Lady Lazarus:
I don’t normally over-analyze poetry due to its personality and intricacies, but for this one, I will try my best as a first attempt. There must be a preface and content warning because this poem and the explanation will bring certain topics like suicide and death; be aware that I will tread carefully.
Lady Lazarus is a poem written by
American poet Sylvia Plath and published alongside several others in a
posthumous anthology by her husband in 1965; the title of the poetry collection
is Ariel. The reason for the posthumous publishing is that Plath killed herself
in 1963 from carbon monoxide poisoning, after already trying several other times
before. Plath was diagnosed with clinical depression—others comment that she suffered
from Bipolar Depression Disorder.
Let’s begin with the title: Lady
Lazarus. It refers to Lazarus of Bethany, a biblical character that Jesus
helped revive four days after his death, saving him from hell. Although a sign
of revival, Plath did not intend on being revived in this poem as she
inserts herself as the protagonist and title-bearer. She takes on the
characteristics of the death rather than the revival, knowing herself that it
was impossible to come back to life; or more accurately, not wanting to come
back. Regardless, in the end, she comes to terms as if she herself were immortal
after tempting death more than once.
Her first eleven stanzas have a
connective theme: her body. She tells through various allegories how she feels
in her own skin, and what her limbs represent. One of the references is the Nazi
Lampshade; it was a lampshade made from human skin found in a concentration
camp—it was only one, meaning there was no recurring event to skinning people.
With the body in mind, Plath adds details that suggest she had attempted three times
to kill herself, but this was before her final attempt, indicating that she was
already planning her death.
The next fifteen stanzas dance
around the beauty and aesthetics of dying and death while also mentioning some
more metaphors on her body. Her belief is that dying is an art form, inferring
that she is practiced in the art of dying. Beauty comes from experience.
In between the last seventeen
stanzas, Plath incorporates aspects that directly relate to the title. She
mentions how the action of suicide is to feel like hell and that she does it
really well, due to her attempting two times in the past and will end it with a
final third time. However, the nail in the coffin is the two final stanzas
calling to God and Lucifer with the German honorific noun for sir (Herr God,
Herr Lucifer). Here is where everything changes; Plath now warns both that she
will emerge from the ashes like a phoenix, giving meaning to the title rather
than herself as the self-inserted protagonist.
The self-portrait of one's sadness put
into words, with a beautiful structure, gives you the dichotomy of how alluring
death can be from the perspective of someone that has already tried to commit
to it prior times. Not a typical worldview, but one shared and understood from
the standpoint of satiric aesthetic or a paradoxical desire. Beauty is in the
eye of the beholder, while death does not concern us, it is in beauty we glare
at the abyss absentmindedly.