Originally posted by David Reuteler
carlfogel <[email protected]> wrote:
> See
>
> http://www.jamesreich.com/plath-ariel.html
>
> which says:
i got my version from a A. Alvarez's "The Savage God: A
Study of Suicide" a cheery little volume that does its duty
in my library. page 52 of the prologue (which is all about
sylvia plath). i won't quote it, but it's pretty similiar to
the one you referenced except that it adds that sylvia plath
was discovered with a note that said, "Please call Dr. -"
with his phone number. that is, it probably wasn't a serious
attempt and it's likely she was expecting to be found.
--
david reuteler [email protected]
Dear David,
Alas, they're all serious. (In this case, what more
could she have done to prove that she was
serious?)
The game of trying to distinguish the suicidal
gesture from the true attempt is about as helpful
as the game of trying to decide whether John
Hinckley is really over Jody Foster.
(To the embarrassment of the psychiatrists who
repeatedly pronounced Hinckley well-adjusted,
searches of his room kept turning up dozens of
new pictures of the actress.)
As for Plath, her first known suicide attempt came
at the age of 21 and also included a note:
". . . in August of 1953, Sylvia makes her first
attempt at suicide. She leaves a note for her mother,
saying she has gone for a long walk and will be back
the next morning. Aurelia finds that a steel locked
case containing sleeping pills is broken and the pills
are missing. Sylvia's disappearance is made public
on the the radio and in newspapers after Aurelia
calls the police. Three days passed before Warren
Plath discovered Sylvia tucked away in a space in
the Plath's cellar wall. She has crawled into the
small hole with a glass of water and the bottle of
sleeping pills. She was hospitalized and treated . . ."
"In 1962, after Nicholas is born, Sylvia drives her
car off the road in what she later describes as a
suicide attempt . . ."
[Third time's a charm!"]
"In January of 1963, Sylvia is alone with her two
young children at Fitzroy Road, poor, during a
furiously cold winter, while Ted was off in Spain
cavorting with Assia Wevill. This undoubtedly
contributed to Sylvia's mental anguish, though
the exact reason for her death will never be known.
It was on the morning of February 11, 1963 that
Sylvia ended her life. Her suicide was painstakingly
executed. She carefully protected her children by
sealing off their room with towels and tape, opening
their window, and she left food for them. Sylvia died
by carbon monoxide poisoning from her oven. If she
wrote a suicide note, it hasn't been made public."
http://www.valkyrieshaunt.com/plath/plathbio.html
While "painstakingly executed" (probably an
unintentional pun), Plath's suicide actually serves
to underline Erwin Stengel's verdict on the suicidal
impulse:
"Most people, in committing a suicidal act, are just
as muddled as when they do anything important under
emotional stress. Carefully planned acts of suicide
are as rare as carefully planned acts of homicide."
Plath, for example, never made a will, so control of
her literary estate and the poems and prose that were
supposedly the most important things in her world went
to her estranged husband--hardly careful planning.
Carl Fogel
