Monk

"Yes, I was infatuated with you: I am still. No one has ever heightened such a keen capacity of physical sensation in me. I cut you out because I couldn’t stand being a passing fancy. Before I give my body, I must give my thoughts, my mind, my dreams. And you weren’t having any of those."

-- Sylvia Plath

This woman haunts me. I should've made a separate tag for her a long time ago.

(Source: Tumblr)

I have put up quite a few items dealing with Sylvia Plath. I guess there is something about a hot babe who is also a poetic artist and a suicide that captures my imagination, like a beautiful tragedy.

She had caught my attention before my blogging years as well, beyond the odd mention in this or that classroom. I read A. Alvarez's "Savage God" a couple of times, which revolves around her suicide. And a couple of times I would be in a book store holding up her diary, debating with myself whether to get it. I never did. I imagine, if I were a woman, I probably would have gotten it, and that she would be a lot bigger in my mental life. I might even be book-blogging her diary along with her novel.

If life were not so short, I probably would get to her yet. For now, here is a nice biographical essay on her life and art: "The Bell Jar at 40" by Emily Gould.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

-- "Lady Lazarus" by Sylvia Plath

I watched the 2003 movie, “Sylvia”, about the poetess Plath, starring sleeky Gwenyth Paltrow and Daniel Craig. I am still drawn to stories of the literary life, even though I know that I will never leave such a life behind me, being more reader than writer, more pathetic than tragic.

Sylvia is the quintessentially tragic artist - beautiful, brilliant, and suicidal - the great soul unable to make peace with the random, mad world in which we unaccountably find ourselves. Tired of gazing into the abyss and writing about it, she finally dives headlong into it and makes good on her last suicide attempt.

I wonder about my own life spent coping with the abyss and my latest way of dealing with it, which now has me trying to be friends with God, and I wonder: is it because no one else will have anything to do with me, or is it because I don’t think anyone else is good enough for me? All I know is that I find the poetry of Christian metaphysics more exalting than the literature of nihilism and despair, even if I cannot really feel saved myself.