荷蘭作家Connie Palmen 小說： Jij zegt het 荷蘭語：《你說》；Ted Hughes。Andrew Miller的The Land in Winter
剛讀完這本小說：Du sagst es，荷蘭作家Connie Palmen，原文是Jij zegt het，2016年出版，在荷蘭得了文學大獎。我沒辦法閱讀荷蘭文，目前這本也還沒有英文，就先讀德文翻譯吧，反正我每年都會要求自己要以德文讀完小說。
是個痛苦的閱讀經驗。展書之前，就知道痛苦。讀完，果然痛苦。哎。
1963年，英國大寒，Sylvia Plath把頭跟身子放進烤箱，身亡。那晚，老公Ted Hughes在別處，跟新戀人共枕。
是大三還是大四？我很愛讀Plath的小說，在輔大理圖圖書館找到一些她跟老公Ted Hughes的激烈婚姻故事，當時Ted Hughes還活著，我在圖書館裡詛咒這個英國大詩人，去死啦。手上的英國大詩人詩集，真的很想丟掉。
2003年，當紅的Gwyneth Paltrow演出電影Sylvia，演Ted Hughes的演員是還沒有因為007而大紅的Daniel Craig，電影成績尚可，我覺得Paltrow演得不錯，該狂放該收斂，有抓到憂鬱詩人氣韻，Daniel Craig也很穩。最後關鍵戲，就是烤箱那場戲，我記得我有點失望，因為導演選擇避開這個烤箱畫面。我當時覺得這畫面是最重要的詩人句點，不該躲藏。
荷蘭作家Connie Palmen以小說重啟這段激烈的20世紀美英詩人戀曲，選擇的角度不是Sylvia Plath，而是Ted Hughes，以第一人稱敘述，從桂冠詩人的角度，去審視這段暴烈/爆裂的婚姻。多年來，大家想到這段，當然就是跟年輕的我一樣，詛咒Ted Hughes，這本書提出了一個全新角度，但不是為偷情的男主角「平反」，而是以小說的想像，去看待婚姻裡的撞擊與暴力。
很好看啦，沒問題。這個題材入小說，本身就夠激烈，作者駕馭故事沒失控，但我這讀者看了還是很頭痛。哎。真是辛苦啊。傳奇，大概就是注定辛苦吧。
讀完我想，媽啊，這本以Ted Hughes觀點入筆，要是作者是個生理男，會被罵死吧，根本有解圍爛男的文學企圖。但作者是女性，她以這個角度闖入，就少了一些性別柵欄。
跟我一樣都是Plath粉絲的讀者，最近非常好的消息，就是The Bell Jar瓶中美人，電影版殺青了，卡斯非常驚人，Carey Mulligan！尖叫！Connor Storrie！尖叫！等一下，還有，Billie Eilish！失控尖叫！編導是Sarah Polley。演出大學生主角Esther Greenwood的，是Billie，這個casting真是大膽且合適，我真是好期待啊。
非常推薦大家去讀Plath唯一一本小說《瓶中美人》The Bell Jar，等電影上映。小說當年剛剛在英國出版，她就離開了，而且當年不是以本名發表。
繼續延伸閱讀：Plath離世那個冬天，是英國戰後所謂「最冷的寒冬」，就是1962-1963，史稱the Big Freeze of 1963，有很多史料可閱讀。我推薦以小說進入，Andrew Miller的The Land in Winter，布克獎shortlisted小說，超好看。
"I Want, I Want" by Sylvia Plath
Open-mouthed, the baby god
Immense, bald, though baby-headed,
Cried out for the mother's dug.
The dry volcanoes cracked and split,
Immense, bald, though baby-headed,
Cried out for the mother's dug.
The dry volcanoes cracked and split,
Sand abraded the milkless lip.
Cried then for the father's blood
Who set wasp, wolf and shark to work,
Engineered the gannet's beak.
Cried then for the father's blood
Who set wasp, wolf and shark to work,
Engineered the gannet's beak.
Dry-eyed, the inveterate patriarch
Raised his men of skin and bone,
Barbs on the crown of gilded wire,
Thorns on the bloody rose-stem."
Raised his men of skin and bone,
Barbs on the crown of gilded wire,
Thorns on the bloody rose-stem."
With this startling, exhilarating book of poems, which was first published in 1960, Sylvia Plath burst into literature with spectacular force. In such classics as "The Beekeeper's Daughter," "The Disquieting Muses," "I Want, I Want," and "Full Fathom Five," she writes about sows and skeletons, fathers and suicides, about the noisy imperatives of life and the chilly hunger for death. Graceful in their craftsmanship, wonderfully original in their imagery, and presenting layer after layer of meaning, the forty poems in The Colossus are early artifacts of genius that still possess the power to move, delight, and shock.
Sylvia Plath（The Bell Jar《瓶中美人》作者，英國桂冠詩人Ted Hughes之妻）
Sanity may represent our nominal ideal, but Sylvia Plath and John Nash are the box-office draws.
draw
Attract (someone) to come to a place or anevent:you really drew the crowds with your playing
台灣似乎出版過一本中英對照 Sylvia Plath 詩選
美國新聞記者﹑作家珍妮特"馬爾科姆（Janet Malcolm,1934-）在寫關于美國著名女詩人希爾維亞 普拉斯（Sylvia Plath﹐1932-1963）時把傳記作者比作一個"職業竊賊﹐破門而入﹐在他們認為很可能有珠寶與金錢的地方翻箱倒櫃﹐並席卷贓物凱旋而去"。
Sylvia Plath was born in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts in 1932. Although best known as a poet, she also wrote a semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar, in which the main character, Esther Greenwood, a bright college student interning at a fashion magazine, suffers a mental breakdown and attempts suicide. Plath, like Esther, attended Smith College and was awarded an internship at a magazine in New York, however, it was just after this experience that Plath made her first suicide attempt and was committed to a mental institution.
On leaving the institution Plath graduated from Smith and obtained a scholarship to Cambridge University in England where she met and later married poet Ted Hughes. In 1960 Plath published her first collection of poetry, the remaining volumes of her work being published posthumously following a successful suicide attempt in 1963.
台灣將這Sylvia Plath名著The Bell Jar 翻譯成「瓶中美人」（鄭至慧譯，先覺，1999 年）
本書是50年代美國著名作家Slyvia Plath的最後一部作品在她的一生中充滿著不幸而這些
不幸不但讓她在生命中最精華的一刻死去同時也讓她所有的作品沾染
Jar就是她以自身的大學經驗和幾樣她自身的設定而寫的自傳型小
Experiments using a bell jar
It can be sealed, which allows it to be used in a classroom science
experiment involving an alarm clock and a vacuum pump. The air is
pumped out of the sealed bell jar, and the noise of the alarm clock
fades, thus proving that sound travels through vibrations in matter,
not as waves.
Sylvia Plath read by Harriet Walter
Mushrooms
Overnight, veryWhitely, discreetly,
Very quietly
Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.
Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.
Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,
Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,
Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We
Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking
Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!
We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,
Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:
We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot's in the door.
The American poet #Sylvia Plath was born #onthisday in 1932. Hear Harriet Walter reading her poetry. http://bit.ly/1yFaXHj
