"In the Primal Beginning was the Word, the Logos. And the Word was with God, and the Word was a god."

-Beginning of John Gospel-(Rudolf Steiner translation¹

Interpretive notes:

I tend to feel that Plath's poems are as much about universal humanity as they are about her own biography. For example, what seems initially to be an incident in one life may be read as a series of events over the entire life of humanity, from primordial, archetypal human to the present. A phrase such as "years later" may be read as "eons later" much like the way some readers equate eons with the seven days of creation. Metaphors not only reflect the poet's feelings,but help us perceive a new relation between the inner human and outward nature. When Plath mentions the "welling of the sap" in "Words", I see a physical picture of an emotional process and an actual relationship between Plath's feeling and the movements of sap in plants. I believe the poet discovers an essential unity between our inner feeling and the movements of outer nature which greatly increases our responsibility for our thoughts because these thoughts are not bounded by our skin(see "I Am Vertical"). -KD

Words

By Sylvia Plath²

"Axes
After whose stroke the wood rings,
And the echoes!
Echoes traveling
Off from the center like horses.

The sap
Wells like tears, like the
Water striving
To re-establish its mirror
Over the rock

That drops and turns,
A white skull,
Eaten by weedy greens.
Years later I
Encounter them on the road---

Words dry and riderless,
The indefatigable hoof-taps.
While
From the bottom of the pool, fixed stars
Govern a life."

Comment on "Words":

The beginning of the poem reveals the word as an instrument of power and creator of formative vibrations. The axe metaphor recalls the apocalyptic idea of the word as a "two edged sword" where life is the rhythmic alteration of destruction and creativity. The tree rings of the opening paragraph beautifully portray how the original power of the creative sound is materialized and captured in the ring patterns. The human uses the two-edged axe to unleash these primal forces and return this creativity back to the realm of pure idea and archetype. The echoes we hear are the physical manifestation of this spiritual process. The "Word "echoes" into the widths of space and the depth off time and the center becomes the periphery.

In the second verse Plath reiterates the theme of the rhythmic motion of formation and destruction as the water creates forms over the rocks. The hard wood of the first verse is replaced by the flowing sap and water. Here the word penetrates nature and works into the life forces and the flowing motions. The "tears" metaphor mysteriously connects human passion to nature. Plath discovers the connection between her inner life and the primeval power of nature. She realizes that her outer perceptions are in realty a vision of her own humanity. The life force represented by the flowing water covers the material rock and creates the mirror where the poet sees herself.

In the third verse the water recedes and Plath experiences matter devoid of the life force. The white skull is a vision of the human of two dimensional abstraction devoid of the spirit. (see her poem "The Thin People"). Abstract intellectualization cannot outlast nature's forces. The power of the "word" may leave behind a dead, abstract shell. The modern ego no longer feels the creative life in words, only the lifeless concept remains.

In the last verse Plath seems to relinquish her free will. The cosmic periphery ("fixed stars") streams into the center but the individual ego must retain its autonomy and work with these forces. Cosmic forces work inwardly. The stars of the periphery are identical to the stars within. To consciously penetrate these forces we must recreate living words and move beyond the dead abstract shells that we currently experience.

-Ken DiBenedette

Aside:

The Possibility of Pure Thinking as a Method of Historical Research by Ken DiBenedette

How do we accept Rudolf Steiner’s detailed descriptions of Ephesian initiations? He was not physically present and no records of the initiation processes exist by his own admission. Can his deep thinking into the world of ideas possibly reveal the thoughts of the long departed? Does human consciousness of events remain even after the human perceiver and thinker has died?

We can easily accept that thoughts of the past reach us through written records and works of art. Suppose we read a pre-Christian era thinker such as Plato. How do we enter into Plato’s thought? Is the thought we think the same thought that Plato conceived? Is a mere rational understanding of a train of thought enough or must our whole thinking, feeling, and willing be engaged in the idea?

In reading Plato we confront the complex system of signs and symbols that constitute written language. For the scholarly this may be classic Greek or we may read a translation in our native tongue. The only physical, tangible thing left is the printed page and that page is a copy that replicates through the ages. As soon as we comprehend the page, we enter into an exclusively non-material realm, the realm of thought. Plato's thinking was originally purely non-material. Plato then used more thinking to create a written record of the thought he experienced. We bring ourselves to the written word and use our will to transform our sense impressions of the symbols into non-material thoughts which combines with thinking that we have done before and hovers outside of our consciousness in memory.

(Keep in mind that the physical brain is a vehicle of thought, but the actual thought itself is independent of the brain structure. If we read Plato's Cave Allegory, for example, we think about concepts such as light, shadows, and caves. We do not enter into a world of firing neurons and electrical impulses. The study of brain structure is another manifestation of non-material thought but is separate from the concepts of Plato's allegory. Thought must be independent of the brain because the concept "brain" is pure thought which precedes the material manifestation of "brain". Our consciousness is thought and therefore can only directly know thought. Our thought works into the world and presents us with objects but these objects are totally dependent on human thought. They are thought. In physics we conceptualize smaller and smaller particles and systems but these fascinating abstractions tell us less and less about the qualities of the object on the macro level. Knowledge of vibrating molecules of air tells us nothing about the music of Bach or Beethoven. The reality is in the aesthetic perception which is in the realm of pure thought.

Plato's thought is communicated down through the ages but Plato's brain has long ago returned to the Earth. His brain structure was not copied or preserved and then grafted onto his pupils. The symbols, words, that remain carry concepts unrelated to brain structure. Our senses perceive these symbols and the thoughts begin to form. But if these thoughts originated from brain structure, then the written word must carry hidden data that programs and physically alters our brain. The spoken word and sense impressions would be similarly encoded. However, there's no evidence of encoding beyond the letters "fire"-f--i--r--e---simple letters that produce an effect within us--they create the inner idea of fire. Certainly the brain may alter accordingly, but its the word that precedes and works on the physical.

Even if we assume that a thought simply corresponds to a particular material configuration of the brain, then something outside the brain must cause the successive material configurations. This guiding force cannot be in the brain itself because then the "command" part of the brain would have to be in particular configurations and this would lead to infinite chain of of command centers which contradicts the finite nature of a material structure. This logic lends credence to Rudulf Steiner's claim that the physical brain is a medium into which thought enters to create individual self consciousness.

In this thought realm, we begin to meet Plato’s thinking. There’s sympathy and antipathy. Our feeling guides us into finding the correct concepts by firing our imagination. If we have sympathy, we feel that we have uncovered a layer of our own being and a part of ourselves begins to stand before us. We even begin to feel the consciousness of Plato and of his people. All of these actions of perceptions in the thought world are non-material.

These thoughts already far exceed the initial symbolic data of the printed word; therefore, even with written sources, we have already entered a realm of pure thought that was shared by a much earlier historic epoch. The text is the point of entry, but the world of thought is infinitely large.

So the world of Plato’s thought and Greek culture still exist in a purely ideal realm. Since thoughts come together to create complex webs, it is then possible that thoughts about the initiation at Ephesus, where there is no longer any historical documents, is connected by chains of thoughts to the thoughts about ancient Greece,Turkey, or to Plato’s thinking.

It seems possible that intimacy with the extant works of someone like Shakespeare may link us to the entire psyche of Shakespeare. Of course today we consider these thoughts our own ideas, but think of all the new ideas that may have “piggybacked” Shakespeare's dramas. These ideas may be scientific or mathematical. They need not be limited to literature. Neil Bohr’s intuiting the structure of the atom in a dream may have been a result of music he heard or books he read, the idea may have been linked to an idea that had nothing to do with science, at least the abstract science of our present times.

Our thinking is not isolated within our skin or else there would be little possibility of human understanding and empathy. All thought must interpenetrate and must exist independently of our physical substance. All ideas about physicality are only aspects of human consciousness.

Of course finding “links” to ancient consciousness is no easy matter. Learning through Plato may take a lifetime of study of both his thought and thinking itself. So it is not a question of whether it is possible to describe the mysteries of Ephesus without historic documents but whether Rudolf Steiner actually did this. Any claims to this knowledge must be tested by seriously entering into the thought of the claimant and using our own inner senses to determine the validity of the claim.

End of Aside

Steiner on Initiation and Speech at Ephesus

Steiner claimed that the writer of the John Gospel was influenced by the spiritual current flowing from the Temple of Artemis or Diana at Ephesus seven centuries before the Christian era. The Ephesian Mystery centered on human speech and candidates focused on the mystery of their own speech. The pupil felt the effect of words on their thoughts and feelings:

"Again and again the pupil was directed to the way in which the word sounds forth from the mouth. He was told over and over again: 'Notice what you feel when the word sounds forth from the mouth.' The pupil had first to notice how, to a certain extant, something from the word ascends in order to take up into itself the thought of the head; and then, how something from the same word descends into man so that he might experience inwardly the content of feeling."³

Observing the rise and fall of the force of the word began to work on the pupil's ego. "I am" worked into the ascending force and "I am not" worked into the descending. The pupil became aware of the word's relation to the four elements. "Air" begins the process, but in speech "Air "is transformed into rising "fire"which approaches and "draws down" the thought in the head and into descending "water"which presses down into feeling. A series of waves pours forth from the mouth , alternating fire and water forces and the propelling air. The pupil began to feel the following:

"Speak, oh Man!! And thou revealest through thyself the evolution of the World."⁴

The pupil felt the entire cosmic creative process working into the Primeval Earth with its manifold forces rising and falling, with its evolving forms, with metals, primordial plants, nascent animal forms, thick atmosphere. Human consciousness was not a point which observed all these actions outside of itself, but instead embraced all this as its own being. The pupil could return to a time when this living Earth planet "sounded"within him. Steiner:

"What is it then that man hears? These world happenings, in what form do they reveal themselves? They reveal themselves as the Word of the cosmos, as the Logos. The Logos sounds forth, the macrocosmic Word in this rising and falling of the chalk"⁵

The flux and flow of forces and nascent, tenuous matter of the primeval earth undulated, born by the creative word and our being permeated this cosmic weaving of forces; however, the macrocosmic powers could only unfold when humans developed greater self-awareness and the freedom that results from separateness. The birth of our ego pushed our memory of the true nature of the Word back into remote consciousness. The unified archetypal human atomized into individual units. The cosmic processes remain in our individualized speech and written records of the word, like Plath's poetry, allow us to glimpse, not only into the interior creative process of the individual poet, but into the actual creation of the world. Poetry's fascination lies in this higher, creative knowing where the true essence and the origin of the human manifest. Poetry fuses Art and Science into a seamless whole pointing the way to a healthy, future science where the Altar and the Laboratory combine into a "living" thinking.

The cosmic thought must separate from the cosmic word in the human mediator for self consciousness to develop. If we can feel the plant , mineral, and animal world as existing within ouselves, then we can begin to feel how our thought relates to the myriad plant forms and how our memory infuses the mineral realm. Our "becoming" is a veil for God's "becoming". Ego consciousness requires the mineralization, the hardening, that results in both our nervous system and the quartz and other forms of silicon of the Earth. Pure "living" force would not gain consciousness. Death-like hardening in both Earth and human body is a necessary impediment that makes the Word conscious.

Back to Steiner:

"Today when man thinks, he has to think in isolation with his head. Within are his thoughts and his words come forth. The universe is outside. Words can only indicate the universe. Thoughts can only reflect the universe. When man was still one with the macrocosm this was not the case, for he then experienced the universe as within himself. The Word was at the same time his enviroment. Thought was that which permeated and streamed through the enviroment. Man heard, and the thing heard was the word.....The Word was first of all sound....and something which struggled, as it were, to be solved like a riddle; in the rising of the animal creation something was revealed that struggled for a solution. Like a question the animal kingdom arose in the chalk. Man looked into the silicic acid, and the plant creation answered with that it had taken up as the sense nature of the Earth, and solved the riddles the animal creation had presented. These beings answered each other's questions....... The whole world becomes speech."⁶

Pain

Steiner claims that human barbarism torched the Temple at Ephesus. Similarly, Steiner's own modern Temple of The Word, the Goetheanum in Dornach Switzerland, was reduced to flames:

"Then the Goetheanum was destroyed by fire. This terrible picture of the burning of the Goetheanum rises before us. The pain may give birth to the summons to look ever more deeply into that which lives in the power of our thought, into this burning Goetheanum of New Year's Eve. That is an experience, painful thought it is, which leads us into greater and greater depths."

Steiner's gaze into the flames of the burning Temple revealed the following words:

"Behold the Logos

In the burning fire;

Seek the solution

In the house of Diana."

Burning the Letters

by Sylvia Plath⁷

I made a fire; being tired
Of the white fists of old
Letters and their death rattle
When I came too close to the wastebasket
What did they know that I didn't?
Grain by grain, they unrolled
Sands where a dream of clear water
Grinned like a getaway car.
I am not subtle
Love, love, and well, I was tired
Of cardboard cartons the color of cement or a dog pack
Holding in it's hate
Dully, under a pack of men in red jackets,
And the eyes and times of the postmarks.

This fire may lick and fawn, but it is merciless:
A glass case
My fingers would enter although
They melt and sag, they are told
Do not touch.
And here is an end to the writing,
The spry hooks that bend and cringe, and the smiles, the smiles.
And at least it will be a good place now, the attic.
At least I won't be strung just under the surface,
Dumb fish
With one tin eye,
Watching for glints,
Riding my Arctic
Between this wish and that wish.

So I poke at the carbon birds in my housedress.
They are more beautiful than my bodiless owl,
They console me--
Rising and flying, but blinded.
They would flutter off, black and glittering, they would be coal angels
Only they have nothing to say to anybody.
I have seen to that.
With the butt of a rake
I flake up papers that breathe like people,
I fan them out
Between the yellow lettuces and the German cabbage
Involved in it's weird blue dreams,
Involved as a foetus.
And a name with black edges

Wilts at my foot,
Sinuous orchis
In a nest of root-hairs and boredom--
Pale eyes, patent-leather gutturals!
Warm rain greases my hair, extinguishes nothing.
My veins glow like trees.
The dogs are tearing a fox. This is what it is like-
A red burst and a cry
That splits from it's ripped bag and does not stop
With the dead eye
And the stuffed expression, but goes on
Dyeing the air,
Telling the particles of the clouds, the leaves, the water
What immortality is. That it is immortal.

Burning the Letters--Comments:(see poem in left column)
The "word spirit" that she imparted to the letters seems to drain her of energy because the living aspect of her thought is inhibited by the physical writing. The paper and ink can barely contain the seething spirit of her words . She needs to liberate her spirit from the confines of the written word. Like the pupil at Ephesus, Plath intuits how her being is intermingled in her words. It is necessary for the word to rise in the realm of archetypal fire where it can rejoin her inner being. Somehow the letters work to maintain a split in her being. They form a kind of shadow or double. Purgation by fire somehow releases this double and has the potential for creating a new wholeness.

Plath beholds the Logos in the burning fire. Again Plath sees the fire and its effects as mirrors of processes that happen within her. The bursting of an object in the fire gives Plath an insight into her own death: A bursting red cry where the power of the word leaves behind its materialization on the printed page and lives on in a disembodied state where it permeates Air and Water and rises into the realm of the clouds. Plath achieves liberation and immortality when the word is free from the printed page.

The complexity of this process is conveyed by Plath's exact observations of the burning of paper. The visible black ash-birds that can no longer speak but may accompany an invisible word force that has great power. The burning words are "involved" in the sense of being turned intently inward like the developing human foetus and the "blue dream" where Plath's consciousness enters into the glowing embers. The colors in the flames speak to her in a language that only the most finely wrought poetry can convey.

Plath's fascination with the airy spirit Ariel may be a result of Shakespeare's recounting of how this spirit was torturously bound in a tree and freed by the intervention of the higher ego, the master magician-artist Prospero. Plath loved tree imagery. She described trees, the source of paper which binds the word, as a scaffolding for her own spirit. She seemed almost consciously aware of the blood-nerve tree within her and how the creative word was bound to this inner tree.

Here is the relevant part of The Tempest:

Shakespeare's Tempest

Act 1, Scene II

ARIEL
Is there more toil? Since thou dost give me pains,
Let me remember thee what thou hast promised,
Which is not yet perform'd me.

PROSPERO
How now? moody?
What is't thou canst demand?

ARIEL
My liberty.

PROSPERO
Before the time be out? no more!

ARIEL
I prithee,
Remember I have done thee worthy service;
Told thee no lies, made thee no mistakings, served
Without or grudge or grumblings: thou didst promise
To bate me a full year.

PROSPERO
Dost thou forget
From what a torment I did free thee?

ARIEL
No.

PROSPERO
Thou dost, and think'st it much to tread the ooze
Of the salt deep,
To run upon the sharp wind of the north,
To do me business in the veins o' the earth
When it is baked with frost.

ARIEL
I do not, sir.

PROSPERO
Thou liest, malignant thing! Hast thou forgot
The foul witch Sycorax, who with age and envy
Was grown into a hoop? hast thou forgot her?

ARIEL
No, sir.

PROSPERO
Thou hast. Where was she born? speak; tell me.

ARIEL
Sir, in Argier.

PROSPERO
O, was she so? I must
Once in a month recount what thou hast been,
Which thou forget'st. This damn'd witch Sycorax,
For mischiefs manifold and sorceries terrible
To enter human hearing, from Argier,
Thou know'st, was banish'd: for one thing she did
They would not take her life. Is not this true?

ARIEL
Ay, sir.

PROSPERO
This blue-eyed hag was hither brought with child
And here was left by the sailors. Thou, my slave,
As thou report'st thyself, wast then her servant;
And, for thou wast a spirit too delicate
To act her earthy and abhorr'd commands,
Refusing her grand hests, she did confine thee,
By help of her more potent ministers
And in her most unmitigable rage,
Into a cloven pine; within which rift
Imprison'd thou didst painfully remain
A dozen years; within which space she died
And left thee there; where thou didst vent thy groans
As fast as mill-wheels strike. Then was this island--
Save for the son that she did litter here,
A freckled whelp hag-born--not honour'd with
A human shape.

ARIEL
Yes, Caliban her son.

PROSPERO
Dull thing, I say so; he, that Caliban
Whom now I keep in service. Thou best know'st
What torment I did find thee in; thy groans
Did make wolves howl and penetrate the breasts
Of ever angry bears: it was a torment
To lay upon the damn'd, which Sycorax
Could not again undo: it was mine art,
When I arrived and heard thee, that made gape
The pine and let thee out.

ARIEL
I thank thee, master.

PROSPERO
If thou more murmur'st, I will rend an oak
And peg thee in his knotty entrails till
Thou hast howl'd away twelve winters.

ARIEL
Pardon, master;
I will be correspondent to command
And do my spiriting gently.

PROSPERO
Do so, and after two days
I will discharge thee.

ARIEL
That's my noble master!
What shall I do? say what; what shall I do?

PROSPERO
Go make thyself like a nymph o' the sea: be subject
To no sight but thine and mine, invisible
To every eyeball else. Go take this shape
And hither come in't: go, hence with diligence!

Exit ARIEL

The Word

By Sylvia Plath2

Act 1, Scene II

By Sylvia Plath²