Sylvia Plath's LADY LAZARUS Poem: ON LIFE, DEATH AND RESURRECTION

‘He cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth!”
And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes, and his face was bound about with a napkin.’
----John: Chapter 11, Verses 43-44

Sylvia Plath's poem 'Lady Lazarus' is an exploration of her powerlessness against the unstoppable death instinct, yet one where she attempts, as the artist that she is, to transform this powerlessness into its opposite, by mythologising herself as the female version of Lazarus who was raised by Jesus in the Bible.

Plath explores many themes from death and resurrection, to the voyeurism of the supposedly concerned crowds (that is the relationship between sex and death), through to nazi symbolism, as well as what she perceived (whether rightly or wrongly) to be the male oppressor in many forms, responsible for her miseries.

She declares a final judgement of the equivalence of good and evil (in the forms of God and Lucifer) due to their inherent male natures and therefore, moves beyond the moral sphere, as any true artist worth the name should do.

Full of depth of imagery and written in the same month as her poem 'Daddy' - which you can view here:    • Sylvia Plath's 'Daddy': Identities, S...   - Plath utilises a type of 'poetic justice' and announces that she will return to punish those responsible for her sufferings.


RECOMMENDED READING:

Ariel by Sylvia Plath: (includes the Poem 'Daddy'): Faber Modern Classics (Faber Poetry): https://amzn.to/33BxrRI

The Colossus By Sylvia Plath: (Faber Poetry): https://amzn.to/3iICfJn

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath: (her only novel): (Faber & Faber): https://amzn.to/36D8sPS

The Journals of Sylvia Plath: https://amzn.to/36DxH4y

A Collection of the Letters of Sylvia Plath Volume I: 1940–1956: https://amzn.to/33zv1mn

A Collection of the Letters of Sylvia Plath Volume II: 1956 – 1963: https://amzn.to/3jBfLLs

Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath: https://amzn.to/36AvmHx

The Theory of Psychoanalysis (for an introduction to the Electra complex), by Carl Gustav Jung: https://amzn.to/2Ssemei

The Freud Reader by Sigmund Freud (for an Introduction to the Oedipus complex - the forerunner to the Electra complex): (Vintage Classics): https://amzn.to/3d1kZxs


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