All About Books discussion

Daddy
BY SYLVIA PLATH

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 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 gipsy 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 scared 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.

Just want to add that the reason for picking this is not any resemblance to Plath's relationship with her father.

There is always a bit of push-me pull-me-ism with our parents and a certain ambivalence where we feel guilty for not being all there for them or for taking them for granted and maybe thinking that they are being selfish by wanting us around them all the time. I read this poem a week before my own dad passed away on 26th Nov. 2013, and while I love my dad there was an ambivalence and guilt and it was all so sudden that I've still not managed to snap out of it. It has been a difficult year.

As for the poem itself, Plath had major issues with an absentee father. It's all guts and bloodbath of emotions - for a guy who was dead before her 8th birthday! So I don't know how much of her anger is justified, but it's the loss and the void of a (politically incorrect / horrible / stubborn) father that makes her feel persecuted and half-empty.

There's a lot of self-hate in here, as in the daughter is unable to resolve the extreme polarities between the parents or the reality of who her father is with the very real love she does feel for each - and is stuck. I think anyone with a divorced parent or parent dealing with issues of alcoholism or rigid affection can relate to the theme of the poem. It's a great wretched poem.

Yes it is, I read a lot of Sylvia Path still trying at times to understand her works.

Love this poem and I especially love her own narration of it, which can be found on youtube if anyone wants to listen.

Transcript of her BBC interview where she talks about the poem is as follows:

http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/...

You can feel her pain coming through in this poem. This was written just 4 months before her death. Two lines stand out for me:

So Daddy, I'm finally through.....

Daddy, Daddy, you bastard, I'm through

Was this a warning, a cry for help? We will never know.

Noorhilda, I love how you describe it: "guts and bloodbath of emotion." It's true. Plath had a fantastic, unbelievably strong talent but totally un-reigned.

Much of her poetry is like this. Absolutely striking in odd images, often perfect in cadence, but there are no reigns. The horse runs wild, amock, boards and rocks alike crushed underhoof!

The beginning image is so odd, the pale foot in the black shoe, but perfect! The constraint and disgust inherent in that image - I can picture that sweaty, trapped foot.

Thanks for sharing!

Another excellent poem about the push and pull with parents is "The Revelation" by James Wright from the book Saint Judas. That one is also lovely.

Thanks so much for the interview link as well. I have read her poetry but know little about her other than the bare bones story of her life.

Welcome Greg, and yes 'Revelation' brings it full circle.

Do you think Plath is angry / mourning the fact that the dead father has so much hold over her (even 30 years later) or that her dead 'Nazi' father has that hold over her ? - and she hates herself for it, and is not going to be caged in the memory of his death or be identified with him anymore?

Do you think she wants to shun him because of what the 'black (hearted)' 'Nazi' father stands for and the bad reputation he has or because his death was so painful that she hates the way he makes her feel (being depressed, having tried to kill herself over him)?

I studied this poem with my sister and it is a really sad one. There are so many questions in my mind. Is she warning the reader? Is it a cry for help? Is the fact her father was a 'Nazi' affect how she feels?

Yes Noorilhuda, I think so; I read the poem exactly as you do - as you say, it seems she is somehow "caged in his death." She can't escape it. The memory of her father and his absence torture her.

When she describes the photograph of him at the blackboard, it almost seems like the picture is her main memory of him, as though she can hardly remember who he really was. So she replaces the reality of him with what she calls a "model" of him, this grotesque, larger than life Nazi torturer that probably isn't real. Her father's absence and memory are so painful that he functions in her life like that Nazi torturer; his memory itself constrains and smothers her like the enclosing shoe.

Also as you say, I think she wants to shun him because she hates the way his memory makes her feel.

I don't think that her father was necessarily a Nazi in real life; I think it's an exaggeration to express an overpowering disgust and anger at the power his memory and absence have over her.

I like in the interview in your link how she talks about the way confessional poems should be "relevant to the larger things, the bigger things such as Hiroshima and Dachau." I wonder if the Nazi reference is somehow an attempt at such larger relevance. Maybe she's trying to relate her personal pain to something bigger than herself? Not sure. To me it definitely feels hyperbolic though - I don't necessarily believe that the narrator's father was actually a Nazi, just that his loss makes him feel like one.

No, it was believed that her father was a Nazi. But I don't think it is true and think it is an exaggeration on her part.

Noorhilda, I just looked back again at your post in message #2. Your interpretation is the 3rd and 4th paragraphs is fantastic.

And I understand what you mean about your father - parents going through an illness is very hard. Toward the beginning of my father's bout with Parkinsons, we got into my brother's car to move it out of the driveway. It had a push button start instead of an ignition key. My dad couldn't figure out how to start it, and I laughed (as I thought) good naturedly. My dad got very upset and started to cry. I'd had no idea that he felt himself slipping - not being able to figure out how to start the car must have felt like a loss of control over his life, an acknowledgement of decline. I know I will always be ashamed in my heart over that moment. I too wish I had spent much more time with him before he was very sick, and I wish I'd been more aware of how he was feeling.

I'm very sorry for your loss Noorilhuda.

Very powerful and very emotional. I too am sorry for your loss.

Thanks Greg, Diane, means a lot - parents end up as memories, we end up as memories and the fear is how we are remembered.

I think your interpretation of her verses is spot on too.

As for the poem, I've read quite a few critical essays on how Plath uses imagery and why she says what she says. A few interpretations:

- she was neurotic and uses words to express her neurosis / decline in mental health / suffocation she was feeling in life (culminating in her death a few months later)

- the poem is an allegory of female resenting the dominance of man over her - or the dominance of ugliness of life, violence, hate, chaos over all that is beautiful, natural, gentle and glorious in the world.

- the untimely early death of her father was keenly felt by her and the poem is a way to suppress the power of the hollowness. All the name-calling relieves her.

- she avenges both the real father and the image construct she lived with all the years with one poem - killing them both once and for all and banishing from her mind.

- it shows a masochistic relationship without the redeeming pleasure for the victim.

- Plath plays the victim while we know nothing of the father. Whatever we do get to know is through her words, and how reliable can her words be?

- One interesting observation over the net was from this college student (a guy) who said that maybe Plath was never loved by a kind man, and she blames the absent father as the reason for that - this 'statue', 'bagful of God' (and uses negatives like black shoe, Nazi, devil, etc.) maligning him for her failings in romantic department.

- The poem can be used as a construct of every domestic violence victim who finally lets go the perpetrator / abuser.

- She uses the word 'seven years' (which was the exact duration of her marriage to Ted Hughes by that point) so is the poem a reflection of her marital life? and the reason why she's so miserable and angry in the poem?

- There is an inability to accept a person as they are - because the power they have over her, or because of the choices they have made - and hence there can be no 'compromise'.


And as authors, how reasonable is it to assume we bring ourselves into the world we create? Plath was obviously brave enough to deconstruct and destroy the image of a man she barely knew and relate it to her life's current problems. Creatively it's a masterpiece. But it makes for uncomfortable reading. Should authors take this route?

What do all of you think?

I particularly like the first two of those interpretations Noorilhuda, the "neurosis/decline" one and the "resenting the dominance" one. Those both have some ring of truth to them, and I think they could both be partly true. No doubt she has a formidable talent however.

I also like the "masochistic relationship without pleasure" observation. That definitely is true in the poem.

I don't know enough about her personal life to comment on some of the others.

As far as the uncomfortable reading question, I don't know. The confessional nature of Ariel is pretty extreme, even more so than other confessional poets like Anne Sexton. Maybe whether it's too much is a matter of personal taste? I do think that all writers use their lives in their work, and I think that's a good thing. The difference here is her loose reins on the emotions.

What makes Plath absolutely unique for me among the poetry I've read is that she somehow manages to have near complete control of the language and cadence while simultaneously showing very little emotional control. That combination produces a very odd effect - both disturbing and beautiful at the same time. I find it somewhat fascinating. I think if she had less control at the level of language (of her craft), it would be much less appealing (perhaps even histrionic). As it is, I like it.

An interesting poem on Father-Daughter relationship. S. Plath uses the affectionate term, "Daddy" in a poem which is filled with negative emotions. Why does she do that?

The other lines that struck me particularly were:
"Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you." Is it auto biographical?

Noorilhuda , you've included some great interpretations there. I suppose all of them could be argued as the reasoning behind the poem. From what I've read of Sylvia Plath I think it's a convergent of several issues, her mental health, relationship with her Father, but also her relationship with Hughes. I've read most of Plath's work in the past, but only this year decided to pick up Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes, after avoiding it for a long while. I thought it was also fantastic and offered an insight, at least into how he viewed Plath's relationship with her Father, which seemed to dominate her life and a lot poems in this collection. I've read a few times that Plath used this poem to finally free herself from her Father, killing him off for good after he'd haunted her adult years, though whether that was her intention with the poem I don't know.

Powerful poem Noorilhuda! I can't say I "liked" it because, as you pointed out, it makes for uncomfortable reading, but I will be back to read it again.

Thanks for all the commentary & analysis too. I am terrible with analyzing myself but am fascinated by what others come up with!

Brilliant, powerful poem Noorilhuda, thanks for sharing it. I felt that it is one of the poems that go right to the gut, no matter whether you like or dislike her style. I wonder whether that assumption of mine is true. It definitely went right to mine. I will take some time reading through all the comments. Great to see that it sparked such a lively conversation.

Thanks Jenny and do share what it means to you and what you make of it - beyond the gut :)