What an amazing mind she had. What an extraordinary talent she possessed. And if you have ever had the privilege of hearing her recordings of her reading her own poems, it is truly a jaw-dropping experience. Whoa! What a captivating voice she had. Her words seemed to come alive as she spoke them, carrying the listener on a journey through her thoughts and emotions.

Unfortunately, she is gone too soon. It is a great loss to the world of literature and to all those who were touched by her work. She will be deeply missed, but her memory will live on through her beautiful poems and recordings.

May she rest in peace. <3

I did not finish this book.

As a matter of fact, I got only about 1/4th of the way through and just stopped.

I had read about this book and loved the diary/journal format, so I was excited to read it. However, I was wholly disappointed.

Firstly, many of the journal entries at the beginning of the book did not have dates on them, which I found very distracting.

It is difficult to gauge someone's frame of mind when you have no idea if the journal entries are one day, one week, or one month apart.

Secondly, it is a very long book (700 pages!), and in paperback format with very small type, making each journal entry seem to go on and on.

A lot of times, it felt like she was writing an essay for college or trying to figure out a new poem, rather than being real and recording her feelings.

At times, it was very wordy, with flowery language and a teenage-dreamy quality.

Yet at other times, it was very mature and insightful.

I kept thinking to myself, who writes like this at 18 - 20 yrs old?

The beginning of the book covered the years when she was 18 - 20 years old, from July 1950 to July 1953, when she started at Smith College.

I didn't even finish that section. I got about 3/4 of the way through when I had had enough.

Everything in the first section that I read was about her experiences dating boys, her comments about her looks and desires.

But I really didn't need to read 100 pages about how restrictive the times were, the kissing and hand holding, and the very detailed descriptions of the rooms and clothes everyone was wearing.

She was extremely concerned about society's expectations that she go to college, find a nice boy, get married, and have children.

She knew that she didn't feel that way and had real struggles with how her life was predetermined.

Those journal entries were actually the best of what I did read.

She showed real maturity and progressive thinking (feminist) for the times on that subject matter.

Her concerns and arguments were well thought out and written.

Overall, I guess I never read a teenage girl's diary before.

I never kept one myself.

But it struck me how every girl she encountered, whether at school or in summer jobs, she had to physically describe in detail.

Hair, height, breasts.

I believe she was quite insecure about her looks, although she alternated between statements of insecurity and confidence.

I didn't know what to make of those details.

The bottom line is this book is not what I expected.

I will admit I am not a poetry fan, so I am not a Plath poetry fan.

But I am aware enough to know that her written works have millions of fans and have impacted a generation of women.

I was interested in reading about her life leading up to that point to see if I could uncover or understand what would drive someone to do that.

But I did not get that from the beginning of the book and I was not committed enough to the effort to read 700 pages of minutia to see if there were those types of insights in there.

I won't rate this as it's an extremely private matter and likely not intended for anyone else to read.

However, I truly adored it. While perusing its pages, I experienced emotions that are simply indescribable with ordinary words.

This book offers us a profound insight into her writing style and what sustained her imagination and motivation within this form of art. Her inner life was incredibly rich, yet at times, due to that very richness, she felt isolated and misunderstood.

She depicted her struggles in writing with such vividness that any artist could genuinely glean valuable lessons from her experiences.

Moreover, I'm utterly devastated that two of her notebooks were either lost or deliberately destroyed. Somewhere within me, I believe that those two notebooks would have illuminated even more aspects of her life.

It's a great pity that those potential treasures are now gone, leaving us with a sense of incompleteness regarding our understanding of her creative journey.

Nevertheless, the remaining work still manages to captivate and inspire, serving as a testament to her remarkable talent and the depth of her artistic vision.

After long, long ten months,

I have finally finished reading this haunting collection of Sylvia Plath's journals. It leads from her teenage years all the way up until months before her overwhelmingly tragic death.

I entered into this reading experience with the intention of taking my time, reading slowly, and allowing the words to deeply sink into my mind and heart. However, I truly never could have guessed that it would mean I would finish it in almost a year's time. That seems absurd, doesn't it? And yet, looking back, I think it was the best decision I ever made when it came to indulging in a book as heavy as this.

During this time, I went through so much. I had a lot of similar stories and experiences as Sylvia. Especially during the first half of reading, it truly felt as if I got to know her on a deeper level (I must admit, I became very parasocial). It was almost as if I morphed into a version of her.

I firmly believe that she is one of the most brilliant and intelligent writers I have ever had the pleasure of reading. I wholeheartedly recommend to everyone to put aside their preconceived thoughts about her and tune in to this rollercoaster of emotions. It's a symphony of words that is filled with agony, yet is also beautiful, surreal, and poetic.

Sylvia Plath's "Tulips" is a profound and evocative poem that delves into the complex emotions of the speaker.

The tulips, described as "too red," immediately strike a chord of discomfort within the narrator. Their redness seems to have a life of its own, hurting the speaker even through the gift paper.

The comparison of the tulips to an "awful baby" breathing lightly through their white swaddlings adds an element of unease.

Their redness corresponds to the speaker's wound, as if they are communicating with it on a deeper level.

The tulips are both subtle and powerful, seeming to float yet weighing the speaker down. Their sudden tongues and vivid color upset the narrator, as if a dozen red lead sinkers are tied around her neck.

The poem also explores the theme of being watched. The tulips turn to the speaker, and the window behind her becomes a source of self-awareness.

The speaker sees herself as a flat, ridiculous, cut-paper shadow between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips. She feels faceless and desires to efface herself, as if the vivid tulips are consuming her oxygen.

"Tulips" is a powerful exploration of the speaker's desire to be left alone, away from the intrusive gaze of the tulips and the outside world.

  


The poem can be found at https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/201... and https://www.theatlantic.com/entertain...

Last night, as I was driving back from Boston, I reclined in the car and let the colored lights, the music from the radio, and the reflection of the driver wash over me. It all came with a screaming ache of pain. Remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it, hold onto it tightly. I want to become extremely aware of all the things I've taken for granted. When you sense that this might be goodbye, the last time, it hits you harder.

When I was fifteen and read The Bell Jar, I never expected to be so understood by a woman in her early twenties undergoing shock treatment in the 1950s. Being a woman in Sylvia Plath's era is vastly different from the female experience today. Of course, the "female experience" is an extremely general term, and deliberately so. But I would like to note that I do recognize that other factors come into play when describing a woman's experience in Western civilization and in the 21st century. Nevertheless, despite the differences between womanhood now and in the 1950s, reading Plath's descriptions of finding her place in a patriarchal world, and her relationship to femininity and masculinity, has resonated with me completely and impressively. So have her reflections on coming of age, depression, being a writer, feeling useless and talentless, feeling time slip through your fingers, the intense desire to be everything or nothing, the torment of being subjected to a world built on the expectation to conform, limit, and convert any original soul into another identical model, and the desperate, nagging, heart-squeezing desire to be someone, to create life, and to be entirely authentic, original, and... perfect.

Reading Sylvia Plath's journals has been a life-changing experience for me. I started this book in February, and looking back on who I was when I began and who I am now has been both interesting and inspiring. When I began reading Plath's journals, I was astonished by how lush her prose was, even though they were written solely for herself. In her room, her dorm, in Paris, Cape Cod, she breathes and exhales poetry, beauty, and rawness in ways that have enamored and inspired me far more than her poetry or fiction. And that's not a criticism of her poetry or fiction at all, as I hold both dear to my heart and soul. It's rather a huge praise for the corners of her mind and the creative, artistic, and existential treasures that can be found there – unedited, stream-of-consciousness. These journals are page after page of sweat, blood, and tears converted into ink, into poetry, into art. Her journals inspired me, back in February, to start treating every time I write as if I'm creating. I began treating my journal entries as though I was writing a poem or a story, and it has enhanced both my writing experience and even my life.

Sylvia Plath's personality was not depressive. She had depression, but she wasn't the gloomy pessimist that the media portrays her as. She was wise and eager for life, and despite her (chosen) end, much of her writing, even when she was horribly depressed (but not always), is about how beautiful, full, insightful, and enlightening life and living are. She writes about the thrill of the world, of people, and of experiences, both dark and light. Reading about her life and how she wrote paragraphs about the little things – how the wind feels and the world looks when riding a bike, about walking the streets at night, about the children playing in the sand on the beach. Everything was an opportunity for romanticism to Sylvia, everything was an inspiration. To peek into the mind of someone like that has been, for me, beautiful and galvanizing. I look at the world differently because of her; I find meaning and poetry in more things than I used to. She flipped a switch in my brain that illuminated a bulb I had tried many times to light, and much of my personal and creative growth this year, I owe to her.

I took many breaks when reading this book, and each time I returned, I would find that Sylvia was exploring themes or struggling with issues that were relevant to my current line of thought or my current state. This constantly amazed me, how I connected with what she wrote. I feel rather guilty to say that I relate to Sylvia Plath, as I never knew her, but I will say that I relate greatly to how I have interpreted her writing, her experiences and struggles, and how she has articulated her life. I've never felt that way when reading anyone else's writing, and the more I know about Sylvia Plath, the more I want to know and understand about her – and also myself.

Sylvia Plath, to many people who read her work and are inspired by her creatively, has indeed reached the stars. She has kissed divinity. She has achieved what she worked so hard for her entire life and what she dreamed of with such rigor, such passion, and force. Plath was filled with beauty, rage, misery, energy, and life. Her mind was alive; arguably, far more than most people's. I often wonder what she would think about her literature being taught at universities and her journals being published and passionately annotated by a certain girl. I'm honestly not sure what she would think. I hope at the very least, she would think: "I did make it."

"That moment of illumination, fusion, creation: We made this: against the whole falling apart, away, and the coming again to make and make in the face of the flux: making of the moment something of permanence. That is the life-work. I underlined and underlined: reread that. I shall go better than she… My health is making stories, poems, novels, of experience: that is why, or, rather, that is why it is good, that I have suffered and been to hell, although not to all the hells. I cannot live for life itself: but for the words which stay the flux. My life, I feel, will not be lived until there are books and stories which relive it perpetually in time… Writing breaks open the vaults of the dead and the skies behind which the prophesying angles hide. The mind makes and makes, spinning its web."

"Last night, blunted as I was by agony, revolted at food and the distant bumbling noise of talk and laughter, I ran out of the dining room and walked alone back to the house. What world blue could get that dazzling drench of blue moonlight on the flat, luminous field of white snow, with the black trees against the sky, each with its particular configuration of branches? I felt shut in, imprisoned, aware that it was fine and shudderingly beautiful, but too gone with pain and aching to respond and become a part of it."

The work of Sylvia Plath has always been characterized by a biographical basis. Her life and work go hand in hand, and in this book, we can delve into the life of the author from her perspective in an intimate way. Sylvia was very introspective, intelligent, and had a strong conviction regarding her goals and dreams of devoting herself to writing. In many ways, she achieved a great deal in her short life. However, her own perception of herself was always diminished by her depression.

There are also allusions to her ideas about writing, both in poetry and her initial ideas for "The Bell Jar". And despite her great emotional conflict, she was able to have introspection about her mental illness and its origin. If you like the author and her writing, this is a book of great value that complements the author's work. I loved it.

Sylvia Plath closed the door of her house at dawn on February 11, 1963, turned on the gas stove, and took her own life. She had attempted suicide before and had once been in the hospital under electroshock treatment.

This book, which can tell more of her memories:

It is an amazing collection of real emotions of a writer, a poet, and a woman. The words attack each other and the reader becomes a prisoner of the words. There is no escape. You move forward and suffer. You become Sylvia and endure all the pains, depressions, joys, hurts, and hopes. The memories have no specific order and do not pursue a specific subject. The only problem of writing the book is that it must be written until it succeeds. However, the book has a profound impact on its reader in the end. An impact that can be known as an influential one for the entire life.

Sylvia writes beautifully with a kind of disbelief, is sensitive, and has sharp eyes. She loves her writings and has an extraordinary respect for her life. She can smile at all people and have a respect for all people that they do not have for themselves. Her desires are simple (happiness, having a child, success in work, a good sex) and currently unobtainable. Something that forces the reader to suffer.

When you finally find someone with whom you feel you can share your joys, you stop in that moment, stuttering with your words - they are so strange, so ugly, so absurd and so weak because they have been imprisoned for a long time in the cold darkness within you.

Oh God! How much this creature has endured and how much she has lived!

What has most attracted me in Sylvia among all her works that I have read so far is that she has lived her whole life feeling pain and loneliness!

Since her adolescence, it has been evident in her writings, the longing and the strangeness.

For me, after reading the diaries, I have found a lot in them, as she was writing them truthfully, but I was more attached to the letters.

Finally, I am happy with my acquisition of her letters and diaries and happy with my experience with them.

Finished

30 March 2024

Ugh, my heart.

It feels like a heavy stone is weighing it down.

Every beat seems to carry a burden that I can't quite shake off.

I don't know why it hurts so much.

Maybe it's because of the disappointments I've faced recently.

Or perhaps it's the result of holding onto too many emotions for too long.

Whatever the reason, it's a pain that I can't ignore.

I try to push it aside and focus on the positive, but it keeps creeping back in.

My heart is like a wounded animal, crying out for attention and healing.

I hope that one day, this pain will go away and my heart will be light again.

Until then, I'll do my best to take care of it and give it the love and care it needs.

I can't quite remember the exact source where I read it, but I do recall someone expressing their concern about relating so strongly to a person whose life ended in such a tragic manner (or as they rather bluntly put it, 'someone who stuck her head in an oven'). This thought has stayed with me as my interest in Plath and my knowledge of her and her work have grown, especially now that I've delved into her diaries.

Early on in reading her diaries, the extent to which I identified with Plath was rather distressing for me. She managed to take those feelings and vaguely formed thoughts that had been recurring in my own mind and put them into eerily precise and vivid words.

Initially, that is.

As the diaries progressed, our simpatico decreased, and her writing style, which Plath aptly described as fragmentary, became increasingly sprawling despite its patchy nature and more of a chore to read. Normally, I would approach this more critically, but I don't feel entirely at ease doing so since these are the diaries of a real, troubled individual. Diaries are private affairs. People express themselves in ways they might not outwardly, in ways intended only for their own eyes and far less for the dissection of others. And I feel this way much more strongly than I might otherwise because of how deeply personal Plath's diaries are.

Despite the wealth of her diaries, I'm not sure if I would recommend this to just anyone. The book weighs in at seven hundred and sixty-eight pages (in ebook format, a whopping one thousand two hundred and forty-four pages) and demands a great deal of patience to get through the lethal combination of length and prose.

For those who are interested, I don't know if reading the abridged version of Sylvia's diaries is a worthwhile alternative as I haven't read it myself. I deliberately sought out the unabridged version because I wanted as complete a portrait of her in her own words as I could obtain, and in that regard, I definitely got what I was looking for.

What a pity that it's all over....

This phrase expresses a sense of regret or disappointment. It implies that something that was expected or desired has come to an end, perhaps prematurely or in a way that is not satisfactory.

It could refer to a variety of situations, such as the conclusion of a relationship, the failure of a project, or the loss of an opportunity. The feeling of pity may stem from the realization that things could have been different or better.

When we say "what a pity," we are often acknowledging the finality of the situation and expressing our sadness or dissatisfaction with it. However, it can also serve as a reminder to cherish the things that we have and to make the most of future opportunities.