maybe?"
This is one of my favorite quotes. Sylvia is saying the same thing in different words, crying out to be loved. But the truth and the tragedy is that even if she is loved by everyone and everything in the world, it won't be enough for her. It is this passionate, insatiable spirit that drove her to suicide that killed her. And yet S knew herself, she knew that she was naive, passionate, and a fragmentary girl. Is this self-awareness a gift or a curse? Maybe it's both...
Sylvia ended her life by suicide. Was she not understood or loved enough? What made her give up on life? Was life too much for her as she teetered between happiness and sadness? Among all these questions, we will not find the answer. Yet it is possible to read her and see the deadlock in her soul. Sylvia did not stop writing about it, both when she was suffering and when she was happy. She wrote poems, short stories, a novels. Sylvia wrote. Although she died at the age of 30, perhaps writing kept her alive in her short life. Was writing a way of living for her? Was writing a survival for her? I don't know. I don't know if I am asking these questions for her or myself. Yet Sylvia inspires me infinitely with her courageous writing and undaunted soul. Happy birthday Sylvia Plath. Thank you for your words that are not afraid to open your heart. Existing was both pleasure and pain for her. Yet writing was the only way to cope with life. On 27.10 Sylvia was born, she took life in her hands and played with death until she was caught by it.