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

Sylvia Plaths wo and CreativityAbstractIn this article, I concentrate on the connection between grief and creativityin Sylvia Plaths work. Melanie Klein postulates that the pain of mourning and thereparation experienced in the depressive strength is the basis of creative activity.Through creative activity, one can come to lost internal and external objects and losthappiness. I argue that Plaths work is an example of Kleins idea that artistscreative products represent the regale of mourning. For Plath, art -- in her case,writing -- was a compensation for bolshie, especially the loss of her catch. She seemsto have continued writing as her exercise in mourning and reparation trying toregain not only her bereaved fix but also her internal good object which was lostwhen her father died. Through her writing, Plath attempted to enrich her ego withthe father-object.Keywords Sylvia Plath, Melanie Klein, mourning, creativity, reparationIn her paper, Mourning and its Relation to Manic-D epressive States,Melanie Klein claims that the work of mourning is a reliving of the primaeval depressiveposition. I would like to quote Kleins accountMy experience leads me to conclude that, turn it is true that thecharacteristic feature of normal mourning is the individuals setting up thelost loved object inside himself, he is not doing so for the first time but,through the work of mourning, is reinstating that object as considerably 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)harmonize to Kleins hypothesis, the loss of the present object in the external worldbrings with it the mourners unc... ...lath, 2000, p.300). working 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/ refreshful YorkLongman, 1994).Melanie Klein, Love, Guilt and Repar ation (London 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 Journals of Sylvia Plath, ed. by Karen V. Kukil (New YorkRandom House, 2000).Segal, Hanna, A Psycho-Analytical Approach to Aesthetics, supranational Journalof Psycho-Analysis vol. 33 (1952).