HAPPY 52th BIRTHDAY, Frieda Hughes!!! :)
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Picture via
Location: New York, NY, US
Date taken: October 1998
Photographer: Ted Thai
Picture via Peter K. Steinberg’s A celebration, this is sylviaplath.info
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❀ ✿ ❀ Happy Death Day, Aurelia Plath! ❀ ✿ ❀
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Aurelia Frances Schober Plath - Sylvia’s mother - died on Friday, March 17, 1994 (aged 87 years) at the North Hill Health Center in Needham, Norfolk County Massachusetts, USA, due to complications from Alzheimer’s disease.
She is buried at the Woodlawn Cemetery in Wellesley, Norfolk County, Massachusetts, USA.
The Nicholas Hughes-Week!
Another week, another theme… this week, I would like to dedicate to Nicholas Hughes, since the 3rd anniversary of his death is coming up on Friday.
Enjoy! :)
The VERY BAD Sylvia Plath-Comic week!
A new week, a new topic… this week we had an !!ACCIDENTAL!! VERY BAD Sylvia Plath-Comic week!
A while ago, I have been searching for Sylvia Plath comics. There is so much Sylvia related stuff out there and I was sure, there must also be some comics.
However, the majority of Sylvia Plath comics I found, weren’t funny, cool or good at all!
Most of them were disrespectful, distasteful, offensive and above all - very, very bad! Mocking mental illness, suicide and a brilliant woman!
However, I still decided to collect them and I wanted to post them during “The VERY BAD Sylvia Plath-Comic week!” to show you how stupid and insensitive people can be when it comes to Sylvia Plath!
As I always do, I was planning to write a proper introduction post before I stard posting the comics. So that no one hits of the idea that I like or support these kind of things!!!
These of you who follow this blog for a longer time, know how strongly I feel about Sylvia Plath! How angry I get if someone posts disrespectful comments about her! How I despise the “head in the oven” jokes! How I judge the Sylvia Plath Halloween costumes! How I pick a fight with everyone posting shit about her!
Some people seem to forget that, despite the fact that she is a public figure and sometimes seems like an unreal character, she has been a HUMAN BEING. A very ill and tormented woman. A woman who couldn’t take her pain any longer and gave up the fight with depression!
The only reason why I posted these comics without an introduction is that I didn’t mean to post them this week AT ALL. I must have accidentaly queued them instead of saving them as drafts.
I have been really busy this week and didn’t come up with a topic for the blog and since I never queue my posts, I decided to skip this week and start a new theme week next week.
When I took a look at my tumblr on Wednesday, I realized that all the comics have been posted WITHOUT A COMMENT and I decided to wait till the end of the week (today) to write you an afterword instead of the introduction.
So, here you go! Hope this clarifies a few things and answers all your questions!!
via http://mikemartinart.blogspot.com
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A comic inspired by Sylvia Plath’s poem
Black Rook in Rainy Weather
On the stiff twig up there
Hunches a wet black rook
Arranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain-
I do not expect a miracle
Or an accident
To set the sight on fire
In my eye, nor seek
Any more in the desultory weather some design,
But let spotted leaves fall as they fall
Without ceremony, or portent.
Although, I admit, I desire,
Occasionally, some backtalk
From the mute sky, I can’t honestly complain:
A certain minor light may still
Lean incandescent
Out of kitchen table or chair
As if a celestial burning took
Possession of the most obtuse objects now and then —
Thus hallowing an interval
Otherwise inconsequent
By bestowing largesse, honor
One might say love. At any rate, I now walk
Wary (for it could happen
Even in this dull, ruinous landscape); sceptical
Yet politic, ignorant
Of whatever angel any choose to flare
Suddenly at my elbow. I only know that a rook
Ordering its black feathers can so shine
As to seize my senses, haul
My eyelids up, and grant
A brief respite from fear
Of total neutrality. With luck,
Trekking stubborn through this season
Of fatigue, I shall
Patch together a content
Of sorts. Miracles occur.
If you care to call those spasmodic
Tricks of radiance
Miracles. The wait’s begun again,
The long wait for the angel,
For that rare, random descent.
—1956
She was your friend. You pay the bill.
“
| — |
Paul Alexander, Rough Magic. A Biography of Sylvia Plath, Chapter 11 “A Posthumous Life” *** This was written on the gas bill for 23 Fitzroy Road in London for the period that inculuded Feburary 11, 1963 - when Sylvia Plath committed suicide. Assia Wevill sent it to Sylvia’s Devon friend Elizabeth Sigmund. Wanna know more? Click! |
Suicide Off Egg Rock
Behind him the hotdogs split and drizzled
On the public grills, and the ochreous salt flats,
Gas tanks, factory stacks — that landscape
Of imperfections his bowels were part of —
Rippled and pulsed in the glassy updraught.
Sun struck the water like a damnation.
No pit of shadow to crawl into,
And his blood beating the old tattoo
I am, I am, I am. Children
Were squealing where combers broke and the spindrift
Raveled wind-ripped from the crest of the wave.
A mongrel working his legs to a gallop
Hustled a gull flock to flap off the sandspit.
He smoldered, as if stone-deaf, blindfold,
His body beached with the sea’s garbage,
A machine to breathe and beat forever.
Flies filing in through a dead skate’s eyehole
Buzzed and assailed the vaulted brainchamber.
The words in his book wormed off the pages.
Everything glittered like blank paper.
Everything shrank in the sun’s corrosive
Ray but Egg Rock on the blue wastage.
He heard when he walked into the water
The forgetful surf creaming on those ledges.
- The Collected Poems, 1959
My tribute to Sylvia Plath, my favorite writer. This is the inscription on her tombstone. It is essentially ‘whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ and I have surely been through some things I thought would kill me. So it is comforting to have a reminder of hope on my skin.
“Even amidst fierce flames the golden lotus can be planted.”
- Sylvia Plath’s epitaph on her grave in Heptonstall, West Yorkshire, England
Picture via Peter K. Steinberg’s A celebration, this is sylviaplath.info, taken February 11, 2003
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“Even amidst fierce flames the golden lotus can be planted.”
- Sylvia Plath’s epitaph on her grave in Heptonstall, West Yorkshire, England
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Where does this quote come from?
According to Ted Hughes, the quote comes from the Hindu sciptures, the Bhagavad Gītā (“Song of God”), written in the period between 200 BCE and 200 AD.
However, it is more likely that this quote is from the 16th century Chinese novelist and poet Wu Cheng’en. It can be found in his novel “Journey to the West” that is one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature, originally published anonymously in the 1590s during the Ming Dynasty.
In English-speaking countries, the tale is also often known simply as “Monkey”, from the title of a popular, abridged translation by Arthur Waley or as “Adventures of the Monkey God”, “Monkey: Folk Novel of China”, and “The Adventures of Monkey”. And in a further abridged version for children, “Dear Monkey”.
In the Penguin Classics Edition, the quote can be found on page 23. It is spoken by a Patriarch who is teaching Monkey the way of a long life.
Here is the full quotation:
“To spare and tend the vital powers, this and nothing else is sum and total of all magic, secret and profane. All is comprised in these three, spirit, breath and soul; guard them closely, screen them well; let there be no leak. Store them within the frame; that is all that can be learnt, and all that can be taught. I would have you mark the tortoise and snake, locked in tight embrace. Locked in tight embrace, the vital powers are strong; even in the midst of fierce flames the Golden Lotus may be planted, the five elements compounded and transposed, and put to new use. When that is done, be which you please, Buddha or Immortal” .
