"I am not a Caesar. I have simply ordered a box of maniacs."
September 12, 2023 12:07 PM Subscribe
Sylvia Plath and the Bees....in February 1963, Sylvia Plath wrote a cluster of extraordinary poems about Bees. She had taken up beekeeping that June and wrote excitedly to her mother in America to describe the events of attending a local beekeepers’ meeting in the Devon village of North Tawton", Sylvia Plath and the Bee Poems
There are typos in both linked texts, unfortunately. Notably the descriptions of the queen bee: "her long body/rubbed of its plush" in Stings and "Maids and the long royal lady" in Wintering.
Cleaner texts are here at Genius, along with the rest of Ariel, Plath's last book. She had originally intended for the book to end with the five Bee Poems. She pointed out that the book would then begin with the word "Love" and end with the word "Spring".
But she died by her own hand before the book was published, and Ted Hughes re-ordered the poems as he thought fit. (Hughes, of course, is the "great scapegoat" getting stung by the bees in Stings)
Among moments that have not aged well, there's the bit in Arrival of the Bee Box where she compares the bees in the box to enslaved African people crowded inside a ship.
(I owe any understanding of the Bee Poems to an awe-inspiring English teacher, former actor and veteran of many Hammer Horror films including "Lust for a Vampire" and "Twins of Evil," and in his latter days a Plathian. May he and Plath both rest easy.)
posted by Pallas Athena at 1:30 PM on September 12, 2023 [8 favorites]
Cleaner texts are here at Genius, along with the rest of Ariel, Plath's last book. She had originally intended for the book to end with the five Bee Poems. She pointed out that the book would then begin with the word "Love" and end with the word "Spring".
But she died by her own hand before the book was published, and Ted Hughes re-ordered the poems as he thought fit. (Hughes, of course, is the "great scapegoat" getting stung by the bees in Stings)
Among moments that have not aged well, there's the bit in Arrival of the Bee Box where she compares the bees in the box to enslaved African people crowded inside a ship.
(I owe any understanding of the Bee Poems to an awe-inspiring English teacher, former actor and veteran of many Hammer Horror films including "Lust for a Vampire" and "Twins of Evil," and in his latter days a Plathian. May he and Plath both rest easy.)
posted by Pallas Athena at 1:30 PM on September 12, 2023 [8 favorites]
I owe any understanding of the Bee Poems to an awe-inspiring English teacher, former actor and veteran of many Hammer Horror films including "Lust for a Vampire" and "Twins of Evil," and in his latter days a Plathian
Therein lies a tale. Do tell.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 1:32 PM on September 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
Therein lies a tale. Do tell.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 1:32 PM on September 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
His CV was extensive, and his stare when you hadn't done your essay was terrifying.
posted by Pallas Athena at 1:36 PM on September 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Pallas Athena at 1:36 PM on September 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
The story I heard was that her doctor recommended getting a pet to alleviate her mental illness. Like a comfort animal, to be her companion and stop her spiraling down. They were probably imagining a puppy or a kitten, but Sylvia chose a swarm of bees. My kind of lady.
It is dark, dark,
With the swarmy feeling of African hands
Minute and shrunk for export,
Black on black, angrily clambering.
She's using a metaphor to describe her shizophrenia, the voices she hears. I don't have schizophrenia, so descriptions like this really help. It's like a slave ship! Fuck! Now I understand, that sucks. I really don't see how you can avoid using a metaphor that isn't terrible if that's how it feels. She's not endorsing slavery.
She also called the box a midget coffin. This is so tiresome. Are we really cancelling Sylvia fucking Plath? The problem with the left.
The bee box itself is a metaphor for her head full of voices, which make the final lines of the poem so heartbreaking. She died by suicide.
Tomorrow I will be sweet God, I will set them free.
The box is only temporary.
posted by adept256 at 8:47 PM on September 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
Among moments that have not aged well, there's the bit in Arrival of the Bee Box where she compares the bees in the box to enslaved African people crowded inside a ship.I put my eye to the grid.
It is dark, dark,
With the swarmy feeling of African hands
Minute and shrunk for export,
Black on black, angrily clambering.
She's using a metaphor to describe her shizophrenia, the voices she hears. I don't have schizophrenia, so descriptions like this really help. It's like a slave ship! Fuck! Now I understand, that sucks. I really don't see how you can avoid using a metaphor that isn't terrible if that's how it feels. She's not endorsing slavery.
She also called the box a midget coffin. This is so tiresome. Are we really cancelling Sylvia fucking Plath? The problem with the left.
The bee box itself is a metaphor for her head full of voices, which make the final lines of the poem so heartbreaking. She died by suicide.
Tomorrow I will be sweet God, I will set them free.
The box is only temporary.
posted by adept256 at 8:47 PM on September 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
Are we really cancelling Sylvia fucking Plath? The problem with the left.
This is… rather unnecessary. So much so that I took some time to think about whether to respond to it.
But, as someone who works with texts from the earliest written in English up to now, I can say that it is absolutely appropriate to note language in older texts that is problematic by today’s standards, and it is appropriate to interrogate an author’s conscious or unconscious biases. By doing this we gain insight into the author’s perspective, their blind spots, their assumptions, and where they stood within the range of the norms of their time. We also gain insight into the question “what does this text say to us, today? And how is that different from what it said to its readers at the time it was published?”
So no, it’s not about “cancellation,” it’s about learning. About context. About understanding.
To bring this back to Plath: to the best of my understanding, she tends to refer to Black people as images or metaphors rather than as people. (I’m mostly drawing on her poetry here; it’s been years since I read The Bell Jar.) This is in line with what we know of her social life: her upbringing was super WASPy, and I don’t know if we know of any Black people in her social circle.
Lastly, a gentle reminder that Plath was only diagnosed with depression during her lifetime. We can speculate as to what conditions she suffered from, but we should draw a line between the speculative and the known. She wrote about feeling mentally in pain; about feeling anxiety; she wrote about cycling between “joyous positive and despairing negative”. But when she writes about wanting to die, she speaks of it as her own agency rather than as voices telling her to do so. She is not documented to have hallucinated or to have been delusional.
So if we can mine Plath’s work for her relationship with her deceased father, her mother, her spouse, her children; if you can mine it to armchair-diagnose her with a condition from which she may or may not have suffered— then I think it’s fine to mine it for her biases and her manner of speaking about marginalised groups.
(See, for example, the Orientalism of “Purdah,” the horrified and horrifying way she talks about disability in “Thalidomide”, and her ongoing fixation with the possibility of being of Jewish heritage on her mother’s side. CW: “Thalidomide” and “Lesbos” both contain troubling metaphors about Black people, using an outdated racial term.)
posted by Pallas Athena at 6:05 AM on September 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
This is… rather unnecessary. So much so that I took some time to think about whether to respond to it.
But, as someone who works with texts from the earliest written in English up to now, I can say that it is absolutely appropriate to note language in older texts that is problematic by today’s standards, and it is appropriate to interrogate an author’s conscious or unconscious biases. By doing this we gain insight into the author’s perspective, their blind spots, their assumptions, and where they stood within the range of the norms of their time. We also gain insight into the question “what does this text say to us, today? And how is that different from what it said to its readers at the time it was published?”
So no, it’s not about “cancellation,” it’s about learning. About context. About understanding.
To bring this back to Plath: to the best of my understanding, she tends to refer to Black people as images or metaphors rather than as people. (I’m mostly drawing on her poetry here; it’s been years since I read The Bell Jar.) This is in line with what we know of her social life: her upbringing was super WASPy, and I don’t know if we know of any Black people in her social circle.
Lastly, a gentle reminder that Plath was only diagnosed with depression during her lifetime. We can speculate as to what conditions she suffered from, but we should draw a line between the speculative and the known. She wrote about feeling mentally in pain; about feeling anxiety; she wrote about cycling between “joyous positive and despairing negative”. But when she writes about wanting to die, she speaks of it as her own agency rather than as voices telling her to do so. She is not documented to have hallucinated or to have been delusional.
So if we can mine Plath’s work for her relationship with her deceased father, her mother, her spouse, her children; if you can mine it to armchair-diagnose her with a condition from which she may or may not have suffered— then I think it’s fine to mine it for her biases and her manner of speaking about marginalised groups.
(See, for example, the Orientalism of “Purdah,” the horrified and horrifying way she talks about disability in “Thalidomide”, and her ongoing fixation with the possibility of being of Jewish heritage on her mother’s side. CW: “Thalidomide” and “Lesbos” both contain troubling metaphors about Black people, using an outdated racial term.)
posted by Pallas Athena at 6:05 AM on September 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
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They are wonderful.
posted by jamjam at 12:36 PM on September 12, 2023