The razor cuts neatly
The vein the needle betrayed
The warm water receives my life
While turning the pain to sleep
“When they asked some
old Roman philosopher or other how he wanted to die, he said he would open his
veins in a warm bath. I thought it would be easy, lying in the tub and seeing
the redness flower from my wrists, flush after flush through the clear water,
till I sank to sleep under a surface gaudy as poppies.”
~ Sylvia Plath, The
Bell Jar
It is interesting to note that Sylvia Plath having schizophrenia would have had a difficult time to tell the difference between what is real and what is not.
ReplyDeleteI do not understand how the possibility Sylvia Plath was schizophrenic (depending on which psychiatric evaluation one reads this is up for debate) has relevance hermeneutically to the text of the Bell Jar? From the text it seems Esther is aware of what is real and what is not. She is aware of the reality of death as evidenced by the suicide of her friend Joan. ~ Chris
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