The Letters of Sylvia Plath Vol 2

by Sylvia Plath

  From a selected list, quite limited, of possibilities, I taught William James’s “Varieties of Religious Experience”, short stories by Hawthorne, Lawrence, James (“The Beast in the Jungle”, “The Pupil”) and Lawrence; “Crime and Punishment”; “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man”; “Oedipus Rex”, “Antigone”, “The Duchess of Malfi”, “Rosmersholm”, “The Master Builder”, “Miss Julie”; poems of Hopkins, Yeats, Eliot (especially enjoyed “The Wasteland”)* and Auden and Thomas.* I had many doubts about the contemporary emphasis of the course, but as you probably know, this is where the Americans begin. All stems from Joyce, and works back, through Shakespeare, to the Greeks. I had my own two-month tragedy course, minuscule, and wished I could teach it for a year. All during the year the girls wrote papers. Every two weeks I read seventy papers, which nearly put my eyes out. I felt to be reading a massive, incurably botched, redundant novel-essay after a few months of this. Much time was spent in office hours, talking over various problems with the girls. A teacher is very much a part of the “campus life” here: Ted and I were invited to dinner with the girls at various houses at least once a week and only with effort did we keep it down to this. I found myself with a complex of double feelings at the close of the year.

  One part of me rejoiced in the teaching, while wishing for less paperwork and more actual lecturing. I felt the need, too, for much more study, possibly specialization through work for a PhD., none of which was feasible at the time. The other part of me longed to be writing freely on my own: I found teaching inimical to working at poems and stories: my critical faculties kept slyly pointing out the immense gap between me and the haloed writers for whom I was priestess. Ted went through approximately the same experience. He had a job offered him at the University of Massachusetts (a state university, and, in a state of excellent large private colleges, not full of the best pupils: some were earnest, but near-illiterate. I was reminded a bit of your rugger players and the intricacies of Plato!) Ted, with his usual ease, taught three different courses---freshman English (which in America usually means: how to write a clear sentence), a sophomore General Literature course which romped from Samson Agonistes* to Moliere, to Thoreau, with breath-taking agility; and an advance course in writing, which he enjoyed. He, too, stopped writing, during this period. We decided, although both warmly invited to teach the same courses this year, to rashly break our ties with the groves of academe (a lassooing of tall tree arises to mind at this melded metaphor), and to write for a year.

  I found life, too, in Northampton, left much to be desired. Gossip among the entrenched and unentrenched faculty members, jealousies, coup d’états, promotions and student popularity ratings is unavoidable, as, I suppose, it is in every such semi-enclosed community. But in America, privacy is suspect; isolation, perilous. Coffee-houses, tea-hours, dinners and evenings bring one constantly in communion with one’s colleague’s. Pleasant enough, but oddly narrowing in some ways. And the more one advances, the more administrative duties stand in the way of the actual teaching (which is my favorite work): directing course plans, serving on the innumerable faculty committees, and so on.

  So we are in Boston this year, the city I was born in.* We have a little two room apartment: I write in the livingroom-diningroom-kitchen (pullman, all in one wall, hostile to any elaborate housewifery, and that to the good) while Ted’s study is in the bedroom, a desk of two fine sturdy planks in a window niche. We are on the cobbled, tilty summit (almost) of Beacon Hill, which, I fear, is deserted by the old Brahmins and inhabited by students and elderly telephone operators and young doctors and lawyers now. Each of us, in our sixth floor flat, has a magnificent bay window to work in, overlooking a panorama of orange tiled rooftops, chimneypots, and mosquito trees to the dull silver flat of the river and grandiloquent sunsets. We take long walks to the wharfs to watch the gulls, ships, and crab-merchants; read aloud, read silently---I am beginning the Notebooks of Henry James,* which I have never read, and finding surprising solace, encouragement, and challenge here. I find myself too, wishing furiously that the shade of James could somehow become aware of the intelligence, dedication, tact, and even love, which is devoted to his work today. Are you giving, still, your lectures on James? I remember these with the greatest pleasure, together with your lectures on the moralists and those on “Oedipus”, Shakespeare and Ibsen. Rereading my notes,* I call up an image of the whole, your presence, your words balancing, tilting, with just the right emphasis, the precise revelation, in what I should like to call The Art of Lecturing. But I should like to have the original Platonic bed, and not a notetaker’s smudged copy. What are the prospects for your books---on the moralists and on James? I look forward to their appearance most eagerly.

  Ted’s work is progressing admirably, and I feel in the presence of something particularly special---his dedication is complete, selfless and highly demanding. I am delighted that he enjoys Boston---he claims, everywhere, that the heavy stone buildings, the scraggly brick flats, the green park full of swans, remind him of England. His poems for his second book, which is about half-written, are far better, steadier, deeper, than anything in his first book. That, with its flaws in tone and maturity, which we see now, but did not, two years ago, has had, on the whole, an excellent critical reception in both England and America, and one of the poems in it has been chosen to receive the award for the best poem published in Great Britain for the past year, a bolt out of the blue, which, in practical terms, will see us fed for ten months. Ted is now working on a verse play. He has applied for a Guggenheim grant, and T. S. Eliot and others are strongly behind him, but we won’t hear about this till next spring, and his British citizenship may be against him. So we write and hope. If he received the grant, we would like to return to Europe for 1959-60, and spend some time in Cambridge. I would so much like to see you again, after the deep chagrin of having missed you this fall.* Did you have the opportunity to see Gary Haupt* at Yale on your visit here? I know he was a great admirer of yours and a fine student in his own right. How is he, and how is his career progressing?

  I think also of dear Wendy Christie. I have not heard from her, but wish her well with much love. And your handsome, vital sister---I remember her with such pleasure. Is she studying at New Hall now? Please know that all this year your teaching, even the sense of your existence over the ocean, has been of the greatest help and encouragement. I would be so happy to have a note from you, but will understand if you are too much involved.

  With warmest love,

  Sylvia Hughes

  TO Elinor Friedman Klein

  Sunday 26 October 1958

  TLS, Smith College

  9 Willow Street

  Boston 8, Mass.

  October 26, 1958

  Dear Ellie,

  Come ahead Friday November 7th with your orchid leis and all and even Russ, yea him. Tell me what time you’re coming. I got The Call when autumn began and wanted people wrought-up and around me, so I took a part-time job by going to an agency and demanding something with no responsibility or homework yet full of people. My first lead was what I am doing now, being a secretary for the Psychiatric Clinic at the Out-Patient Dept. at the Mass General Hospital.* I belong to a city of welfare workers and feel pleasantly anonymous. I type fascinating records, meet troubled people who think they are going to give birth to puppies or that they have lived for three centuries or that they will go mad if they leave an ingredient out of a cake. People just like anybody on the subway or in the street: I meet them, and look them secretly up and down and secretly read their records which are delightfully particular. In and out of the office go 25-odd psychiatrists and students, from Norway, Persia, Iran, with weird accents, which I type up from an audograph.* I shall work at it until I have paid my week’s salary to the agency and then maybe stop, for the part-time is almost full-time. Smith had asked me back for next year and offered even a writing course for me: for some reason, no doubt superficial as the two poems in the New Yorker, while others sweat
for PhDs. I have nightmares about accepting, so must refuse. It’s all so cosy there. I want to hear details about your famous and infamous work. What made Leonard go back to teaching after all his writing nobility? Is there some reason for him to want to earn money? Let us know what time you will come. Ted has just won first prize---did I tell you? I believe it was in last Thursday’s Times*---over 3000 poems in England, with his poem “The Thought-Fox”, in the Guinness competition. Have you seen Dave Keightley lately? How is the leg? Write & advise us.

  Love,

  Kitty & Levin*

  TO Esther* & Leonard Baskin

  Between Monday 17 November

  TLS, British Library

  & Wednesday 10 December 1958*

  Suite 61

  9 Willow Street

  Boston 8, Massachusetts

  The-night-before-

  Dear Esther & Leonard,

  It was quite wonderful to have your call. We felt you were in the room & wish you actually would be. We spent a good afternoon brooding in Mirski’s showrooms.* The angel filled the air, and I feared for the ceiling and walls, he exerted such pressure. The feather-detail on the wings is magnificent. I had been wondering what the wings would do. He is an ikon to have in the head, and there he stands. I am particularly partial to the black-and-white “Death Among the Thistles”,* am curiously deeply moved by it, those barbs and spurs and the bulbous deathlily-white head. “Tobias”,* dog and fish, give our livingroom another room: I find myself going off into it.

  I will work, Esther, on bullfrogs: I observed practically nothing else in Northampton and will dig up their gorier habits. Ted says you say they eat each other. I wish I could see this, but will do what I can with the slithering green (I saw some a purply-dark color too, I think) web-fingered monsters.

  How is the blond Tobias? I miss him, he was such a good armful.

  We are projecting a trip to Northampton so far in the spring, to maybe talk to a creative writing class, and will let you know when, because we would like to see you very much.

  Love to you both, and Tobias

  Sylvia

  TO Gerald & Joan Hughes

  c. mid-December 1958*

  ALS in greeting card,* Indiana University

 

  Best Wishes for Merry Christmases / “Best of wishes for your Merry Christmases and your happy New Years, your long lives and your true prosperities. Worth twenty pound good if they are delivered as sent them. Remember? Here’s a final prescription added, ‘To be taken for life’.” / Doctor Marigold’s Prescriptions (1865)

  We thrive. Ted has 4 poems accepted by Poetry (Chicago)* & is writing a book of humorous poems about relatives for children.* Merriest of Christmasses!

  Love,

  Sylvia & Ted

  TO Margaret Wendy Christie

  c. mid-December 1958*

  ALS (copy) on verso of bookmark, printed from Cambridge Review*

 

  Dearest Wendy –

  Doris has the other half of Paradise. Are you here or in your new house – is it built? Ted & I, after both teaching English here last year, have retired to Beacon Hill, overlooking river and chimneypots, to write for a year – me finishing a first book of poems, Ted his second & a book of humorous poems for children. We think of you very often & would love to see you when we come back to England which we hope will be in a year or so. How are the lovely children? Ted joins me in sending love & warmest holiday wishes –

  Sylvia Hughes –

  TO Olwyn Hughes

  c. mid-December 1958*

  ALS on verso of bookmark, Washington University (St Louis)

 

  Dear Olwyn . . .

  I’ve quit my amusing job at the City Hospital after two months & am battened down to writing. Weather here so frigid it hurts, Charles River Basin an evil-white-capped blue. Pitchblack at 5 pm. With the Parks lit up all red, green, yellow, full of live reindeer, black sheep, nativity scenes.* In one big shop there’s a whole glassed-in window of motorized poodles baking Christmas cookies, in another a 3-window railroad train run by angels & white foxes: a blend of sublime & ridiculous. Do tell us which one of Luke’s stories the Sewanee’s taken* as we can’t wring it out of him. And what was Thrushes in the Observer* for? We get dim rumors, but still haven’t seen it ourselves. We miss you, wish we could summon you up like a genie out of smoke & incense – am beginning “Scorpion” – elegant & delightfully produced. Burn a candle for us.

  With love –

  Sylvia – Ted

  TO John Lehmann

  Wednesday 24 December 1958

  TLS, University of Texas at Austin

  Suite 61

  9 Willow Street

  Boston 8, Massachusetts

  USA

  December 24, 1958

  Mr. John Lehmann

  THE LONDON MAGAZINE

  36 Soho Square

  London W.1, England

  Dear Mr. Lehmann,

  I was very happy to learn about your keeping my three poems* for the London Magazine. I wonder if you would be so good as to alter the French line in “Lorelei” to its English equivalent: “Drunkenness of the great depths”.* This keeps the syllabic count, and I have had enough afterthoughts about the line to want it in English.

  Ted and I are spending the year in a small flat-with-a-view on Beacon Hill in Boston, overlooking a vista of orange chimneypots which reminds me nostalgically of my view in Cambridge. We both worked teaching English at college and university last year and had too little time to write, so are writing hard this year. Ted is doing some stories about Yorkshire, very solid little worlds they are, and well into his second book of poems, and I am working on stories and poems also.

  We are hoping very much to return to England in a year or so. Ted joins me in sending our warmest good wishes.

  Sincerely,

  Sylvia Plath

  TO Edith & William Hughes

  Tuesday 30 December 1958

  ALS, Family owned

  Tuesday – December 30

  Dear Ted’s mother & dad . . .

  One more day of the old year – Ted has just finished making himself a remarkable wolf-mask for the New Year’s Eve masquerade tomorrow night:* I found a marvelous peice of sealskin fur, black, in the attic rooms full of century-old dresses of her grandmothers & grandmothers-in-law where Agatha let me browse to my heart’s content yesterday – with his two poems about wolves* in his second book and actually one line about “making wolf-masks mouths Clamped well on to the world”.* I find the mask quite frightening – it has slit eyes which Ted has filled with yellow – very realistic, with room for his mouth to show so he can speak. With the real fur it is incredibly lifelike. I am wearing an antique black dress & red cape for Red Riding Hood.

  Ted has written two very funny children’s stories & we are hoping Jack & Jill may like them. The weather here is quite clear – only one real snowstorm so far and that melted now.

  Ted is reading the novel by the Russian nobel prize winner, Pasternak,* & I am in the middle of an autobiography of the French St. Theresa* – all the photos of her in the book are terribly touched up to make her look as if she has holy tears in her eyes and a sprouting halo –

  The present book by John Press* arrived today & Ted is into it already – also the lovely flowered scarf & shaving soap from Hilda & Vicky – do say thanks to them for it – we’ll write, too.

  We love every letter we get from you – we can just imagine the Beacon & all the life & country surrounding it.

  I made a big pot of fish chowder today which Ted likes & eats bowls of – full of milk, o
nions, potatoes, fish stock & fish, very wholesome & convenient to dip out of the pot & warm up for the next few days.