This paper investigates the discursive ways in which Sylvia Plath’s artistic identity is constructed in some of her most representative poems. Our analysis focuses on the difficult relationship this poetic “I” establishes with the otherness of language and with the elusive “something else” beyond language that is only felt and never defined sufficiently. Leon Wieseltier’s ideas on identity constitute a theoretical basis for the demonstration that Plath’s “I” becomes a signifier/axe that alienates/splits the subject not only from the words themselves, but also from what is, but cannot be spoken
