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"I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful-
The eye of the little god, four cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish."
“Mirror” - Sylvia Plath
On being delivered the manuscript of 4.48 Psychosis, very shortly before Kane’s death:
(Interview by Simon Stephens, found at Royal Court Theatre’s archive: http://www.royalcourttheatre.com/files/downloads/sarah_kane_edupack.pdf)
“When she delivered the play it was the week before she died. It was the Olivier Awards afternoon. I remember it, vividly. It was kind of a schizophrenic afternoon for me. She came in. I was going to this bloody award ceremony. She was very agitated and it wasn’t like Sarah to be agitated. And she said ‘I’ve got my new play, I’ve got my new play, I’ve got my new play, you have to read it, you have to read it, you have to read it.’ And I went to the Olivier Awards and by the time I got back she’d started to ring. I mean this is three hours later. ‘Have you read it? Have you read it? Have you read it?’ This was not like Sarah at all. So I knew something was odd.
I came in on the Saturday because I wanted to be completely alone. And I rang her at two, which I said I would do. And we discussed it. And actually I said that it needed more jokes. And we said that it was very beautiful. And we talked about the music of it. And the fact that it was probably for three people. We discussed the doctor exchanges. We discussed counterpoint. She actually did a re-write. And its the first time she took notes, I mean really took on board the notes, and so I’m kind of very grateful.
She typed up the play on the Sunday. Her first suicide attempt, I think, was the Tuesday night. They found her on the Wednesday morning, she went into hospital. I went to see her on the Thursday. I don’t think she had delivered the re-writes of 4.48 at this point. We had a laugh. She was very, very funny. She was very, very calm. She was absolutely wonderful and we talked about everything under the sun and I bought her a packet of fags. I left her. She killed herself the following day.
It then transpires she left me all these plays with 4.48. She had re-typed and re-drafted all of them, and left them in a package on the Tuesday. And she left me a note, in typical Sarah fashion, a note of instruction. It was her final letter to me. It was also a letter of love and warmth I suppose. And she said about 4.48. ‘Do with it what you will. At least get it published. Just remember: writing it killed me.’ So I thought, ‘ooh, easy task then, thanks Sarah.’
After a while I gave it to James and he read it. The Court were terrified of doing it. James was too, quite understandably, though he was in love with it. I think Simon and I, at this point it was the August, felt very strongly that it had to be done. I think that was right. But I could hardly bear to watch it.”
So basically, in the past couple of weeks it’s seemed that I’ve been quite interested in female creative talents suffering from pain or depression of some sort - Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Sarah Kane, Frida Kahlo, Diane Arbus. I believe that in an attempt to try and narrow down my subject matter - which is quite broad at the moment - this title could possibly be suitable?
Female perspectives on the link between creativity and mental illness, including mood disorders: is there any justification?
Pretty badass title, if I may say so myself. The form is as yet uncertain - it would seem an essay would be best suited. Yet I’d really like to do something creative - perhaps a synthesis of the two? A dramatic piece (either theatre or film) in which Plath, Sexton, Kane et al give imagined monologues on their opinions on the link? A sketchbook with several pages for each “case study”? I don’t know.
I don’t know where this’ll lead me, but one can only hope for the best.
"At 4.48/ when sanity visits/ for one hour and twelve minutes I am in my
right mind./ When it has passed I shall be gone again,/ a fragmented puppet, a
grotesque fool./ Now I am here I can see myself"
Sarah Kane, 4.48 Psychosis
