Meningitis and Sylvia Plath

Illnesses, psychological and otherwise, as well as suicide are topics Sylvia Plath readily explores in her poetry. “This is Number Three/What a trash/To annihilate each decade,” Plath writes in “Lady Lazarus,” alluding to her suicide attempts in life, which apparently take place every ten years. A sufferer of severe chronic depression, Plath is a testament to the idea that beauty is borne out of profound suffering; as painfully as Plath conveys her disposition, her poetry is nothing short of brilliant, if at times unbearably morose. As someone who has recently overcome a potentially life-threatening illness, I found much of Plath’s poetry, as an outlet of the pain she endured, oddly consoling.
To say that my illness is comparable to Plath’s would be unfair to Plath; I was fortunate to receive a specific and treatable diagnosis, whereas Plath chronically suffered from a depression she was never able to overcome. If there is one thing to be said about receiving treatment for an illness, the best part is when you no longer have to receive treatment, and the illness is terminated. Being off an intravenous antibiotic, and able to resume a normal life is liberating for me. Unfortunately for Plath, this same liberty came at the price of her life.
Quite often in Plath’s volume Ariel, particularly in this excerpt from “Edge,” I’m inclined to believe Plath is vividly foreshadowing the scene of her own suicide:

The woman is perfected
Her dead

Body wears the smile of accomplishment,
The illusion of a Greek necessity

Flows in the scrolls of her toga,
Her bare

Feet seem to be saying:
We have come so far, it is over. (1-8)

In spite of being the scene of a death the tone conveys “accomplishment” rather than grieving; it is as if Plath writes from the point of view of her own soul, gladdened by the transcending of a miserable corporeal existence. The image of the Grecian toga calls to mind the image of a Greek goddess, reinforcing to this idea of transcendence through death. Aside from the issue of suicide in “Edge,” this poem suggests that the human is perfected when it no longer exists in body. This, of course, is a dangerous interpretation. “The moon has nothing to be sad about/…/She is used to this sort of thing,” Plath writes. In juxtaposing her death with the image of a celestial body, Plath glorifies the act of dying, in order to justify the crime she later commits against herself.
“Edge” is not the only poem in which Plath foretells, or at least refers to, suicide or illness. “Paralytic,” “Fever 103 degrees,” and “Hangman” each indicate these topics in their titles alone. This being the case, it is clear that merely living was an act of suffering for Plath, in which she saw no end. I thought about this as I read, and as I waited for a tube to be removed from my arm. Between having to leave Seville, Spain without saying bye to my friends, losing my credits for the semester, and being left at home mostly alone, I had plenty of time to feel sorry for myself. Reading Sylvia Plath could have easily been the straw that broke the camel’s back, as most would agree that her poetry is anything but uplifting. Plath, however, accepts her inconsolable disposition:

I smile, a Buddha, all
Wants, desire
Falling from me like rings
Hugging their lights.

In this excerpt from “Paralytic,” Plath conveys a sense of content. Free of worldly desires, Plath is at peace with her suffering—which would not end. In my case, there was a specific day in which my IV would be taken out, and I would be able to resume normal activity. In understanding that Sylvia Plath could come to terms with a suffering that would not leave her, my temporary illness began to pale in comparison.