la version de flor -fever 103(Sylvia Path)

Maria Florencia Farias Jocou

The Experience of Poetry

Professor Linda Voris

Critical Essay:  Sylvia Plath

April 15, 2008

 

Fever 103

 

Pure? What does it mean? 
The tongues of hell 
Are dull, dull as the triple 

Tongues of dull, fat Cerberus 
Who wheezes  at the gate. Incapable 
Of licking clean 

The aguey tendon, the sin, the sin. 
The tinder cries.
The indelible smell 

Of a snuffed candle! 
Love, love, the low smokes roll 
From me like Isadora’s scarves, I’m in a fright 

One scarf will catch and anchor in the wheel. 
Such yellow sullen smokes 
Make their own element. They will not rise, 

But trundle round the globe 
Choking the aged and the meek,

The weak 

Hothouse  baby in its crib, 
The ghastly orchid 
Hanging its hanging garden in the air. 

Devilish leopard! 
Radiation turned it white 
And killed it in an hour. 

Greasing the bodies of adulterers 
Like Hiroshima ash and eating in. 
The sin. The sin. 

Darling, all night 
I have been flickering, off, on, off, on. 

The sheets grow heavy as a lecher’s kiss.

Three days. Three nights. 
Lemon water, chicken 
Water, water make me retch. 

I am too pure for you or anyone. 
Your body 
Hurts me as the world hurts God. I am a lantern— 

My head a moon 
Of Japanese paper, my gold beaten skin 
Infinitely delicate and infinitely expensive. 

Does not my heat astound you. And my light. 
All by myself I am a huge camellia 
Glowing and coming and going, flush on flush. 

I think I am going up, 
I think I may rise— 
The beads of hot metal fly, and I, love, I 

Am a pure acetylene 
Virgin 
Attended by roses, 

By kisses, by cherubim, 
By whatever these pink things mean. 
Not you, nor him 

Nor him, nor him 
(My selves dissolving, old whore petticoats)— 
To Paradise.

 

October 20. 1962

 

Ambivalent Paradise

 

            Ambivalent duality is art in its purest form. Duality can be traced to ancient times, from the Egyptian’s life and the afterlife to Plato’s ambiguous body and soul, from the dual character of an atom with its protons and electrons to the dichotomy between today’s Eastern and Western culture.  The shin and the shun, the sacred and the profane, heaven and hell, hot and cold, finite and infinite, love and hate, life and death. Just as every analogy listed above depends on its opposite to be defined, Silvia Plath’s poetry does something similar: she transforms the art of writing into a powerful twofold experience of extremes.      

Plath establishes a twin reality of opposites that delivers volcanic energy while achieving aesthetic accomplishment with psychological insight. In her poem ‘Fever 103,’ the very experience of pain is the means to which the persona grows to a new power and reaches paradise. This masterpiece was written a few months before she committed suicide as a desperate attempt to exteriorize her inner struggle, to transcribe the ongoing battle between life and death that was taking place in her mind. In ‘Fever 103’ –one of her latest poems- Plath expresses her inner conflicts through the Earth and paradise dilemma complemented by the heaven and hell paradox; simultaneously, she symbolizes astounding influence from a patriarchal figure represented by her husband. Furthermore, the theme of death and rebirth as an instrument of liberation that bestow Plath’s words portrays an exceptional dichotomy that aids the poem to attain the aim of ambivalent reality.

            Firstly, it is imperative to approach the theme of the poem through the Earth and paradise dilemma. ‘Fever 103’ has numerous allusions to biblical events, as well as secular ones, such as the horrifying WWII catastrophe in Hiroshima – the first city attacked with an atomic bomb on warfare-. This contrast of good and evil portrays the ambiguity of her style. The one-worded question that Plath uses to begin ‘Fever 103’: “Pure?” followed by the impatient exclamation “What does it mean?” give the reader the first hints of the extensive religious references that will take communion with the lines to follow: “The tongues of hell// Are dull, dull as the triple// Tongues of dull, fat Cerberus// Who wheezes at the gate, Incapable//Of licking clean.” The appearance of the idea of heat merges with the title to connote urgency and dynamic. She overthrows purity and replaces it with wordiness to conceal obfuscation. Moreover, there is reference to Cerberus –Greek mythology- the tree headed-dog that guarded the gate of Hades, which Plath manages to depict as a pathetic animal that can barely breath, when in the myth he is depicted as a ferocious and frightful creature. The imagery of “Tongues of hell” leads the reader to the religious association of purification by fire somehow combined with the flames of the underworld. In addition, there are allusions to the three days and three nights that Jesus was in the heart of the earth before His resurrection. This biblical allusion also acts as a medium for portraying Plath as a virgin, such as the Virgin Mary. The creation of a female image of almost magical power and autonomy can be seen on the acetylene virgin.

            Plath incorporates imagery from the nuclear attack and blends it with her persona until the point where she cannot distinguish between herself and the facts of Hiroshima. She is a victim, a murderer, and the place and process of dreadfulness all at once. Plath links the overwhelming forces of a nuclear attack with her despair at the betrayal of trust in marriage. “The tinder cries.//The indelible smell//Of a snuffed candle!”  are the first references in this poem about Hiroshima. Plath is metaphorically comparing her suffering with the one of a country –Japan- that cannot condone the evil that the human beings can achieve. She employs singular verses in a successful attempt to catalogue despair, violent emotion, and her obsession with death. ‘Such yellow sullen smokes’ can perfectly delivers violent impact to the reader; the use of the word sullen that by definition means “showing ill humor to silent resentment” soothes faultlessly the cultural sentiment of the locals of the aftermath of Hiroshima.  Furthermore, “I //Am a pure acetylene” is used to refer to the bright light and the astounding amount of heat that follows an atomic explosion, as well as her depiction of the purest form of being: A Virgin. In the last lines of ‘Fever 103,’ the persona accomplishes his or her goal and reaches Paradise –note that Paradise is capitalize to link it to the “Pure”- after having experienced the horrible pain of the earthly world that could as well had been hell itself.

            Another aspect of the poem in discussion is the unconscious and unavoidable patriarchal influence that Plath reflects in most of the stanzas. Plath, who had lost her father at the age of eight, developed a mixture of ambivalent feelings toward her father that added subjectivity to most of her work. In ‘Fever 103,’ the patriarchal figure is represented by her unfaithful husband, who had somehow resembled the image of her father. Sylvia’s father betrayed/abandoned her with his death, and so did her husband with his infidelities. In the first stanza, despite religious connotations, Plath also reveals torment and suffering from her husband’s disloyalty; a few stanzas later, she claims to be “too pure for you [her husband] or anyone else,” exteriorizing once more her psychological insights in a metaphor that connotes the purity of Virgin Mary.  She portrays the betrayal of her husband as an unforgivable sin as well as the images of human remains of Hiroshima with metaphors such as:“Greasing the bodies of adulterers//Like Hiroshima ash and eating in. //The sin. The sin.” Plath makes an art of juxtaposing the personal aspect of her suffering with the destructive forces of nuclear weapons. She uses her writing as a mean to fight the unfairness and despair of her personal experience. Furthermore, “Darling, all night// I have been flickering, off, on, off, on. //  The sheets grow heavy as a lecher’s kiss “ effectively  portrays her husband as a man given to excessive sexual indulgence, as lascivious with a fussy and irritable tone; whereas, on the other hand she depicts herself as a virgin, making notable the dual reality of the poem. “Your body//Hurts me as the world hurts God. I am a lantern— “ is another incidental mention of the antagonism that the most important patriarchal figure at that particular time- since it has been established that her father was the base of that ideal figure- caused with his lack of loyalty. When ‘Fever 103’ was written, Plath was battling with the disillusion of a broken marriage; thus, it is almost unfeasible to avoid making her husband one of the central themes of the poem.

            The third and last most important aspect of the theme of ‘Fever 103’ is without any doubts the amazing use of life and death, and death and rebirth metaphors as an instrument of liberation. Plath accomplishes the extraordinary when blending these two opposites and gives birth to ambivalent lines that portray her psychological reality.  The connection of pureness, sexuality, and death are clarified by the prose description, though the force of language and meaning is in the poem. “Love, love, the low smokes roll//“From me like Isadora’s scarves, I’m in a fright// One scarf will catch and anchor” mirrors ambivalence of life and death;  “love” becomes “low” becomes “smokes” becomes “roll.” Thus, love –representing life- evolves to deadly and heavy smoke –representing death. Both “love” and “smoke” are originated in the same source –herself. Furthermore, she portrays the opposite imagery with “smokes roll from me,” somehow exorcising the detrimental allusion of Isadora Duncan-an American dancer that broke her neck and died when her scarf caught the wheel of her car- almost reaching a new beginning, a rebirth.  Plath is known for transforming morbid and obscures situations –such as Isadora or Hiroshima- to personal analogies of her sadness and despair.  The same duality can be analogous to “Hothouse baby in its crib” and the “ghastly orchid,” where Plath juxtaposes the sleepless repulsion that this mother has for her newborn with the breathtaking beauty of a flower -a dreamy nightmare.-  In addition, “Glowing and coming and going, flush on flush” shows the transformation –rebirth-that the speaker undergoes until becoming a “camellia;” these choices of words can be understood as a parallel of pushing the dark past of betrayal and suffering  to rise as a new illuminated being. These stanzas denote a sentiment of freedom and release.

            By the end of the poem, Plath has become pure Virgin made of a colorless flammable gas that could even destroy metal –unlike Cerberus-. The ambivalent metaphors are intensified when the imagery suggests she is being “Attended by roses//By kisses, by cherubim, //By whatever these pink things mean!;” she –the persona- could  be an invalid or a princess. Note that she is being attended by “pink things”-symbolizing love and life- and not by “him” or “you”-which could be analogous for darkness and death-. In the next stanzas, we can observe Plath’s ascension to heaven as a liberation; she has freed herself from identity constrains, betrayal, ambiguity, and ambivalence. She has now reached a safe place where earthly pain and suffering have no power to harm her purity. Furthermore, the capitalization of the poem’s last word “Paradise” is as emblematic in meaning as the poem’s first word: “Pure.” Thus, if the method is analyzed according to the meaning, we can assert that the poem suggests purity as an entrance to paradise. Plath finishes “Fever 103’ by answering the first question in the first stanza: “pure” means “paradise.”

In ‘Fever 103,’ Plath transforms words into a potent twofold of extremes, establishing an ambivalent duality that can be only depicted through heaven and hell, Earth and paradise, and good and evil. Moreover, Plath’s line-to-line power and rhythm give the poem dynamic and passion. Her internal battle to overcome her husband’s betrayal becomes a paradox of death and rebirth that aims to achieve the freedom from suffering. Such freedom would only be accomplished through the purity that leads to paradise. Plath made poetry and death inseparable; one could not achieve completeness without the other. The same analogy is mirrored in her life, which could not achieve completeness without her death.

~ por masqueinstantes en Abril 24, 2008.