Poesía inglesa de los siglos XIX y XX    

Stasis in darkness.                                             
Then the substanceless blue
Pour of tor and distances.

 

God's lioness,
How one we grow,                                       5
Pivot of heels and knees!--The furrow

 

Splits and passes, sister to
The brown arc
Of the neck I cannot catch,

 

Nigger-eye                                                   10
Berries cast dark
Hooks----

 

Black sweet blood mouthfuls,
Shadows.
Something else                                              15

 

Hauls me through air----
Thighs, hair;
Flakes from my heels.

 

White
Godiva, I unpeel----                                      20
Dead hands, dead stringencies.

 

And now I
Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas.
The child's cry

 

Melts in the wall.                                            25
And I
Am the arrow,

 

The dew that flies,
Suicidal, at one with the drive
Into the red                                                    30

 

Eye, the cauldron of morning.[i]

 

 

1. INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this paper is to explore and interpret the most significant images as the imprisonment and escape in “Ariel”. An initial analysis of this archetypical theme of willingness to die through the different images will lead us to consider and appreciate the most intimate attitude and feelings of the poet.

Before we start the analysis, I would like to mention that in this paper there will be a very brief biographical information about the author, as from my point of view this poem stands on its own and speaks for itself.

 

2. ANALYSIS OF “ARIEL”

This poem carries the same name as its collection title: Ariel, which is the second book of Sylvia Plath's poetry to be published, in 1965, two years after her death by suicide. [ii]

The title "Ariel" carries multiple meanings; it refers to the ethereal spirit of Shakespeare's Tempest, but also significantly, Ariel happened to be the name of the (rather elderly, ponderous) horse on which Sylvia was learning to ride. Most potent of all, Ariel is the spirit of poetry, the romantic embodiment of inspiration or genius. In the canon of Sylvia's work, "Ariel" is supreme, a quintessential statement of all that had meaning for her.[iii]

 

The speaker is as much Ariel as the horse, and together they become the one thing.[iv]

 

 

A general overview of the poem could be summed up on a movement from “stasis” [line 1] and stillness towards a state of incredible speed. This poem talks about motion, a movement that symbolizes her longing to escape from the state of human being towards a higher level of existence: death. In order to convey this shift from existence to non-existence, Plath uses a series of images that we will later on develop in this section.

 

Ten tercets with a final verse constitutes the structure of the poem and according to the thematic point of view, it could be could be divided into three parts:

-         1^ST PART: lines 1 to 9

-         2^ND PART: lines10 to 21

-         3^RD PART: lines 22 to 31

 

The first part comprises the first three stanzas: at the very beginning of the poem we can notice the movement mentioned above, a state which does not change and remains in the darkness, to a sudden “substanceless blue” [line 2]. Thus we have here a shift from darkness to light, a process where the ceasing of activity gives place to a kind of awakening. This process could be identified, in a way, to a positive meaning of death, as if death is not the end but the beginning of existence.

The action accelerates steadily throughout the following stanzas, now she is riding in a horse and the speed she is trying to convey is supported by the enumeration of such images as “How one we grow” [line 3], “The furrow Splits and passes” [lines 6-7], and “Of the neck I cannot catch” [line 9]. The sensation of speed is boosted by the heap of images and the picture we see is that of her and her horse flying through the air, the speed is such that the speaker cannot even reach the neck of the horse and the definite sense we get as readers, is that of the speaker’s desire to escape from humanity.

In the second part the struggle between the poet and the obstacles of her surroundings comprise the main images. The berries that “cast dark Hooks” [lines 11-12] constitutes one of the obstacles that the poet has to face, but it soon becomes shadows.

As the sixth stanza begins, she is pulled onwards becoming thus more and more substancesless and the acceleration of the movement increases as the verses goes on:

“Hauls me through air----
Thighs, hair;
Flakes from my heels.” [Lines 16-17-18]

The seventh stanza compares the rider to a strong female figure, Lady Godiva:

“White
Godiva, I unpeel----
Dead hands, dead stringencies.” (Lines 19-20-21) 

According to the legend Godiva rode naked on a horse through Coventry in order to persuade her husband not to tax the townspeople so heavily.[v] In this sense, it could be interpreted that the woman in this poem is as brave as the white Godiva (physically, and emotionally, "white," a link to the many images of purity and chastity in these Ariel poems)[vi] to stand up for herself and fight against any obstacle that could have oppressed her.

Throughout the last part of the poem, the movement mentioned above achieves its highest position into a state of incredible speed, the character of the poem melts with nature and becomes that substanceless creature that appears in the first stanza. The narrator is not longer a human being, but she is continuously changing from “foam to wheat” [line 23] and from wheat to “a glitter of seas” [line 23]. She is transformed into an arrow and later into the dew, which evaporates at the appearance of heat of the morning. This final set of images symbolizes the release of the narrator and the end of her journey. Thus the flight from earthly life to achieve the condition of being insubstantial is finally fulfilled.

 

3. CONCLUSION

After having set up all this body of analysis, as I usually do, I feel terribly unsatisfied with the attempt to describe this poem and after hours of turning this problem over, I have finally realized that describing and understanding this poem has been a great task, but it is only a part of the process; the other part is to feel the poem because there are no words to describe the spiritual dimension that Plath is trying to convey to her readers. In other words, this poem, apart from being analysed and retold, it should be felt and experienced.

 

And finally, in order to conclude this paper, I would like to mention that what I most appreciated about this poem is that I have almost heard, touched and experienced this process of movement towards disintegration thanks to Plath’s precise usage of the images throughout the poem.