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| Conversation among the Ruins |
| 作者Author / Sylvia Plath 西爾維亞．柏拉絲 |
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Conversation Among the Ruins
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 Summary |
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In the first stanza (the octave), the speaker
illustrates a vivid description of the male destruction. The
furious man intrudes into the woman's orderly life, smashing her dream
of love. The conception of the blasting whirlwind denotes the
male lover's ravaging power. Images, such as "elegant house,"
"garlands of fruit / And the fabulous lutes and peacocks," "rich order
of walls," which represent female elegance, contrast with images of
male vulgarity, such as "wild furies," "whirlwind," and "stormy
eyes."
The second stanza (the sestet) presents a ruptured
relationship. The man who stands "heroic in coat and tie"
finds no emotional interaction with the woman who sits "Composed in
Grecian tunic and psyche-knot." There is no communication
between them, since no "ceremony of words can patch the
havoc." The poem is not a conversation between two persons;
rather, it is a resentful monologue of a female speaker. |
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| Pictorial
Background |
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The poem is based on Giorgio de Chirico's 1927
painting with the same title. The painting presents a man and
a woman in a room with an open door and without walls.
Outside the room is a barren landscape. The blurred
boundaries create a disturbing atmosphere. While the inside
is also the outside, the landscape becomes part of the room.
As the woman looks nostalgically beyond the suitor toward the Greek
hero in the clockface above—notice how the hero's head is slanted in
the same position as the man below—it seems the man represents an
inferior demonstration of the Greek hero. And the discrepancy
between modern and ancient indicates the conflict between the man in
his untidy contemporary suit and the woman in her tasteful Grecian
garment. De Chirico implicitly uses the view to suggest a
psychologically disharmonious male-female relationship. These
differences predict an inevitable failure of the “conversation.”
Giorgio de Chirico,
Conversation Among
the Ruins
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 Mythological
Source |
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The term “psyche-knot” not only illustrates a
hairstyle, but also suggests a mythological source. In Greek
mythology, Psyche is the personification of the human soul as the being
beloved by Eros (Cupid)—the god of love. She is represented
as a butterfly, or as a young maiden with butterfly's wings, sometimes
as being pursued by Eros in various ways, or revenging herself on him,
or united with him in the tenderest love. Apuleius (a Latin
writer of the second century A.D.) in his tale of the Golden
Ass makes Eros and Psyche a loving couple. The
love-god causes the charming Psyche, the youngest of the three
daughters of a king, to be carried off by Zephyrus,
the West Wind, to a secluded spot, where he visits her at night alone,
without being seen or recognized by her. Persuaded by her
sisters, she transgresses his command, and wishes to see him, when the
god immediately vanishes. Amid innumerable troubles and
appalling trials she seeks her lover. At length, purified by
the sufferings she has endured, she finds him again, and is united to
him forever. In Plath's poem, the speaker, on the one hand,
presents the man as a god-like figure and herself as a frail human
being; on the other, she manifests the suffering she experiences, as
Psyche, for their love.
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| Form |
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The poem is a sonnet containing an octave (an
eight-line stanza) and a sestet (a six-line stanza) with irregular
meter and slant rhyme (abbaabba, abbaba). The sounds of "k"
and "t" that go through the whole poem may demonstrate not only the
breaking noise of the devastating damage, but also the hard
relationship between the lovers. |
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| Commentary |
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Sylvia Plath's ekphrastic poem on Giorgio de
Chirico's painting expands the theme of the picture and establishes a
vision of the devastating effect of a male lover on the female
persona. Both de Chirico's painting and Plath's poem indicate
similar themes about male-female relationships, yet the focus is
conspicuously different. The painting portrays the
irretrievable affinity. However, the poem not only
illustrates the barren landscape to reveal the mind of characters, as
the painting presents, but also emphasizes images of a destructive,
powerful male and an oppressed, fragile female. While Plath
adds other imageries (such as "garlands," "lutes," "peacocks,"
"whirlwind" and "rooks") to reinforce a conflict between the man and
the woman, she actually presents a victimized female under the dominant
male. |
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