SYLVIA PLATH, EARLY CRITICAL RECEPTIONS

Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing.

Sylvia Plath, Child

For Raúl Manuel and Mário José ,

in the loving memory of their grand-father

This is a translation of the initial pages of my book Sylvia Plath. O Rosto Oculto do Poeta, published by Edições Cosmos, in 1997.

Copyright, Edições Cosmos and Mário Avelar

«Criticism is a metaphor for the act of reading, and this act is itself inexhaustible».

Paul de Man, The Rhetoric of Blindness

«Maybe... maybe even more than that . I don’t know yet ; but where reason , like a breeze , will lead us , that must be our way ».

Plato, Republic, 394

Precursor of a feminist challenge against a patriarchal universe; martyr in a repressive society; romantic genius rapdily reaching fame and then vanishing; neophyte of misterious inciatic rituals; schizophrenic whose work stands as a dangerous stimulous for young people and more touchy minds; laborious craftswoman writing and rewriting her texts... I guess it would be easy to find other labels for Sylvia Plath’s poetry ; labels that would enclose her somewhere or would silence her voice in any kind of ghetto.

While writing this essay I tried to overcome these and other points of view ; points of view partial and restrictive that wouldn’t allow the reader to understand an obviously complex and sometimes disquieting work. Overcoming doesn’t mean ignoring . That is why , following Piaget , these points of view will be mentioned , quoted , sometimes assimilated , and questioned . This integrating dimension will constitute - I hope - something new in the analysis of Plath’s poetry; of Plath’s poetry as a whole .

Well then , what kind of analysis is the one I put forward ? In a dinamic perspective I’ll try to show the way her poems dialogue with time and place . In order to make this perspective effectively functional , I started with an analysis of the critical reception of her work , recording possible changes and eventual revisions . During this process I confronted myself with the editor issue , as it meant the building of a poetic corpus and , eventually , the way it is known today by the ordinary reader. The dinamic perspective will lead us to discuss the critical and the poetical canons ; this - I hope too - will constitute something new , as it will be present , not only in several passages but through the whole essay .

I’ll try to develop this critical aspect through the dialogue between the poems compiled in autonomous books and those that were transfered for the corpus of her work we know today compiled in the Collected Poems . This will allow an insight of her poetry through endogenous mecanisms ; through the agon - in a bloomian sense - with traditions ; through the conflict with dominant norms ; an insight that rejects biographical or moralist reductions.

While trying to resist the temptation of assuming a point of view , the critical stand will reveal itself through these pages as discourse , as Foucault conceived it, challenging le Même , the canon , the ethos . In this sense the act of criticism must be understood as an ethical space too .

This was my intention . The reader , he or she , will see if my wish was fulfilled.

1

Early criticism and further revisions

1. The Colossus –first approaches , first glances : the unfolding of a look

 

In February 1960, Sylvia Plath then twenty seven years old signed a contract with Heinemann for the publication of a book of poetry entitled The Colossus. This book would come out in October , in London , while the american version , including ten poem less than the english one , would appear almost two years later , in May 1962 , by Knopf , and with a small difference in the title, The Colossus and Other Poems.

Though briefly we should ponder on its critical reception since this book will receive further revisions dealing with its structure and , even , with the way it was analysed and read by the critics . We must not forget that all criticism , considerate as it may be , remains in the end as an icon of its times and participates of a process in permanent construction , and it’s likley this process still remains opened . But that will be object of further reflection .

The Colossus got several reviews , namely by standing poets and critics in England and in America ; people like Al Alvarez, John Wain, Roy Fuller, Richard Howard, Mark Linenthal or Ian Hamilton. These and other voices outlined five main trends which could already define an identity . First , I would stress the emphasis on the feminin discourse – feminine charm, was the expression used by Alvarez in an article published in December 1960 in the Observer1. This poet and critic defined Plath as a «young (excuse me) American poetess», writing further: «She stears clear of feminine charm, deliciousness, gentility, supersensivity and the act of being a poetess»2. Fifteen years later this book would be published in the United States and Mark Linenthal would resume this issue: «... her work is feminine, never effeminate. Critics have called her language masculine, probably in response to the force which takes hold of its subject, ...»3.

Poet or poetess, feminine or effeminate, these two poles insinuate a radical conflict latent in western societies in the late fifties and early sixties: at its core stands the debate on the feminin identity; deeper ruptures would come out only a few years later. This may seem obvious today when we notice the faltering way Alvarez approaches this issue when he writes «a young (excuse me) American poetess». When he underlines and uses round brackets he’s just stressing his perplexity towards this object , or towards the problems it raises. On the contrary , A. E. Dyson will be much more radical in his review: «... the most compelling feminine voice certainly, that we have heard for many a day»4.

This reviewr underlines another aspect that remains as a second trend in this poetry early criticism the connection between self and place. When he evokes poems like Hardcastle Crags, Point Shirley, The Hermit at Outermost House, Ouija, The Thin People, Mushrooms, Sculptor, Frog Autumn, Mussel Hunter at Rock Harbour, All the Dead Dears, Blue Moles e The Beggars, Dyson stresses either the distance between Nature - sometimes indifferent , sometimes hostile - and the self, or the possible analogy between states of mind in both these elements, this analogy in a certain sense anticipates eliot’s correlative5. The radical importance of place will be present too in Nicholas King’s6 and Richard Howard’ reviews. However , Howard’s analysis will be deeper , since it will put forward a new concept in this relationship between self and place: genius loci, is the expression he used. This concept stresses the function of place as an actor, ou personae , and this will reveal experience as drama 7.

Thus a new strategy of enunciation, based on a dramatic mode , unfolds. Judson Jerome subscribes this kind of dialogue in his review when he detects an alegorical strategy in The Colossus; a strategy already present in the title of the book 8. We shouldn’t forget that A. E. Dyson did recognise the presence of alegory, through which he established an analogy with Sylvia Plath’s husband, the poet Ted Hughes9.

Still in this dialogue between self and place , a rather curious perspective should be mentioned.. In a review published in March , 1961, Roy Fuller writes: «... English subjects... – fit as naturally into her verse as American ones. But her sensibility is wholly transatlantic, ...»10. Fuller states that a specific sensibility determins a very specific assimilation of place. Thus , more than the place , it is the poet’s perspective that unfolds an original process . In the end the self identity persists.

A third trend should be mentioned , the possible reminiscences of other poets in this first book. Through this trend we’ll be able to recognise the author’s filiation in a very precise strategy of inovation of post-war american poetry. In one of the first reviews of this book, Bernard Bergonzi refers John Crowe Ransom and Theodore Roethke as obvious influences11. In his turn , the poet John Wain recognises Stevens’ echoes in Snakecharmer and Roethke’s in Poem for a Birthday12. Roy Fuller points Ransom, mentioning, however, another name, Marianne Moore. But, according to Fuller, the assimilation of these voices was still to come13. Participating of his analysis of alegory, Dyson will indicate Hughes’ and Roethke’s presence14. Finally , just as a mere example, one should add a later review by Ian Hamilton - July 1963 -, where Stevens’, Roethke’s and Moore’s names appear once again15.

These different reviews unfold an emerging trend in american poetry where Ransom and Roethke stand as touchstones ; in this trend the poet’s private universe , his intimate references , icons and fictions , stand at the core of the poem. On the other hand, Stevens and in a certain sense Hughes indicate the central importance of a symbolical rhetoric in the strategy of revelation of the real . The rather marginal influence of Marianne Moore can be seen as a need to find feminin touchstones for this poetry. Dickinson’s name was still to come.

But these different voices echoing in The Colossus should be also understood in the field of the formal structure , insistently mentioned by the critics. This will the fourth trend of earlier reviews. Bernard Bergonzi, for instance, mentions «the virtuoso qualities of its style»16, while Roy Fuller stresses the author’s virtuosism and her formal control17.

This trend will lead us to the fifth and last , identity. We can observe several expressions of that identity according to each reviewer enphasis and point of view. Al Alvarez defins it as «an admirable no-nonsense air»18. John Wayn writes that Plath, though still young, has already built an identity, «an individual manner»19. In a close relationship with his analysis of her formal control, Roy Fuller mentions her domain of several themes20. This aspect is actually very important since sometimes the processual nature of The Colossus is not easily recogniseful as we can see in the anonimous review in the T.L.S., of August 196121.

Ian Hamilton however is going to put forward an analysis of identity which anticipates further opinions , conceptions and even prejudices , since he points out the danger of trying to recreate difficult experiences without an effort of reason in order to surpass them . 22. This point of view in a certain sense reminds what E. Lucas Meyers had writen one year earlier , in 1962 . According to him the voice that would express the spirit of the fifties was felt in Plath’s poetry . 23. This may be seen as a turning point in the reception of her earlier poetry since History and individual expression are revealed in a subliminar dialogue between them ; thus we may detect the emphasis in some areas of alterity that post-war America was still concealing.

2. Ariel – as critical transferences lead to a new focus and to the creation of a myth.

 

The way The Colossus was analysed latter , may be determined through three main landmarks: first of all , Plath’suicide in February 1963; secondly, the publication of The Bell Jar, in January 23 of that year , under the pen-name of Victoria Lucas; and thirdly, the publication , in 1965, of another book of poetry entitled Ariel which, in the american edition, included a preface of Robert Lowell.

The reader has already seen that this order is not diacronical . Let us see why. Actually it is only after Plath’s death that the novel will reveal itself in its full dimension as autobiographical narrative : Plath’s would be suicide in August 24 , 1953 , when she was twenty. The author had just spent the month of June in New York as Guest Editor of Mademoiselle, after having succeeded in being among the twenty american girls chosen all over the country. When she came back home , her former application for a seminar was turned out , and this may be seen as an immediate reason for her attempt of suicide.

She was clearly aware of the autobiographical nature of her novel , and also of the impact it could have on her mother, Aurelia Plath, and that is the main reason why she chose a pen-name.

Her suicide, and the facts surrounding it - conjugal conflicts with Hughes, their separation, two children orphans –, and all the obvious efforts to explain and justify it – The Bell Jar would be again called to mind like all the clinical fictions having Plath as center –, were quickly transformed in a ground of information and as a way of decodifying her poetry.

But Ariel may be too an important element in the rereading of The Colossus; and here Lowell’s preface is nuclear since it reoriented further receptions of Plath’s poetry .

One of the critics with an obvious responsability in this reorientation was however Al Alvarez, with his review in the Observer, soon after the publication of Ariel. This review came out in March 12 , 1965 , under the tittle Poetry in Extremis. In this tittle a twofold tradition is insinuated. In the first place , the critic filiates her poetry in a contemporary poetry trend that he designates as extremist art; this trend had its origins in Robert Lowell’s Life Studies, a book published in 1959 that would be at the core of the so called confessionalism. This one would constitute a poetical praxis based on a radical interaction between quotidian experience and art; «... the perceptions pushed to the edge of breakdown», as he wrote24.

In second place , Alvarez stands at the origin of another trend of Sylvia Plath’s criticism, a trend based on the assumption that life and art are related in terms of cause-effect, being the author a kind of martyr in a process that inevitably closes with death. In the same direction, George Steiner will write on Ariel «... the vehemence of the verse is such as to constitute a very powerfull rhetoric of sincerity»25. Still echoing Lowell’s confessionalism, the emphasis will be on sincerity; thus an analysis of psychological or ethical basis is emerging.

Let us leave for the moment this issue , since it will be relevant to observe way Alvarez represents the dialogue between Ariel and its precedent The Colossus:

Technically, the basic difference between the earlier and later poems is that the first were written for the eye, the second for the ear. They need to be read aloud; they are original because she discovered in them her own speaking voice, her own identity. So the poems run with an inner rhythm which alters with the pressure of feeling and allows the images, which come crowding in with an incredible fertility and accuracy, to shift into one another, define and modify one another, and rub off colours each on the next26.

The processual nature of Plath’s poetry above quoted, indicates the dinamic character of each poem, something which is based on a rather volatile structure, «inner rhythm», as Alvarez had said.

Thus we have two main moments : in the first one , form stands at the center , at the genesis of the poem , something easily recognisable in the formal rigidity of The Colossus ; the second one is characterized by a more fluent structure , since structure depends directly on the poem as an individual and autonomous process , i.e. , Ariel’s poetry .

Alvarez stresses this difference when he recalls the visual dimension of The Colossus – «written for the eye» – and the phonical dimension of Ariel – «for the ear». This distinction suggests however another element of this book , its connection with spoken language , with voice. In this sense the phonical emphasis will participate of a process of overcoming the dicotomy life-art and subsequent synthesis realized by poetry . However , we should remember that Plath herself did recall the importance of reading aloud her poetry in April 1956 in a letter home ; she had then in mind poems that would be part of The Colossus27. On the other hand , this emphasis will lead to other important issues . First of all , bearing in mind Aristotle, voice, and word, are seen as an expression of the self on a private truth, writing being thus a mere technic of reproduction of that word 28. Thus this emphasis on the self – «on a private truth » – proposes a particular vision and not imediatly an universal one; an individual universe reveals itself in the act of speach.

Based on this perspective , we can feel another one raising , a metaphysical one suggesting the radical nature of voice and , accordingly , of a speach that finds there its true nature . Let us see what Corrado Bologna writes about this :

Voice has been always there , even before language took place and articulated itself in words able to carry on messages as speach acts, i.e. , with potential meaning, and vibrates as an indistinct flux of vitality , as a confuse impulse in order to say something , to express , and to exist. Its nature is essentially physical , corporeal ; it is connected with life and with death , with breathing and with sleep ;it flows from the same organs on which nourishing and survival depend 29.

Maybe also because of this primordial pulsion emanating from Ariel, the earlier reviews responded with a certain reserve , with repulse even , to the tension that could be felt in each poem. We should recall , for example , the horror and the distance that the anonimous reviewer of the T.L.S. interposed between himself and these poems 30; the moralist approach of place as actor in this poetry – «obscene landscape» –, of P. N. Furbank31; or John M. Brinnin’s conclusion that this poetry «must be taken in small doses , in medicinal doses »32.

These responses in a certain sense clarify the need felt by literary criticism of some instruments that would allow it to overcome its own perplexity . Psychanalisis or psychology could very well be the answers. The explications thus offered will cacatlogue the poetry of Ariel, as can be seen , for example , in the anonimous review of Newsweek, a review entitled Russian Roulette , an obvious echo of Lowell’s preface for the american edition; clinical liricism, is the rather curious and obvious expression used by that reviewer33. If we pay attention to Richard Tillinghast’s review , we’ll notice the fact that he calls The Bell Jar to mind in order to make of it a testemony that gives the clues for her personal process of dissolution thus denunciating the schizophrenic dimension of Ariel poems 34.

Another trend of this book critical reception points to the analysis of the specific dialogue of the individual with her inner self , as Peter Davison will stand 35. On the other hand, in one of Ariel brightest reviews , Stephen Spender expands this dialogue in the interaction between conscious and unconscious 36. Spender signals also another kind of dialogue that , as we have seen above , was already present in The Colossus reviews : the interaction between self and place where Nature stands at the center. But , even more important than this dialogue will be the analogy established by the critic between this poetry and the mystical experience in the process each poem is . This mystic experience will be circunscribed to the time of the poem ; it is there we recognise the visionary effect of Ariel poems and also the obvious association with St. John of the Cross .

But Spender analyzes also the identity issue as something indissociable of death as a poetical topic 37. And here , once again , Alvarez echoes.

Independently of specific emphasis of each critic and/or reviewer , all these points of view stress the nuclear presence of the individual and of her experience as poetry primordial object. Poetry reveals itself then as an ontologial soil where more universal anxieties , still generally concealed or unperceived in the coeval society , are projected .

Reviewing The Colossus, in a dialogue with Ariel, James Tulip states that this presence of the individual constitutes , all by itself , a poetical revolution , namely because it comes out either as her projection in the universe - being thus energy and action - , or as remainder of her isolation towards that universe 38. This may be the reason why Irving Feldman sees these poems as an expression of a kind of hiper-reality – «naked fact» – that sets them apart from confessional tradition , and that finds in perplexity - and even in madness - the logical reaction to God’s absence 39. Maybe because of that Richard Tillinghast sees in Ariel one crucial moment in contemporary poetry40.

In one of the first reviews of this book, Peter Dale analyses what will become an essential dimension of this poetry, a dimension that , we should recall , Richard Howard had already observed in The Colossus: the dramatic strategy. Peter Dale studies the dramatic recriation of ordinary day experience, paying particular attention to the specific use of irony in Morning Song and to the structural conception of «Daddy – nursery-rhyme»41. We should mention though that this structural conception had already been indicated in a previous review in Newsweek 42. At last , we must pay attention to the poets quoted as having been possible influences on this poetry , since it will be through them that other trends from which it will be analysed in the future, insinuate themselves .

Just as it had happened with The Colossus, Robin Skelton brings to mind Roethke’s ascendant in the fragmentary dimension of Ariel imagery , stressing at the same time the natural filiation of this book in Lowell’s and Sexton’s confessionalism43. An identical filiation in this tradition comes out in Stephen Spender’s review , but here two other names are quoted : Berryman and Jarrell44. On the other hand , Peter Dale mentions the echoes of Keats, along with the dramatic strategy turned clear through a certain ironical rhetoric; Roethke’s specific influence in Letter in November is also stressed 45. In M. L. Rosenthal’s review , Whitman will be seen as an influence modelling poetci rhythms 46.

The presence of european poets along with americans begins to be seen as relevant . John M. Brinnin, for instance , mentions Blake and Baudelaire and, in the american traditions, Emily Dickinson; the way this poet lirically expresses her anxiety is used by Brinnin in order to show what sets her apart from Plath , and what distinguishes two historical moments 47. Nevertheless , in one of Ariel reviews, in T.L.S. November 1965, the dialogue with Auden had already been mentioned48. M. L. Rosenthal expands that dialogue to Larkin and Eliot, whose Prufrock echoes in Two Views of a Cadaver Room49. Latter, Margaret Shook will mention Yeats deep influence until then unnoticed50.

One last aspect should be remembered , the reference of this poetry visual dimension. Already suggested in those reviews where place, and specifically Nature , were seen as central , the visual dimension will be expounded by Richard Tillinghast and by M. L. Rosenthal . Rosenthal reminds only Brueghel’s presence in the second section of Two Views from a Cadaver Room51, but Tillinghast provides a deeper dialogue. Actually , when he reminds us of Bosch, Goya, Pironesi and Richard Wain, Tillinghast evokes a universe on the verge of allucination , a universe where expression transfigures itself and the frontiers of reality acquire a different notion. This poetry doesn’t quote those universes , it assimilates them 52.

But there’s always a presence haunting and conditioning Ariel analysis : Robert Lowell, and his preface. The famous initial expression – «... certainly not another 'poetess', but one of those super-real, hypnotic, great classical heroines»53 – if, on one hand , tries to emphasize Plath’s place in contemporary poetry, on the other, raises fundamental questions in the ideological field where criticism also stands. Poetess is refered here as a designation of a poetical speach confined to the feminin universe, to a specific code of behaviour, of anxieties, fictions and expectations 54; as if that universe and that code couldn’t concern poetical issues. Besides , while paying a compliment on Plath, placing her among the great classical heroines, Lowell clsassizes her, i.e., he sees her through a speech that, in the end , is placing her somewhere in the past and not in the present, or that doesn’t understand her through the anxieities of those days , anxieties insinuated only , but it is there that the female identity will be reavaluated stressing one of the ruptures of the post-modern condition . The conflict with the present that we feal in this poetry, is thus denied, enclosured in the past and, obviously , neutralized.

Does it mean that Lowell is refusing Ariel conflictual dimension ? Certainly not. As a proof we should point out another item of this preface , something that will echoe in further reviews and essays : the confessionalist topic . Let us observe Lowell’s words: «Everything in these poems is personal, confessional, felt, but the manner of feeling is controlled hallucination, the autobiography of a fever»55. And further : «What is most heroic in her, ..., is not her force, but the desperate practicality of her control, her hand of metal with its modest womanish touch»56.

Lowell filiates Plath in the very precise tradition that emerged in the late fifties having himself and his Life Studies , as touchstones . This filiation stresses a very close connection between poetry and the assimilation of an intimate reality. Poetry emerges then as a kind of mirror of a private grief. The establishment of a connection betweeen this poetry and sincerity will be the next step . The con-fusion between sincerity and truth , i.e. , between a probable expression of the self and an ethical or epistemological category will condition further analysis of her poetry ; these are willing to understand her work - and each poem - as an extension of a psychanalitical culture and not as an identity with an autonomous structure. It is here , in the structure itself that we should look for those devices that somehow will insinuate the sound of an emerging voice.

Thia preface will reveal another topic relevant for a further reception of Ariel. Two sentences synthetise it; the first one is: «... her art's immortality is life's disintegration»57; and the second one: «... they [the poems] tell that life, even when disciplined, is simply not worth it»58. In the previous paragraph we saw the way Lowell felt the connection between poetry and expression; here , the author of Life Studies regards the relationship between this poetry and death as something inevitable. The singularity of this poetry will be then strictly connected with the inevitability of that relationship, as if the only path designed for the poet was death . As a result of this each poem will be read as participating of a growing process towards death, as part of a ritual of a dissolution of life.

A final topic should be stressed . This topic may be found in an expression often quoted to define Plath’s poetry . I will transcribe it here in its context since it is the context that makes us aware of its full meaning:

In her lines, I often hear the serpent whisper, «Come, if you only had the courage, you too could have my rightness, audacity and ease of inspiration.» But most of us will turn back. These poems are playing Russian roulette with six cartridges in the cylinder, ...59.

All criticism reverberates its author’s idiossincracies and this is clearly obvious in Lowell’s empathy towards Plath’s poetry ; this is something we feel in his preface namely in the way he sees the evocation of death as a way of overcoming a life without meaning . But above all we should stress «the serpent whisper» since it is here that another conditioning of her poetry’s criticism will be built . I mean the dialogue between poetry and reader .

The serpent has here a double symbolical referent . First of all , the serpent functions as a vehicle in a change of degree; as seducer the serpent invites the selfl into a new stage of knowledge . After all , this will mean an invitation to death. This biblical reminiscence echoes in Lowell’s analysis. Thus , this poetry turns out to be dangerous since it integrates the reader in the speech of death . In the second place and according to Jung, the serpent «embodies a lower and darker psychism, that which is rare, incomprehensible, mysterious»60. Sign of a conceiled pre-verbal world and its agent , the serpent will iniciate the reader in his/her own conceiled world . Poetry will be then a kind of mirror of the self’s unfathomable mysteries ; and it’s here , in this very ground that death lives . In the end , the road to self-knowledge and revelation is the road to death .

It’s on these different perspectives that a new reading of Plath’s poety starts to emerge . With it a mythical canon will also emerge.

3. Crossing the Water – the emergence of critical and poetical canons

As I’ve mentioned above , the process of critical reception of Sylvia Plath’s poetry is closely connected with a somehow unclear and long drawn out process of publication . We must bear in mind that only one book of poems , The Colossus , was published while the author was still alive, actually Plath was also responsible by the revision of the american edition. On the other hand , the posthumous book known as Ariel, doesn’t match with the book Plath had in mind 61; but this will analysed further in detail .

Crossing the Water , her third - published - book of poems , was edited by Ted Hughes, who was also responsible for poems selection and organization of the poems. This book was simultaneously published in London and New York in 1971, six years after Ariel. Crossing the Water allows us a more precise contextualization of Sylvia Plath’s poetry and a certain revision of the books previously published. Beware, dear reader, this doesn’t mean previously written books.

Written in 1960 and in 1961 , these poems follow those she compiled in The Colossus, while in a certain sense coinciding in time with those belonging to Ariel. The fact that they were written after The Colossus makes them to be seen as part of a growing process which would eventually culminate in Ariel. On the other hand, the fact that Crossing the Water somehow coincides in time with Ariel, is responsible for the way it will be considered as a space of transition ; of this, the title itself would be sign and symbol. Let us see then which topics are present in the first reviews of Crossing the Water.

In his review, Peter Porter stresses the contextual and processual nature of this poetry . This would be relevant, first of all, in a language of transition half-careful, half-vernacular; secondly, in the way objects are assimilated by a speech that turns them into «frightening Greek messengers»; thirdly , in the subversion of codes and universes usually associated to certain formal structures (Love Letter, for instance)62.

In a review published two months later, Douglas Dunn contributes too for an analysis of Crossing the Water, and of her poetic corpus then known, based on the contextual and processual logic . Thus, The Colossus is once again read as an initial stage of a growing process that would culminate in Ariel63. Simultaneously, Crossing the Water identity is defined through a logic of transition: «Crossing the Water is much freer in style than the first book... The new ingredient in her poetry of this period is an improved sense of drama, ...»64. In their reviews , Victor Howes and Terry Eagleton also subscribe this processual perspective . Victor Howes words reiterate this idea of transition, while enphatically defining the other books published before: «... they help to bridge the gap between the sober, workmanlike verses of The Colossus and the wild, expressionist outcries of Ariel»65. Terry Eagleton contributes for this bipolar reading when he refers that Crossing the Water imagetic is divided between the static and the dinamic 66. These are after all metonimic designations of The Colossus and of Ariel.

Besides the obvious processual nature of this poetry stressed by the different reviewers , another deeper divergence begins to emerge . Actually , Douglas Dunn only virtually comes closer to the other points of view: «sense of drama» is the expression-key since it points out enunciation as a strategy of difference. Diverging of the «expressionist cries» mentioned by Victor Howes, this analysis echoes some notions present in earlier reviews of Plath’s previous books , thus pointing out new forms of understanding her poetry . When Domenica Paterno evokes teatrality, she’s subscribing this critical perspective and making clear this poetry’s assimilation of an exogenous genre 67.

The critics also mentioned another important issue, the ontological and epistemological limits imposed on the self in Crossing the Water; these limits in a certain sense participate of points of view emerging then in the european and american cultures. We should bear in mind what Lucas Myers had writen on The Colossus.

On the other hand , when Eileen Aird tried to recognise analogies between the poems of Crossing the Water and those of Ariel, in order to prove the unity of Sylvia Plath’s poetry , she mentioned her rejection of a romantic unity between self and Nature. This rejection might echoe other rejections of Modernism , what could lead us to consider it as a certain late modernism - an euphemism of epigonism . But, when she analyses Tulips, Eileen Aird introduces a new and nuclear dimension : the absence of idendity of a self that runs along space and time deprived of an understanding of her function in a universe hopelessly distant68.

When the poetical speech reverberates irony and alterity , two issues should be raised. First of all , the notion of poetry as expression of sentiment and not of poetry confined to sentimentalism ; this means the refusal of expressionism and of pathos. Thus we understand the irony that informs some relevant moments of her poetry, «self-directed mockery» according to Eileen Aird. At the same time , the individual reveals herself simultaneously as irradiating centre and receiver of irony. This doesn’t estrange her from others and allows her to assume herself as inevitable space of doubt and , in the end , of alterity. And here becomes nuclear the process of enunciation as a manipulator strategy of experience. Plath herself stresses this issue when interviewed by Peter Orr:

I cannot sympathize with these cries from the heart... I believe that one should be able to control and manipulate experience, even the most terrifying, like madness, being tortured... and one should be able to manipulate these experiences with an informed and an intelligent mind69.

Several critics and reviewers will evoke this dimension of Plath’s poetry. Victor Howes, for instance, refers the transitory function of Crossing the Water from this point of view: «... this book reveals Sylvia Plath's growing dramatic ability, her power to project herself into 'personae', as in 'Mirror', ...»70. The processual nature had been brought to mind by Douglas Dunn through three distinct strategies: the dramatic monologue – In Plaster; description with a dinamic function that transfigures the object while making it an actor ina wider drama – Blackberrying71; the assimilation of a subgenre – the parable, The Tour72. But Victor Howes will lead us further when he mentions a dramatic tradition based on the keatsian concept of «negative capability»73.

These different reviews may be catalogued in two main trends : on one hand , the emergence of an analysis concerning specific processes of enunciation and the way these processes may function in each book and in her poetry as a search for identity; on the other hand , the search for possible influences that Plath may have assimilated and , possibly , overcome. All this makes part of an emerging identity.

In what concerns this issue, the critical reception of Crossing the Water doesn’t bring to light new elements. Stevens, Lowell and Roethke are mentioned again by critics that identify their presences in specific poems, thus in a subliminar way reiterating Plath’s filiation in confessionalism. Robert Boyers - apart from these poets he also mentions Frost - refers the way she assimilates and overcomes those identities. According to him, Roethke is present in Who, Dark House, Maenad and The Beast, while Stevens echoes in Black Rook in Rainy Weather74. Victor Kramer mentions Roethke’s influence in these poems and in Witch Burning; besides he stresses the echo of Stevens’ diction and rythm in Ouija75.

Though somewhat secondary two last topics must be mentioned . In the first place , according to Robert Boyers, the atmosphere of mystery:

There is an element of mystery in Crossing the Water that is very different indeed, and one may locate its source at just that point where the object refuses to yield in its intransigent otherness and insists upon a range of potential meanings or associations that lead not in a straight line but in several directions at once. And this mystery is no mere rhetorical affair, but at least equally an affair of a spirit which can still afford a limited generosity76.

Mystery is here strictly connected with the interaction between individual and object . Besides , the polissemic and multidirectional dimension of mystery raises a hermeneutical issue : which are the possibilities and the limits of sense , and , obviously , of perception? The poetry of Crossing the Water ascribes perception a nuclear function. Victor Kramer reminds this aspect in his review: «There are thirty-eight poems here, and often they hover about the beauty of a moment; almost always such moments are informed by an awareness of death»77.

Time and place thus participate of the genesis of a poetry that confronts itself with its own ontological limits. Let us see how . On the one hand, somehow reviving the imagistic trend of modernism , instant comes out as a source of a possible revelation. On the other hand , place dialogues with the self’s reminiscences and obsessions - for instance «an awareness of death». The way these two dimensions - time and place - function together makes of each poem an element inscribed in a kaleidoscopical and accidental perception of reality. Alterity flows from this strategy, thus exposing the limits of knowledge . We’ll mention this issue once again when we will analyse the critical reception of the Collected Poems.