The Letters of Sylvia Plath Volume 1

by Sylvia Plath

  Anyhow, I hope my attempt to explain a little of how I feel about the situation had been at least partially coherent . . .

  I will enjoy hearing from you, Phil, and hope that we can get together again soon---and in the meantime, my very fond love . . . .

  as ever,

  Syl

  TO Gordon Lameyer

  Saturday 6 February 1954

  TLS on Smith College News Office

  letterhead, Indiana University

  Saturday, February 6

  Dear Gordon . . . .

  9 a.m.- Having just pared a multitude of whitish turnips and brutally gored the eyes from a large carton of potatoes, I sit at the third window in my large maroon-gray-and-blue single overlooking the quaint colorful commerciality of Green Street and the far gray humpback of a dark distant hill under the uncertain light of Saturday morning. I have been here a week, and already I feel most comfortable and at home and quite unbelievably contented.

  My arrival last weekend was a spectacular one . . . as Warren drove us from the clear wintry metropolis of Amherst across the river into Hamp, we entered a dark whirling cloud of local blizzard which seemed to shroud college hall in a phantomlike obscurity. As we began to descend the unplowed steepness of the hill by Paradise Pond, the car plunged into a skid the likes of which I never hope to see again---speeding downward sideways, turning all the while and leaning dangerously. There were three alternatives---all quite unpleasant: we could smash into the manywindowed greenhouse on the left, crash into the car parked in front of it, or plunge over the steep bank at the right and roll merrily down into the dark iced waters of “Paradise.” I remember telling Warren that it had been lovely knowing him and saying: oh, god god god god god (to my own private diety) in that ineluctable interval as we slid, spun, and miraculously came to a halt at the bottom of the hill, facing upward, the way we had come, and rather pale and tremulous from the unexpected and uncontrolled ride. Our new housemother, Mrs. Kelsey,* (who is a most felicitous improvement over the fluttering idiot we had last year) understandingly fed us some hot tea in her livingroom, which had the desired quieting effect.

  Most pleased am I with all my courses. After long months of no more intellectual work than trying to solve Double-Crostics and (much more difficult and cryptic) attempting with only partial success to decipher one erudite nautical cross word puzzle,* I am really glad to get back to my program, which includes Russian lit. (Tolstoy and Dostoevsky), European Intellectual History of the 19th cen., Medieval Art, and early and modern American lit., (the latter of which two courses is with my favorite critic, the unbeatable R. G. Davis.) At present, I am reading (simultaneously) Hawthorne,* Sister Carrie by Dreiser,* and Crime and Punishment:* really too pleasurable to be classified as assignments!

  Thursday evening Sheila Saunders* and I planned to visit my last year’s roommate at Amherst for dinner etc., but it was a blasted cold windy night, and we missed the afternoon bus by a few mere minutes, so we stepped out in the road and began to hitch . . . a novel experience for me, at any rate (except for the one evening when a friend and I hitched home from Boston and the boy in the back was merrily tearing up dollar bills and watching them float out the window.) We found Mary in the lab in the depths of the Biology building helping a few senior honors students remove the pituitary glands from newts in regeneration experiments. (Seems that newts with pituitaries can regenerate amputated limbs; not so newts without; ho ho.) Dr. Schotté,* the head of the lab (on a Rockefeller grant) welcomed us with literally open arms and said the occasion called for some wine, which he proceeded to extract from his chemical closet in a fat bottle. We cleared away the mutilated newts, poured the wine in beakers and began drinking toasts, etc., and talking for a good long while. Whereupon we all went to dinner at Valentine, after which we spent a most stimulating evening at Dr. Schotté’s, imbibing quantities of liqueur and talking and being read to aloud and listening to some young married instructor of math at Princeton imitate the inimitable Tom Lehrer’s* songs when the occasion called for it, which it often did. Mary seems to enjoy her little apartment and her work at Amherst which is a combination of a research and study grant (she’s been broadening out and taking German and music, etc.--besides chopping the feet off newts.) With a promise to join them all newt-hunting this spring, I left with Dr. S. for Lawrence, arriving one minute before the deadline.

  Our house is in an uproar these days as one of the seniors is getting married up here in a week . . . and we are all going through the rituals of showers etc. Remember Throcky? (Joan T.)* Well, she writes that she is being divorced this winter, after just being married last year. So it goes; La Ronde. While my inner core is really (I think) sincere and hopeful idealist, my outer layers are rationally pragmatist enough to think that a calm analysis of character and desires and situations would obviate the frequent messes arising from casual or careless matches . . . but one never knows.

  Anyhow, it seems a long long way till spring vacation March 24. I hope to be able to drop down to New York to visit a few of my lovely bizarre friends who are modeling, painting and simultaneously interpreting in that fair metropolis . . . but we shall see, we shall see.

  Your letters, as usual, are a delight to read, containing and re-creating, as they do, the color and flavor of the scenes you wander through. I was most amused by your recapitulation of the shore(t)-sighting sentiments of some of your men . . . .

  2:30 p.m. . . . hours later, having sat through a characteristically witty and whimsical Davis lecture on extrinsic and intrinsic aspects of the novel; perused slides of pagan and Christian art and architecture and learned that early Christian art technique, forms and subjects are nothing less than immediately derived from the antique pagan origins: shepherds, wine-festivals and Dionysus being transformed into shepherds, wine-communion and Christ; rented a modern art masterpiece to hang on the walls of my room; sat for an hour over coffee with one of my friends and caught up on the past year; played reckless bridge on the floor of the livingroom; eaten lunch; now devouring a whitefleshed ocherskinned pear and writing you preparatory to going to tea at Elizabeth Drew’s a bit later on . . .

  I was just considering the differences in our present modes of existence . . . you, while always intellectually active, are never-the-less emphasizing the actual three-dimensionality of new experiences and discoveries in a new Old World, while I am leading what might be termed the “contemplative life” in the sequestered ivy-twined browsing rooms of my old mind . . . trying always to expand the minute islands of my philosophic understanding and experience which are microscopic in a view of the whole enormous and quite spectacular universe. I suppose I will be trying to enlarge those islands of understanding and experience for the rest of my life (I hope so at any rate)---to keep on growing and altering until I get to the terminal where “. . . Grave level-headed men / Know all disjointed temples break their vows and fall / And sonnets alter into alphabet again.”*

  Sometimes, when I try quickly to think back upon the texture and substance, the form and content of these past 21 (doesn’t that sound ancient?!) years, I think that the parts of actual living (by which I mean physical experience and doing, as distinguished from activity which is primarily philosophical and mental . . . ) stand out like unique trees along a roadway which is now rough, now level, now leading through a wasteland, now coming unexpectedly to grape arbors and fountains . . . . I remember, although it sometimes seems impossible to conceive of myself as a child, physical details: the noon sunlight on my mother’s pale hands as she cut raw carrots and beans into an aluminum pot, the radiance making her slender fingers almost translucent; the nightly ritual of going upstairs with Warren to get ready for bed in an ecstasy of fear because we thought giants lived in the dark, mysterious bathroom store-closet; bits of colored watersmoothed glass we collected on the beach and pounded up into blue, red, and green powders which we stored in glass jars; a green rock that became a boat, a castle, an island in our fertile imaginings . . . . oh, all those m
ultitudinous recollections that are stored in the unconscious, that elude the memory, only to emerge unexpectedly in connection with some stimulus in the present. Life is so largely eating and sleeping and going places without ever getting there: my “experiences” with the quantity of “action” seem so few and outstanding in comparison with the rest of the sitting and reading and sleeping: I can count them off: seeing a baby born, breaking rules and going up spontaneously for the first time in a small private airplane, cutting up the lungs of a human cadaver, being the only white girl at an all-Negro party, battling high waves in a storm in trying to climb aboard our little tipping sailboat, squatting in the blazing noon sun setting strawberry runners and wishing for water, racing my favorite golden retriever along the hardpacked shore at Nauset beach . . . . little things, large things, that all are somehow very important in the formative scheme of living. I want to do more, so very much more: to bike and hike through Europe, to travel out West, to meet and know and love people with that intense rapport, transient and elusive though it may be, which I have felt so strongly in so many separate instances: I want to condition myself to hear, and not just listen; to see, and not just look; to communicate, and not just talk; to feel, and not just touch . . . . It is so disastrously easy to settle down into the smooth undemanding rituals of the trite sheepish conformist life . . . . That is why it is good to have friends who will stimulate and arouse one . . . .

  I think you said that you would not mind hearing a few fragments of things I have written; of course, nothing has been written since last spring . . . . and I don’t remember if I showed you this brief sarcastic bit: Anyhow, here it is. Tell me what you think of it:

  Dirge in Three Parts

  I.

  The door bangs shut upon the tiny garden:

  Gigantic children rant and kick the stairs

  And scribble cross notes to the wicked warden

  Who exiled them in spite of bribes and prayers.

  II.

  The road to Oz is flawed with shocking ruts,

  Fallen prey to scarecrows and tin men;

  The two-faced lion lives on blood and guts,

  And Dorothy won’t walk that way again.

  III.

  The vampire clock mocks the unwinding heart

  And claps black hands, converting man to dung;

  The friendly sluts and chimeras depart,

  And dirt is devil’s food upon the tongue.

  Of course the first verse is supposed to derive from a small satire on Adam and Even in Eden combined with Alice-in-Wonderland and DP’s in general. The second uses the fairytale Oz yellow-brick road to take the place of Dante’s road of life and the pilgrimage in Bunyan’s book. The third plays on the inexorable black magic of time passing, childhood dreams lost, and the final taste of inevitable death. Cheery, wot? W. H. Auden accused me of being too glib, which I think is a valid criticism in most cases . . . except I wasn’t trying to be completely serious. Also played with vowel sounds . . . .

  Did I tell you that I bought two magnificent records before I came back: one is Edith Sitwell’s Façade with the bizarre music of William Walton* in the background. Mother doesn’t like it, and general family concensus makes me shut all the doors when I listen to what they think in incomprehensible gibberish, while I insist that vowels do have wave lengths and can give a pure sensuous listening pleasure, even when dissociated from meaning . . . “Said the navy blue ghost of Mr. Belaker, the allegro Negro cocktail shaker . . . ”* and so on. The other record is a wonderful Dylan Thomas set of readings,* with his musical lyric voice, living beyond the grave for me, and making me shiver and sometimes even cry to hear “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” and “In the White Giant’s Thigh” . . . . these being the first records of the poet readings I have ever had, I love them blithely well.

  This letter is becoming much more monumentally long than I ever intended. Sometimes I’m not even sure to just which sort of Gordon I’m writing . . . . that is what this medium of prose and typewritten talk can do to one if prolonged . . . . it can so abstract a personality that it becomes altogether too easy to extend the attributes of an individual to cover all sorts of characteristics, some of which may not even exist. Leading to the eventual shock of realization some day in the future.

  This, I sincerely hope, will not happen. If I continue to feel that I can tell you just about anything that I do or think, I am presupposing a sensitive and understanding recipient at the other end of the postal line, an individual whom I endow with definite perceptive comprehension. The test comes in the more complex three-dimensions . . . where action is added to and becomes an integral cause-and-effect of the abstracted words. All this may be incoherent . . . . but I hope, and usually assume, that you are kindred enough to me to supply much of what is badly said, and sometimes not said at all.

  Do feel free (even libidinously so) to share all sorts of ideas and experiences with me, please, or to say anything, absolutely anything that comes into your lovely head . . . .

  and so, my peregrinating Ulysses,

  adieu for a time

  aufviedersehen (or howsoever

  they spell it . . . .)

  your own particular

  sylvia

  TO Ellen Bond*

  Sunday 7 February 1954

  TLS, Library of Congress

  Lawrence House

  Smith College

  Northampton, Mass.

  February 7, 1954

  Miss Ellen Bond

  Personal and Otherwise

  Harper’s Magazine

  49 East 33 Street

  New York 16, N.Y.

  Dear Miss Bond:

  Needless to say, I was extremely pleased to hear from you about the possible publication of some of my poems this coming spring.* There are only a few recent items to add to the information I sent you last spring.

  Briefly, I am a junior at Smith College this year, honoring in English. This fall I was named a junior Phi Bete, and my past activities have included working on the Editorial Board of the Smith Review (our literary magazine) and being the Smith College correspondent for the Daily Hampshire Gazette newspaper.

  My poems and stories have appeared in Seventeen and Mademoiselle magazines, as well as in the Christian Science Monitor. Last June I spent the month working at Mademoiselle in New York as one of the twenty guest editors chosen annually from colleges all over the United States. As guest editor from Smith, I was assistant to the managing editor of Mlle., Cyrilly Abels.

  And that is a short history of my activities since last spring. I shall be most eager to hear what issue of Harper’s my poem will appear in!

  Sincerely,

  Sylvia Plath

  TO Aurelia Schober Plath

  Monday 8 February 1954*

  TLS, Indiana University

 
  Memorandum sheets, with heading>

  TO

  you

  FROM

  me

  SUBJECT

  things in general

  DATE

  monday

  Dearest mother . . .

  I’m sending you this blank for next year which I hope you can make out immediately and send to the office of Scholarships as the blanks are all supposed to be in by Feb. 14. I put down tentatively that I expect to earn $400, although I don’t even know if I could ever get a job paying that much. So don’t you put down that you can give me a whole lot next year, as you are paying for all this semester, and they certainly will want to help if I do well, and even if I don’t.

  Saw Miss Mensel today, and had a nice chat. Also went to tea at Miss Drew’s Saturday afternoon and had a lovely time . . . she is such a dear . . . hugged me and kissed me and said how happy she was to have me back. I still have some people left to see, but the major items of immediate importance are completed. Have only seven letters out of about 20 left to write . . . sent off the most important ones to Mrs. Prouty, Mary Wren
n,* etc.

  Had a blind date at Amherst Saturday night . . . . very young and childish, although goodlooking, with a penchant for beer. He obviously thought I was tremendously witty, even though I didn’t say one thing out of the ordinary, but rather enjoyed making little remarks that were over his head. The boys over there are all so young and weak and “sheepish” fraternity-wise. I do think that the standards at Amherst are much inferior to those at Harvard and Yale. Gordon certainly was an exception to the rule.

  However, although my date in himself was no prize, I sized up the situation practically, turned on the laughable cosy side of my nature, curled up on the big leather couch and drank beer and listened to music, and managed to enjoy myself in a casual hedonistic way.

  I have spent a good deal of time chatting in the rooms of various girls in the evening and playing bridge, figuring that getting well acquainted with some of the underclassmen is most important at first. Am reading Hawthorne’s short stories, “Crime and Punishment” and “Sister Carrie” by Theodore Drieser. All very good books.

  Needless to say, it is simply wonderful to be back here, and I feel no desire to graduate, amazingly enough, with the rest of my class. I like the underclassmen in Lawrence very much and am growing to feel more at home with them which is a good thing.

  I’ll probably be talking to you on the phone soon, so I won’t go on any longer. I’m glad that Harper’s wrote. I was sure they thought I was dead or something and were never going to publish anything, or if they did, that they were going to put a black border around it!

  much love,

  sivvy

  TO Gordon Lameyer

  Wednesday 10 February 1954*

  TLS in greeting card,*

  Indiana University