On Ariel

This is a fascinating collection; there’s something deeply satisfying in the verses. Plath plainly had a kaleidoscopic view of reality — she didn’t see everything, but what she saw was hers alone. She can paint the most beautiful picture in words and then, with a turn of the kaleidoscope, make everything jagged, surreal, painful. That is the archetypal vision of the depressed person: the writer is convinced she sees the world as it is, and the world may well be that way, but it is also more than that. Even so, the poems resonate with me heavily, and no one else could have written with this kind of verve. They don’t carry the Bergsonian élan vital so much as its dark inversion — some sort of élan abîmal.