Sylvia Plath’s poem, “Mirror,” deftly uses symbolism, figurative language, and imagery to convey a theme of introspection and self-realization. The first sign that this deeper meaning is evident in the poem is the fact that the speaker of the poem is evidently a mirror: an inanimate object that should be incapable of thought, let alone speech. Plath’s use of anthropomorphic language begins in the opening line: I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions. From this opening line, it's obvious that the mirror is not only conscious; it's almost entirely consciousness. It's rational, but possesses no human emotion. Instead, it demonstrates a knack for speaking in poetic language with metaphor, symbol, and imagery conveying meaning and mood. The mirror asserts: Whatever I see I swallow immediately Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike. I am not cruel, only truthful ‚ The eye of a little god The mirror is a symbol for a form of consciousness that's larger than anything it observes. It exists on a plane of absolute honesty. In a case of double metaphor, Plath turns the speaking mirror into a figurative eye of a god, showing clearly, that the speaker of the poem is not a literal mirror, but a deep consciousness: the artistic mind, the imagination -- or, if you prefer, the unconscious. The poem’s second most prominent symbol is a lake. Plath writes in lines ten through eleven that the woman of the poem looks into the lake with the purpose of self-discovery: Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me, Searching my reaches for what she really is. The reality that the woman is searching for has already been revealed by the mirror to the reader in the first stanza. Being unable to disguise reality, or to lie about it, the reflective capacity of the unconscious simply sees the searching woman for what she is: a mortal who will age and die. The final image of the poem: that of the woman’s face, aged to a frightening state, rising toward her peering eyes like a fish from the bottom of the lake, is another use of double metaphor. Plath compares the reflected image of the old woman to a “terrible fish.” While time has transformed the woman; the speaker of the poem has been left unchanged. The poetic consciousness lives on while the earthly ego must experience age and death. I think "Mirror" is one of Plath's best symbolist efforts. Do you agree? Categories All
0 Comments
Almost six decades after her suicide, Sylvia Plath's poetry (and prose) continue to fascinate and inspire. More than any other poet of her generation, Plath captured widespread popular attention and hammered out a personal identity and literary aesthetic that has endured for over half a century. The tragedies of Plath's life and career are well known, and they are particularly germane to a full understanding of her work, given the fact that Plath mastered the Confessional idiom. That said, it is Plath's artistry that gives her work longevity and power. Whether in regard to her bold themes, her incomparable skill with figurative language, her indelible diction, or her metrical precision, Plath was the full-package as a poet. Her insights into nature and human nature, backed by her prodigious scholarship, elevate her work to its rightful place among other literary greats like Yeats, Dickinson, Roethke, or Sappho. Virginia Woolf's "If Shakespeare Had a Sister" was published in 1929 and concludes with this statement: "If ever a human being got his work expressed completely, it was Shakespeare. If ever a mind was incandescent, unimpeded, I thought, turning again to the bookcase, it was Shakespeare's mind." For Woolf, the realization of Shakespeare's genius was bittersweet, but her observation that "unimpeded" was the make or break point for any artist is no less true for Plath. Plath, of course, was never able to express her work completely, but her existing work is a pyrotechnic display of mastery and power that, in every way, rises to Woolf's subversive ideals and makes them as real as Woolf did. Plath's incandescent mind still burns and it is sunfire hot for anyone who dares to read her work. My book The Ariel Method is scheduled for release in May 2022. The book reveals and celebrates the techniques and creative strategies that Plath developed in becoming "Shakespeare's Sister." I've studied Plath's biography and work intensely for many years and I'm finally ready to write about her. Watch this space for updates regarding the book and for glimpses into the mechanics (and mystique) of Plath's poetic idiom. As always, I eagerly await your thoughts. Talk to me about Plath or anything else -- hit the button below or the "talk" link up top. Categories All Archives |