Speaking about these diaries is rather complicated. Since there are many years of intimacy, feelings, reflections... All of this in an atmosphere full of crudeness. Sincerely, it has been a great experience to let myself be led by the hand of Sylvia.

The quote

“What inner decision, what assassination or what escape from prison must I commit internally if I want to speak from my deep and true voice when I write?”

adds an interesting layer to the complexity. It makes one wonder about the lengths one must go to in order to express oneself truly and deeply through writing.

Perhaps Sylvia was grappling with these very questions as she penned her diaries. Maybe she felt the need to break free from the constraints of society and convention in order to speak her truth. Or perhaps she was dealing with some inner turmoil that she could only express through her writing.

Whatever the case may be, her diaries offer a unique glimpse into her world and her mind. They are a testament to the power of writing as a means of self-expression and self-discovery. And they remind us that sometimes, the most profound and meaningful things in life are hidden beneath the surface, waiting to be uncovered.

This is yet another masterpiece that I can add to my ever-expanding collection of books.

The subject matter? Miserable, unstable, mentally ill, and beautiful women.

It's my favorite genre, for real.

There's something about these complex and tortured female characters that really draws me in.

Maybe it's the contrast between their inner turmoil and their outer beauty, or maybe it's the way their stories explore the depths of human emotion and the fragility of the human psyche.

Whatever it is, I can't get enough of it.

And this new book looks like it's going to be just as captivating as the others in my collection.

I can't wait to dive in and see what kind of emotional rollercoaster it takes me on.

There is not really a way to review something like this.

I wonder even if she'd have wanted these to be read. And yet, some entries are truly gorgeous. They are full-bodied stories in themselves. Her discussions of going to the grocer, at times, are more eloquent than any more complex literary piece.

There is a part where she speaks on being at the beach in the sun, and it was rapturous.

Can't help but wonder what was in that "lost" final book, of course. But the often-manic tones of some entries, while sobering, were very relatable. Some of Sylvia's takes on gender roles and sexuality made me squint. But I wonder what someone like her would've been like even one generation later.

More psychological medical help, a broadening world for women in which they didn't have to get married...I just wonder.

These are some of the most evocative journal entries I've ever read, in any case. It's as if Sylvia Plath's words have the power to transport us into her inner world, filled with both beauty and turmoil. Her thoughts on daily life, love, and society are both profound and thought-provoking. Reading her journal entries is like embarking on a journey through her mind, and it's a journey that I won't soon forget.

My EPUB version has three thousand pages. I have read the seven hundred-page text written on the first two hundred pages three times, each time with very minor changes. The plot is extremely appealing to the readers, and it repeats some words at times. It also talks a lot about common female experiences. In this regard, it seems very similar to my own Firuzeh, full of suppressed emotions, female passions and states...

The plot was one that I thought could be my choice today for the future, among those writers that you find now and divide your whole life into before and after; but I realized no, not my plot!

It's important to note that the original text seems to have some personal and perhaps somewhat complex emotions and thoughts expressed. By expanding it, we can further emphasize these aspects and make the description more detailed and vivid. This allows the readers to better understand the author's perspective and the significance they attach to the EPUB and the plot within it.

I finally finished this book and I can say it is one of the most valuable books in the library. Reading this book required patience and perseverance because the notes are random and daily, and they may not be related or we may not be familiar with the places and unnamed people.

But I read this book for Sylvia herself. To know her personality, her thoughts and feelings. The complexity of Sylvia's emotions sometimes reached a point where I would put the book aside and think about her words and sentences for several hours. I marked the parts that interested me so that I could return to them again and again and imagine the depth of all those daily lives, the passage of a person's life.

I accompanied Plath on this journey and witnessed her personal growth and progress... I don't know what Sylvia would feel about the fact that her memories are so detailed and specific and available to all people, but I hope she knows that reading all those notes was a source of inspiration and comfort for someone like me, and I am grateful to her for all of this.

"I envy those who think more deeply, write better, draw better, sculpt better, love better, and live better than I do."

I have been in love with Sylvia Plath ever since I read "Mad Girl's Love Song" for AP English. Since then, The Bell Jar has become one of my all-time favorite novels.

Finally, I took the bold step and decided to immerse myself in reading her journals. After going through them, I was left with several thoughts.

Firstly, Sylvia Plath and I seem to be kindred spirits. Or at least, her way of writing about the emotional human experience, such as love, heartbreak, loneliness, career pressures, education, and so on, deeply resonates with me.

Secondly, Plath adored Ted Hughes more than I could have ever fathomed. Reading her descriptions of him made me feel as if I was invading her personal space. ("Living with him is like being told a perpetual story; his mind is the biggest, most imaginative, I have ever met. I could live in its growing countries forever.") It's truly heartbreaking, considering the role Hughes played in her unhappiness towards the end of her life. But it goes to show how quickly love can turn sour.

Thirdly, Plath struggled with her self-worth and the quality of her writing, which amazes me considering she is one of my favorite poets. Even the greats suffer from imposter syndrome.

Fourthly, many people reduce Plath to her suicide and the way her life ended. When I mentioned reading her journals to some friends, the common response was "How depressing!". However, in many ways, these journal entries reveal many other aspects of Plath - her joys and triumphs that might otherwise be forgotten.

In conclusion, I have learned a great deal about my favorite poet. I have also confirmed that I will never be able to write journal entries as eloquently as she did in my lifetime. And I know that one day, I will reread this!

Favorite passages:

"'I love the people,' I said. 'I have room in me for love, and for ever so many little lives.'"

"Why can't I try on different lives, like dresses, to see which fits best and is most becoming?"

"I have, continually, the sense that this time is invaluable, & the opposite sense that I am paralyzed to use it: or will use it wastefully & blindly."

My library fine on this long-overdue book is truly going to bankrupt me.

The initial few hundred pages were rather perceptive. However, when you recall that you're in the midst of your final year of high school, with 15 papers to study for and numerous coursework deadlines rapidly approaching, the idea of delving into the mind of a woman who committed suicide by sticking her head into a gas oven doesn't seem like the best one at this moment. After all, there are still 500+ more pages to go, and it's not even certain that you'll find out what you're looking for!

Moreover, this 3.3lb - yes, I checked - book is starting to cause me lower back pain.

In the future, I'll likely give this book another try. But for now, I just need to ensure that I don't stick my own head into an oven. I have to focus on my studies and meet those crucial deadlines. The library fine is a burden, but I can't let it overshadow my academic responsibilities. I'll return the book as soon as possible and maybe come back to it when I have more time and a more stable mental state.

I used to imagine how I spent 8 months with this book. Oh God, it's so holy that I experienced things with it, it's so holy that I understood my situation, it's so holy that it helped me to embrace many things or even run away from many things when they were beyond my strength and comprehension.

There is no connection between what Joseph said and my relationship with Silvia. She is my friend from a young age. We resemble each other in many ways and thus she helped me to know where my weaknesses are and how to strengthen them and hide my situation from them as time passes.

At first, it used to cause me depression and drain my energy for a long time, and this was the reason for the slowdown in my reading. But over time, I began to see the book like a mirror reflecting me, just like me, and I began to look from a distance as if I were a psychiatrist, trying to listen, understand, analyze, accept and reject. This process was a big difference in my life.

I'm grateful for every time I read something and this book was sitting on the shelf waiting for me to open it and feel the warmth and friendship.

I wish I had been there when Silvia was there, I would have gone to her, comforted her and told her that I understand you, and I'm here to listen to you, even if you're not in a good state. These words would have changed a lot.

I have experienced love, sorrow, and madness. If I cannot赋予这些经历意义，no new experiences will assist me.

Plath's journals are intense, passionate, and often enraged outpourings of emotions. However, they are never raw. We always sense Plath's own cool, perhaps cold, analytical writer's intelligence observing over her shoulder, transforming her pain into poetry.

Make no mistake, Plath is a complex woman. She is narcissistic and highly competitive both sexually and poetically. Brilliant yet deeply troubled, she presents an all-American smiley blonde on the surface but is a seething mass of contradictions beneath. In an era (primarily the 1950s) when being a successful female meant being a wife and mother, she desires freedom and liberation. Throughout, we witness her planning her sexual strategies, husband hunting, all the while knowing that domesticity will suppress her creative brilliance. Her rage is palpable: at the way college women have to suppress their sexuality while college men are free to indulge their desires; later, that Ted Hughes can prioritize his writing career while she manages their home and domestic affairs.

From an early age, her journals document her fascination with death: both a negative erasure of self and the kind of transcendent annihilation found in poems like 'Ariel'. Frustratingly, yet not surprisingly, the journals have gaps where we most渴望听到Plath自己的声音: when she attempts suicide in college and her painful recovery; when she falls in love with Hughes; and they end when the Hughes are on their way back to London from the US, en route to Primrose Hill and her final successful suicide.

It is difficult not to read these journals in a teleological sense, intuiting that journey towards death almost from the beginning. However, Plath, of course, always had options and alternatives. What is most remarkable is her pure writing ability: 'and when he kissed my neck I bit him long and hard on the cheek, and when we came out of the room, blood was running down his face... The one man in the room who was as big as his poems, huge, with hulk and dynamic chunks of words; his poems are strong and blasting like a high wind in steel girders. And I screamed in myself, thinking: oh, to give myself crashing, fighting, to you.'

This is an intense, feverish read that can sometimes be uncomfortably voyeuristic - even as we wish that Hughes hadn't destroyed those final journals from Plath's last days.

I don't want to live only once in a way that in a general sentence they can say: "She was a girl..." and finally describe you in 25 words or less or more. I want to live as much as I can... You are wealthy... Because you are eighteen years old, still sensitive, still don't believe in yourself, you speak a little bravely and a little reasonably to cover up your mistakes. So you can't be accused of being emotional, sentimental play or having feminine behaviors and manners.

***

How can I make my father understand that my happiness is cutting a piece of my life, a piece of my heart and beauty and turning it into typed words on paper?

***

I will be a little god for myself.

I don't know what I was expecting when I started reading. Long discourses on depression and marriage? Well, there are, but they are different from what I thought. During her deepest depression, Plath stopped keeping a diary, which I perfectly understand. What was I expecting? That she would be so young. The diary begins when Plath starts studying at university. She is eighteen years old and, despite her first publications in magazines for girls, she is incredibly naïve. At first, she focuses mainly on dates, romantic relationships, and appearance. Her approach to studying is purely utilitarian. And yet she is still an ambitious poet who is broken by failures and hurt by the successes of her peers.

Strange reflections crossed my mind while reading: if Plath had known what masturbation was, she wouldn't have wasted so much time on dates. It can be seen that she goes on them out of obligation. She has a negative attitude towards the prevailing model of heterosexuality, seeing it for what it is: an obvious injustice where women only lose, especially themselves. She has no illusions that the institution of marriage is anything other than legalized prostitution. After all, it's the 1950s. But she doesn't try to opt out of this model. She suffers, but she doesn't reject it.

Plath is very bourgeois, and that's her problem.

Elements of homophobia and anti-Semitism.

She writes a lot about her creativity, about struggles and failures, the search for a plot for a novel, the fight against the sentimentality attributed to female creativity. There is no clear poetic program here, no declarations are made, but what Brodkey calls the writing scene is perfectly sketched - a pure creative workshop, the conditions of literary work, a vivid description of the whole process. This is what kept me reading.

The diary didn't make me understand Plath's poetry better. I don't hide that I picked it up out of pure voyeuristic impulses, wanting to peek into someone's life. In that regard, it didn't disappoint. A perverse pleasure throughout.

When Plath died, she was younger than I am now. This makes me approach taking antidepressants with greater enthusiasm.

Wow.

I have so many thoughts in my head that I don't even know where to start. No other book has probably given me so many diverse emotions. I also haven't read any other book for so long. At a certain point, I even had to take a break, which ultimately lasted for several months. Maybe reading such depressing thoughts made me need to distance myself, or maybe I simply wasn't in the best mental state for such a captivating position. So I returned to it with a clear mind and finally managed to finish it.

However, it is difficult to evaluate anything here, and I won't do it because no epithet is appropriate to describe the life of another person with it. The book was extremely personal; sometimes you can even feel that we are getting a little too much into the private spheres of the author's life. I feel irritation knowing that Ted got rid of the "inconvenient" pages of the diaries for him, especially those written in the last moments of Sylvia's life. A very touching, depressing position.