The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath Author: Sylvia Plath | Language: English | ISBN:
B0012DZ34W | Format: EPUB
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath Description
First U.S. Publication
A major literary event--the complete, uncensored journals of Sylvia Plath, published in their entirety for the first time.
Sylvia Plath's journals were originally published in 1982 in a heavily abridged version authorized by Plath's husband, Ted Hughes. This new edition is an exact and complete transcription of the diaries Plath kept during the last twelve years of her life. Sixty percent of the book is material that has never before been made public, more fully revealing the intensity of the poet's personal and literary struggles, and providing fresh insight into both her frequent desperation and the bravery with which she faced down her demons. The complete
Journals of Sylvia Plath is essential reading for all who have been moved and fascinated by Plath's life and work.
From the Trade Paperback edition.- File Size: 9071 KB
- Print Length: 770 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0385720254
- Publisher: Anchor; Unabridged edition (December 18, 2007)
- Sold by: Random House LLC
- Language: English
- ASIN: B0012DZ34W
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #96,163 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
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When one is a fan of Plath (1932-1963), one feels one has to issue a disclaimer that it isn't the sensationalized, soap opera of her life that appeals and compells, but rather the sheer force of her talent that attracts. I think there is no technical virtuouso like Plath in poetry, no one with her emotional compass and her intuitive impact. The woman was a stunningly brilliant poet (and her novel The Bell Jar is a fabulous evil twin Skippy to Bridget Jones).
I have just finished reading the 670-some pages of her unabridged journals, published in the United States in 2000 for the first time. I had read her abridged journals during college, and I remember nothing like the impact that comes here. And now that I am done, I feel kind of grieved in a new way for the loss of her, a fresh hurt.
The book is divided into sections based on her notebooks or journals that include Plath's adult journals from 1950 to 1962, and is an exact transcription of her writing, including errors and notes on edits she made or that her husband, the late British Poet Laureate Ted Hughes may have made, in the original manuscripts. The unabridged version comprises sections from the following years: July 1950 to July 1953; November 1955 to April 1956; July 1956; July 1956 to August 1956; January 1957 to March 1957; July 1957 to August 1957; August 1957 to October 1958; and December 1958 to November 1959. The 15 appendices contain journal fragments and entries starting from October 1951 to 1962.
Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) is an icon of the alienated poetic soul confronted with a world of potentially numberless Auschwitzes and Nagasakis, the soul who chooses self-destruction in the face of this existential crisis.
These unabridged journals, edited by Karen V. Kukil, are a vast improvement over the perniciously edited version published in the 1980s (for too long the only one available), whose preparation was supervised by Plath's ex-husband the poet laureate of Britain, Ted Hughes.
Hughes has been cast as the villain of the piece vis-a-vis Plath's life, having been blamed (rather wrongfully) for her suicide at age thirty, and having been accused (more rightfully) of effectively censoring Plath's work, both poem and prose, following her death, whether by legal process, blue pencil, spontaneous rearrangement, or outright destruction of material.
Comparing the Hughes edition to the Kukil edition JOURNALS is an eye-opening education. Hughes slashed vast amounts of material from Plath's daily record, and bowdlerized much of the rest. He extensively editorialized the text. The Sylvia Plath of Hughes' creation strikes the reader as remote and too measured---as if she was writing even her journals for an audience.
The unexpurgated Sylvia Plath who appears in the Kukil JOURNALS is a far more vulnerable, wistful, soft, tough, gritty, obscene and sexualized person---in short a real woman.
Unlike Hughes, Kukil avoided editorializing the text, but perhaps too zealously, thus losing sight of something important. Unless Plath speaks to specific issues, the reader is left unanchored in the 1950s, an era of vast changes whose roil and turmoil unquestionably had subtle (if not always journalistically noted) effects upon Plath.
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