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

Sylvia Plaths Mourning and CreativityAbstractIn this article, I concentrate on the connection between mourning and creativityin Sylvia Plaths work. Melanie Klein postulates that the pain of mourning and thereparation experienced in the depressive position is the basis of creative activity.Through creative activity, one faeces restore disoriented internal and external objects and losthappiness. I implore that Plaths work is an example of Kleins idea that artistscreative products establish the process of mourning. For Plath, art -- in her case,writing -- was a compensation for loss, particularly the loss of her father. She seemsto have continued writing as her exercise in mourning and reparation trying toregain non only her bereaved father 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-Depressive States,Melanie Klein claims that the work of mourning is a re-experiencing of the early depressiveposition. I would like to quote Kleins accountMy experience leads me to shut that, while it is true that thecharacteristic feature of normal mourning is the individuals picture 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 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 realnessbrings 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 check (London/ New YorkLongman, 1994).Melanie Klein, Love, Guilt and Reparation (London Virago, 1988a).---, Envy and Gratitude (London Virago, 1988b).Plath, Sylvia, Letters Home balance 1950-1963, ed. by Aurelia Schober Plath(London Faber, 1976).---, Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams and Other Prose Writings (London Faber,1979).---, quiet 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 court to Aesthetics, International Journalof Psycho-Analysis vol. 33 (1952).