#judith kroll

[funeral]

This kind of rebirth, egoless transcendence, is an identification not with individual forms of self, but with the larger, impersonal "Self" of the universe. Not only the false self, but the mythic true self as well (insofar as its selfhood is a limitation or barrier) are transcended. The line between these two kinds of rebirth—egoless transcendence (an identification of the self with the eternal, without limitation) and the more literal (mythic) rebirth (an identification of the self with a timeless mythic order, though with limitation)—is not a firm one. Either form could believably be imagined as resulting from a confrontation with death.

Judith Kroll, Chapters in a Mythology: The Poetry of Sylvia Plath

[funeral]

Judith Kroll, Chapters in a Mythology: The Poetry of Sylvia Plath

[funeral]

Studies of near-fatal accidents, in which people have suddenly and apparently irrevocably been confronted with death, have demonstrated that there is a capacity to experience a dissolution of or a detachment from the ego (the subject of one's personal history). The sense of ego yields to a sense of unity with the world and consequently of eternity. Such confrontations, when survived, can so drastically alter the perspective on one's former life that one is completely changed, and such experiences are rightly called experiences of rebirth. Premonitions of such experiences are abundant in life and art. One explanation of a longing for death might, then, be the instinctual sense that in confronting death one can recover from a spoiled history.

Judith Kroll, Chapters in a Mythology: The Poetry of Sylvia Plath

[funeral]

Judith Kroll, Chapters in a Mythology: The Poetry of Sylvia Plath

[macrolit]

Chapters in a Mythology: The Poetry of Sylvia Plath, Judith Kroll

[collectingroots]

Your Clothes

Of course they are empty shells, without hope of animation. Of course they are artifacts. Even if my sister and I should wear some, or if we give others away, they will always be your clothes without you, as we will always be your daughters without you. -Judith Kroll