She sits up there
drinking wine
while her husband
is at work.
She puts quite
some importance
upon getting her
poems published
in the little
magazines.
She's had two or
three of her slim
volumes of poems
done in mimeo.
She has two or
three children
between the ages
of 6 and 15.
She is no longer
the beautiful woman
she was. She sends
photos of herself
sitting upon a rock
by the ocean
alone and damned.
I could have had
her once. I wonder
if she thinks I
could have
saved her?
In all her poems
her husband is
never mentioned.
But she does
talk about her
garden
so we know that's
there, anyhow,
and maybe she
fucks the rosebuds
and finches
before she writes
her poems.
The area dividing the brain and the soul
is affected in many ways by
experience —
some lose all mind and become soul:
insane.
some lose all soul and become mind:
intellectual.
some lose both and become:
accepted.
Leitura de um trecho de 'Flower Herding Pictures On Mount Monadnock', de Galway Kinnell.
Essas são as últimas palavras registradas da Sylvia Plath, em 10 de janeiro de 1963, antes do seu suicídio:
In the forest I discover a flower.
The invisible life of the thing
Goes up in flames that are invisible
Like cellophane burning in the sunlight.
It burns up. Its drift is to be nothing.
In its covertness it has a way
Of uttering itself in place of itself,
Its blossoms claim to float in the Empyrean,
A wrathful presence on the blur of the ground.
The appeal to heaven breaks off.
The petals begin to fall, in self-forgiveness.
It is a flower. On this mountainside it is dying.
The woman is perfected.
Her dead
Body wears the smile of accomplishment,
The illusion of a Greek necessity
Flows in the scrolls of her toga,
Her bare
Feet seem to be saying:
We have come so far, it is over.
Each dead child coiled, a white serpent,
One at each little
Pitcher of milk, now empty.
She has folded
Them back into her body as petals
Of a rose close when the garden
Stiffens and odors bleed
From the sweet, deep throats of the night flower.
The moon has nothing to be sad about,
Staring from her hood of bone.
She is used to this sort of thing.
Her blacks crackle and drag.
----------------------------------
Limite
A mulher está perfeita.
Seu corpo
Morto enverga o sorriso de completude,
A ilusão de necessidade
Grega voga pelos veios da sua toga,
Seus pés
Nus parecem dizer:
Já caminhamos tanto, acabou.
Cada criança morta, enrodilhada, cobra branca,
Uma para cada pequena
Tigela de leite vazia.
Ela recolheu-as todas
Em seu corpo, como pétalas
Da rosa que se encerra, quando o jardim
Enrija e aromas sangram
Da fenda doce, funda, da flor noturna.
A lua não tem porque estar triste
Espectadora de touca
De osso; ela está acostumada.
Suas crateras trincam, fissura.
translated by Luiz Carlos de Brito Rezende (in FOLHETIM Poemas Traduzidos, Ed. Folha de S. Paulo, Brazil, 1987, p. 65)
Off that landspit of stony mouth-plugs,
Eyes rolled by white sticks,
Ears cupping the sea's incoherences,
You house your unnerving head--God-ball,
Lens of mercies,
Your stooges
Plying their wild cells in my keel's shadow,
Pushing by like hearts,
Red stigmata at the very center,
Riding the rip tide to the nearest point of
departure,
Dragging their Jesus hair.
Did I escape, I wonder?
My mind winds to you
Old barnacled umbilicus, Atlantic cable,
Keeping itself, it seems, in a state of miraculous
repair.
In any case, you are always there,
Tremulous breath at the end of my line,
Curve of water upleaping
To my water rod, dazzling and grateful,
Touching and sucking.
I didn't call you.
I didn't call you at all.
Nevertheless, nevertheless
You steamed to me over the sea,
Fat and red, a placenta
Paralyzing the kicking lovers.
Cobra light
Squeezing the breath from the blood bells
Of the fuchsia. I could draw no breath,
Dead and moneyless,
Overexposed, like an X-ray.
Who do you think you are?
A Communion wafer? Blubbery Mary?
I shall take no bite of your body,
Bottle in which I live,
Ghastly Vatican.
I am sick to death of hot salt.
Green as eunuchs, your wishes
Hiss at my sins.
Off, off, eely tentacle!
There is nothing between us.
-----------------------------------
Medusa
Longe dessa península de boquilhas petrificadas,
Olhos revirados por varetas brancas,
Orelhas absorvendo as incoerências marinhas,
Você abriga sua cabeça débil — bola divina,
Lente de piedades,
Seus parasitas
Abastecem suas células selvagens à sombra de minha quilha,
Empurrando como corações,
Estigmas vermelhos bem no centro,
Cavalgando a contracorrente até o ponto de partida mais próximo.
Arrastando seus cabelos de Jesus.
Escapei, me pergunto?
Minha mente sopra até você
Umbigo de velhos mariscos, cabo Atlântico,
Se mantendo, parece, em estado de milagrosa conservação.
Em todo caso, você está sempre ali,
Respiração trêmula no fim da minha linha,
Curva d'água pulando
Em meu caniço, deslumbrante e agradecida,
Tocando e sugando.
Não chamei você.
Não chamei você mesmo.
No entanto, no entanto
Você navegou em minha direção,
Obesa e vermelha, uma placenta
Paralisando amantes impetuososos.
Luz de naja
Espremendo o hálito das rubras campânulas
Da fúcsia. Sem poder respirar,
Morta e sem dinheiro,
Superexposta, como num raio x.
Quem você pensa que é?
Hóstia de comunhão? Maria Carpideira?
Não vou tirar nenhum pedaço desse seu corpo,
Garrafa aonde vivo,
Vaticano terrível.
O sal quente me mata de enjôo.
Imaturos como eunucos, seus desejos
Sibilam para meus pecados.
Fora, fora, coleante tentáculo!
You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.
Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time---
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal
And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off the beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.
In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend
Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.
It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene
An engine, an engine,
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.
The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gypsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.
I have always been sacred of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You----
Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.
You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who
Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.
But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look
And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through.
If I've killed one man, I've killed two---
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.
There's a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.
Fonte: CARVALHO, A. C. A poética do suicídio de Sylvia Plath. Ed. UFMG, 2003.
Versão psicanalítica dos poemas Daddy e Medusa, da Sylvia Plath:
Just give me a little atomic bomb
Not too mutch just a little
Enough to kill a horse in the street
But there aren't any horses in the street
Enough to knock the flowers from a bowl
But I don't see any flowers in a bowl
Enough then to frigthen my love
But I don't have any love
Well give me an atomic bomb then to scrub in my bathtub
like a dirty and lovable child
I've got a bathtub
Just a little bomb general
With pugnose
Pink ears
Smelling like underclothes in July
Do you think I'm crazy?
I think your crazy too
So the way you think.
Send me one before somebody else does.
"After a month’s sobriety my faculties became unbearably acute and I found myself unhealthily clairvoyant, having insights into places I’d as soon not journey to. Unlike some men, I had never drunk for boldness or charm or wit; I had used alcohol for precisely what it was, a depressant to check the mental exhilaration produced by extended sobriety.”
"Depois de um mês de sobriedade minhas faculdades se tornaram insuportavelmente agudas e me vi como uma espécie de vidente doentio, tendo visões de lugares aos quais nunca tinha ido. Diferentemente de alguns homens, eu nunca bebi por audácia, charme ou sabedoria. Eu tenho usado o álcool precisamente para o que ele serve, um depressivo para checar a excitação mental causada por um período de sobriedade prorrogada."
"First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you."
"Primeiro você pega uma bebida, depois a bebida pega uma bebida, então a bebida pega você."
"Sometimes it is harder to deprive oneself of a pain than of a pleasure." (Tender is the Night, 1934)
"All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible."
"Todos nós falhamos em alcançar nossos sonhos de perfeição. Então eu classifico-nos como uma falência esplêndida em fazer o impossível."
"I only take a drink on two occasions: when I'm thirsty and when I'm not."
"Eu só bebo em duas ocasiões: quando eu estou com sede e quando eu não estou."
"The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry." (A Farewell to Arms, 1929, ch. 34)
"An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.”
"Um homem inteligente às vezes é forçado a ficar bêbado para gastar um tempo com suas bobagens."
"They, that unnamed "they," they've knocked me down but I got up. I always get up-and I swear when I went down quite often I took the fall; nothing moves a mountain but itself. They, I've long ago named them me."
"And this is how I sometimes think of myself, as a great explorer who has discovered some extraordinary land from which he can never return to give his knowledge to the world: but the name of this land is hell."(Under the Volcano, 1947, ch. I, p. 36)
"E é desta forma que eu às vezes penso sobre mim, como um grande explorador que descobriu alguma terra extraordinária, na qual ele não pode mais sair para transmitir o seu conhecimento ao mundo: mas o nome desta terra é inferno." (Debaixo do Vulcão, 1947, cap I, p. 36)
"God, how pointless and empty the world is! Days filled with cheap and tarnished moments succeed each other, restless and haunted nights follow in bitter routine: the sun shines without brightness, and the moon rises without light." (Under the Volcano, 1947, ch. XII, p. 346)
"Deus, quão sem sentido e vazio o mundo é! Dias preenchidos com momentos baratos e embaçados, noites assombradas e sem descanso seguidas por rotinas amargas: o sol brilha sem brilho e a luz nasce sem luz." (Debaixo do Vulcão, 1947, cap XII, p. 346)
