Dark magic: the occult world of Sylvia Plath
A review of ‘The Occult Sylvia Plath: The Hidden Spiritual Life of the Visionary Poet’ by Julia Gordon-Bramer (Destiny Books, May 2024)
Sylvia Plath, the American poet and novelist, was not only a famous, gifted writer with a dark side who tragically committed suicide but also a literary mystic of the highest order, asserts Plath scholar Julia Gordon-Bramer, who adds: ‘I aim to break the world from the habit of reading Plath’s work solely through the lens of autobiography.’
In this intention, in her specific explorations of the deeper Plath ethos, Gordon-Bramer has succeeded admirably, having produced a remarkable biographical tour de force in which Plath’s story is compellingly retold. It’s a riveting literary experience with a multitude of fresh insights that will reverberate through critical and academic thought and intrigue existing and new generations of Plath readers alike.
The result of fifteen years of comprehensive research into Plath’s little-known immersion in the occult, the book analyses many unpublished personal writings kept in the Plath archives at Indiana University, enabling a more complete and essential view of this intense and extraordinary writer.
Gordon-Bramer’s analysis includes calendars, notebooks, scrapbooks and significant annotations and underscorings in books…
