sylvia final

8/13/2019 Sylvia Final

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S Y L V I A P L A T H

a m o n u m e n t

by wend y a nd a llys on

A symbol of blighted female geniusSylvia Plath was an American poet and novelist whose work catalogued despair, violent emotion, and obsession with

death.


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October 27th, 1932 February 11, 1963

Plath suffered from depression for most of her adult life and after several attempts, committed suicide in 1963. She was found with her head in the oven

and the gas turned on, the room sealed off from her sleeping children.


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To this day, her death continues to provoke conflict and scandal, because nothing about her l ife or legacy seems wholesome or resolved. Her work is still

relevant today, because readers find relief in her wordsthey know that they are not alone in their struggles and anxieties.


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i n t e n s e

a m b i g u o u s

i n t r o s p e c t i v e

Our attributes are intense, ambiguous, and introspective.


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I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.

What ever you see I swallow immediately

Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.

I am not cruel, only truthful---

The eye of a little god, four-cornered.

Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.

It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long

I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.

Faces and darkness separate us over and over.Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,

Searching my reaches for what she really is.

Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.

I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.

She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.

I am important to her. She comes and goes.

Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.

In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman

Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

We chose to use this poem, because of its narrative ties to Sylvia Plath's own conflicted identity and her frequent use of the mirror as a symbol. This was

also a turning point in her workfrom here her voice becomes that "of a woman who has accepted her depersonalization and passivity and who longs for

the numbing purity it promises."


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Our model is at 1/4 scale.


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The viewer enters from a door in the center where they will then be able to see on one side a mirrored wall and on the other side a pink, speckled wall.

The ground slants down forcing the viewer deep into the space.


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A glass wall on the back looks out into the ocean from Point Shirley in Winthrop, MA. The Plath's moved to Winthrop in 1936it is where eight-year-old

Sylvia saw her first poem published and experienced the loss of her father.


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The mirror is "silver and exact," and while it stares at the opposite wall it represents the world in a truthful and objective way.


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Then, interrupted by a viewer searching for their mind, soul, and psyche, conflict and vivid emotion arise


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the mirror reflects desires and understandings; tensions between our exterior and interior lives.


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In the poem, water is both a reference to a mirror and an actual lake. The viewer is described as looking to the water for "what she really is." Although it is

truthful and causes dissatisfaction, she keeps coming back and as a result drowns "a young girl, and a old woman rises toward her."


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The poem tells the story of a woman who is suffering and isolated, however, this sense of self-awareness "translates into fantasies of transformation, of

escape from constriction and engulfment, and of flight, where casting off outgrown selves and overused masks lead to naked renewal."


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sylvia final

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