"The Disquieting Muses" is a poem by Sylvia Plath first appearing in the 1960 collection The Colossus and Other Poems published by William Heinemann, Ltd.Barnard, 1978 pp. 121-128: Selected bibliography
Background "The Disquieting Muses" was among the eight poems Plath wrote in winter and spring of 1958 during a period of inspired creativity.Rollyson, 2024 p. 215Plath, 1981: See Table of Contents p. 6: Editor Ted Hughes places the poem chronologically in 1957.Barnard, 1978 p. 35: Barnard indicates that the poem was written in 1958, in Northampton, Massachusetts. Fellow poet and spouse Ted Hughes reported that she was writing as much as 12-hours "at a stretch ... too excited to sleep."Rollyson, 2024 p. 215: "She was in an ecstasy of creation ... in a manic, Promethean outpouring." And p. 218: "...the manic energy that had produced eight good poems ... "
In a note referencing these "eight poems," Plath exalted at the quality of her recent work:
Literary critic Edward Butscher declared "The Disquieting Muses" the genesis of Plath's "artist self."Rollyson, 2024 p. 216
1938 New England hurricane "The Disquieting Muses" includes a reference to Plath's childhood in Winthrop, Massachusetts when a category 3 hurricane struck the area in September 1938: "windows bellied in / like bubbles about to break." Almost six-years-of-age at the time, Plath retained vivid memories of a storm that killed 564 people and injured 1,700. Winthrope and other communities suffered significant property damage.Rollyson, 2024 p. 5: Verses quoted here. And: Stats on deaths, damage.
Theme
The theme and title for the poem is derived from the painting by Italian artist Giorgio de Chirico entitled The Disquieting Muses (1918).Plath, 1981 276, Notes; 1957 Reading the poem on a BBC radio programme, Plath explained the significance of the title:
Biographer Caroline King Barnard locates the poem's theme in the familiar realm of a daughter's discontents with her upbringing - emphatically directed at her mother.Barnard, 1978 p. 53: "...the poet expresses here the familiar you-dont-understand-me theme of nearly every child to a parent, of nearly every daughter to a mother."
In each of its seven stanzas Plath registers a malediction. Barnard offers the first of the stanzas in which the disquieting muses appear at "the left side" of the infant daughter's crib:
Barnard points out that despite its commonplace theme, familiar to daughters and mothers alike, "the strength of the conviction is not diminished by its lack of uniqueness."
Footnotes
Sources Barnard, Caroline King. 1978. Sylvia Plath. Twayne Publishers, G. K. Hall & Co., Boston, Massachusetts. Plath, Sylvia. 1981. Sylvia Plath: The Collected Poems. Ted Hughes, editor. Harper & Row, New York. pp. 74–76 Rollyson, Carl E. 2024. The Making of Sylvia Plath. University Press of Mississippi