L357 assignment #-

The peacefulness is so big it dazes you,

And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets.

It is what the dead close on, finally: I imagine them

                These three lines are big enough to daze me, as Plath’s peacefulness expands enough to enclose such a confidently clear approach to the experience of death. But when the light becomes blinding, putting on sunglasses is well advised, so let us bring some shade to the dazzle and see what emerges from a close reading of lines 32-34 of Tulips.

                With a first quick look at the poem’s title, something emerges, maybe a mirage, maybe not, but something that illuminates the passage by shadowing it in perspective is the fact that Plath’s father was a zoologist. This doesn’t directly apply to tulips, but he studied bees and sometimes those who know bees know flowers. So on one level or another this poem (and passage) applies to her father; as most of her poems likely did.

One layer of protection that may prove useful is the Oxford English Dictionary, with which we can clear the haze from around the words themselves, and thus the images they conjure in the imagination. Peace is a rather abstract concept even in the concentration of everyday experiences, and its use in a poem, especially one by one as prominent as Sylvia Plath, cannot be taken lightly, though likely represents something specific in the artist’s life. The online OED offers a definition of peace that, when used as a filter between Plath’s life and poetry and our understanding, acts as the concrete in our cement recipe: “Peace- Freedom from conflict or dissonance between individuals, (esp. in early use, between an individual and God).” This seems to describe the primary goal of Plath’s life. For her, her father represented the most prominent symbol for ‘God,’ and his death early in her life was her greatest disillusionment with him. The word ‘big’ used to describe the fullness of her desired freedom from dissention with her father carries a lot of weight. Big, beyond the surface connotations of large size, is about inclusion, or, as the OED phrases it: “Filled to busting; teeming, pregnant.” So Plath’s use of ‘big’ isn’t just a reiteration of the fullness of the freedom, it also brings along a piece of the puzzle with life-giving symbolism printed on it. The word Plath uses to provide the image of what the peacefulness is big with is like the sun on days free of clouds and covering, and the OED defines is as; ”to prostrate the mental faculties… as by weariness; to benumb or confuse the senses; to confound or bewilder the vision with excess of light or brilliance.” So the inclusiveness of the freedom she sought, so teeming with light that it becomes excessive and prostrating to the mental faculties was her replacement for the prostrating nature of her father’s brilliance to her mental continuity.  

                In order to clear up the image in line 33 let’s retreat once again to the perspective gained through the poem’s title and look at line 51 of Daddy, it goes: “You stand at the blackboard, daddy.” It only seems logical that for Plath, her peace, her freedom from the Daddy that “d[id] not do any more” might possibly be full of a lack of questions fired from the blackboard like panzer shells. The second portion of line 33 seems to state that, for her, peace only required letting go of herself, and the idea of things as possessions that are valuable in themselves.

Turning now to line 34, the word ‘close’ pops into the foreground and brings us back to the beginning. The OED defines it, in its verb form, as: “to stop an opening, to shut; to cover in; to contain (enclose); to include, contain within itself.” If we include the adjectival definitions some shade might be found that supports Plath’s conjecture: “close- of proximity in space, time, form, or state… of intervening space or spaces closed up, whereby the parts are… near to each other.” Many of those who have experienced ‘near death experience(s)’ describe the perception of light and, in the Buddhist philosophy, a departing being is said to be presented with the ‘Pure Light’ that occasionally dazes and sends the being back into the cycle of birth and death. So, with the polarizing lenses of anecdotal philosophy and the OED, we discover that when we die, or near die, we come close to the light that fills and dazzles and sometimes seek again the shelter of embodiment. Then, finally, we ‘stop [the] opening’ of that book in our lives and begin “to include, contain within,” the light that is peace until we’re full. If only Sylvia could have found means to do so within her incredibly expansive imagination…