Lady Lazarus – Sylvia Plath – Analysis

Lay Lazarus

I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it——

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?——

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot——
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies

These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I’ve a call.

It’s easy enough to do it in a cell.
It’s easy enough to do it and stay put.
It’s the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

‘A miracle!’
That knocks me out.
There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart——
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash—
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there——

A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

Sylvia Plath (1932 – 1963)

The title Lady Lazarus rolls off the tongue with alliteration and assonance. She uses interior rhyme. Colloquial expression gives emphasis to the passion of her delivery –
I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
She mentions her age of 30 years … I am only thirty … she turned 30 on the 27th October 1962 … so this dates the poem … her most productive time as a poet.

There are 28 three line stanzas involving reference to –
SP’s previous suicide attempts – with personal details … like her scars
The Holocaust … she identifies her ‘death and resurrection’ in terms of those that died in the gas chambers. In her final attempt she dies with her head in an oven.
Religion – Lazarus – resurrection – She details what her ‘resurrection’ signifies.
Her life … she sees herself as an artist …
Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

It is a very strong stand-up ‘I’ poem declared in strong passionate terms. And rallying against those guilty of inhumanity. A confrontation with Herr God, Herr Doktor, Herr Lucifer.

SP was only nine years old when her father died and this caused an anger against death in taking him away, he had a German heritage … she became aware of the holocaust and the terrors of death in the camps when a child being born in 1932 … again angry with such death … caused by man … and at the time of writing this poem, in October 1962, Ted Hughes had left her and perhaps an ’emotional death’ and distrust created similar anger against man. This poem is often seen as a statement for female emancipation.

SP identifies with those who died in the Holocaust … she herself as of lampshade skin … and the picture of body decay presents distastful morbid imagery to the reader as …
Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me
(note the internal structure to the middle line)

SP sees herself as an expert at attempted suicide and returning … and she considers her skill as a theatrical performance … before the peanut-crunchers … performing a miracle for all to see. She did get much recognition in regard to her suicide attempts and there is always a certain context shadow when reading some of her poetry.

But she will survive like Lazarus … the great miracle … and when she is ‘unwrapped’ it will be the big strip tease … regarding her revival as exciting entertainment … to see what’s underneath … to see her new born again body (peel off my napkin)

Her second attempt nearly took her life … she was discovered just ‘as the worms were setting in’
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

And there she is in the Holocaust as just ash … the Holocaust being defined by …
A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

And there is nothing there … but there is a charge for the rebirth … a restitution for the unjust dead? … and she will rise out of this …out of the ashes … representing all those that died … she will arise and give rebirth … new life … a little far-fetched but perhaps she imagined herself as some sort of warped female Christ
Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

And SP states that this is for you … for humanity … with a hatred for man
I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby
(opus – creative piece of work … pure gold)

In summary … this is clearly a personal poem of anger … defining herself in strong Ok terms … about death (and unjust death) … about her challenge of defying death … and beating death and those that have caused terrible death … laughing back at them … returning to life with fire and energy as a female … and devouring terrible MAN … clearly seen by the last stanza …
Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

Sylvia Plath on Wikipedia

RIP – SP

Futility – Wilfred Owen – Remembrance Day 2018

Today marks 100 years since the end of WW1 in 1918.

PoppiesWarMemorial

The hand-woven poppy display at the Australian War Memorial, Canberra

Futility

Move him into the sun—
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds—
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs so dear-achieved, are sides
Full-nerved,—still warm,—too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
—O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth’s sleep at all?

Wilfred Owen (1893 – 1918)

Sonnet structure of two 7 line stanzas with slant rhyming scheme …

Wilfred Owen technique is to use slant rhyme; this poem is no exception. It has an AABABBB rhyming pattern in the first stanza, then alternating slant-rhyming lines in the last stanza. Slant rhymes (such as “sun” and “once”) are a subtle way of giving a poem unity, where the words may echo each other, without being an obvious rhyme. The reader gains a sense of coherence without, initially at least, being conscious of how it is done. However, in certain contexts, such as this poem, the near rhymes may signify discord, a rhyme that is not ‘quite right’. Refer – https://genius.com/Wilfred-owen-futility-annotated

S1 – Farm labourers had no comprehension of what they were in for when they enlisted in WWI. This poor fellow is mortally injured as his mates move him into the sun. It is cold as there is snow on the ground and the sun will provide warmth. The sun is personified as a healer capable of giving recovery. In England the sun has always been a friend to him waking him and giving life to his fields. Even in France it has been with him in the mornings. Perhaps ‘the kind old sun will know’ how to revive him.

S2 – The sun brings life to seeds and from the text it appears that it brought life to the universe – ‘woke, once, the clays of a cold star’ … and much has been achieved in the evolution of life and the advancement of humanity … ‘limbs, so dear achieved’ … so is it too much to ask the sun for help akin to asking a mate for help.

This is a poem about grief following what has happened to a rural worker enlisted in WW1, with anger vented at the creator and maintainer of life represented by the sun.

Is the sun an uncaring mate (sun=creator, son, God) ?

And the poem poses the question if life has been created by an uncaring unintelligent ‘sun’ then what is the purpose of life!

A link to Wilfred Owen on Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilfred_Owen

Note – 

The Canberra Rotary Peace Bell is available today for residents and visitors to sound … see https://canberrapeacebell.org/ This is done in conjunction with reading the following words by the Chinese Philosopher Laozi … (the bell is sounded after each statement is read).

“If there is to be peace in the world,
There must be peace in the nations.

If there is to be peace in the nations,
There must be peace in the cities.

If there is to be peace in the cities,
There must be peace between neighbours.

If there is to be peace between neighbours,
There must be peace in the home.

If there is to be peace in the home,
There must be peace in the heart.”

Bell