Suicide-Authors: a Deconstructive Study by Lilia Loman
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Suicide-Authors: A Deconstructive Study By Lilia Loman ( Thesis submitted to the University of Nottingham Table of Contents Introduction .................................................................................................. 1 Part I ............................................................................................................ 6 1. Theorising Suicide .......................•.............................................................. 6 2. Memorial Texts: Suicide as a Posthumous Performance ..................•...........•.. 33 3. The Deaths of the Suicide-Author ............................................................... 71 Part II ........................................................................................................ 99 4. Speaking to/about the Dead: Plath's Belated Witnesses ................................ 99 5. "The blood jet is poetry": Plath in Her Own Words ...................................... 134 6. "Burning the Letters": The Plath-Hughes Dialogue ...................................... 168 ,., Conclusion ..........•.........................•...•...................•................................... 194 Works Cited ..........................................................•..•.•.............................. 199 Abstract The purpose of this thesis is to problematise the relationship between suicide and the author. On the basis of a deconstructive approach, it will study the effect of the self-inflicted death of the writer, namely the emergence of a dual figure, the "suicide-author". To deconstruct the suicide-author, this thesis will combine theoretical issues with examples taken from authors who killed themselves, including texts written by the suicides and by their survivors. Such texts will be referred to as "memorial texts" and will constitute a key element in the deconstruction of the figure of the author, namely his/her "posthumous persona". The thesis is divided into two parts. Part I, comprising the first three chapters, will propose an anti-teleological theorising of suicide, followed by a study of the role of memorial texts in the deconstruction of the figure of the suicide author and a problematising of Roland Barthes's concept of the "death of the author" in the context of the multiplicity of deaths of the suicide-author. In Chapter Two, the study of memorial texts will be developed in conjunction with analysis of selected examples, such as Yukio Mishima, Mario de Sa-Carneiro, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Sergei Esenin, Raymond Roussel, Walter Benjamin, Anne Sexton, and Virginia Woolf. Also divided 1nto three chapters, Part II is dedicated to an extended analysis of the thesis' case study, namely Sylvia Plath. Rather than focusing on Plath's ( suicide as an individual unique case, the second part aims at extending and complementing the discussion of the issues previously proposed. Of particular interest is the magnifying of such issues offered by the mythical aura of the Plath case. Chapter Four deals with the "voice of the other", the deconstruction of Plath's image by the living, including both those who had known her in person and the so called "anonymous witnesses" to her suicide, namely critics, journalists, et a/. Chapter Five focuses on the "voice of the deceased", as emanating from Plath's writings. Finally, Chapter Six analyses the Plath-Hughes dialogue, with attention to Hughes's particular role in the deconstruction of her posthumous persona. Acknowledgements First of all, I would like to thank my supervisors, Dr Macdonald Daly and Professor Bernard McGuirk, who guided and supported me through this thesis. I would also like to thank Universities UK for granting me a scholarship and the Department of Critical Theory and the Graduate School for financial aid for researching and attending conferences at home and abroad. A special thanks to Karen Kukil and Katherine Baxter for the invaluable help during my research at the archives at Smith College, and the British Library. My research has also benefited from the kindness of the following scholars who provided me with information and/or manuscripts of their works, namely David Lester, G. Patton Wright, Jeffrey Berman. I would also like to thank my previous supervisor, Vera Bastazin, from the Pontificia Universidade Cat6lica de Sao Paulo, who, in many ways, initiated me in the unending universe of research. Finally, very special thanks for those who have always been there and whose help was, of course, Incommensurable. ,( Introduction In a letter to Olwyn Hughes, concerning a proposed publication of The Bell Jar in the UK, Aurelia Plath wrote: "It's the suicide of the author that gives the novel its 'piquant flavor' and value. This is the sort of thing the publishers would not need to present-it was done for them ... "l The statement is particularly compelling, for it embeds some of the key issues pertaining to this thesis. Immediately, it begs straightforward questions such as "What is the 'piquant flavour'" Aurelia Plath refers to? and, "What is its relationship with the suicide of the author and why is there such a relationship?" The answers, however, are not quite so straightforward. In order to problematise ~,nd discuss the issues involved, such a "piquant flavour" will be here understood as an effect whose relation with suicide affects, in variOUS volatile ways, text, author, and reader, in a transit through intra- and extra-textual frames. The impact of such a "piquant flavor" as a "suicide-effect" concerns directly the ambivalence. of suicide, which will be dealt in detail in the first part of the thesis, especially in Chapter One, which will provide a theorising of suicide essential for the development of the discussion. Suicide can be described as a magnifier of abject elements intrinsiC to every form of death, which, in combination with its theatrical and ritualistic aspects, provides a powerful instrument of aesthetic defamiliarisation. Thus, not surprisingly, on a thematic level, the disquieting fascination exercised by the ambivalent nature of voluntary death is expressed in a multitude of fictional suicides in literature. Shakespeare alone depicted a total of fifty-two cases, excluding failed attempts, between 1589 and 1613.2 Other examples Include Racine's tortured heroines, Werther's "epidemic" suicide, Kirilov's philosophical self-sacrifice, and Septimus Smith's fatal flight, among many others.3 The proliferation of fictional suicides during the Renaissance is particularly illustrative of the effectiveness of suicide as a dramatic artifice. In the early modern period, the ambivalence of suicide was heightened by contradictory feelings of attraction and repulsion, characteristic of cathartic states. Most importantly, whereas proximity to the scene caused fascination and fear, It still kept the audience at a safe distance from reality. Through the distorted lens of artistic representation, the audience was protected from the overwhelming ambivalence of "actual" self-inflicted de.aths. It is worth observing that suicide Is, generally, a taboo, given the .human impulse to save a life, which makes the actual presence of passive spectators utterly incompatible with it. Posthumously, suicide calls for reconstruction, for an attempt to neutralise the destabilising forces that bring 1 together killer and victim. Its disquietude is its source of attraction, causing death to be recreated, repeated. Nevertheless, at the actual moment of self fragmentation, should it be devoid of the protective shield provided by fiction, suicide belongs to the obscene-"off-scene", the "not-to-be-seen". A recent example, outside literature, was given by the controversy over photographs of the falling bodies of those who had chosen to jump from the Twin Towers during the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. The photographs, taken by an Associate Press photographer, were banned from publication in the United States.4 Associated with deeply rooted taboos against suicide, what one finds here is a refusal to assume the role of an eyewitness to the act of death. Despite being delayed by representation, the moment in which one becomes killer and victim carries the unacceptable impact of immediate exposure. " In this context, what endows the suicide of the author with the "piquant flavour" Aurelia Plath refers to? The myth of the self-destructive artistic genius allied to a great number of authors who committed suicide is certainly a contributing factor. The following table lists some suicide-authors and the 5 respective methods used when killing themselves: . Name Method Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) Overdose of morphine John Berryman (1914-1972) Jumped from a bridge Paul Celan (1920-1970) Drowning Ana Cristina Cesar (1952-1983) Jumped from the seventh floor Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770) Arsenic Hart Crane (1899-1932) Jumped overboard into the sea Osamu Dazal (1909-1948) Drowning Michael Dorris (1945-1997) Suffocated himself with a plastic bag Florbela Espanca (1884-1930) Overdose of Veronal Sergei Esenin (1895-1925) Hanging Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) Shotgun Heinrich von Klei.st (1777-1811) Shotgun Arthu_r Koestler (1905-1983) Overdose of barbiturates Primo Levi (1919-1987) Jumped from stairs 2 Vachel Lindsay (1979-1931) Overdose of Lysol Jack London (1876-1916) Overdose of morphine Vladimir Mayakovsky Shotgun (1893-1930) Yukio Mishima (1925-1970) Seppuku (disembowelment followed by decapitation) Gerard de Nerval (1808-1855) Hanging Cesare Pavese (1908-1950) Overdose of barbiturates Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) Ca rbon