Showing posts with label the listener magazine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the listener magazine. Show all posts

Monday, September 19, 2016

Aurelia Speaks About "Mrs. Greenwood"

Quoted from a 1976 interview of Aurelia Plath by Robert Roberton, published in The Listener, Vol. 95, pp. 515-16. They're discussing The Bell Jar:

Roberton:  [W]hat sort of similarity do you feel between yourself and Mrs. Greenwood in that story?
Aurelia Plath: Very little, really. As my son and I analysed it, the words uttered by Mrs. Greenwood were uttered by five different individuals in real life. The counsel Sylvia gave me to bear in mind, whenever I read anything that she wrote in the form of poetry or prose, was: 1. that there is a manipulation of experience--this is part of the creative act, of course; 2. that there is always a fusion of characters--that's very, very evident; 3. that she firmly believed that art was a rearrangement of truth--this was to make the art form more consistent than life ever is.

[The Listener was the BBC's weekly print magazine, published from 1929 to 1991.]