#heptonstall

Today marks the 59th anniversary of Sylvia Plath’s death! RIP!

27 October 1932 Jamaica Plain, Boston, Massachusetts, USA -
11 February 1963, Primrose Hill, London, England, United Kingdom

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“I can’t deceive myself out of the bare stark realization that no matter how enthusiastic you are, no matter how sure that character is fate, nothing is real, past or future, when you are alone in your room with the clock ticking loudly into the false cheerful brilliance of the electric light. And if you have no past or future which, after all, is all that the present is made of, why then you may as well dispose of the empty shell of present and commit suicide. But the cold reasoning mass of gray entrail in my cranium which parrots “I think, therefore I am,” whispers that there is always the turning, the upgrade, the new slant. And so I wait.”

-–The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, diary entry no. 36, 1950

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59 years ago today:

Sylvia Plath commited suicide on Monday, 11 February 1963 at approximately 4:30 a.m. in her appartment at 23 Fitzroy Road, near Primrose Hill, London, where she moved in with her two children in December 1962 after separating from Ted Hughes; a house William Butler Yeats used to live in from 1867 till 1873.

She was 30 years, 3 months, 2 weeks and 1 day old. Her death certificate states that the cause of her death was “Carbon Monoxide Poisoning (domestic gas) whilst suffering from depression. Did kill herself”.

She left some bread and milk in her children’s (Frieda, almost 3 and Nicholas, 1 year old) room, opened their window and sealed their door off with tape to prevent the gas from entering. She also sealed the kitchen door with wet towels.Sylvia Plath’s dead body was discovered less than five hours later. Her children were unharmed.

Jillian Becker wrote in her memoir Giving Up: The Last Days of Sylvia Plaththat “According to Mr. Goodchild, a police officer attached to the coroner’s office … [Plath] had thrust her head far into the gas oven… [and] had really meant to die.”Sylvia Plath is buried in Heptonstall’s parish churchyard of St Thomas the Apostle, the new St Thomas á Becket’s churchyard; near Ted Hughes’ birthplace Mytholmroyd in  West Yorkshire, England.

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Photo info: Studio portrait of Sylvia Plath holding with a glass ball, 1945-55

Photo source: Peter K. Steiberg’s Twitter @sylviaplathinfo