A Sorcerer Bids Farewellto Seem
A Sorcerer Bids Farewellto Seem - context Summary
Composed 1961, in Ariel
Written in 1961 and published posthumously in Ariel (1965), the poem stages a speaker renouncing ornate, theatrical language. Using Alice-in-Wonderland imagery, the poet repudiates decorative metaphors and syntactic tricks—"grand looking-glass hotel" and carnival props—to seek a more honest voice. The final lines assert a retreat to linguistic reality where things are named plainly. This reflects Plath's growing disillusionment with linguistic artifice and a desire for authenticity.
Read Complete AnalysesI'm through with this grand looking-glass hotel where adjectives play croquet with flamingo nouns; methinks I shall absent me for a while from rhetoric of these rococo queens. Item : chuck out royal rigmarole of props and auction off each rare white-rabbit verb; send my muse Alice packing with gaudy scraps of mushroom simile and gryphon garb. My native sleight-of-hand is wearing out : mad hatter's hat yields no new metaphor, and jabberwock will not translate his songs : it's time to vanish like the cheshire cat alone to that authentic island where cabbages are cabbages; kings : kings.
Feel free to be first to leave comment.