Introduction to Literature

1
Introduction to Literature

• Lesson FIVE Roethke and plath
• Family Relationships

Margarette Connor
2
Outline

• Theodore Roethke
• intentional fallacy
• My Papas Waltz discussion
• Sylvia Plath
• Daddy discussion

3
Theodore Roethke (1908-1963)

• Considered by many critics to be one of the most
  important American poets of the 20th century.

4
His influence

• Roethke's pioneering explorations of nature,
  regional settings, depth psychology, and personal
  confessionalism--coupled with his stylistic
  innovations in open form poetics and his mastery
  of traditional, fixed forms--have secured his
  reputation as one of the most distinguished and
  widely read American poets of the twentieth
  century.
• American National Biography.

5
Early life

• Born in Saginaw, Michigan.
• Son of Otto Roethke and Helen Huebner
• As a child, he spent much time in the greenhouse
  owned by his father and uncle.
• impressions of the natural world contained there
  would later profoundly influence the subjects and
  imagery of his verse.
• When he was 15, his father died of cancer
• would powerfully shape Roethke's psychic and
  creative lives.

6
Education

• 1925 to 1929 at the University of Michigan at Ann
  Arbor, graduating magna cum laude.
• Resisting family pressure to pursue a legal
  career, he quit law school after one semester
• 1929 to 1931, he took graduate courses at the
  University of Michigan and later the Harvard
  Graduate School, where he worked closely with the
  poet Robert Hillyer.
• The Great Depression forced Roethke to leave
  Harvard and to take up teaching at Lafayette
  College from 1931 to 1935.

7
Beginning career

• In the fall of 1935 Roethke assumed his second
  teaching post at Michigan State College at
  Lansing
• soon hospitalized for what would prove to be
  recurring bouts of mental illness.
• Throughout his subsequent career Roethke used
  these periodic incidents of depression for
  creative self-exploration.
• They allowed him, as he said, to "reach a new
  level of reality.
• Taught at Pennsylvania State Univ, 1936 - 1943,
  publishing in Poetry, the New Republic, the
  Saturday Review, and Sewanee Review.

8
First book

• Open House (1941), took ten years to write
• Critically acclaimed upon its publication.
• Many poets influenced the work, including TS
  Eliot, but the book's subjective focus on
  personal experience marked an important departure
  from T. S. Eliot's doctrine of poetic
  impersonality, stated in "Tradition and the
  Individual Talent," (1917), and from what the New
  Critics W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley later
  deplored as the intentional fallacy.

9
Intentional fallacy

• Many modern critics regard a literary work as a
  public document, complete in itself, and the
  writers intention of writing the work, if he had
  one other than the invariable intentional of
  writing the work, an external irrelevance. The
  error in judging a work by the authors
  success or failure in achieving his intention
  these critics call the intentional or
  generic failure. (cont)

TS Eliot
10
More on intentional fallacy

• In The Verbal Icon, Wimsatt and Beardsley wrote,
  The poem is not the critics own and not the
  authors (it is detached from the author at birth
  and goes about the world beyond his power to
  intend upon it or control it). The poem belongs
  to the public.What is said about the poem such
  as the poets statement of intention is subject
  to the same scrutiny as any statement in
  linguistics or in the general science of
  psychology.)
• definition from Beckson and Ganz, Literary Terms,
  a Dictionary

11
Bennington years

• In 1943 he left Penn State to teach at Bennington
  College,
• a major arts school in America, known for the
  number of writers who teach/attend

12
Important second book

• 1948 published second, pivotal, volume, The Lost
  Son and Other Poems.
• Includes My Papas Waltz
• In the so-called "greenhouse poems," the metaphor
  of the open house passes into the figure of the
  glasshouse as the dominant symbol of the self's
  interior, existential world.

13
Roethke on his work

• In "An American Poet Introduces Himself and His
  Poems" (BBC broadcast, 30 July 1953), Roethke
  described the glasshouse, as
• "both heaven and hell.... It was a universe,
  several worlds, which, even as a child, one
  worried about, and struggled to keep alive."

14
Last ten years height of his popularity

• worked last at the University of Washington,
  where he was mentor to a generation of Northwest
  poets
• 1953 married Beatrice O'Connell, whom he had met
  during his earlier stint at Bennington
• reputation grew with each new collection,
  including The Waking which was awarded the
  Pulitzer Prize in 1954.
• 1955 and 1956 Roethkes traveled in Italy, Europe,
  and England on a Fulbright grant.
• 1957 published Words for the Wind, which won all
  sorts of prizes for poetry
• Died in 1963, at the height of his popularity.

15
My Papa's Waltz (1)

• The whiskey on your breath
• Could make a small boy dizzy
• But I hung on like death
• Such waltzing was not easy.
• We romped until the pans
• Slid from the kitchen shelf
• My mother's countenance
• Could not unfrown itself.
• ? We see family dynamics here the little boy is
  clinging to his father, hes a little bit afraid
  her mother is not happy

16
My Papa's Waltz (2)

• The hand that held my wrist
• Was battered on one knuckle
• At every step you missed
• My right ear scraped a buckle.
• ?a painful memory for the little boy but also NOT
  a painful memory

17
My Papa's Waltz (3)

• You beat time on my head
• With a palm caked hard by dirt,
• Then waltzed me off to bed
• Still clinging to your shirt.
• The title Papa, the author chooses the familiar
  and the affectionate and Waltz is the loving
  dance theres pain and fear here, but theres
  also love and affection.
• other interpretation of this poem? the child is
  being abused?

18
Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)

• Mixed reactions to her poems
• her suicide and relationship with her husband Ted
  Hughes, who later became Britains Poet Laureate,
  often color reaction to her works.

19
Parents

• Daughter of Otto Plath and Aurelia Schober,
  German immigrants to the US.
• Father an entomologist who taught at Boston
  University
• Mother later taught secretarial skills there

20
Fathers early death

• 1940 Father died when Plath was 8 of diabetes
  mellitus, which at the time was a very curable
  disease.
• Upon his death a friend only asked, "How could
  such a brilliant man have been so stupid?"
• The disease contributed to gangrene in his toe,
  which turned black from the disease.
• This appears in Daddy.

21
Early education

• Excellent and hardworking student, had already
  published some of her stories and poetry before
  she left high school.
• Her first poem appeared when she was eight in the
  Boston Herald (10 August 1941, page B-8)
• Scholarship to Smith College, an excellent
  womans college in Massachusetts. Entered in
  September 1950.

Schoolgirl Plath
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Early successes

• Beginning in 1950 began publishing in national
  periodicals.
• "Youth's Appeal for World Peace published
  Christian Science Monitor ,16 March.
• Short story "And Summer Will Not Come Again"
  appeared August Seventeen
• Poem "Bitter Strawberries" appeared Christian
  Science Monitor ,11 August .
• Throughout 1951-2 published quite a bit.
• 1953 also writing articles for local newspapers
  like the Daily Hampshire Gazette and the
  Springfield Union as their Smith College
  correspondent.

23
Important experiences

• Her short story, 'Sunday at the Mintons' won
  first prize in a Mademoiselle contest.
• From this story, she also won a one-month, summer
  Guest Editorship at Mademoiselle.
• She spent June 1953 in NYC, and was hoping to be
  admitted to Harvards Summer Writing Program for
  the rest of the summer.
• She did not get accepted.

Plath around this time
24
First suicide attempt

• 24 August 1953, Plath left a note saying, "Have
  gone for a long walk. Will be home tomorrow."
• Instead, she swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills
  in the familys basement in a suicide attempt.
• She was found and spent many months hospitalized,
  receiving many treatments, including shock
  treatments.

25
The Bell Jar

• The novel, The Bell Jar , written under the
  pseudonym Victoria Lucas, is a thinly disguised
  memoir of the period in her life
  from the Mademoiselle internship through
  her recovery.

26
Back to school

• Readmitted to Smith in the Spring 1954 term and
  went on to graduate summa cum laude.
• Won a Fulbright Scholarship Newnham College,
  Cambridge University, a life-changing event.

The River Cam, Cambridge
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Ted Hughes

• February 1955, at a party she met
  Ted Hughes, a young English poet
  whose works she had just read and memorized.
• The attraction was intense and instant.
• They married June 1956 in London.
• The partnership with Hughes, while eventually
  personally destructive, was a strong and positive
  influence on Plaths development as a poet.

28
Back to America

• 1957, Hughes won first prize in the New York
  Poetry Center contest judged by Marianne Moore,
  W.H. Auden and Stephen Spender for his book The
  Hawk in the Rain.
• Plath was offered a teaching job at Smith
  College.
• She studies hard to finish her graduation exams
• In the fall, they go to America.

29
Teaching Experience

• Plath was very unsure about her own teaching
  ability, and was extremely frustrated by the lack
  of time for her own writing.
• At the end of one year, the couple decided to
  focus on their writing and give up academia.

30
Yaddo

• Fall 1959, Hughes and Plath stayed at Yaddo, a
  famous writer's colony in Saratoga Springs, New
  York,
• Plath finally had a breakthrough in her writing.
• During this time, she had been closely reading
  the poetry of Theodore Roethke.
• Plath was also pregnant, and Hughes wanted the
  child born in England. In December 59 they went
  back

31
Major output on two levels

• 1960, settled in London.
• In April, Frieda Rebecca, was born.
• Plath's first collection of poetry, The Colossus
  and Other Poems published in October.
• Demands of motherhood limited her writing output.

32
Illnesses and writing

• February 1961 Plath had a miscarriage followed
  closely by an appendectomy, which left her
  hospitalized for a number of weeks
• The illness led to a writing frenzy. According
  to the only authorized biography, Bitter Fame,
  she began The Bell Jar in March 1961 and wrote it
  in 70 days.

33
Joy and sadness

• January 1962 had a son, Nicholas Farrar
• She starts another frenzy of writing around April
  of that year.
• May 1962, Plath discovers Hughes is having an
  affair.
• Tried to patch up their relationship on holiday
  in September, but it deteriorates.
• He moves out.

34
Major writing frenzy

• October 1962 and January and February 1963 she
  created an incredible output of poems,
  including Daddy.

Plath with her children, Frieda and Nicholas
35
The End

• On February 11, 1963, Plath commits suicide,
  though some think it may have just been a cry for
  help that went awry.

36
Misguided critics

• The critic Elizabeth Hardwick writes that Plaths
  father died of a long illness, but there is no
  pity for his lost life adding that he did not
  kill anyone and the fat black heart of the
  poem is really Plaths own and concluding that
  to bring strangers, the towninto the punishment
  of her father. . .is somehow the most biting and
  ungenerous thought of all.

37
Daddy (1)

• You do not do, you do not do
• Any more, black shoe
• In which I have lived like a foot
• For thirty years, poor and white,
• Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

38
Daddy (2)

• Daddy, I have had to kill you.
• You died before I had time--
• Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
• Ghastly statue with one gray toe
• Big as a Frisco seal

39
Daddy (3)

• And a head in the freakish Atlantic
• Where it pours bean green over blue
• In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
• I used to pray to recover you.
• Ach, du.
• ?shes remembering praying to have her father back

40
Daddy (4)

• In the German tongue, in the Polish town
• Scraped flat by the roller
• Of wars, wars, wars.
• But the name of the town is common.
• ?feel unprotected after her father died after
  the war, anti-German feeling going on We can
  feel the girls hatred , anger, and shame.

41
Daddy (5)

• My Polack friend
• Says there are a dozen or two.
• So I never could tell where you
• Put your foot, your root.
• I never could talk to you.
• The tongue stuck in my jaw.
• It stuck in a barb wire snare.
• Ich, ich, ich, ich,
• I could hardly speak.
• I thought every German was you.
• And the language obscene

42
Daddy (6)

• An engine, an engine
• Chuffing me off like a Jew.
• A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
• I began to talk like a Jew.
• I think I may well be a Jew.

43
Daddy (7)

• The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
• Are not very pure or true.
• With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck
• And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
• I may be a bit of a Jew.

44
Daddy (8)

• I have always been scared of you,
• With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
• And your neat mustache
• And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
• Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You

45
Daddy (9)

• Every woman adores a Fascist,
• The boot in the face, the brute
• Brute heart of a brute like you. ? her father
  abandon her emotionally
• You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
• In the picture I have of you,
• A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
• But no less a devil for that, no not
• Any less the black man who
• Bit my pretty red heart in two.
• I was ten when they buried you

46
Daddy (10)

• At twenty I tried to die
• And get back, back, back to you.
• I thought even the bones would do.
• But they pulled me out of the sack,
• And they stuck me together with glue.
• And then I knew what to do.
• I made a model of you,
• A man in black with a Meinkampf look
• ? She replaced her father with another man

47
Daddy (11)

• And a love of the rack and the screw.
• And I said I do, I do.
• So daddy, I'm finally through.
• The black telephone's off at the root,
• The voices just can't worm through.
• ?shes talking about a new man, not her father
  anymore. The new man is her husband.

48
Daddy (12)

• If I've killed one man, I've killed two--
• The vampire who said he was you
• And drank my blood for a year,
• Seven years, if you want to know.

49
Daddy (13)

• Daddy, you can lie back now.
• There's a stake in your fat black heart
• And the villagers never liked you.
• They are dancing and stamping on you.
• They always knew it was you.
• Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.

50
Daddy (14)

• When we read closely, we see that shes dealing
  with her emotions that she had with her father
  and moved it (the emotion) to her husband.