Cryptoquote Spoiler – 06/16/15

Sylvia Plath’s grave at Heptonstall church, West Yorkshire, England. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart.  I am.  I am.  I am.”   —   Sylvia Plath

(This is the first Sylvia Plath quotation since I have been posting the Cryptoquote spoilers!  It’s a great quote, but it’s touched both with irony and controversy.  The irony should be pretty obvious to anyone who knows of her.  It sings with a kind of defiant will to live, but she was so clinically depressed that she committed suicide at the tender age of 30.  She had a husband – although they were going through a separation period – and two very young children.  The kind of things that drive most mentally stable people to want to live.  The controversy comes from a single, semi-ambiguous word in the quotation.  The version we are seeing uses “brag”, but the other version – the one with more search results – has it as “bray”.  Many think Sylvia may have done this purposely, as a way of creating a point of discussion.  That we may never know.  I don’t believe that the words are necessarily synonymous.  For me, a bray is always a loud, kind of obnoxious sound.  But a brag doesn’t necessarily have to be loud.  It can often be a kind of a quiet confidence.  The mere fact that she had to take a breath, and presumably hold it, in order to listen to her heart, tells me it wasn’t some harsh kind of sound, but the more confident assuring sound of being.  Be well and do good, friends.)   —   YUR

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