...we shall board our imagined ship and wildly sail among sacred islands of the mad till death shatters the fabulous stars and makes us real.
Sylvia PlathRead
Piece by piece, I fed my wardrobe to the night wind, and flutteringly, like a loved one’s ashes, the gray scraps were ferried off, to settle here, there, exactly where I would never know, in the dark heart of New York.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects the intimate relationship between personal loss and the ephemeral nature of memories.
In this evocative imagery, Sylvia Plath draws a parallel between the act of relinquishing her wardrobe and the emotional release associated with loss, comparing the discarded fabric to a loved one’s ashes scattered in the wind. The metaphor encapsulates the idea that memories fade and leave us with lingering fragments, just as clothing, once cherished, can become unmoored in the vastness of a city, symbolizing the unpredictability of remembering and forgetting.
Themes
LossMemoryNew YorkWardrobeNightNature
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of letting go of material possessions to embrace emotional healing.
More from Sylvia Plath
All quotes →The hardest thing, I think, is to live richly in the present, without letting it be tainted & spoiled out of fear for the future or regret for a badly-managed past.
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It is as if my life were magically run by two electric currents: joyous positive and despairing negative--which ever is running at the moment dominates my life, floods it.
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You walked in, laughing, tears welling confused, mingling in your throat. How can you be so many women to so many people, oh you strange girl?
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I keep wanting to crawl back into the womb.
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It's the living, the eating, the sleeping that everyone needs. Ideas don't matter so much after all. My three best friends are Catholic. I can't see their beliefs, but I can see the things they love to do on earth. When you come right down to it, I do believe in the freedom of the individual.
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