A review by larakas1
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath

5.0

will forever be my favorite

I have found so much of myself in these lines. She captures what it means to become a woman, what it means to be one. Her words in this are raw, messy and intimate. I underlined so so many quotes, found parts of me in each one of them. read this almost a year ago and till this day many of her quotes I think of and go back to, here’s some of them:

“But of all the nights, rushing backward along the rocket-track of your experience and receding into the dark of your past subconsciousness, remember, remember how he trusting looked long and sweetly at you out of the dark at the door with all the wild wind in the dark grasses, and how love was there in his face – making you, miraculously, the dream girl and woman, sister and sweetheart, mother and spiritual mistress. You walked in, laughter, tears, welling confused, mingling in your throat. How can you be so many women to so many people, oh you strange girl? All the young growing and testing and being once burned and twice shy and not knowing what to do, or where, or when to be how. And then this, the sudden intuitive flash, the sudden knowing when it is right to render up a dream, to speak so, to love so. It comes ripe in you suddenly and there is the taste of wisdom, aged full and mellow-flavored. You have gotten drunk and elated on the young firm tart green of early apples, and never wanted other. But the first ripened apple breaks open its fruit on the palate, and the sweet, savory juice floods in vindication into the hungry mouth, lyric lovely on the tongue. Oh honey ancient gathered from the garden of rare weed and strange wild plant, years pass and you grow golden clear in the tree, shedding fragrance.”

The very first thing she mentions, how the gaze of loved ones can turn you into many different roles and give you many different identities; the dream girl, the sister, the mother. how can you be so many women to so many people, oh you strange girl?
And then comes the journey of growing up, the trials of becoming the woman that you are today. Being burned and twice shy. uncertain of who to be, when to dare, when to speak up. This line dares me to go back to the girl I once was, afraid to demand her presence, filled with nativity, of shyness to exist unapologetically and dream loudly
“But then this sudden intuitive flash” that moment when you become the woman that you are, the one who dares to speak so, to dream so. To carry this audacity to not shrink yourself, this wisdom that demands the world
Oh how I love this paragraph, the way it can be interpreted in many ways and still remain just as beautiful.

Another paragraph that stayed with me:
“So it all moves in the pageant toward the ending, its own ending. Everywhere, imperceptibly or otherwise, things are passing, ending, going. And there will be other summers, other band concerts, but never this one, never again, never as now. Next year I will not be the self of this year now. And that is why I laugh at the transient, the ephemeral; laugh, while clutching, holding, tenderly, like a fool his toy, cracked glass, water through fingers. For all the writing, for all the invention of engines to express & convey & capture life, it is the living of it that is the gimmick. It goes by, and whatever dream you use to dope up the pains and hurts, it goes."

One other line from her book that says “I am a part of all I have met”
I am a part of all the passers by in my life, all the authors I’ve read, all the thoughts strangers have said, I’m a part of everything I’ve cried for, of people I’d die for. So yes this line so beautiful. I am a part of all I’ve met, and I’ll always carry this heaviness of everything had shaped me with me. Most certainly, Sylvia's book will always be a part of who I am <3
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