Google Doodle celebrates Sylvia Plath on what would have been her 87th birthday

Sunday's Google Doodle paid homage to renowned poet Sylvia Plath on what would have been her 87th birthday.

Born Oct. 27, 1932 in Boston, Plath is most remembered for how her writing dealt with her mental illness. It's a theme that echoes through her most celebrated works, like her novel The Bell Jar and Ariel, a posthumously published collection of poems that included "Lady Lazarus," which is among her most well-known poems.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Plath took her own life on Feb. 11, 1963, a death that, for a while, overshadowed her life and works. Many biographical sketches simply focus on the dissolution of her marriage with famed writer Ted Hughes over an affair as the impetus behind her death.

But over time, Plath's work has accrued a new appreciation for the way in which she so bravely and directly addressed her own mental health via writing throughout her life, at a time when depression and mental illness carried such a heavy stigma. (A stigma, it's worth nothing, that still lingers even in 2019.)

As writer Sarah Manguso noted in the New Yorker on the 50th anniversary of Plath's death:

Plath’s suicide at thirty, after publishing just one volume of poems, invited the stereotype of the mad poetess, the wife betrayed; it was impossible to read the posthumous publications without considering the biography. But in the fifty years since her death the myth has dimmed; the work endures.

Which brings us back to the graceful, snow-filled image featured in the Google Doodle. Google posted a Q&A with artist Sophie Diao in which she talks about her love of Plath's poetry and how Plath's frequent use of frosty winter imagery was an inspiration for the art.

Of the image, Diao notes, "I tried to find specific passages from her work that would thread together into a pseudo-narrative, but ended up pivoting to an illustration that would capture the mood of her work instead."

Even now, Plath's career continues to unfold; volumes of her letters and correspondence have been published in recent years, and earlier in 2019 a "lost" short story of hers was published. In every instance, more is revealed about a brilliant writer whose life, though tragically too short, continues to reverberate decades later.

If you want to talk to someone, text the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 or contact the NAMI HelpLine at 1-800-950-NAMI, Monday through Friday from 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m. ET, or email [email protected].