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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.

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Comments

  1. Melanie Smith13 May, 2013 17:23

    Well, that changes things a bit and makes O'Rourke's claim re the quote a wee bit, well... Inaccurate.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Peter K Steinberg14 May, 2013 08:50

    They are brilliant, Julia, as you might imagine!

    pks

    ReplyDelete
  3. suki14 May, 2013 08:54

    Plath seems to have been a voracious and eclectic reader. She knows her poetry

    ReplyDelete

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