by Sylvia Plath
Well, tomorrow I try the town of amherst again with the new Gordon, whom I still can’t believe is coming: all the girls want to be around to see this handsome creature when he comes! I just know it will be fun.
by for now,
much love,
sivvy
TO Myron Lotz
Saturday 7 February 1953*
AL (excerpt),* Indiana University
I think walking might help, don’t you. I think better that way myself – hate sitting cramped up in manmade boxes – so stultifying!
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Tuesday 10 February 1953
TLS with envelope,
Indiana University
tuesday, february 10
dearest maternal image . . .
got your postcard today . . . hope the late tues. classes won’t overtax your health with the already demanding french lessons. so proud about warren. if only he can play his athletic jumping to the full I feel college will welcome him with open arms. I can’t stress enough how important a balance of athletics is (important) in the eyes of the authorities . . . in this distressingly wellrounded american age. glad I wrote him encouragement. he should keep jumping for the next four years.
last night . . . supper at haven house with the frail pale charlotte who has had a cold for the last week in addition to her leg. poor kid. I’m so much luckier than she to be so husky, really. after that: drew unit, where I read a short paper on yeats . . . we had coffee and cookies . . . a nice ceremony to break the two hour period with informal conversation.
gordon is utterly lush. just got unpinned from a smith senior honors last week, so I’m the first girl on his new round of dating again, I guess. rained all saturday. we took a taxi down town to wait for the bus to amherst . . . talked intensely over icecream about religion. He got me holding forth on my independent unitarianism until I stopped suddenly and asked: where do you stand? I’m a catholic, He said. I slumped in my seat with a huge blush. whereupon he quoted the unitarian creed with astonishing rapidity and said with a laugh: I’m just what you are: a renegade unitarian. you can say anything to me. so I did. whew!
spent afternoon in his room at amherst, fire blazing in fireplace, music playing, talking about james joyce: he is a joyce fanatic, and since I’m just beginning to follow in his footsteps, it was most stimulating. he told me about this fascinating friend of his teaching at yale who he says will be the writer of our generation. chicken dinner across the street at the community eating hall. back to room for an evening bottle candles burning, fire going and him reading aloud to me stories and some of his own poetry he has written. he also recreated his last summer hitchhiking all over the west, working as pipefitter on the 3rd biggest dam in the world, as icepacker, and coal miner. likes the vigor of labor although he looks like a lean handsome country-clubber. needless to say I hope he asks me out again during the course of the year when I can have two normal legs. but he doesn’t want to be serious about anyone again for years, so he’ll probably just play the field. ah me.
most lovely news from Myron . . . our eclectic beliefs about religion are in almost complete accordance . . . and we serve to heighten each others ideas. a letter and a postcard came from him today . . . after my letter I told you about. seems he wants to see me before the prom, too! so I’m going to ask him up for rally day weekend: I’m so happy about it: the invulnerably au·gust male has volunteered for the third time in a row to come see me, with my only actual asking being the first house dance weekend! those french ladies have nothing on me! ho ho. nicest of all, I think is his signature: your future taxicab driver: he says “I might mysteriously state that any week end after the 14th will find us about 100% certain that our limitations of travel will be forever banished . . . ” and on his postcard* he pasted a lovely green chevrolet directed smith-ward under which: “to the lonely sea and the skies . . . to fields and brooks and plains of paradise.”
in other words, cars are a means to wonderful ends to freedom and an extended radius. I have a sneaking suspicion that the prognostication for the coming spring will be more than favorable! apple orchards, modern poetry, and a lovely husky baseball player to carry me over fences.
o life where is thy sting* . . . . .
xxx
your sivvy
P.S. just got a letter from a guy who wants to republish “Crossing the Equinox” in a “volume of poetry like Dorothy Parker’s death and taxes”* (he says). I said O.K. – hope it has a hard cover!
xx
siv
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Wednesday 18 February 1953*
TLS, Indiana University
wednesday night
dear mother . . .
enclosed is a big favor I am askingof you: would you mind awfully retyping the enclosed essay which is the first half of my Mlle assignment for this month? I was going to have this be the final draft, but then made corrections and am just too strapped for time and energy to redo it. I don’t think you’ll have any trouble reading it, but I just felt I couldn’t type another thing. would you mind sending it so it gets back here (in a flat brown envelope) before the end of the month? that’s before next weekend. can you manage?
as for me, this is the most discouraging time as I’ve been spending precious hours up at the doctor’s office trying to get the whole intricate web of circumstance hashed out. I’ve got an appointment with the veddy busy bone specialist here tomorrow to see if he will take responsibility for my case. at this point, no one will take off my cast for me. also, eventually hugenberger* should send the xrays back here and to raybrook, since medical ethics say the hospital that takes them owns them. as it stands now, I don’t know whether they will take it off tomorrow or next week or next month. I’m just fed up with the whole thing. I’ve been going to bed early, but the daily plodding to classes and up and down stairs is telling on me, and by late afternoon I’m exhausted. papers and assignments are cracking down, and I realize that the next two weeks will be hell. your letters are very comforting. the one person in the world I know feeling worse than me now is poor charlotte. her best friend at middlebury heard about her broken leg through one shirley baldwin, and charlotte, unfortunately, has put two and two together and gotten the fatal four. I think perry was damn mean not to write her an explanation, but to drop her like a hot potato, especially at this low time.
the doctor in the office was very glum about my prospects. said I couldn’t put any weight on the leg at all for days and days once the cast is off. I just pray I can walk to the Junior Prom now. I’ve been stoic about this long enough. All spring I’m going to be an arrant hedonist.
One rather cheerful thing (yes, there is something): just got my semester marks tonight: first time in college that I haven’t gotten a B! A- in creative writing, A in science, and A (!!!!!) from my dear stern lovable brilliant Mr. Patch. Not bad, what? Should be a Junior Phi Bete after all.
Myron has been a dear. Honestly, today I felt so depressed with the uncertainty of my leg that if he’d been here I would have thrown my arms around him and hugged him, he is so sweet. He has done the spectacular and bought a new Ford in New Haven and is getting it Saturday morning and driving up here with it right away to take me off in the country. So I will be the first to christen his new car. I very badly needed something to look forward to to make life bearable right now, and I am leaning on him, although he doesn’t know it yet. He wrote me a very wonderful stream-of-consciousness letter sunday, as I probably told you, and I think he wants to let me try to know him. Really, I don’t know what I’d do without him. I am so looking forward to saturday that I can hardly bear the dragging minutes. I find it hard to believe that I will actually see him again . . . three weeks is such an impossibly long time. At least if he has the car, my leg (cast or uncast) won’t matter. He can carry me anywhere we want to go. Oh, I wish I could sleep and wake up saturday.
How can Perry get pinned if he doesn’t belong
to a fraternity? just curious . . .
xxx
sivvy
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Saturday 21 February 1953*
TLS, Indiana University
saturday afternoon
dear mum . . .
well, this will go down in history as plath’s Black Month. myron called last night, car hasn’t been delivered yet, so no weekend date. I’ve had so many disappointments by now that I really would be shocked if anything nice happened to me at all. it is a big dance weekend here, so dates are everywhere, and I feel quite stoic about life in general.
the cast came off thursday night, and I felt as if the doctor were lifting a coffin lid when I saw the hairy yellow withered corpse of my leg lying there. the emotional shock of admitting it was my leg was the hardest (ugh). he took an xray and said the leg wasn’t completely mended (which was also a nice shock.) I couldn’t worm anything else out of him, and so went to get my hot water whirlpool bath at the infirmary: that is to be a daily affair, taxi up and back. the doctor told me to walk on crutches without putting my foot to the ground until I heard from hugenberger about the new xrays. I only pray to god that I don’t have to have a third cast put on.
thursday night I felt like hell: took a razor and sheared off the worst of the black stubble and the skin of course is all coming off and raw, my ankle is swollen and blackish green, and my muscles have shriveled away to nothing. needless to say I am never going skiing again. I am going to live in a southern climate the rest of my life and play tennis (a nice safe sport) bicycle, swim, and eat mangoes. I wish to heck I could start to use my foot walking. From the way things look now I’ll be lucky to go to junior prom in my long black dress with a taped ankle. and I did so want to live up to the glorious queen shirley. I just hope I can go now. just let me know what hugenberger says about the leg, and do your best to keep it out of another cast: I’ll stay in bed if necessary, just so I won’t have to have it back in plaster again.
the hot whirlpool is very comforting, and I do ankle exercises in it. aside from the sore skin and the weakness, it doesn’t hurt. I would just like to know what “not completely mended means”.
to make myself feel better I wrote two villanelles today and yesterday:* a rigid French verse form I’ve never tried before, where the first and third line have to be repeated as refrains. They took my mind off my helpless misery and made me feel a good deal better. I think they are the best I’ve written yet, and of course sent them off blindly, one to the Atlantic and one to the New Yorker.
Oh hell. Life is so difficult and tedious I could cry. But I won’t: I’ll just keep writing villanelles.
much love,
sivvy
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Monday 23 February 1953*
TLS, Indiana University
monday . . . rally day
dearest of mothers . . .
excuse the big black letter that last one must have been. sun is shining to day, all is much brighter. missed canham* at rally day, much to my sorrow, because I had an appointment with the doctor at the weekly bone clinic* and also a whirlpool scheduled. I decided, medical reticence or not, I was entitled to know just how serious my bone “not being completely mended was”. “I have a bone to pick with you,” I told him. “my fibula, as a matter of fact.” thank god, he told me I could start bearing weight on it. every day in the whirlpool increases my range of motion and ankle rotation and the swelling has gone down, and the skin looks normal, even though the leg itself is thin and the muscles hang loose. I still do bicycle exercises, and would welcome and others hugenberger can suggest. except for a soreness at the place of breakage and tender skin, I can bear full weight on it without a twinge of pain . . . my christian science has subconsciously helped my mental attitude, I think. all in all, I think I will be able to dance slowly in two weeks, as walking without crutches (yup, I’ve tried) is very easy and doesn’t hurt at all. I want to go ahead as fast as I can without endangering myself.
manuscript came yesterday, and I can’t thank you enough. when I am rich and famous I will hire you for my private secretary and baby-tender, and pay you scandalously high wages and take you on monthly jaunts in my own shocking pink yacht. needless to say, I love you very dearly.
my poem* is not indicative of any misunderstanding with myron, but merely is an expansion of the thought that we were destined never to get together again. he sounded tense and distraught when he called friday night, and a letter received sunday cleared up a lot of doubts I had.
the car didn’t come till late saturday, and by then the mechanics had quit working. the next day being sunday, and today being a holiday, he couldn’t get the necessary fluids and checkup till tuesday. but he is coming up tuesday! that is tomorrow. at this point I hardly can believe I’ll ever see him again, but at least he has the car.
I must quote from his letter, I think it’s too good and heart-warming not to share: He says: “at this point you will undeniably be justified in accusing me of obsessively pursuing in a monomaniacal fashion a chimerical capricious goal called a car . . . . my umpteenth revised itinerary reflects my arrival at smith by 2 p.m. tuesday. should you be doing anything to prevent a tryst please call collect and tell me. my reaction will be the mild one of imitating a V-2 rocket upwardly bound with callous disregard to newton’s three laws of motion . . . in toto, being prevented from the Smith jaunt this weekend was highly unpleasant. I must confess my frustration tolerance is very poor . . . ”
nice, what? the poor guy has met up with so many delays and changes of plans, that he is really at the end of his rope. I was too, last saturday night. thank goodness I only have one morning class tomorrow. also that my leg looks respectable (after a fashion).
oh, I like that boy!
much love,
sivvy
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Wednesday 25 February 1953*
TLS, Indiana University
god what a morning . . . wednesday
dear mother . . .
honestly, now that I can walk again the world is going up in unbelievable flashes and earthquakes. I am the girl that Things Happen To. I have spent the morning writing a flurry of letters: all sorts, all sizes: contrite, gay, loving, consolatory. One to art kramer: saturday night, just before supper, he walked into the livingroom and sat down beside me. shocked at seeing the living apparition of the summer, I assumed that he was up here on a date with another girl, and excused myself, saying I had to go to supper. this morning I got a terse note saying that my amazing behavior seemed rather unjustified: usually visitors, out of common courtesy, weren’t left gaping in the living room when they had driven a hundred miles to see someone. score one: I was overcome with horror at my unwittingly curt behavior. also a sad, longing pathetic letter from dick:* he told me last fall that he wanted me to tell him all about my dates so he wouldn’t imagine things. I did so as painlessly as possible. yet, in his heart, I should have realized that he wouldn’t want to hear about them. so I am going on a gay tender campaign: remember-all-the-companionable-things we’ve done together, etc. you might make the norton’s aware that he never asked me to marry him point blank, that I never went-steady with him or committed myself in any way other than that I liked being with him more than any other person, (but I always went out with the other persons). also, I went out all last summer with bob and art, and he wasn’t bothered: now, at the sanatorium, I have taken on unusual importance as I am the only girl he knows, and he is inhibited from making new contacts. if he were in the real world he wouldn’t feel so sorry for himself. I really Don’t Want to go up there spring vacation at all, but if they will go for only a day and two nights, I might be persuaded.
I have to write a topping story for Mlle then, a paper for Creative Writing, a paper for Modern Poetry, and read Paradise lost. the travel by car is tedious, a waste of time as far as I’m concerned. Marcia Is coming. I want to see Warren. but as a human being, I might visit him if they really think it
will do any good. the thing I am afraid of is that he will propose to me when he sees me face to face, or try to extort a promise to him to try again when he comes out. at any rate, I feel that it would be better for me not to go: I can hedge for just so long. I know as well as I’ve known for a long time now, deep down, that I could never be happily married to him: physically I want a colossus; hereditarily, I want a good sane stock; mentally, I want a man who isn’t jealous of my creativity in other fields than children; I also want a healthy husband so I won’t have to worry about his relapsing into tb if he doesn’t get enough rest. I have always been very rational and practical about the prospect of marriage: I feel that I can have the best; I won’t take an inferior. Falling in love is a lovely ecstatic thing, and I think I might very well let myself do that this spring. Of course I won’t tell Dick, but I never felt the great generous abounding spring of beneficence I do now. maybe there’ll be someone after this, I don’t know: it’ll take a year or more to tell: I’m not leaping rapidly into anything for some time yet. So I don’t want anyone to know how very fond I am of Myron: as far as the world is concerned: I like him very much indeed, but there is no scent of orangeblossoms about it. not yet, anyway. graduate school and travel abroad are not going to be stymied by any squalling breastfed brats. I’ve controlled my sex judiciously, and you don’t have to worry about me at all. The consequences of love affairs would stop me from my independent freedom of creative activity, and I don’t intend to be stopped.