Two Women Who Sang of Death

Human beings go through different emotional phases in their lives. If all could express what they feel verbatim, there would ve been no difference between a layman and a poet . To translate into words, the language spoken by the mind, is a tedious task. I am reminded of a great writers confession that producing a literary work is like giving birth to a baby. The prospective author has to go through all the pangs of childbirth.

This is why I admire two great women of letters who found a perfect expression of their mind’s language in poetry, though a century separates them. The first one Emily Dickinson, focused on themes relating to death, eternity, and love, usually in short four-line stanzas. Sylvia Plath on the other hand tried to exorcise the oppressive male figures that haunted her life in her poetry. I feel that sylvia’s poems are a successful attempt at unraveling the hazy maze that was her mind. Going through them is a tedious task for a superficial brain, but a rewarding experience for an intutive one.

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put awayMy labor,
and my leisure too,
For his civility.

Emily Dickinson

Death is described as a suitor or a gentleman caller in this poem by Dickinson. Whenever I read this poem, an analogy comes to my mind in a poem called Ente Veli. I think it was by Olappamanna.

The day she visited the dissecting room
They had four men laid out, black as burnt turkey,
Already half unstrung.
A vinegary fume
the death vats clung to them;
The white-smocked boys started working
. The head of his cadaver had caved in,
And she could scarcely make out anything
In that rubble of skull plates and old leather
. A sallow piece of string held it together.
In their jars the snail-nosed babies moon and glow.
He hands her the cut-out heart like a cracked heirloom

from Two Views of a Cadaver Room: Sylvia Plath.

Though this poem is not for the faint hearted or the traditional mindsets, it stands out due to its glaring difference from conventional poetry. This enthralling difference is there in most of her poems. She uses images of cadavers and skull plates in a poem which also speaks of love!

We used to adore her poetry in college and had sessions of discussions on her poetry and life which itself was mysterious. One of our beloved lecturers, Dr Susheel had done his Phd in Plath. So all the dicussions were moderated by him. I still remember that in one of the discussions I opined that Plath was suffering from insecurity ( which is obvious) and there were traces of self pity in her poems and she wrote these poems to attract attention to her frail and insignificant life.

I always believed that I had rare insights into her thought processes. Dont know why. But now I feel that it is just a phase and it will pass. Poetry especially confessional poetry has a connection with solitude and sadness. I agree with Shelley that " the sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought". Poetry springs from alienation, pain and distress. It cannot be denied that there are sweet songs that have sprung from daffodils and running brookes. But I feel that they lack the "essential sadness" which creates a bond with the reader's heart.