by Sylvia Plath
The cultic twalette is deepening now, and I think of levels of ambivalences, and nefarious nuances and paradoxical polemics, and I am happy to know that I will have at least two years . . . and maybe more, who knows, to plunge and probe and wallow utterly in reading and talk . . . I always was to evolve dialectically, but I think that by prolonging these years of intense delight I shall only be the more desirous and capable of mixing up sonnets with my scrambled eggs, lyrics with my laundry, and so on . . .
As ever, I am slightly awestruck at the amount I can learn from you; your literary background is so much richer and prolific than mine! I feel like Alice in Wonderland, always running, yet staying relatively the same distance behind . . . this term has helped: am savoring one novel after the other in these three hectic weeks before exams . . . War and Peace, Anna Karenina,* The American,* Portrait of a Lady* . . . and, for reading period, The Ambassadors (I remember your showing that book to me last spring and commenting upon the intricacy of the style . . . now I look forward to reading it and making your remarks more meaningful . . . ) Newton Arvin has been a magnificent experience in this Hawthorne, Melville and James course, as you may imagine . . .
I’ll be through with my last exam on the afternoon of May 27, and hope to head home that Thursday. Except for a wedding in Hamp on the 7th of June, and my bridesmaiding at one in Hanover on the 14th and 15th, I’ll be luxuriating in tennis, swimming and leisure reading all of June before Harvard Summer School opens in July . . .
Did I tell you that I have been seeing one of Siefried Sassoon’s descendants for the last few weeks? My charming roommate for next year, Nancy Hunter, introduced me to Dick Sassoon and since then I’ve been receiving weekly visits from the thin, black-eyed little guy, who is Parisian born and a subject of the queen . . . and never fails to come up in his minute Volkswagon without a bottle of exquisite French wine and a few volumes of Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine or Malarmée . . . it is improving my comprehension of French no end, as Sassoon insists on speaking French whenever he is intense, which is most of the time . . . you’d enjoy him, I think.
Our last exploit frightened me no end: we took off for the country with poetry books, Bordeaux wine and chicken sandwiches for a picnic, and drove all over rutted roads to get to a particularly verdant hilltop, paying no attention to the fact that the roads were abominable. I began to get uneasy at twilight when an eerie wind sprang up and I remembered that we would have several barbwire fences to cross in the descending dark . . . there were no lights anywhere . . . and when, with relief, I crawled into the little car after lacerating myself on barbwire and being bitten all over by malignant minute flies, we found that the car wheels just spun deeper and deeper into the wet mud of the rutted road. At this point I began to become terrified, the way I do, utterly unreasonably, on the top of a fire tower where the steps can be seen through . . . my visciously vivid imagination conjured up murders and brutality in the woods . . . the car wheels spun more shrilly, Sassoon swore gallantly about “merde de vaches” in French and the forest got darker and darker . . . oppressive and obscure . . . you know: “I came to myself in the middle of a dark wood where the way was lost . . . ”
Finally, in a flash of inspiration, I suggested through chattering teeth that we walk together to a farmhouse I had remembered seeing about a mile and a half back on the tar road we had left so blithely that afternoon. Leaving the two faint lights of the little car to recede behind us in the ominous dark, we walked hand in hand, ankle deep in mud, up the black road . . . finally we saw a light far off; luckily the people in the farmhouse did not retire at 8:30 . . . and as we approached the distant house in its isolated circle of light, I began to conjure up new images of sadistic farmers with guns, bloodhounds, perverted hired hands who would kill Sassoon and so on.
We knocked; would it be the lady or the tiger?* Neither. A solid, taciturn and handsome man opened the door . . . his white-haired wife came up behind him to see who it was, and invited us into a wide, spacious kitchen, full of light and warmth. A dog nuzzled my ankles; a young girl in slacks sat at the kitchen table with an elderly man who looked like a urbane leprechaun, his fingers gnarled and stiff with arthritis. I sat shakily down in a chair and swore I wouldn’t ever move or go back in that windy wilderness again.
While Sassoon was calling the towtruck and spending hours getting the car out of the mud, I was getting to know the family. They accepted me immediately, and I let them think I was more afraid than I was because that pleased them. They seated me in their one burlap rocking chair before a huge fireplace that served as the center of the house; the taciturn gentleman went down cellar to get another big log to put on the blaze; the mother showed me the picture of her son in Korea and obligingly kept saying: “I wish Paul was here now”; the young girl brought out the pink and white satin pajamas her brother had sent her from Japan; the old man hobbled about with his cane and put violets in my hair. By the time Sassoon came back, I was invited to a square dance next week and told please to come back anytime to visit . . . all in all, it was a really warming sequel to the dark terror of unknown nature: the friendliness of simple people who brought out all their treasures to show me because I was afraid . . . . . enough of this . . . do let me know as soon as you know when you’ll be home . . .
with love,
sylvia
P.S. Do try to buy a copy of the May issue of Harper’s! It’s my first poem therein – and as I’ve always wanted to dedicate something to you, consider this dedicated . . .
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Tuesday 4 May 1954*
ALS (postcard), Indiana University
Tuesday 2 p.m.
Dear mummy . . .
just a note in the midst of a rigorously-planned schedule from now till reading period & exams to say that I am fine: had a good Saturday with Sassoon up here – most unique – another bottle of exquisite Bordeaux wine & a picnic of chicken sandwiches in a lovely green meadow – strange and enchanting evening spent in a farmhouse while waiting for Sassoon & towtruck to get his car out of quagmire on rutted dirt road – 4 intriguing people who were evidently captivated by my peculiar arrival in the dark of night, hair, damp with rain. They called me Cinderella and treated me like a queen till Sassoon came back with the reclaimed Volkswagon – a unifying episode of crisis. Wonderful letter from Gordon who is gradually changing to favor teaching (!) – my letters, subtle as they are, seem to be exerting influence – also I hope to know him on deeper more mature levels than I was capable of last summer – See you Sat the 15th –
xx
sivvy
TO Melvin Woody
Wednesday 5 May 1954
TLS on Smith College News Office
letterhead, Smith College
May 5
Dear Mel . . .
And I also find it impossible to spend the hours necessary for full communication, as you do, but at any rate I’m sandwiching this answer between War and Peace and Anna Karenina, and using my typewriter to facilitate and accelerate expression . . .
I say this is an “answer” to your last letter,* although I hardly like to identify my reply by such a pedestrian word: and yet I marvel that you, in consistency with the tone of your message, did not enclose a stamped, self-addressed postcard with two boxes to check: yes or no . . .
Don’t misunderstand me by thinking that I misunderstand you, or this letter will strike you as either blind or a little cruel. But Mel, you are so devastatingly illogical in your logic, so passionless in your passion, that I cannot resist indicating a few discrepancies I find even in the framework of your philosophy . . . and, indeed, I can hardly forbear a blow by blow annihilation of your premises and conclusions: but I shall try to control myself here . . .
Granted, I stand accused of sophistry and pragmatism . . . two very derogatory words in your vocabulary, obviously, but (while I vehemently deny sophistry, or “subtle fallacious reasoning”, I do accept the full guilt of pragmatism in the dictionary sense that thought
should function as a guide to action and “truth is pre-eminently to be tested by the practical consequences of belief”.)* I would rather be admittedly a relativistic amoral pragmatist, which I suppose I am in a certain sense, than a déracinée (your word, I believe) idealist incapable of more than inconsistency in linking thought and action: and of this last drastic flaw I accuse you . . .
Your hypothetical membership in the “community of life” as speciously distinguished from the “community of men” I find highly artificial. You apparently deny the possibility of finding fulfulment in a social context, a context of tradition, ritual and responsibility which can become as rich and vital as you are capable of making it. Your concept of a completed ritual act of fertility is as incomplete and sterile as any I could imagine!
Really, now, do you accept the fact that your “total commitment to earth” involves more than a brief spasm of irresponsible ecstasy? Do you accept the fact that the demand of fertility in fertility, creation (not of male euphoria) of babies, and the care of such? Can you deny that the end of fertility is reproduction, not just the hedony which you condone as “a ritual act of fertility allowing no aesthetic distance?”
Not only do I deplore your unawareness of the real, provable end of fertility rituals, but I am concerned for your apparent justification of the “laceration and pain” you intend admittedly and coldly to inflict on others (me, in particular) by your sweeping generalization that pain is the true root of existence. That last assertion may be true, but it is hardly appropriate to justify your propositions here! I don’t pretend to be going through complete fertility rituals – (as you would have me do) – simply because I am honestly not ready to accept the consequences (the full consequences) of the conceiving act: I am hardly ready or willing to produce the children which nature would endow me with as the understood reward of my actions.
In this sense, I claim to be more honest than you are. I don’t pretend to desire a “complete act” simply because I refuse to accept the consequences of a complete act. You, contradictorily, would pretend to be honest and unsophistical while denying the same responsibility . . . and the responsibility is a responsibility to the community of man as well as that of nature: there is no unequivocal and drastic distinction as you seem to imply. In the amoral world of nature, procreation and survival is the tacit apparent aim; in the moral world of man, the aim is the same. And I think it’s about time you began thinking about the meaning of roots, instead of denying all roots, ipso facto, as evil man-made and sterile. I, too, abhor hypocritical and sterile man-made institutions, but I think that one of the most powerful things an individual can do is to endow those same institutions with deep meaning, as Marcia will do when she raises a family: that, to me, is real, honest and vital creativity.
By now you are either thoroughly angry or thoroughly sure that I am a puritan pragmatist . . . and perhaps thoroughly sure that I am not any longer capable of representing your theory of Woman with a capital “W” . . .
All I can say is, I am sorry that you must retreat to an artificial “all-or-nothing” standpoint, especially when I see you making false and specious distinctions between “life” and “men”, and apparently misunderstanding the true meaning of the word “fertility”. I admittedly feel deeply that I understand the meaning of this word, and therefore do not intend to desecrate it by pretending to act under its aegis; that will come later, and I hope to do full justice to it.
Meanwhile, I accept your condescending appellation of “pragmatist” and can only say that, by your own declaration of alternatives, I can never see you again . . . I am even a little sorry you are so “scrupulous” in your alternatives . . .
s.
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Friday 7 May 1954*
ALS (picture postcard),
Indiana University
R. Dufy Il Casinò di Nizza 1928. Edizioni Del Milione. Milano. Serie di Cartoline a colori. N. 207.
Friday 10:20 p.m
Dear mother . . .
just a note before I leave: to wish you a happy mother’s day! I’m going to New Haven tomorrow to see Sassoon for a final party (exams & Europe preclude any more dates this year) – should be absorbing as both Sassoon and his roommate, Mel (they hate each other) claim to be intensely in love with me: it’s a bit disconcerting to get passionate metaphysical love letters from the same mailbox & two antagonistic roommates: to top it off, Nancy & the 3rd roommate have been “partners” for years (as I used to be with Perry) – anyhow, Sassoon & I are driving to NYC to celebrate our farewell party. Next Friday I’m going to the Amherst spring Formal with Jack Furner,* older brother for Dave F., (the boy Nancy goes steady with) as a “favor” which I look forward to. Let me know when to expect you Sat. – as I have tons of work, perhaps late afternoon (5?) would be best – & stay till after Sunday dinner (I have a room for you nearby – the boys should stay at Amherst) – could you bring some of your yummy cookies? I’ll have some clothes & books ready to go – Nancy is coming from June 1 to 5 (her birthday is June 3 & I want to have a big steak dinner & cake surprise – I do love her!
xxx
sivvy
HAPPY MOTHER’s DAY
s. p.
TO Melvin Woody
Friday 7 May 1954
TLS on Smith College Press Board
letterhead, Smith College
Friday, May 7
Dear Mel . . .
This interweaving web of circumstances is becoming so intricate that I feel fleetingly like having a family barbecue under the trees for the few of us individuals involved . . . in honor of our rapidly multiplying plethora of egos and ego-relationships, past, present, and (may the lord have mercy on us!) future!
Your excellent letters* arrived today, as did you rhythmic and exquisitely clever congratulatory (?) postcard to my roommate-to-be (shades of Marty!) Nancy. I do feel that I should assume nothing about the relationship of you and your estimable roommates, and so I’m telling you myself, because I wanted to be sure you knew, that I’m coming to New Haven Saturday and will no doubt, at sometime, be up in your suite, to return some of your books (not all, as I haven’t read them all . . . and hope perhaps you will collect them sometime before you leave for Edinburgh . . . which statement obviously implies a three-dimensional conversation, if you feel so inclined.) As for Saturday, I mainly wanted to tell you I’m coming because I wanted you to feel free not to be there, if you chose, for any reason . . . to prefer absence to presence . . . but I have not forgotten times, nor even attitudes . . . only it is not my place (for I am a little proud) to remind you of them or suggest that they recur: that is part of the tacit responsibility of the male role, I think,
Till I see you again . . .
syl
TO Philip E. McCurdy
Friday 7 May 1954*
TLS on Smith College
News Office letterhead with
envelope, Smith College
Friday, 11 a.m.
Dear Phil . . .
Oh, your last letter was exquisite! I am still trying to quench the hysterical and delighted laughter which burst out when I read your brief play sketch . . . I’ve read it aloud to Nancy Hunter, my roommate-to-be, and she and I have been roaring together . . .
Which reminds me, just for any notice you may care to take of it . . . (all this is a bit tentative and subject to change): Nancy will probably be my guest in Wellesley from June 1-5 and her birthday is June 3 (21st) . . . ergo, I want to give her some big surprise, or dinner, or something. What could be more of a surprise than to get her a date with the handsome trilingual poet? If he isn’t free that Day, he might be some time during her stay (and you could always take me out so I wouldn’t feel excluded by Nancy’s blaze of glory.)
Statistics which might concern said poet: Nancy is both beautiful and brilliant, not to mention talented (she was j
ust elected president of the Smith College Glee Club). She is going to write her history thesis on Morris Cohen,* I think, and American Liberalism and (this smacks of a non sequitur) is tall, slender, with an enchanting heart-shaped face, green Kirghiz eyes, black hair and a more than figmentary ressemblance to a certain Modigliani odalisque. Our relationship is most involved, and I do love her dearly: she is to me, in a feminine way, what Norm is to you, I think . . . will he take me up on this?
She does happen to be dating an Amherst junior rather steadily, but is perfectly willing to accept my recommendations, if footnoted properly: and for Norm I can give her a whole bibliography! It would be fun for the four of us to jaunt to the Cape for a day’s picnic or something (she’s never seen the Atlantic as she comes from Akron) . . . let me know if any of this sounds plausible . . . or pleasurable . . .
As for me . . . I shall be incommunicado from now till May 27 as far as social affairs are concerned. Mother and Warren and Clem Moore are coming up the 15th and 16th, and I shall try to be civil to them while reading Anna Karenina.
I did say I’d go to New Haven and NYC this weekend with Sassoon to celebrate our last meeting for the year (he sails for Europe, the cruel brute, after exams) . . . but only for 24 hours . . . and even then, I feel guilty about my gaily atrophying intellect! When do you get through with exams?
I’ll write again . . . and call when I come home the 27th if you’ll be there. I approve of the new vocabulary! . .
love . . .
Syl
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Tuesday 11 May 1954*
ALS (postcard), Indiana University
Tuesday 2 p.m.
Dear mother . . .