What Sylvia Plath said & where she said it

Last week I posted a request for help in locating a quote attributed to Sylvia Plath in Meghan O'Rourke's 2004 essay "Subject Sylvia." I know a couple of people have looked but I am pleased to say that I found the original quote and for their efforts I would like to give a massive shout-out of thanks. The quote is by Sylvia Plath, but it has nothing to do with any comment she said on the BBC "in the weeks before she died" as O'Rourke claims.

The original quote as written by Plath appeared in her review of C.A. Trypanis' volume of poetry Stones of Troy which was published in the Summer 1957 issue of Gemini, pages 98-103. The quote appears on page 102:

A similar sense of fresh, first-hand observation and reaction is revealed in Chartres. Again, we are contemplating a work of art: this time, the architecture and stained-glass windows of a French cathedral. The metaphor-moral is intrinsic to the poem, working back and forth on itself, not expressed prosaically at the close, like the moral of a fable. And in spite of questionable simile 'as free of flesh as sin' (isn't sin, ipso facto, inherent in the flesh?), the words and rhythms of the poem make the church leap alive in colour and light...

So, quite possible the quote is taken out of context considering it is a critique of a Trypanis poem. But at least we have the source. This quote was reprinted in Linda Wagner[-Martin]'s Critical Essays on Sylvia Plath (G.K. Hall, 1984) on page 18.

The review -- like all of Plath's book reviews -- remains uncollected.

Famous Quotes of Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath inspires us all in various and wonderful ways. She is in many respects a form of comfort to us, which is something that Esther Greenwood expresses in The Bell Jar , about a bath: "There must be quite a few things a hot bath won't cure, but I don't know many of them. Whenever I'm sad I'm going to die, or so nervous I can't sleep, or in love with somebody I won't be seeing for a week, I slump down just so far and then I say: 'I'll go take a hot bath.'" We read and remember Sylvia Plath for many reasons, many of them deeply personal and private. But we commemorate her, too, in very public ways, as Anna of the long-standing Tumblr Loving Sylvia Plath , has been tracking, in the form of tattoos. (Anna's on Instagram with it too, as SylviaPlathInk .) The above bath quote is among Sylvia Plath's most famous. It often appears here and there and it is stripped of its context. But I think most people will know it is from her nove...

Sylvia Plath's Gravestone Vandalized

The following news story appeared online this morning: HEPTONSTALL, ENGLAND (APFS) - The small village of Heptonstall is once again in the news because of the grave site of American poet Sylvia Plath. The headstone controversy rose to a fever pitch in 1989 when Plath's grave was left unmarked for a long period of time after vandals repeatedly chiseled her married surname Hughes off the stone marker. Author Nick Hornby commented, "I like Plath, but the controversy reaching its fever pitch in the 80s had nothing to do with my book title choice." Today, however, it was discovered that the grave was defaced but in quite an unlikely fashion. This time, Plath's headstone has had slashed-off her maiden name "Plath," so the stone now reads "Sylvia Hughes." A statement posted on Twitter from @masculinistsfortedhughes (Masculinists for Ted Hughes) has claimed responsibility saying that, "We did this because as Ted Hughes' first wife, Sylvia de...

Sylvia Plath and McLean Hospital

In August when I was in the final preparations for the tour of Sylvia Plath The Bell Jar sites, I found that I had long been mistaken about a couple of things. This is my coming clean. It was my intention in this blog post to discuss just McLean, but I found myself deeply immersed in other aspects of Plath's recovery. The other thing I was mistaken about will be discussed in a separate blog post. I suppose I need to state from the outset that I am drawing conclusions from Plath's actual experiences from what she wrote in The Bell Jar and vice versa, taking information from the novel that is presently unconfirmed or murky and applying it to Plath's biography. There is enough in The Bell Jar , I think, based on real life to make these decisions. At the same time, I like to think that I know enough to distinguish where things are authentic and where details were clearly made up, slightly fudged, or out of chronological order. McLean Hospital was Plath's third and last...

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