Sylvia Plath’s reputation, no doubt, influences the way readers approach her poetry. As soon as one encounters darkness, blackness, blindness, paleness, silence—or just about any term linked to depression, illness, and death—the reader is off and running, finding another gloom-filled Plath poem. While there are a few of her poems that this view fails to account for, most of the time it can, in fact, be of great assistance in interpreting Plath. Even her little lyric in Ariel titled “Morning Song” has a stretch of gloom expanding through it.
The poem I am focusing on here is from her transitional poems collected in her book of the same title Crossing the Water. My guess is that if Plath has not completed her suicide the poems in this volume would have taken a different interpretive turn for most readers. But as she did successfully close her life, most readers are directed to find those gloom-filled metaphors.
From my Classic Poetry web site I received a question about Sylvia Plath’s poem “Crossing the Water.” I decided that my interpretation of the poem could be useful for people interested in spirituality—or perhaps the antithesis of spirituality.
The poem consists of four three-line stanzas. I offer them here with my paraphrase following each stanza:
Crossing the Water by Sylvia Plath
Black lake, black boat, two black, cut-paper people.
Where do the black trees go that drink here?
Their shadows must cover Canada.
The speaker observes two people in a boat.
It is night or after dusk. The speaker wonders about
the trees in near the lake and muses that they must be
tall enough to throw their shadows over a whole country.
A little light is filtering from the water flowers.
Their leaves do not wish us to hurry:
They are round and flat and full of dark advice.
The water lilies seem to reflect some light, and the speaker
thinks they are inviting her to stay awhile. She describes their shape
and claims that she intuits some disturbing thoughts from them.
Cold worlds shake from the oar.
The spirit of blackness is in us, it is in the fishes.
A snag is lifting a valedictory, pale hand;
The speaker imagines an other-worldliness bouncing off the ends
of the oars as the rowers continue to cross the lake. The speaker
is filled with darkness, and she even claims that that darkness even
fills the fish in the lake. She sees the rowers have some difficulty as if
hung up on some obstruction; she imagines it to be the hand of a dead body
greeting the rowers.
Stars open among the lilies.
Are you not blinded by such expressionless sirens?
This is the silence of astounded souls.
She sees the reflection of stars on the water between the water lilies
and asks herself if such sights don't impair her vision because
they are so beautiful yet so non-committal. And then her last claim
reveals that not only is the darkness overwhelming, but also the
silence of the night overcomes her.
Perhaps the most telling line in this poem is “The spirit of blackness is in us, it is in the fishes.” As the spirit of darkness is within us, so is the spirit of light. Yet the light is real and the darkness is not; therefore, one could interpret the last line, “This is the silence of astounded souls,” to suggest that in silence the soul finds itself. But for this poem and most of Plath’s other works such a happy conclusion would constitute a stretch.
For more on Plath:
Sylvia Plath Modern American Poetry
A fan’s site
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Books by Linda Sue Grimes:
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Singing in the Silence: Poems of Faith
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Jiggery Jee's Eden Valley Stories
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