The Explicator

ISSN: 0014-4940 (Print) 1939-926X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/vexp20

Plath’s Lady Lazarus

Leonard Sanazaro

To cite this article: Leonard Sanazaro (1983) Plath’s Lady Lazarus, The Explicator, 41:3, 54-57,
DOI: 10.1080/00144940.1983.11483687

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00144940.1983.11483687

Published online: 22 Oct 2015.

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 fused, self-obsessed bicyclists lost in the woods. Several critics have noted that
"Moran in a sense becomes Molloy.,,2 The two halves of the novel thus resemble
each other in structure and in the similarities between the two narrators.
In Moran's section, self and other become united through the establishment of
identity between Moran and Molloy. In collapsing the traditional relationship
between narrator and character or between self and other, Beckett conveys a
solipsistic sense that human consciousness is inherently self-referring, subjective,
and incapable of ultimate truth.
Near the end of Molloy, Moran makes his abrupt and seemingly gratuitous in-
terjection about "the Obidil." The passage appears incomprehensible until the
page of print is held in front of a mirror, at which point "Obidil" turns into
"libido." The word "Obidil" is mirror-language for "libido," and implies that
Moran fails to understand the (psychological) motivations behind his behaviour
and thought-processes.
Moran's reference to "the Obidil," therefore, can only be understood with the
help of a mirror. This fact reinforces the impression of solipsism, as well as the
dual structure, in the novel as a whole.

-DAVID GROVES, York University, Canada

The Explicator 1983.41:54-57.

NOTES

1. Samuel Beckett, Molloy, in Thr.ee Novels by Samuel Beckett, trans. Patrick Bowles (New York:
Grove Press, 1965), p. 162.
2. John Fletcher, "Interpreting Molloy, in Samuel Beckett Now: Critical Approaches to his
Novels, Poetry, and Plays, ed. Melvin J. Friedman (Chicago and London: University of Chicago
Press, 1970), p. 169.

Plath's LADY LAZARUS

In 1970, M. L. Rosenthal wrote an essay entitled "Sylvia Plath and Confes-

sional Poetry" for Charles' Newman's collection, The Art of Sylvia Plath. In this
essay, Rosenthal formulated what has since become the predominant critical
stance in regard to her work. He tells us:
Sylvia Plath's range of technical resources was narrower than
Robert Lowell's, and so, apparently was her capacity for intellec-
tual objectivity ... she chose, if that is the word, what seems to
me the one alternative advance position to Lowell's along the
dangerous confessional way, that of literally committing her own
predicaments in the interests of her art until one was so involved
in the other that no return was possible. (p.71)
Certainly Plath was aware of the magnetic influence of Robert Lowell whose
poetry seminar at Boston University she audited in 1958. Later she acknowledged

54
 his powerful influence upon the "Ariel" poems in an interview with Peter Orr for
the BBC in late October, 1962:
I've been very excited by what I feel is the new breakthrough that
came with, say Robert Lowell's Life Studies, this intense break-
through into very serious, very personal, emotional experience
which I feel has been partly taboo .... These peculiar, private
taboo subjects, I feel, have been explored in recent American
poetry.
(The Poet Speaks, pp. 167-68)

There can be little doubt that Lowell did exert a powerful influence upon Plath
as she composed what turned out to be her final poems. But to continue to cir-
cumscribe her late poems within the limits of confessionalism serves to obscure
both their complexity and their roots in her total intellectual experience.
Few poets have developed in such a short period of time and have left such a
compact collection of work as Sylvia Plath. Her entire opus is then extremely val-
uable not for what it discloses about her personal inclinations and limitations, but
rather for what it discloses about the development of the literary artist. Her devel-
The Explicator 1983.41:54-57.

opment, in particular, is significant for what it reveals about the overall process
of artistic metamorphosis as well as what it demonstrates about the creation of in-
dividual poems. Since her poetic transformation takes place in less than a decade
before her death, her undergraduate work becomes a valuable source of informa-
tion regarding the evolution of her ultimate poetic vision and also the particular
influences exerted upon specific poems of her oeuvre. "Lady Lazarus" (Col-
lected Poems, pp. 244-46) represents a case in poinL l
Sylvia Plath's interest in the story of Lazarus was long-standing, originating in
her undergraduate studies in poetry and fiction. Obviously her interest took an
increasingly intimate and intense identification after her recovery from a suicide
attempt in the summer of 1953. From that time on, she came to feel that she "had
been on the other side of life like Lazarus" and knew in a special way "the tri-
umph of life over death" (Letters Home, p. 243). Leonid Andreyev's short story,
"Lazarus," which Plath first read in the spring of 1954, evidently did much to
shape her attitude toward this biblical character and the eventual form it took
under the pressure of her poetic vision. Through this story's influence, she was
able to move clearly toward her own characterization of Lazarus in her poem al-
most a decade later.
Plath observed Andreyev's ironic twist to the old biblical episode in his short
story. Here Lazarus rises from the dead but becomes the scourge of humanity.
His physical appearance was certainly disturbing enough, as Andreyev relates it:
On Lazarus' temples, under his eyes, and in the hollows of his
cheeks lay a cadaverous lividness; cadaverously blue also were his
long fingers, and around his fingernails, grown long in the grave,
the livid hue had become purple and dark. On his lips the skin,
swollen in the grave, had burst in places, and thin, reddish cracks
were formed, shining as though covered with transparent mica.
(The Treasury 0/ Russian Literature, B. G. Guerney, Ed., p. 879)

55
 It was the "pernicious power of his eye," however, that held the menace for
those who inquired of the other side of life. No one could endure "the horror
which lay motionless in the depth of his black pupils." Their effect was
devastating:
The sun did not cease shining when he was looking, nor did the
fountain hush its murmur, and the sky overhead remained cloud-
less and blue. But the man under the spell of his enigmatical look
heard no more the fountain and saw not the sky overhead. Some-
times he wept bitterly, sometimes he tore his hair and in frenzy
called for help; but more often it came to pass that apathetically
and quietly he began to die, and so he languished many years,
before everybody's eyes, wasted away, colorless, flabby, dull, like
a tree silently dying in stony soil. And of those who gazed at him,
the ones who wept madly sometimes felt again the stir of life; the
others never. (p.81)
Like Andreyev's Lazarus, Plath's Lady Lazarus has a disturbing appearance.
Her body is an icon of the World War II atrocities. Her skin is as "Bright as a
Nazi lampshade," her right foot is a "paperweight," and her face is a "feature-
The Explicator 1983.41:54-57.

less, fine / Jew linen." And she tells us that "soon the flesh / The grave cave ate
will be / At home on me." Plath's Lady Lazarus also shares the menacing power
of Andreyev's Lazarus. But unlike Andreyev, Plath does not detail the chilling ef-
fect that Lady Lazarus has upon onlookers and curious enquirers. However.
through her use of direct address, her Lady Lazarus is as threatening as Andreyev's
Lazarus with his "accursed" knowledge. Plath's character tells the "peanut-
crunching crowd" that is callous enough to be entertained by her suffering:
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.
(CP, p. 246)
But despite their tremendous powers, both Andreyev's and Plath's characters
share a common fate. They are ultimately victims of their societies. Andreyev's
Lazarus is punished for his "accursed" knowledge of death and dark infinity in
his eyes. They are burned out, and he is left to wander aimlessly about. Still, even
in the depths of his black eye pits, his terrible knowledge "hid in ambush," ready
to plunge "its thousand invisible eyes into man," and none dared look at him.
Finally Lazarus stumbles alone into the desert where "against the red screen of
the sunset his black body outspread hands. .. form a monstrous likeness of a
cross" and is seen no more (p. 896). Similarly Lady Lazarus comes to embody
Man's faithlessness and gross inhumanity. She represents the penultimate horror

56
 of the Holocaust, humanity reduced to ashes and "A cake of soap, / A wedding
ring, / A gold filling." Neither character obtains justice or compassion in a world
where effective means for either punishment or reward are so apparently absent.
Yet Plath added another dimension to her Lazarus character, a dimension per-
haps more ominous for its necessity. Unlike Andreyev's Lazarus who finally es-
capes his second dreadful life in death, Plath's Lady Lazarus is condemned to
die, "like a cat," nine times. From each of her nine deaths, she must return from
ash in fiery conflagrations to exact revenge for the crimes of men against human-
ity. The awful continuum of Man's profane history demands this: "What a trash
to annihilate each decade / What a million filaments." This hallucinatory con-
nection is more clear in the deleted allusion Lady Lazarus also makes to the vic-
tims of atomic annihilation at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, "I may be skin and
bone, 1 may be Japanese." Through Plath's manipulation, Lady Lazarus be-
comes not only the victim of barbaric inhumanity, but also an avenger recalled by
the repetitively evil cycles of Man's history. In this sense, Plath's character be-
comes a dramatic portrait of Mankind's insane drive toward self-destruction and
simultaneously, his desperate need for a means to avert it. Symbolically, Lady
Lazarus represents the inhuman capacity for the most horrific barbarism counter-
poised with the human' capacity for a moral amplitude. An icon of the Apoca-
The Explicator 1983.41:54-57.

lypse, she serves as a warning to a world which moves closer and closer to its own
extinction. But beyond this, the characterization carries an added implication:
Man's survival is not determined by exterior powers that will judge and condemn.
His continuance and the continuance of his world rests solely in his capacity to
curb his violence and to sufficiently punish his crimes.
Although Plath could hardly have conceived her "Lady Lazarus" from And-
reyev's story alone, her characterization clearly has its roots in his conception of a
Lazarus who is a passive victim that reflects the godless vacuum surrounding Man
and his universe. The truth Plath felt in Andreyev's creation combined with her
own nightmarish vision of Man's sinful history contributed greatly to the forceful
effect of "Lady Lazarus."

-LEONARD SANAZARO, Reno, Nevada

NOTES
1. My thanks to Saundra Taylor and the Lilly Library Archive, Indiana University, for providing
me with Plath's early essay, "The Devil's Advocate."

Golding's LORD OF THE FLIES

The central action of Lord of the Flies arises from the conflicts between the ra-
tional society led by Ralph and the primitive, tribal society led by Jack. But the
novel also goes out of its way to stress that there is no inherent "rightness" to
either society, that civilization and savagery are not mutually exclusive. Conse-
quently, the novel is more concerned with the area of moral ambiguity between

57