SYLVIA PLATH:TAKING SHAPE

Abstract

Unveiling a side of Sylvia Plath that remained hidden for a long time: her passion for visual arts, this work involves discovering the other side of the artistic experience of the young woman, who was fascinated by painting but enraptured by writing. Retracing the growing path of the poet, it is possible to observe how, during her life, she shared the tensions and beauties of modernity being divided between the two major arts: painting and poetry. Shedding light on the events that brought her to the mental breakdown, the effort to share her sensations and thoughts works as a therapeutic experience. From her childhood, she tended to tangle drawing and writing in her family letters or invented stories. It was during her student years at Smith College where she attended art lessons that she got closer to painting. Experimenting different range of techniques, her diaries became the canvas on which imprint her life vision, sketches and writing were often mixed up revealing an unexpected outcome. Plath attachment and dedication to visual arts is the testimony of her versatile nature, which allowed her to investigate the deepened layers of human emotions and uncertainties. In most cases, different ways of expression work as necessities of the artist to find new artistic methods to shape the perceptions and emotions that otherwise would not find an appropriate realization through their usual technique. Starting from this point of view, the intrinsic relationship between painting and writing can assume a different connotation. The two arts often move in binary correlation; it was with the Latin poet Horace, that the formula ut pictura poesis took place. Both figurative arts are employed in order to provide beneficiary aesthetic pleasure, and for this reason, their link cannot be underestimated. Focusing on the double nature of the artist, this work moves on to show and analyse the natural connection between Plath’s writing and figurative art. How one depends on the other and how the visual has influenced the artistic process of the poet in a course that allows the viewer to observe the result of Sylvia Plath artistic effort from a different point of view.