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the unpleasant facts. Still, there is a slight implication that Sexton's self–
indulgent behavior, sexually and morally, is not to be seen too harshly,
because she was a writer, a poet. There is not enough condemnation, [
feel, of both Sexton and one of her therapists, for having an affair while
she was in treatment.
Middlebrook's portrait of Sexton's life also revives another question,
much debated in the past by psychoanalysts and a few critics, about the
relation of literature and the literary life to pathology.
In
Sexton's case,
the relation can be seen to be more crucial because so much of her po–
etry expresses her pathology. Theoretically, the question, as it has been
formulated, is whether art is a direct vehicle of neurosis, or whether
neurosis is something to be overcome . Lionel Trilling, it will be recalled,
maintained that art is achieved by the healthy side of a neurotic person–
ality. Others have argued a more organic connection between the two
components. My own view is that the answer depends on how the
question is framed, for I think both approaches are correct.
Obviously, madness in itself does not produce literature. But the
content of a writer's work - insofar as it can be separated from the form
- is shaped to some extent by the warp in the writer's vision. Sexton,
herself, referred to the "unconscious" clement in her poetry, by which she
meant her elemental feelings and images, that is, her "madness," and to
the editing of her writing by her "ego," by which, I assume, she meant
her critical faculty, which goes hand-in-hand with the so-called creative
faculty in every serious writer.
Given all this incorporation of her "madness" in her poetry, the
question of how great a poet Sexton was naturally arises. I leave the final
judgment to her fellow poets and to the history of poetry. But I might
say, in the meantime, that her gifts were large but not always sufficiently
controlled. Compared to Robert Lowell, for example, to whom she
often has been compared, because of the confessional style they shared, it
seems clear that Lowell was superior, not only because of the greater
magic of his language, but also because of his stricter control of the
medium. I should say that despite my reservations about the side effects of
this biography of Sexton, it is in many respects an impressive book. We
get a forceful picture of the achievements and sufferings of Anne Sexton.
Not only docs it tell us everything we could possibly want
to
know
about Sexton's sad life and partially redeeming work, it also is loving of
its subject, something which, it seems to me, is essential to the most per–
suasive biography, and while it is not overtly critical, it does supply the
basis for judgment.
w.
P.
