by Sylvia Plath
These bone shanks will not wake immaculate
To trumpet-toppling dawn of doomstruck day:
They loll forever in colossal sleep;
Nor can God’s stern, shocked angels cry them up
From their fond, final, infamous decay.
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Monday 19 April 1954
TLS on Smith Review Make-Up
Sheet letterhead, Indiana University
Monday, April 19
Dearest mother . . .
Just a quick note before my 9 o’clock class . . . today is the inevitable Monday, when weekend stardust metamorphoses into sawdust . . . and there is kp duty at 8 and classes all morning . . .
The weekend was superlative . . . George was fortunate to have a good friend loan him a car in the torrential rain on Saturday, so we went to Amherst for dinner, back here for Pygmalion, which we both loved, especially Leslie Howard, who reminds me most strongly of Marty’s Mike, then back to Amherst for a French party to which I wore my sliplike black silk sheath dress which, thank God, fits me beautifully, and one long white silk glove with an ermine muff . . . the effect was heightened by the fact that I had quite a good beginning tan from being out in the sun . . . George was most gratifying . . .
Sunday was heavenly . . . sunworshipped all morning with Marcia, and we both skipped the abominable formal Sunday dinner hour, taking a picnic of apples and milk and sandwiches up on the roof and getting a toasty brown. The afternoon and evening was intriguing . . . Dick Wertz, (who is to Nancy Hunter what Perry was to me) a roommate of Mel Woody’s, telegrammed, after the three of us had such a good time last week, that he’d like a date, and his roommate who had heard so much about me from Mel and Dick, wanted to meet me.
So I got Anne Goodkind for Dick, and met Richard Sassoon* (whose father is a cousin of Siegfried Sassoon*) . . . a thin, slender Parisian fellow who is a British subject, and a delight to talk to . . . I find he’s another of those men who are exactly as tall as I, but they don’t seem to mind it, and I certainly don’t. He drove up with Wertz in his little German Volkswagon and we drove out to Look Park as it was such a beautiful afternoon (I had been out all day) and raced each other over the green fields, observed the deer and children leaping around, and meandered along by the river. Then a good pork dinner at Valentine over at Amherst with Nancy Hunter and Dave Furner,* a tour of the college, back to Smith to pick up Anne. Then we four did the most wonderful thing: we drove up to the Mount Tom reservation in the pitch dark, with the wind blowing, and only the headlights cutting a path out of the black, and climbed a perilous firetower from where we could overlook the whole pioneer valley, springfield, holyoke, et al, with the congregations of luminous lights and colored neon pinpricks, and the big moon faintly orange, misty, as in a Japanese print. It was a moving and unifying experience, even if my legs did shake on the way down the steep slatted stairs.
After this communication with nature we went to the Deke house at Amherst where Wertz had a good friend, and sat in the pinepaneled bar decorated with wonderful Tolouse-Lautrec paintings mounted in black, quaffed bourbon and water, danced, and since Richard found a boy named Andre Pierre,* most everybody was speaking French. I was amazed at the amount I understood and could mimic so that Richard told me I had an excellent accent . . . so if only I could learn a vocabulary and relearn grammar, I’m sure I could pick up the inflection in no time! As it was Sunday, there were many stag boys, and Anne and I were the belles of the bar as it were, with several boys asking for dances, dates, etc., all most gratifying to the insatiable female ego!
Richard Sassoon and I got along very well indeed . . . and I honestly enjoyed talking with him, and climbing towers . . . he’s a very intuitive weird sinuous little guy whose eyes are black and shadowed so he looks as if he were an absinthe addict . . . all of which helps me to be carefree and gay and forget this tantalizing Waiting Game which is ubiquitous in the background.
Next weekend George is working hard on his chemistry honors subject, so I won’t be seeing him probably, and as I sweetly refused Phil’s invitation for all-college weekend, I may just (but somehow dubiously) be sitting home and studying. But one never knows.
Am still chatting with Dr. Booth once a week . . . mostly just friendly conversations as I really feel I am basically an extremely happy and well-adjusted buoyant person at heart . . . continually happy in a steady fashion, not ricocheting from depths to heights, although I do hit heights now and then . . .
Hope youre able to find the stole, also hat . . . clothes don’t make the woman but they certainly help . . . my Mexicanprint linen with a black sweater over my tan was highly approved of yesterday . . . the nice thing is that most boys don’t notice the line between woman and apparel, just judge the ensemble . . .
love,
sivvy
TO Richard Sassoon
Tuesday 20 April 1954
TL on verso of Smith College News
Office letterhead, Indiana University
wednesday, april 20:
to sassoon:
halfnakedly browning on natural mattresses of pineneedles we lolled luxuriant and cerebralized abominably about what all vitalisitc people do . . . waded barefoot in iced flowing levels of riproaring river, swung treeward with children, raced deer and made naughty remarks about passing nuns . . . such sinful black swathings and blindings and bindings from god’s blazing, banging, pungent and pugilistic sunlight! rip them naked, fix them writhing white and pious on a formulated paradox . . . burn them to corpulent crisps and serve them up like sanctified snails with a succulent filet mignon of holy notions . . .
remembering: soft moonvaulted night, annoyed with a plethora of stars, climbing in hegelian dialectic spirals up into the dark unknown . . . as kilroy cried: “I don’t see nothing but nothing, and then more nothing!”* and the enchanting jargon of three Other voices accompanying this lone vertigoed one in the perilous descent . . . postulations of rapport don’t need articulation, but poetic symbols facilitate such . . .
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Friday 23 April 1954*
TLS in greeting card,* Indiana
University
Double, double toil and trouble / fire burn and champagne bubble / I’m stirring up a witches brew / That will, I hope, bring luck to you / HAPPY BIRTHDAY
best wishes and lots / of love from your / euphoric daughter / (over)
Dear mother . . .
Just a note to tell you that I’m thinking of you on your birthday . . . today is a warm green rainy day which is a subtle change from all the sun I’ve been out tanning in.
Last night I wore my pretty formal and the silver shoes to the All*Smith Phi Bete dinner* in the quadrangle which was most sumptuous: filet mignon, asparagus, fresh strawberries, etc. . . . sat at Mr. Patch’s table and enjoyed myself thoroughly. Next Wednesday is the dinner at Lawrence House. As we have 5 Phi Betes, it will be a gala occasion: I’m having Mr. and Mrs. Davis, Miss Drew and Miss Page (who has been wonderful about advising me on my program next year and is going to help me review French on my own).
Also, Mr. Fisher,* a handsome middleaged member of the faculty, wanted a collection of my poems, and, although his course in verse writing has been canceled as too expensive for the college, has offered to coach me privately next year in writing poetry . . . a charming man!
Tonight Mike Lotz is coming up to tell me his troubles . . . should be diverting . . . a second Perry! Hoho . . .
xxx
Sivvy
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Sunday 25 April 1954*
ALS (postcard), Indiana University
Sunday 1. a.m.
Dear mother . . .
Just a note before I fall deliciously in bed after a lovely day. First: two records of the four are for you, two for Warren: yours are the New World Symphony by Dvorzak and Copland’s Symphony No. 3 �
� I think you will like the lyricism of them – the more modern polyphones of the others – Hindemith, Bartok & Shoenberg – probably will appeal more to Warren Phi Bete dinner delightful – wore white formal, silver shoes, received pink rose which is now ensconced in chianti bottle at desk – filet Mignon at Mr. Patch’s table – dull few hours with lugubrious Myron last night – he is always so damn sad, depressed, spongy – no “joie de vivre” – even I couldn’t catalyze him – he’s just Dull! Remedy today – my French boy Dick Sassoon drove up from Yale in his Volksvagon with a bottle of exquisite wine which we imbimbed at a 830 ft altitude on top of world steak “saignant” at Wiggins – quoted French poetry – great rapport – charming little chap – diversion
xx
sivvy
TO Philip E. McCurdy
Monday 26 April 1954
TLS with envelope, Smith College
monday april 26
on my mother’s birthday I salute you, darling . . . breakfast has been, as usual, delightful . . .
by cheating me of an infinitely valuable hour of slumber the machinistic men at the Bureau of Time have made 8:30 an earlier blue color with colder greening leaves, and have stretched the afternoons out late and long gold . . . c’est la vie! theyre always changing something . . .
your letter was appreciated, especially the choice cartoon which occasioned much laughter and is now tacked up on my bulletin board (what with your cartoon, your poster, and your own portrait, this room is becoming a salon de Phil!) also loved monsieur norman’s poems . . . have read them aloud to several friends, who gratified me by thinking they were by an established poet (well, isn’t he?)
nice days, mostly, have been devoted to the sun cult, picnics in country and park, reading James on sunroof, taking on tan with tolstoi . . . , lou giesey, pat oneil and I were treated by miss palmer* of wellesley high one night to succulent jack august lobsters . . . reminiscent of former and enchanting time . . . formal college phi bete dinner also this week . . . enjoyed filet mignon and pink roses symbolic of girlish scholarship . . .
I must really plunge into uncompromising work this next month . . . have literally thousands of pages to assimilate and have been playing around too much with sun of god and sons of eve . . .
your friend and mine, george, has been desperately working on his chemistry honors thesis last week, and I have been going out with little expatriate frenchmen . . . one of whom, a sensitive, intuitive, very thin, black-eyed with purple hollows about them, satanic relative of siegfried sassoon I find quite charming . . . he speaks in french half of the time because he thinks I understand it: je t’adore . . . la vie est la farce à mêner par tous . . . and so on . . . as a result of which my french is picking up and I am adding a few telling phrases to my rather meager previous store of “voulez-vous coucher avec moi?” and “merde alores!” oh, every day in every way . . .
so pleased about your cape job . . . I’m planning on Harvard Summer School* remember? or do you? . . . and anyhow, I’ll be home all June except for Two Weddings on the 7th* and 15th . . . maybe you could investigate down the cape and see if they have any little cabins for rent on weekends in which case I could come down occasionally with grammar or goethe or whatever . . .
anyhow, I hope you can practice your tennis coaching skills with me before you take off for the summer . . . my frenchboy is not the outdoor type . . . he prefers cloistered velvet rooms, pale with roses, light wine, a volume of baudelaire or vigny or rimbaud and a nuit d’amour . . . me, I occasionally want good healthy vulgar american sun, sweat and song . . . entendu?
climbed the firetower 830 feet high in pitch black night last weekend with three others . . . to wonder at the circling crown of lights far far below and stand mystified and silent, the winds of eternity blowing down our backs . . . a victim of vertigo, I shuddered in ecstasies of terror all the while pretending to be brave . . .
off to hear more about henry james . . . hoping eventually to hear more about you . . .
xxx
syl
TO Philip E. McCurdy
Wednesday 28 April 1954
ALS with envelope, Smith College
wednesday, april 28
dear phil . . .
speaking of strategically-timed letters, yours, which arrived this morning, was providential! I am writing from a semi-prone position at the infirmary, which opened its antiseptic white gates to receive me an hour ago – malheureusement this is the gala date of our formal Phi Bete dinner at the house – which I was looking forward to attending like a tan cinderella in a silver & white ball gown – our dear housemother has to disinvite my 4 illustrious faculty members, and if I were strong enough, I’d swear bitterly – as it is, I can just about manage one weak, rickety: “damn.” . . .
either someone tried to poison me last night, or I had an immaculate miscarriage: excuse the vulgar simile, but I feel at present as if I’d just given birth to five or six babies simultaneously. In other words, I feel like hell – you know how it is when your skin is abnormally hypersensitive, so that sheets weigh like six feet of gibraltar rock, and to your ears the sound of a sneeze reverberates as if Krakatoa were blowing up?! (. . . excuse my hypochondria, but I keep getting carried away by my own figures of speech! . . . )
anyhow, angel, I am here, too spent to read, with barely enough verve to keep my eyes open and contemplate the wet, rain slick flagstones of the sun (!) porch outside my window. funny thing about pain: it annihilates one’s pride completely – when I think of crying out like a teething baby wanting its mother, I somehow feel more intensely than ever the reserve power of matter over mind . . .
I was shocked and saddened to hear about how death struck adams house . . . Dr. Little* seemed so charming, so debon air – while feeling a vicarious loss for you, I muse on the suddenness of death . . . if we could be clairvoyant and see the date of our own doom, the bloodclot in the vein of our existence – how differently we might proportion our own time . . . and yet, perhaps all one can do is to go on and on “making the best of a bad job . . . ”* and loving life the more for its individual ephemeral quality . . .
a switch: ten novels to devour in four, or rather three brief weeks before exams! all over may 27th . . . and I hope that we’ll have a bit of a chance to see each other before you and Norm hie yourselves to the cape . . . and I start to cultivate my native tongue: Deutschland uber alles . . .
cheerful note: (about time, WOT!) please do buy the sprightly pink-yellow & green covered issue of the May Harper’s. on page 29 you will see displayed the work of this starving minor poet: a landmark in the flux of fickle time.
I was most pleased at the generous typographical setup,* and at the way the poem echoes in verse the prose paragraphs closing Mr. Bowles article – also thrilled at the minute biography on page 19 and the company my name keeps on the title page!
ah, vanitas, vanitatum . . .
I’m only human: & did so want you to share my happiness . . .
The pen falters in my feverish fingers –
my love –
sylvia
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Friday 30 April 1954
Telegram, Indiana University
=SMITH JUST VOTED ME SCHOLARSHIP OF $1250 MORE BIRTHDAY GREETINGS=
SYLVIA=
TO Gordon Lameyer
Monday 3 May 1954
TLS on Smith College News Office
letterhead, Indiana University
May 3 . . .
7:30 p.m.
Dear Gordon . . .
It is the twilight of an english may day, green and gloomy, with car tires slithering wetly on the rainy streets; and the white flower clusters on the tree outside my window are already dissolving, petal by petal falling in the fine and persistent mist . . . a bird chitters sleepily, perhaps it is a goldfinch or a languid nightingale . . . on my desk, in one of my globed green chianti bottles sprouts an “unofficial rose” dark red
and exotically proud . . .
Your excellent letter arrived yesterday* and brought lovely splashes of continental color into my collegiate life . . . I was especially enchanted by your account of the spinning motor bike trip . . . and, as you must obviously know, I am most eager to hear about your evolving tentative plans and reasons for the project of graduate school . . .
Since I last talked with you, I’ve been actively planning my program for my senior (it’s about time!) year at Smith. I don’t know if I mentioned it before, but I’m planning to do my thesis on Dostoevsky . . . more his philosophies than his literary talent: either the recurrence of the split personality or the idea of the Christ and AntiChrist . . . and Mr. Gibian, an exquisite young Czech who is in both the Russian and English departments has consented to be my director . . . I’ve already had two good talks with him, and feel that he is an excellent choice for me: he’s vital, stimulating, and thinks with a penetrating clarity which will be a tonic for my occasional bursts of verbal and metaphysical euphoria . . . also, he’s extremely interested in the creative aspects of writing, and has criticized some of my poems. Speaking of poems, Mr. Alfred Fisher has benignly offered to give me a private and extempore course in verse writing next year, as the college considered this course an hors d’oeuvre too expensive for its palate, in spite of the delicacy of it, and struck it off the catalogue. The first thing Mr. Fisher had me do last week was sprint out and buy the new edition of James Joyce’s poems “Chamber Music”,* with the superb introduction by Tindall.*
As I sat on the sunroof, underlining and laughing at several lovely allusions to “chambermade” music, and “shamebred” music, I enjoyed recalling Bloom’s pun on chamberpot music, and burst into uncontrolled hysterics when, in the midst of Tindall’s scholarly explication I read: “let us look more steadily at Joyce’s concern with urine . . . ”* whereupon we consider that both “tea and urine are forms of water, and water is a natural symbol of life . . . ”* Sometime again you must read me from Finnegan’s Wake which I hope to read at either the beginning or the end of this summer . . . having not yet bought a copy* or remembered more than the parts you read about Shem and Shaun, and the hitheringthithering waters . .