Sylvia Plath’s Mourning and Creativity Essay -- Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plaths Mourning and CreativityAbstractIn this article, I concentrate on the connection between sorrow and creativityin Sylvia Plaths work. Melanie Klein postulates that the pain of mourning and thefix experienced in the depressive position is the basis of creative activity.Through creative activity, one dissolve restore lost internal and external objects and losthappiness. I argue that Plaths work is an example of Kleins idea that artistscreative products represent the play of mourning. For Plath, art -- in her case,writing -- was a compensation for loss, especially the loss of her father. She seemsto have continued writing as her exercise in mourning and reparation trying toregain not only her bereaved father but also her internal good object which was lostwhen her father died. Through her writing, Plath attempt to enrich her ego withthe father-object.Keywords Sylvia Plath, Melanie Klein, mourning, creativity, reparationIn her paper, Mourning and its Relation to Manic-Dep ressive States,Melanie Klein claims that the work of mourning is a reliving of the early depressiveposition. I would like to commendation Kleins accountMy experience leads me to conclude that, while it is true that thecharacteristic feature of normal mourning is the individuals setting up thelost loved object inner(a) himself, he is not doing so for the first time but,through the work of mourning, is reinstating that object as well as all hisloved internal objects which he feels he has lost. He is therefore recoveringwhat he had already attained in childhood. (Klein, 1988a, p. 362)According to Kleins hypothesis, the loss of the present object in the external adult malebrings with it the mourners unc... ...lath, 2000, p.300).Works CitedArnold, Matthew, The Poems of Matthew Arnold, ed. by Kenneth Allott, 2nd ed. byMiriam Allott (London Longman, 1979).Ellmann, Maud, ed., Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism (London/ New YorkLongman, 1994).Melanie Klein, Love, Guilt and Reparation (Lon don Virago, 1988a).---, Envy and Gratitude (London Virago, 1988b).Plath, Sylvia, Letters Home Correspondence 1950-1963, ed. by Aurelia Schober Plath(London Faber, 1976).---, Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams and Other Prose Writings (London Faber,1979).---, Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath, ed. by Ted Hughes (New York Harper & Row,1981).---, The Unabridged daybooks of Sylvia Plath, ed. by Karen V. Kukil (New YorkRandom House, 2000).Segal, Hanna, A Psycho-Analytical Approach to Aesthetics, International Journalof Psycho-Analysis vol. 33 (1952).