Sylvia Plath

 Sylvia Plaths a Poet

Sylvia Plath (1932 - 1963) was a distinguished American poet. She  was one of the most dynamic and admired poets of the 20th century. Her poetry tackles diverse literary topics. She is described as “one of the most celebrated and controversial of postwar poets writing in English.”

Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist, and short-story writer. She is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for two of her published collections, The Colossus and Other Poems (1960) and Ariel (1965), as well as The Bell Jar, a semi-autobiographical novel published shortly before her death in 1963. The Collected Poems were published in 1981, which included previously unpublished works. For this collection Plath was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 1982, making her the fourth to receive this honour posthumously. Consequently, her contribution to the American poetry is enormous. She was one of the first poets who introduced realism technique within the context of the American poetry 

The "confessional" poets composed poems in free verse with intensely volent imagery on subjects taken from their inner emotional lives. They shared interest in, and personal encounters with, psychotherapy. Often, her work is singled out for the intense coupling of its violent or disturbed imagery and its playful use of alliteration and rhyme. 

Plath utilizes literary symbolic devices within expressionism in realistic techniques because she had been influenced by contemporary realistic poets. Being so, Plath wrote in the form of expressionism had not any concern with the state of individuals. They depended on expressionism to condemn complicated contemporary issues regarding industrialism and capitalism as products of systems not individuals. Being a realistic poet, similarly, Plath uses symbolic realistic verse and conversations in some of her poems. he faced difficult conflicts in her life and her inner self, and her suffering leads her to write poetry on the conflicts of all men in her milieu. As an autobiographical poet, Plath‘s main aim was to depict these conflicts in his poems. So that she tried to ease her inner pressures and storms, to justify herself to herself, not to the world through her writings, and from her experiences, she also tried to depict the conflicts of her age Intensely autobiographical, Plath’s poems explore her own mental anguish, her troubled marriage to fellow poet Ted Hughes, her unresolved conflicts with her parents, and her own vision of herself. 

Some of her most vivid poems, including the well-known “Daddy,” concern her troubled relationship with her authoritarian father and her feelings of betrayal when he died. Feminists portrayed Plath as a woman driven to madness by a domineering father, an unfaithful husband, and the demands that motherhood made on her genius. Some critics lauded her as a confessional poet Plath used history “to explain herself,” writing about the Nazi concentration camps as though she had been imprisoned there.

On October 27, 1932, Sylvia Plath was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Her mother, Aurelia Schober, was a master’s student at Boston University when she met Plath’s father, Otto Plath, who was her professor. They were married in January of 1932. Otto taught both German and biology, with a focus on apiology, the study of bees.

In 1940, when Sylvia was eight years old, her father died as a result of complications from diabetes. He had been a strict father, and both his authoritarian attitudes and his death drastically defined her relationships and her poems—most notably in her elegaic and infamous poem, "Daddy."

Even in her youth, Plath was ambitiously driven to succeed. She kept a journal from the age of and published her poems in regional magazines and newspapers. Her first national publication was in the Christian Science Monitor in 1950, just after graduating from high school.

In 1950, Plath matriculated at Smith College. She was an exceptional student, and despite a deep depression she went through in 1953 and a subsequent suicide attempt, she managed to graduate summa cum laude in 1955.

After graduation, Plath moved to Cambridge, England, on a Fulbright Scholarship. In early 1956, she attended a party and met the English poet, Ted Hughes. Shortly thereafter, Plath and Hughes were married, on June 16, 1956.

Plath returned to Massachusetts in 1957, and began studying with Robert Lowell. Her first collection of poems, Colossus, was published in 1960 in England, and two years later in the United States. She returned to England where she gave birth to the couple's two children, Frieda and Nicholas Hughes, in 1960 and 1962, respectively.

In 1962, Ted Hughes left Plath for Assia Gutmann Wevill. That winter, in a deep depression, Plath wrote most of the poems that would comprise her most famous book, Ariel.

In 1963, Plath published a semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar, under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas. Then, on February 11, 1963, during one of the worst English winters on record, Plath wrote a note to her downstairs neighbor instructing him to call the doctor, then she committed suicide using her gas oven.

Plath’s poetry is often associated with the Confessional movement, and compared to poets such as her teacher, Robert Lowell, and fellow student Anne Sexton. Often, her work is singled out for the intense coupling of its violent or disturbed imagery and its playful use of alliteration and rhyme.

Although only Colossus was published while she was alive, Plath was a prolific poet, and in addition to Ariel, Hughes published three other volumes of her work posthumously, including The Collected Poems, which was the recipient of the 1982 Pulitzer Prize. She was the first poet to win a Pulitzer Prize after death.

Emerson's Prose Style

 Emerson’s Prose-Style

Emerson is one of the greatest American essayists of the nineteenth century. He is quite different from the English like Addison, Lamb, Hazlitt, Arnold or Stevenson . He was primarily a philosophical thinker. He was a Transcendentalist. He believed that God pervades the whole universe.

 

The essays of the English are short. But Emerson’s essays are very long. His essays are as a vast treaty of nature in which multitudes of argument and illustrations jostle one another for existence. On the basis of their form, his essays may be called Lectures. Some of them may be called treatises or orations. The body of his essay is vast. It contains various topics under the main title. The essay -- The American Scholars covers about fifteen pages. It talks about the major influence on the scholar, it discusses the duties of a scholar, it is in a way American intellectual declaration of independence '.

Emerson essays are loosely constructed. His paragraphs are not based on any logical sequences. The points of his thought are not related to one another by virtue of logical discussion. In 'the American scholar ' he tells first his readers that Americans should now make a declaration of literary Independence. Then he tells them that the American scholar should be a 'Man - thinking‘. Thereafter he describes the influence upon the mind of man. He was a great scholar. His vision was vast. As soon as he is in a position to complete a paragraph a new vision comes up and ideas form themselves into a circle.

Emerson style for writing essays is philosophical. He writes “There is never a beginning, there is never an end, to the inexplicable continuity of this web of God, but always circular power returning into itself”. Therein it resembles his own spirit, whose beginning, whose ending, he never can find,—so entire, so boundless”. Further , " A Man should learn to detect and watch the gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within’.

Emerson’s prose-style is noted for its aphoristic quality and its epigrammatic terseness. The essay is with him, as with Bacon, a series of short, quotable assertions without the logical unity of the discourse, but all bound together by the intellectual atmosphere of the source from whence they proceed. Many of his sentences are remarkable for their force, subtlety, and impressiveness, and some for their poetical beauty. The imagery is of great range, from the sun and stars and down to the meanest weed or insect, and the diction is quaint and original but not in the least affected. “Man hopes. Genius creates”.

 

He has used a number of stylistic devices such as figures of speech, analogy, antithetically balanced sentences, epigrams, rhetorical etc. The use of these various devices can easily be illustrated from any of his essays –

The perception of analogy takes also the less direct and more forceful form of metaphor. Literary fashions are seen as “the mere remains of foreign harvests.” He expects confidently a time, “when the intellect of this continent will look out from its iron lids.” The young scholar is, “a school boy under the bending dome of day.” Books are lamps to guide our steps to the East again, where the dawn is.

 

To the poet’s privilege of metaphor, Emerson adds the idealist’s prerogative of paradox, which is at once a way of seeing things as well as a way of saying them. It is a philosopher’s game, played with appearance and reality. Diversity and even contrariness are to him only a dramatic presentation of some great designs. “The drop is a small ocean,” “The near explains the far,” “One design unites and animates the farthest pinnacle and the lowest trench”, and, of course, the most basic paradox of all is the one in which, “Everything that tends to insulate the individual ……tends to true union as well as greatness.”

Emerson reminds us often of Milton, especially in The American Scholar, by his eloquence, by the amplitude and sweep of his sentences, the rhythm and the poetry of his descriptions. He reminds us just as often of Bacon with his confident aphorisms. The fullness of the longer sentences is balanced by the sharpness of epigram and the greatness of antithesis. He has a whole series of antithetically balanced sentences, where he describes how experience becomes truth and art in the crucible of the scholar’s mind. Readily noticeable also is the skilful use of rhetorical devices, like inversion, repetition or interrogation. “Emerson has the poet’s ear for the music of words, and something even of the more obvious phonetic and musical satisfaction of verse may be found in Emerson’s prose. Apart from the usual balancing of sound with the sense, characteristic of the antithetical construction, we notice also the devices of rhythm, the balancing of sound through repetition and contrast in passages. With Emerson prose is the other harmony, i.e. poetry. He is one of the greatest writers of poetic-prose. His sentences have the rhythm and cadence of poetry. Such as

“It came into him life; it went out from him truth. It came to him short-lived actions; it went out from him immortal thoughts. It came to him business; it went from him poetry. It was dead fact; now, it is quick thought. It can stand, and it can go. It now endures, it now flies, it now inspires”.

 

According to a noted critic, it is idle to analyse Emerson’s style, if we think of style as meaning order and arrangement: for his method of writing—by stringing together selections from his note-books—made it impossible that his works should have any continuity of thought or unity of expression. But if we think of style simply as manner, as the reflection of personality, and then consider Emerson’s most characteristic paragraphs which suggest stars, flowers and glimmering crystals, then there is no style to compare with his in our literature.

There can be no denying the fact that Emerson is one of the greatest of prose-stylist in the English language, but he has also glaring faults and short-comings. He lacked the gift of sustained construction. His style is best illustrated in selected passages. The sentences are terse, vital, epigrammatic; yet they are always poetic rather than practical, and always hint at much more than they express. Because he lives much out of doors and is intimate with earth, air and water, Emerson’s figures have an elemental quality unlike those of any other writer. 

 The dew and fragrance of the morning are in all his works. Because he has read widely he gives an air of culture to the most homely matters by associating them with the great characters and the great books of the world. He has a large vocabulary at perfect command, but his instinct leads him to the simplest and most picturesque words. He chooses his expressions from the most unexpected places, here from the nursery, there from the Apocalypse or from the mystic books of the East; and not even Lowell approaches him in the ability to clothe his thought in a new dress, making its appeal as fresh and original as if it had been spoken in Eden at the spring time of the world.

Emerson is always striving after eloquence of expression, not to convince his hearers—such a personal motive would never occur to him—but simply because it is in his blood, because eloquence seems to him Man’s natural expression, his unconscious reflection of his harmony with the universe.

 A number of critics are of the view that Emerson, the essayist, is not the artist. In the opinion of Spiller, Emerson is - “a writer who is artistic but not an artist ". Emerson is said to have got no sense of composition. He is accused of writing loose sentences with no sense of syntax .When he starts elaborating his ideas his sense of form disappears and continuation becomes illogical, incoherence is the result of it all. Emerson’s prose has something beautiful style, something dangling. A critic says about his essays that they are - " a chaos full of shooting stars " To find his style , we may conclude him as a great scholar and a great Thinker .

His essays are replete with his wisdom. He was an intellectual, a deep Thinker and an eloquent speaker .

Perhaps the most fitting commentary on their relationship to Indian literature was made by Gandhi after reading Emerson’s essays: “The essays to my mind contain the teaching of Indian wisdom in a western ‘genre’. It is interesting to see our own sometimes differently fashioned.”   

 

 Emerson as an Essayist.  

Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882) was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States.

Emerson gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating and expressing the philosophy of Transcendentalism in his 1836 essay, Nature. Following this ground-breaking work, he gave a speech entitled The American Scholar in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. considered to be America's "Intellectual Declaration of Independence".

Emerson wrote most of his important essays as lectures first, then revised them for print. His first two collections of essays – Essays: First Seriesand Essays: Second Series, published respectively in 1841 and 1844 – represent the core of his thinking, and include such well-known essays as Self-Reliance, The Over-Soul, Circles, The Poet and Experience. Together with Nature, these essays made the decade from the mid-1830s to the mid-1840s Emerson's most fertile period.

Emerson wrote on a number of subjects, never espousing fixed philosophical tenets, but developing certain ideas such as individuality, freedom, the ability for humankind to realize almost anything, and the relationship between the soul and the surrounding world. Emerson's "nature" was more philosophical than naturalistic; "Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul."

While his writing style has been considered impenetrable by some, Emerson's essays remain among the linchpins of American thinking, and Emerson's work has greatly influenced the thinkers, writers and poets that have followed him. When asked to sum up his work, he said his central doctrine was "the infinitude of the private man." Emerson is also well known as a mentor and friend of fellowTranscendentalist Henry David Thoreau.

Emerson anonymously published his first essay, Nature, on September 9, 1836. A year later, on August 31, 1837, Emerson delivered his now-famousPhi Beta Kappa address, "The American Scholar", then known as "An Oration, Delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge"; it was renamed for a collection of essays (which included the first general publication of "Nature") in 1849. Friends urged him to publish the talk, and he did so, at his own expense, in an edition of 500 copies, which sold out in a month.^[1] In the speech, Emerson declared literary independence in the United States and urged Americans to create a writing style all their own and free from Europe.James Russell Lowell, who was a student at Harvard at the time, called it "an event without former parallel on our literary Emerson's religious views were often considered radical at the time. He believed that all things are connected to God and, therefore, all things are divine. Critics believed that Emerson was removing the central God figure; as Henry Ware, Jr. said, Emerson was in danger of taking away "the Father of the Universe" and leaving "but a company of children in an orphan asylum".  Emerson was partly influenced by German philosophy and Biblical criticism. ^] His views, the basis of Transcendentalism, suggested that God does not have to reveal the truth but that the truth could be intuitively experienced directly from nature.annals". Another member of the audience, Reverend John Pierce, called it "an apparently incoherent and unintelligible address".

 It was in 1841 that Emerson published Essays, his second book, which included the famous essay, "Self-Reliance". His aunt called it a "strange medley of atheism and false independence", but it gained favorable reviews in London and Paris. This book, and its popular reception, more than any of Emerson's contributions to date laid the groundwork for his international fame.^]

Emerson was introduced to Indian philosophy when reading the works of French philosopher Victor Cousin.^[92] In 1845, Emerson's journals show he was reading the Bhagavad Gita and Henry Thomas Colebrooke's Essays on the Vedas. Emerson was strongly influenced by the Vedas, and much of his writing has strong shades of nondualism. One of the clearest examples of this can be found in his essay "The Over-soul":

We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul.^[94]

As a lecturer and orator, Emerson—nicknamed the Concord Sage—became the leading voice of intellectual culture in the United States

Emerson's work not only influenced his contemporaries, such as Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau, but would continue to influence thinkers and writers in the United States and around the world down to the present. Notable thinkers who recognize Emerson's influence include Nietzsche andWilliam James, Emerson's godson.

Emerson presupposes that the mind is initially subject to an unhappy conformism.

Self-Reliance is Ralph Waldo Emerson’s compilation of many years’ works and the archetype for his transcendental philosophies. Throughout the essay he gives a defense for his famous catch-phrase “trust thyself.” This argument follows three major points: the self-contained genius, the disapproval of the world, and the value of self-worth.

Throughout this essay, Emerson argues against conformity with the world. He gives an archetype for his own transcendental beliefs, but also argues for his slogan “trust thyself.” For someone to transcend their current state, one must lean only on their own understanding, hold a certain level of disregard for the opinions and currents of society, and most importantly hold a respect for self regardless of circumstances and societies opinions.

Emerson uses Transcendentalist and Romantic views to get his points across by explaining a true American scholar's relationship to nature. There are a few key points he makes that flesh out this vision:

·         We are all fragments, "as the hand is divided into fingers", of a greater creature, which is mankind itself, "a doctrine ever new and sublime."

·         An individual may live in either of two states. In one, the busy, "divided" or "degenerate" state, he does not "possess himself" but identifies with his occupation or a monotonous action; in the other, "right" state, he is elevated to "Man", at one with all mankind.

·         To achieve this higher state of mind, the modern American scholar must reject old ideas and think for him or herself, to become "Man Thinking" rather than "a mere thinker, or still worse, the parrot of other men's thinking", "the victim of society", "the sluggard intellect of this continent".

·         "The American Scholar" has an obligation, as "Man Thinking", within this "One Man" concept, to see the world clearly, not severely influenced by traditional/historical views, and to broaden his understanding of the world from fresh eyes, to "defer never to the popular cry."

·         The scholar's education consists of three influences:

·         I. Nature as the most important influence on the mind

·         II. The Past manifest in books

·         III. Action and its relation to experience

·         The last, unnumbered part of the text is devoted to Emerson's view on the "Duties" of the American Scholar who has become the "Man Thinking."

 

 

 

MA IV Sem The American Scholar

The American Scholar

The American Scholar was a speech given by Ralph Waldo Emerson on August 31, 1837, to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was invited to speak in recognition of his groundbreaking work Nature, published a year earlier, in which he established a new way for America's fledgling society to regard the world. Sixty years after declaring independence, American culture was still heavily influenced by Europe, and Emerson, for possibly the first time in the country's history, provided a visionary philosophical framework for escaping "from under its iron lids" and building a new, distinctly American cultural identity.

The address was published in 1837, and again in 1838. It was published in London in 1844 as Man Thinking: An Oration. The oration is a more concrete version of Emerson’s philosophic system. It is the “Declaration of Independence” in American Letters.

The address was a practical appeal to the American Scholar to raise himself above the dust of peasantries and to reach after the inspiration of the divine soul which inspires all men. The message can be summed up in two words – “trust thyself”, do not quit your belief stand indomitably on your instincts, the world is nothing – man is all.

2. It was Emerson’s best effort to present his whole view point in a single work. There is consistency of tone and consecutiveness of argument in it which is due to the organic metaphor that is used the concept of one men on which the whole essay depends. Emerson believed in the organic principle of the universe as a living organism. He believed in the social body of humanity ion of all things in a unity as the ultimate organisation of all things in a unity. The scholar most work for this unity which is forever changing. Emphasis is placed on the principle of change and progression. The scholar cannot be content with assimilating other man’s ideas he must create his own. He must bring forth that living contemporary truth, not the dead thoughts of the past.

3. The whole address falls into three divisions: the introduction of the subject and its importance, the education of the scholar and the forces that influence him, and the duties and functions of the scholar as Emerson sees it.

4. He starts with the concept that the individual is the unit of measurement in the universe. In the individual is the law of all the nature. The social body of humanity is properly “one man”. But in the divided state various functions of the “one man” are distributed to individuals who do their own work and are cut off from the rest. Thus each is a “part” man and not a ‘whole’ man. Man has thus wronged himself- he has become mass and herd, and the individual is of no account. This wrong is to be righted by the scholar to whom intellect has been delegated in the individual distribution. Rightly understood it means that the scholar is “Man Thinking”. And the scholar must realise that thinking is a continual process, he must continue thinking and promulgating (make known to the people) or disseminate the new living thought and not to be the parrot of scholar man’s thinking.

5. What are the main influences on a scholar during his education: a) nature, b) the mind of the past, c) the world, and d) the scholar’s participation in the experience of life. He may know himself. There is affinity between them. Man seeks to systematize and unify and so he explores the laws governing facts. He is scientist who observes and classifies and speculates on the relations between things. Thus he has the perception of relation is an imaginative and intuitive act, nature and his soul appears as the manifestations of the same universal soul. If he learns one he will know the other. To follow the command “know thyself” man studies nature.

a) Nature: Man is constantly in the presence of nature. What is nature?

There is never a beginning; there is never an end to the continuity of this web of God but always circular power returning to itself. Man and nature have correspondence, man studies nature so that he may know himself. Nature and his soul appear as the manifestation of the same universal soul. If he learns one he will know the other. To follow the command “know thyself” man must study nature.

b) The mind of the past- in the form of literature or art or any institutions that has mind inscribed on it- also teaches him. Through them he comes to know the minds of the greatest man of ages. But books should inspire man to find what is highest within himself. The whole value of history, of biography is to increase man’s self trust, by demonstrating what man can be and do. Thus the great books inspire man but they must not confine him. They should help in revealing his creative activity. Reading must be followed by periods of solitude in quest and self recovery for genius can be his enemy by over influence. They should help him as nature does to know himself. By knowing himself he knows other man. The deeper he penetrates into his secret the more he will understand other people. By his intuitive feelings he will find they are the most acceptable, most public and universally true. Better part of every man feels “this is myself”.

C) Participation in life and experience of life are also essential to the scholar. Activity and action may be subordinates, but they are essential to the scholar. Without this experience he is not a full man, because thought can never ripen into truth. The scholar must receive the world into him, brood on it, give it a new arrangement and utter it. One knows only so much of himself as he knows about life. Experience of life is the raw material for intellect and the instructor in eloquence and wisdom. The final value of life is that like books, it is a resource where the scholar can always go to renew himself. Live life and feel life.

6. H e then discusses the duties and functions of the scholar. He says that they are such as are suitable to Man Thinking. This may be comprised in the one virtue of self trust. And it is through this self trust that the scholar is to cheer, to raise and to guide men. He is to do this by seeing reality himself and showing it to them. This can only be done by observation painful slow observation without hope of immediate fame. He will encounter scorn and hostility but he must bear all this and travel alone for the ultimate compensation that he will be the world’s heart, the world’s eye.  

7. For this he requires confidence in himself and never to defer to the popular cry. He must be free of urgent kind of hindrance. He must be brave. Fear springs from ignorance. He must face things squarely y perceive them clearly, and publish them for what they really are. He must restore the value of the individual which is the real basis of unity, for it is one soul which animates all men.

8. He ends by telling the American scholar to give up the tradition of Europe and replace it with their own liking for native tradition. These views can be applied to any nation and to any literature and therein lies the importance and the universality of the essay.

Summary

Emerson uses Transcendentalist and Romantic views to get his points across by explaining a true American scholar's relationship to nature. There are a few key points he makes that flesh out this vision:

·         We are all fragments, "as the hand is divided into fingers", of a greater creature, which is mankind itself, "a doctrine ever new and sublime."

·         An individual may live in either of two states. In one, the busy, "divided" or "degenerate" state, he does not "possess himself" but identifies with his occupation or a monotonous action; in the other, "right" state, he is elevated to "Man", at one with all mankind.

·         To achieve this higher state of mind, the modern American scholar must reject old ideas and think for him or herself, to become "Man Thinking" rather than "a mere thinker, or still worse, the parrot of other men's thinking", "the victim of society", "the sluggard intellect of this continent".

·         "The American Scholar" has an obligation, as "Man Thinking", within this "One Man" concept, to see the world clearly, not severely influenced by traditional/historical views, and to broaden his understanding of the world from fresh eyes, to "defer never to the popular cry."

·         The scholar's education consists of three influences:

·         I. Nature as the most important influence on the mind

·         II. The Past manifest in books

·         III. Action and its relation to experience

·         The last, unnumbered part of the text is devoted to Emerson's view on the "Duties" of the American Scholar who has become the "Man Thinking."

[edit]Importance

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. declared this speech to be America's "Intellectual Declaration of Independence."^[1] Building on the growing attention he was receiving from the essay Nature, this speech solidified Emerson's popularity and weight in America, a level of reverence he would hold throughout the rest of his life. Phi Beta Kappa's literary quarterly magazine, The American Scholar, was named after the speech, and when printed, sold well.^[2] An exception is the harsh reaction to his speech, The Divinity School Address, eleven months later (see the separate entry).