A Knowable World è una raccolta completamente diversa da Score! Era immaginabile. Me lo aspettavo. Forse sono rimasta un po’ delusa. Nel senso che mi aspettavo un’atmosfera più simile a quella di Sylvia Plath rispetto a quello che ho trovato. C’è qualche momento intenso, è vero, ma per lo più il tono è quasi freddo, distaccato.
Alcuni passaggi intensi, bellissimi, però li ho trovati. Il primo è sicuramente il sonetto che apre la raccolta, "Magnetic Resonance Imaging" che descrive l’effetto di una risonanza magnetica. Sospeso tra immagini tecnologiche (“two walls of magnets” “I lay in this nuclear missile”) e mediche (“my brain was scanned / for shading of schizophrenic detail” “What didn’t show were bipolar symptoms”) si chiude su una metafora di morte:
"I KEPT SPEAKING POEMS I HAD WRITTEN / TO MYSELF, TRAPPED INSIDE THAT WHITE COFFIN."
Un altro momento intenso, anche se breve è in "Harrowing":
E' un passaggio molto bello, che descrive la disperazione della fuga, indotta dallo stress dell’ennesima iniezione, vissuta come una reiterata violenza. Questa sensazione almeno è in comune con la Plath. In particolare, c’è un passaggio in The Bell Jar in cui Sylvia osserva i segni delle ripetute iniezioni:
"I RAISED MY HEAD AND GLANCED BACK AT MY BARE BUTTOCK. THEY WERE BRUISED PURPLE AND GREEN AND BLUE FROM PAST INJECTIONS."
In effetti c’è una grossa differenza tra il trattamento subito dalla Plath e quello della Wardle: non è da dimenticare che la prima subì l’elettroshock.
Un altro momento in cui si percepisce la sensazione di una violenza subita è in “PRN”, dove l’intervento di forzatura delle infermiere per somministrare la medicazione viene percepito come una violenza (‘feels like sexual violation’; ‘the needle rapes you with its prick’).
Quando descrive i pazienti dell’ospedale psichiatrico (ironicamente paragonato ad un hotel) si ha davvero la sensazione di una umanità degradata in attesa di qualcosa: "PEOPLE LOST IN THE IN BETWEEN / OF LIFE, AS SOME MAKE GOOD AND OTHERS FALL BACK". Il senso di prigionia si rafforza in "From Room 3", in cui scrive “I try to preserve my sanity / by sending poems to myself on paper” “I look out, deprived of liberty”, “I cannot see the sky”. L’effetto della prigionia, insieme alla solitudine, portano a ulteriori tristi riflessioni in ‘Solitude’: “locked on a ward with languages’ silence / Left by a radiator with one’s thoughts”. Questo silenzio, su cui si insiste, era percepito in maniera drammatica anche da Sylvia Plath, che scriveva: “The silence drew off, baring the pebbles and shells and all the tatty wreckage of my life”.
La parte più deludente, per me, è probabilmente data dall’infatuazione per lo psichiatra che l’aveva in cura. Questa infatuazione allontana la Wardle dalla sensazione di essere vittima di un continuo sopruso che invece pervade i testi della Plath. Addirittura in “Recipe for Disability” lo humour caratterizza ogni verso nella descrizione del trattamento riservato ai pazienti, secondo le indicazioni di un ricettario:
C’è un’intensa ricerca di significato che investe le parole, la forma poetica: si parla di ‘clause’, ‘subordinate’, ‘meaning’ ‘words’ ‘lines’, ‘pentameter’, ‘discourses’… come se l’insistenza nel capire ciò che sta accadendo coinvolga anche le parole per descriverlo ed il loro significato. In “Author! Author!” insiste sul rapporto tra lo scrittore e le parole che usa, lo descrive come un rapporto speciale, che il lettore non potrà mai capire fino in fondo. C’è anche una riflessione in forma di dialogo filosofico: “A Dialogue Beteen the Body and the Soul”, in cui ciascuno dei due elementi si ritiene predominante nell’essere umano. Non mancano i riferimenti alla mitologia classica, alla letteratura, all’arte: Orfeo ed Euridice, Sofocle, Shakespeare, Van Gogh. Ma in mezzo a tutto ciò compaiono anche riferimenti alla cultura popolare: dai ritornelli di canzoni di Kylie Minogue al calcio.
SARAH WARDLE: A KNOWABLE WORLD
A Knowable World is completely different from Score! Unsurprisingly. I was a little bit disappointed, though. I mean… I was expecting an atmosphere more similar to Sylvia Plath rather than what I found. There are some intense moments, it’s true, but the tone is generally cold, detached.
However, there are some beautiful verses. The sonnet that opens the collection -”Magnetic Resonance Imaging” is one of those intense moments. It is suspended between technological metaphors (“two walls of magnets” “I lay in this nuclear missile”) and medical imagery (“my brain was scanned / for shading of schizophrenic detail” “What didn’t show were bipolar symptoms”) and it closes with a metaphor of death:
"I KEPT SPEAKING POEMS I HAD WRITTEN / TO MYSELF, TRAPPED INSIDE THAT WHITE COFFIN."
Another intense yet short moment is in “Harrowing”:
“AFTER TWO INJECTIONS BY NIGHT I FLED THE CLINIC,
ESCAPING THROUGH A NARROW BATHROOM WINDOW
SHOELESS, WITHOUT CHANGE,WITH CLOTHES RIPPED,
GETTING AS FAR AS THE GATED TUBE AT SOUTH HARROW
BEFORE GOING BACK TO FACE THE MUSIC.”
They are beautiful verses, describing her desperate stress-induced escape, because of the umpteenth injection, which was felt like a repeated violence. At least this is something we can find in Plath’s poems. In particular, there are some lines in The Bell Jar where Sylvia watches the injection marks:
"I RAISED MY HEAD AND GLANCED BACK AT MY BARE BUTTOCK. THEY WERE BRUISED PURPLE AND GREEN AND BLUE FROM PAST INJECTIONS."
I know, Plath’s and Wardle’s treatments were completely different: I didn’t forget the former endured shock therapy.
Another passage where you can feel the violence suffered is “PRN”, where the nurses’ action to administer medicine is really perceived as an act of violence (“feels like sexual violation”; “the needle rapes you with its prick”).
When she describes the patients at the mental hospital (which is ironically compared to a hotel) you really get the impression of a degraded humanity waiting for something: “People lost in the in between / of life, as some make good and others fall back”.
In other passages you get the feeling of imprisonment, like in “From Room 3”, in which she writes “I try to preserve my sanity / by sending poems to myself on paper” “I look out, deprived of liberty”, “I cannot see the sky”.
Captivity and loneliness lead to other sad reflections in “Solitude”: “locked on a ward with languages’ silence / Left by a radiator with one’s thoughts”. This insisted silence was felt by Sylvia Plath, too when she wrote: “The silence drew off, baring the pebbles and shells and all the tatty wreckage of my life”.
The most disappointing part was probably her infatuation with the psychiatrist who attended her. It is something that somehow denies the impression of her being a victim of repeated abuses which, on the contrary, pervades Plath’s poems. In “Recipe for Disability” humour is introduced and characterizes the poem as the treatment of patients is compared to recipe instructions:
"Take the symptoms of mania / Add a crush on a consultant. Stir / well. Reduce the dose of valium / spice with nurses visiting one’s home. / The social workers, a crisis team. / Marinate in an assessment for a section. / Freeze for weeks in a mental ward / past the use-by date. Then discard."
There’s an intense search for meaning: the words ‘clause’, 'subordinate', 'meaning', 'lines', 'pentameter', 'discourses' recur throughout the poems… as if the attempt to understand what is happening somehow involves the words used to describe it.
In “Author! Author!” she insists on the relationship between a writer and the words used and she describes it as a special relationship that the reader can never fully understand.
There’s also a reflection that takes the form of a philosophical dialogue: “A Dialogue Between the Body and the Soul”, where both elements think to be prevailing in humans.
There are also references to classical mythology, literature and art -Orpheus and Eurydice, Sophocles, Shakespeare, Van Gogh- but also to popular culture: from Kylie Minogue to football.
SARAH WARDLE: A KNOWABLE WORLD
A Knowable World is completely different from Score! Unsurprisingly. I was a little bit disappointed, though. I mean… I was expecting an atmosphere more similar to Sylvia Plath rather than what I found. There are some intense moments, it’s true, but the tone is generally cold, detached.
However, there are some beautiful verses. The sonnet that opens the collection -”Magnetic Resonance Imaging” is one of those intense moments. It is suspended between technological metaphors (“two walls of magnets” “I lay in this nuclear missile”) and medical imagery (“my brain was scanned / for shading of schizophrenic detail” “What didn’t show were bipolar symptoms”) and it closes with a metaphor of death:
"I KEPT SPEAKING POEMS I HAD WRITTEN / TO MYSELF, TRAPPED INSIDE THAT WHITE COFFIN."
Another intense yet short moment is in “Harrowing”:
“AFTER TWO INJECTIONS BY NIGHT I FLED THE CLINIC,
ESCAPING THROUGH A NARROW BATHROOM WINDOW
SHOELESS, WITHOUT CHANGE,WITH CLOTHES RIPPED,
GETTING AS FAR AS THE GATED TUBE AT SOUTH HARROW
BEFORE GOING BACK TO FACE THE MUSIC.”
They are beautiful verses, describing her desperate stress-induced escape, because of the umpteenth injection, which was felt like a repeated violence. At least this is something we can find in Plath’s poems. In particular, there are some lines in The Bell Jar where Sylvia watches the injection marks:
"I RAISED MY HEAD AND GLANCED BACK AT MY BARE BUTTOCK. THEY WERE BRUISED PURPLE AND GREEN AND BLUE FROM PAST INJECTIONS."
I know, Plath’s and Wardle’s treatments were completely different: I didn’t forget the former endured shock therapy.
Another passage where you can feel the violence suffered is “PRN”, where the nurses’ action to administer medicine is really perceived as an act of violence (“feels like sexual violation”; “the needle rapes you with its prick”).
When she describes the patients at the mental hospital (which is ironically compared to a hotel) you really get the impression of a degraded humanity waiting for something: “People lost in the in between / of life, as some make good and others fall back”.
In other passages you get the feeling of imprisonment, like in “From Room 3”, in which she writes “I try to preserve my sanity / by sending poems to myself on paper” “I look out, deprived of liberty”, “I cannot see the sky”.
Captivity and loneliness lead to other sad reflections in “Solitude”: “locked on a ward with languages’ silence / Left by a radiator with one’s thoughts”. This insisted silence was felt by Sylvia Plath, too when she wrote: “The silence drew off, baring the pebbles and shells and all the tatty wreckage of my life”.
The most disappointing part was probably her infatuation with the psychiatrist who attended her. It is something that somehow denies the impression of her being a victim of repeated abuses which, on the contrary, pervades Plath’s poems. In “Recipe for Disability” humour is introduced and characterizes the poem as the treatment of patients is compared to recipe instructions:
"Take the symptoms of mania / Add a crush on a consultant. Stir / well. Reduce the dose of valium / spice with nurses visiting one’s home. / The social workers, a crisis team. / Marinate in an assessment for a section. / Freeze for weeks in a mental ward / past the use-by date. Then discard."
There’s an intense search for meaning: the words ‘clause’, 'subordinate', 'meaning', 'lines', 'pentameter', 'discourses' recur throughout the poems… as if the attempt to understand what is happening somehow involves the words used to describe it.
In “Author! Author!” she insists on the relationship between a writer and the words used and she describes it as a special relationship that the reader can never fully understand.
There’s also a reflection that takes the form of a philosophical dialogue: “A Dialogue Between the Body and the Soul”, where both elements think to be prevailing in humans.
There are also references to classical mythology, literature and art -Orpheus and Eurydice, Sophocles, Shakespeare, Van Gogh- but also to popular culture: from Kylie Minogue to football.
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