"dying is an art"

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.
-Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath

Last night gave me the chance to catch up on being a couch potato (it's so happy to go home early!), so I was able to watch Sylvia. Such a sad, sad story of a great female poet, Sylvia Plath. And somehow, I came to wonder why such gifted people end up committing suicide (in artistic ways, mind you). Such depression, such angst. But I do empathize with the poet–she was so in love with her husband Ted Hughes, only to end up in agony over his affair with another poet's wife, Assia Wevill (who also happened to be an aspiring poet herself). Add the fact that Sylvia suffered from bouts of severe depression after her father's demise. She first attempted to end her life by crawling into a cellar after taking a handful of sleeping (?) pills. But it seems as though Death did not want her yet. She was found by her mother and was given a second lease on life. However, Ted Hughes' affair was the last straw. Before gassing herself to death in her own kitchen, she made sure her two children (from Ted) were safe in their room. She prepared for them milk and bread and opened their bedroom windows for ventilation, after which she sealed their bedroom door with towels so the gas won't harm her children. The movie depicted her suicide act metaphorically, and this I appreciate very much (the depiction, not the suicide).

Like I said , watching the film (and reading other writers' biographies) makes me wonder if artists really bring upon themselves such catastrophic ending. (Anne Sextion, Plath's contemporary and friend, also committed suicide by shutting herself in her garage, consequently dying of carbon monoxide poisoning; Antoine de Saint-Exupery allegedly committed suicide by crashing his plane while on a reconnaissance flight; then there's Vincent Van Gogh, who shot himself in the chest with a revolver.) Did such creative genius push these artists to their own death? What could be happening inside their confused minds? And to think Plath and Sexton seemed so normal and happy before they suddenly ended their lives! It's just kind of depressing to learn that these people chose to end everything they have (though I'm sure they think they have none left for them), leaving posthumous awards and citations.

It's just so...sad...

(Image from www.culturapara.art.br/opoema/sylviaplath/images)