SYLVIA PLATH

¡§Battle-Scene from the Comic Operatic Fantasy The Seafarer¡¨

Study Guide

Summary ¡U Pictorial Background ¡ULiterary Source

Form ¡U Commentary

n Summary:

In the first stanza, the speaker describes an illusory world, where the wandering Odysseus finds himself happily in his armor. The "little" seafarer is both physically and symbolically small, just like a child's puppet. The dazzling colors ("pink," "lavender," "and "turquoise"), the chessboard sea ("gently- / Graded," "tiles," "chequered waves"), and the three repeated words that imply a happy mood ("gaily") establish a merry-making theater, which is in contrast with Odysseus the hero, for he actually encounters many disastrous crises in Homer's epic poem.

The second stanza continues the contrast between the naïve seafarer and the fairytale setting. Sindbad the brave sailor becomes a "fishpond" fisherman, who uses childlike equipment ("A lantern-frail / Gondola of paper" and "pastel spear") to fight against fuchsia monsters. Threatening nature is covered with a ridiculous mask. And the cheerful tone is also mixed with a warning. While the sea monsters look inoffensive, the speaker still reminds of harmful beasts: "The whale, the shark, the squid."

The third stanza reflects the power of imagination. The frustrated seafarer, Ahab, can fulfill his boast to take Moby-Dick only in a dreamland fantasy. The speaker keeps on describing the sea monsters as children's toys. They are "scrolled" and "polished." They "gleam like easter eggshells." And they happily "Troll" in the sea with "no slime, no weed." But stanza three also reflects the decisive battle of the seafarer and the sea monsters. While the beasts are ready for the "joust," the seafarer is going to fulfill his "boast: / Bring home each storied head."

The last stanza echoes the theme of the poem, for the comic battle scene simply occurs in childhood imagination, in all children's "bathtub battles." No matter it is "deep, / Hazardous and long," the fables of the seafarer lead to a happy ending. Yet the fantasy does not last forever. The childhood wonder disappears when children grow up. The repetition of "Laughing, laughing" suggests more lamentation than joy.

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n Pictorial Background:

Sylvia Plath¡¦s ekphrastic poem is based on Klee's 1923 painting of the same title. The Seafarer is an Old English lyric poem from the eighth century. It is a dramatic monologue of a sailor who bitterly recollects the cold of the northern seas, the fearful squalls, and the painful sufferings of mariners. The sea compels the sailor to return, though he realizes it is to a tragic fate. It is a poem of melancholy. Yet Klee's picture presents a comic way to see the mariner's suffering. He invents a bizarre theatre where puppets perform in an imaginary landscape of an artificial world. Klee himself was an enthusiastic concert-, opera- and theatre-goer; therefore, he composed many paintings after fictitious or actual scenes in operas, for he loved its illogic and contradiction. The seafarer himself, his boat and the monsters all seem to be created from cut-and-folded paper, decorated with lovely ornaments. Nothing in the picture seems ominous and threatening. It is a happy illusive world. The picture subverts the eighth-century poem on the suffering seafarer, who struggles with indifferent nature. Klee intends to re-create a vision where the mean sea beasts and the fighting sailor exist harmoniously with each other. While the beasts and the seafarer turn into puppet-like creations, the fight becomes a pleasant show. The delightful colors indicate the subversion of a brutal fighting scene. The checkerboard ocean, the similar colors and decorations between the man and the beasts actually combine them into one unity. The comic representation of the figures illustrates that art exceeds the severance between the individual and nature.

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n Literary Source:

Odysseus: The daring sailor in Homer's epic poem The Odyssey, which tells of the sea adventures Odysseus had in getting home to his kingdom of Ithaca after the Trojan War.

Sindbad: The brave mariner who makes seven perilous voyages in Arabian Nights.

Ahab: The sturdy captain who unceasingly chases after the white whale in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick.

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n Form:

The poem combines nursery rhyme with a conversational flat tone. The regular abcbabbcbc rhyme evokes a lovely fairytale world. Also, the nursery repetitions¡X"Gaily, gaily," "Beware, beware," "One thrust, one thrust," "Laughing, laughing"¡Xand the quick pace of the meter reflect a childlike song.

n Commentary:

Sylvia Plath's ekphrastic poem on Klee¡¦s painting demonstrates a re-creation of the seafarer's image and a loss of childhood imagination. Although both Klee and Plath destroy and re-create the image of the sailor in the Old English poem, Plath develops the theme in her poem. While Klee mixes heroic and comic, humor and adversity in his artwork, Plath portrays a contrast between three legendary seamen and their ridiculous equipment, between children's never-ending fantasy and adults' controlled world. Klee presents a comic aspect about the sailor's life, but Plath meditates on the loss of the power that can create such a comic perspective. The first-person plural speaker suggests the voice of the poem is "everybody¡¨; and the poem is about every child's creative dream. If Klee transcends the division of the individual and the world in his picture, then Plath transcends the division of time in her ekphrastic poem, for the loss of the power to treat misfortunes with humor, and to create childhood wonders, is not because of age, but of the mind. And those "sage grownups" do not share the childhood fantasy, not because they are old, but because they do not believe it.

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