Escritura e morte na poética de Sylvia Plath

Abstract

Sylvia Plath is a North-American writer recognized for her modern confessional poetry, especially after the posthumous publication of Ariel (1965). In the present study the main aspects of her work and her literary legacy were discussed – such as the confessional mode of her poetry, as well as the mythological, historical and social references – in order to finally analyze Plath's relation with death, which she developed by creating unique imagery and themes in her poems and by means of an experience with writing itself. Such relations are discussed in the last chapter in which some poems of the original manuscript of Ariel were analyzed, such as "Lady Lazarus", "Cut" and "Fever 103º". The proposed reflections are based essentially on the theoretical works of Maurice Blanchot, Octavio Paz and Roland Barthes. This paper suggests that death in Plath's poetics can be considered a creative force, a movement that enfolds in its space of tensions the inseparable relation between life and death or, in other words, an ambiguous movement, a cycle that never begins and never ends, a dismissal of boundaries. Therefore, death is a fundamental experience to the author, whom must constantly annihilate himself as a being in order to give form and existence to the artistic work.