"Mad Girl's Love Song" by Sylvia Plath
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary darkness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I fancied you'd return the way you said.
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
Usually, the villanelle is composed of five tercets and a concluding quatrain. It has no set of syllables per line and has a pattern of only two rhymes. These rhymes are marked by the alternating refrain which first appears in the first and third lines of the initial tercet. The refrain lines in this poem are "I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead" and "I think I made you up inside my head". They alternate to end each tercet and both are at the end of the quartet.
The repition of the refrain lines shows the internal struggle in the narrator's head. Everything makes sense when her eyes are closed, but her dreams are the only thing she wants to live for. The cacophony of "arbitrary darkness gallops in" shows the discontent the narrator has with her disconnection with reality. This line does not flow and has a harsh discordance of sound. However, when the narrator speaks about her lover, euphony is used. She dreams that her lover "sung [her] moonstruck, kissed [her] quite insance." These pleasant-sounding combination of words shows the narrators longing for a true love.
The narrator also uses metaphors to exaggerate her longing for true love. On line 10, "God topples from the sky" and "hell's fires fade". Of course, none of this actually happens but the narrator is voicing her pain in acknowledging that her obsession is not real.
What do you think Plath is trying to say by alternating "I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead" and "I think I made you up inside my head" at the end of each stanza?
5 comments:
I think that the author is commenting that the speaker has made an entire world inside her head. When she shuts her eyes, everything around her disappears, "drops dead". However, a whole new world opens up within her own mind. Sadly, the speaker knows, either consciously or subconsciously, that this world inside her head is not the real one and she will evetually have to face reality again.
I agree with Kasey in that the world inside her head is herself living in romanticism. I think the speaker is trying to convince herself that the world that appears in her sleep is fake and that her lover was made "up inside [her] head". She is trying to figure out why she cannot find this love of hers, and the only plausible explanation is that she made this love up inside her head.
Also, I think that she may be living in a difficult world because she says "God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade" which indicates that she may be living in "hell" (A very horrible place). She may just deny that any possible happiness is impossible. That is why she uses euphony and cacophony. Those two devices disconnect and separate the two different worlds she belong in.
I think the poem has an almost satirical tone to it. The author uses the ideas brought up by both Kasey and Chris, creating a speaker that seems insane in her romanticism. But, also through the tone of the poem, I feel a shift through the line "(I think I made you up inside my head.)" While the rest of the poem seem unrealistic ravings o an unrealistic speaker, this line, possibly because of the parentheses, seems to sound more like a girl in love. I believe that the speaker is not mad, and that the "Mad Girl" mentioned in the title is used as a method of conveying the immense unlikelihood of a human being finding that kind of love in another.
So while agree with both Kasey and Chris, I believe that it has to go deeper than an insane girl raving about love.
I wouldn't necessarily say she is insane. I think that what she sees in her head is real to her. Perhaps she is in love with someone who doesn't know she exists, something like that. Maybe "Mad Girl" refers to the idea that she is madly in love with someone?
Chris, I really like your point about the use of cacophony and euphony and how it illustrates the two different worlds the speaker is living in.
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