by Sylvia Plath
HER EARS ARE SHOWING AND THE MAN SAID TO HER: you always look as if you were going to cry even when you are laughing.”
BUT HERE SHE IS REALLY LAUGHING
at the damn funny Rose . . . . . .
THIS GIRL WILL HAVE BLACK HAIR AND HER CHILDREN WILL ALL PROBABLY BE MULATTO AND SPEAK WITH A RAW*THRE BRRRITISH OXCENT . . . oh she was a nice girl a fine girl BUT one-a-tha-rovin-kind! hence: cocktails and she doesn’t mind if she does . . .
but really (and this is a secret) but you know it anyway . . she is vulnerable and honest and that makes all the rest of it pretty much OK . . .
except her mother is very sick and she is worried always about that and sometimes is hard talking because inside she is unsure and scared a little bit . . .
and this girl hopes that she will grow like a bamboo tree but not stab anyone that happens to be tied up nearby because she would rather lose a lot than hurt someone . . .
and most of all above anyone she loves and wants to be with most of all a certain person who is YOU, and work hard to make you proud, & she is here smiling at you although she doesn’t know it yet
a rose for you my allin green riding
LOVE
your
own
sp
TO Gordon Lameyer
Monday 20 September 1954*
TLS in greeting card,*
Indiana University
Let us dedicate this day / To people who are somewhat fey / To bundles of nerves / And strange complexes / To all of those / With wrong reflexes / Whom drugs won’t help / Or antibiotics / Let us celebrate / Being neurotics
German professor listening to someone decline
irregular objectives –
Other Smith girls on Mountain Day
Thesis advisor listening to project
Me on day of reckoning
Dostoevsky awaiting trial!
Monday
Dear one . . .
Not that you (or I) belong to this card, but it seemed amazingly appropriate in view of the fact that I wanted to write you in the margins of something gay and rhyming, if possible, and since no menus or ticket stubs were handy, here we are!
Hectic mechanics crowd, and my room is the only stay against confusion at the moment, with the right things in the right drawers: lovely colors: H crimson curtains, chair and bedspread; Y blue rug, blotter, pillows; new gray walls for hanging pictures on and two bookcases filled to overflowing; add four wickered green chianti bottles and two benign portraits of The Man in my life, and there you have my decor.
New faces, me feeling very old in the sense that I know my major purposes here and won’t sacrifice time to dilettanting with the superfluous. In this week I have to make at least 10 faculty appointments for Fulbright recommendations etc. which have to be typed up in quadruplicate by the end of October. I feel very guilty about thesis unreading and German, but hope to get Fulbright red-white-and-blue tape cleared up this weekend, plus an embryonic schedule of study* established so that I can greet you, my love, with calm and uncluttered delight, even though I shall have to prevail on you to sit by my side in the library a bit! All is so unbegun and untried that I still feel insecure . . . and will no doubt till I begin to feel competent in German and Fyodor D. Brown hair accepted here with hardly a murmur except: “It makes your eyes look browner!” I feel serene and dependable somehow, but want to begin to prove it! I’ll try to write again before the much-desired Friday when you come . . . let me know what time, and do write me morale-buildingly! I need your love and confidence enormously.
A sleepy kiss for you, darling,
sylvia
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Tuesday 21 September 1954*
ALS (postcard), Indiana University
10:30 p.m. Tuesday
Dear mother . . .
About ready for bed, I sit to write the latest news: Room charmingly small & cosy & colorful, arranged yesterday with help of Warren & Joan – Harvard Crimson chair, bedspread, curtain – Yale blue rug, blotter, banner, pillows – new gray (at last!) walls ideal for sketches – Ilo’s are now up. hope you can see it all sometime – Life as yet is all crowded chaos – no less than 7 meetings today for me! I have to get my Fulbright application all done by the end of October which means endless forms in quadruplicate, health exams, transcripts & essays on project plus 4 very important letters of recommendation for which I’m seeing professors this week – thesis topic is due Oct. 7, so I have 2 weeks of hectic reading for that – hope to fix red tape about German course tomorrow when I have an apt. with Ger. professor. Once I get my German & Dostoevsky well underway I won’t feel so insecure. I do like to put down roots of schedule! Shopped today for necessities like shampoo (found one for tinted hair!) & bulbs & extension cord, etc. – on the rash statement to Macy: “Oh, write me, if you want a sympathetic ear!” I got 3 (!) letters of the most blind & pathetic self-castigation imagineable! One special delivery, no less! (SHE used to demand that!) – the vile girl is so ironically revealed in all her crude flabby materialism through Macy’s rapturings over her! – I must read like fury – if only a good topic emerges in the next 2 weeks! I feel so unprepared as yet! – my job is waiting on breakfast every morning – I’m up at 7 and done by 8 a.m. – had a good dinner with Warren & Joan – love both – rain sounds cosy outside – this’ll be both the best & hardest year – do write
xxx
sivvy
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Friday 24 September 1954*
ALS (postcard), Indiana University
friday 9 p.m.
dearest mother . . .
got your letter and welcome check today – it does help – only I’m concerned that macy had such a terrible effect on you (thank you for steering him away from visiting me – he has spilled over to countless people already, but I rebel at his taking advantage of your sympathy & making you sick) – I also disapprove vehemently of your evening course plan – how many evenings a week will they meet & how can you get the rested supper & evenings at home you need so much? I am distressed at your taking on such a demanding program when you are so thin and in such warningly poor health! I don’t think another doctor (not mild Fran, who assumes you will take your own way anyhow) would condone it! you know that any problem makes you sick, so you should prohibit unnecessary people preying on you like macey. please cut down on your work, for my sake, if not for your own! As for me, I’ve had innumerable conferences with professors – about courses & fulbright: question: since Dr. Booth has to mention my McClean lapse & Dr. Beuscher anyway – do you think it would be best to get my personal reference from Dr. B – who would be brilliant, eloquent & allay any doubts about my stability in a medical way – or to have Mrs. Cantor or someone do it? Intermediate Ger. is rough – the class is conducted in Ger, & I can’t even stammar a sentence yet – Shakespeare prof is magnificent – conference with Mr. gibian today re thesis was encouraging think I’ll do several examples of “The Double” in Dostoevsky
xxx
SYLVIA
TO Gordon Lameyer
Friday 24 September 1954*
TLS, Indiana University
friday evening
dearest gordon . . .
the rather unique spacing effects on the envelope of this are due to the fact that this is nancy’s typewriter and it skips, hops, and jumps about in a most undisciplined manner, expressing an eccummingsish personality insofar as a machine is able to! my typewriter is at the shop for a week being fixed: I don’t know what’s wrong except that the foxy old carriage is loose and I feel as if part of me were amputated every time I l
ook at my empty desk, but they will probably charge me outrageously for whatever they do . . .
it is difficult to believe that I have been here only five days, for in that time, as my black scrawled textbook will testify under every date, I have made a phenomenal number of conference appointments, meetings and shoppings. I’ll be glad for this sunday, the one morning I can sleep late since I’m a breakfast waitress.
Physically, as I said before, I’m settled, and I will be glad to put down substantial intellectual roots as soon and as solidly as possible. I’ve been going everywhere for my fulbright application material, interviewing practically every professor in the english department and begging the librarian to borrow catalogues of study in england from the amherst library, two of which books are on my desk now, making me wish you were still over there to read daily with me, bike, boat, and give cousel and conversation.
the one course I’m definite about in every respect is shakespeare which I have thfrisat at noon . . . miss dunn is a dynamo, the kind I most enjoy, and her interpretation is not only aesthetic, but political, social and historical in the sense of context . . . perhaps you would like to go to her course with me this coming saturday (only you won’t be able to sit next to me as we’re seated rigidly in alphabetical order). in german I’m in a dubious state and still will have to see the head of the department again for further counsel . . . officially I’ve changed to the intermediate course in conversation, reading and composition, which I have with an attractive young female graduate student from yale* . . . only the class is conducted in german which I never heard at harvard, and I can answer questions in english inside my own head, but can’t very well spiel forth in german since I haven’t learned to form the words yet! all of which makes me feel very dense, even if I have a perfectly valid explanation for it all. I’ll probably do abominably the first semester, but by pure perseverance and exposure I should pick up by the second. my most recent plan, (when I discovered that a sophomore in our house was taking the advanced lit course after only one year of college german,) is to arrange with the head of the department to audit his course in goethe* also, to do the work in it, and perhaps even contribute in conversation later in the year when I can say more erudite phrases than “ich bin müde” (which may be true, but is hardly inspiring) . . . so I would be spending about 20 hours on german a week, but instead of diverging efforts, I hope that after a semester of plodding, torturous work the two courses would help each other to the extent of my being able to converge in german lit. and be able to read with relative facility.
one good thing, today I had my conference with mr. gibian, my thesis advisor and it went better than I’d thought. we talked freely of graduate school plans (he got his degrees at harvard and recommended it highly . . . did his phd thesis in comparative lit. under harry levin!*) and I think that I will do my thesis on several pairs of the “double” personality in dostoevsky . . . it’s been mentioned in many critical works, but mr. gibian said he didn’t think anywhere was it gone into in great and intense detail . . . the challenge is there, I just hope I can meet it . . . really, darling, I honestly can’t picture myself in february, with a thesis “done”. all the original thinking and research I’ve got to do between now and then is phenomenal; I sometimes feel as if I were battering my head up against a resistant wall of matter: time, space, ignorance. if only I can do these three things: dostoevsky, shakespeare, and german . . . and do them more than just adequately, I shall have fulfilled the main aims for this year. I don’t have to worry about slighting social life completely, because I can get along in it perfectly well and happily . . . and now is the time to work.
funny incident: at supper tonight I sat regaling the table (forgive me) with the jellyroll incident, and a freshman gasped when I casually mentioned the perry: “my uncle is captain of the perry,” she said. I crimsoned and said: “oh, there are two, I’m sure of it.” it turned out that her uncle is (thank god) captain of the other (is it JF?) perry* and had told her the story of an attractive young ensign who boarded his boat by mistake last year, thinking it was the one he was stationed on in newport; at that point, I felt the seven-league long arm of coincidence grabbing me by the scruff of the neck again!
in a sense, I’m rather sure that my brown-haired personality will win out this year . . . gone is the frivolous giddy gilded creature who careened around corners at the wheel of a yellow convertible and stayed up till six in the morning because the conversation and bourbonandwater were too good to terminate . . . here is a serious, industrious, unextracurricular unswerving creature who, if you looked closer, might admit to being me! I felt strange at first in bermudas, knee socks and loafers instead of racy red heels, and parachute skirts, and an aura of chanel, –with books under my arm instead of a frenchy parasol, and girls everywhere, instead of men . . . but it is good for me, and this is really the most honest part of myself, I think. I still appreciate the screamingly blue sky, the turning trees, the softness of the sun on autumn green grass and rosecolored buildings, and inside me the love for extravagant and impulsive gesture is still there, only I work better when I go to bed early, and can think sharply from 8 to 1 in the morning when I’ve had a sober sleep . . . although if and when I get a creditable thesis done, I feel I’ll deserve a champagne blast to celebrate . . . heck, wine will do . . . I’ll put on my raffia skirt and scarlet o’hara shoes, and (please bring back my SP badge!) we’ll be eccentric together!
oh, darling, I can stand anything for a year, and if I just catch up on sleep and can see you and study with you often, I’ll be sustained . . . (do look in on warren and reuben brower* if you ever get a chance!)
I resolved this would be a short note, but I can’t resist talking to you, even if it has to be on this satanic hicupping machine . . .
I will probably be tense, sometimes, but you will know that it is because the pressure of my thesis and the demand of my german course are everpresent, and I won’t see light really till the second semester, and then I start preparing for the formidable comprehensives . . .
sky has gone from blue scalloped with dark leaves to all dark . . . with honeycombed light from windows across the way . . . laughter in the hall, surge of hot black coffee, a sudden unexpected rapport with a professor, smell of poignant sweet green grass, description of oxford in a catalogue . . . oh, life may be more solitary now as I plunge into the unique abysses of learning and thinking I’ve accepted, but I think I can be strong and love my work and not mind forgoing the convivial waste of time with a dilletante knitting, bridgeplaying, movie-going, group . . .
I may not be able to see you during the week, but you are there with me . . . in conversation, in my thoughts, as a sort of strong and symbolic sustenance for me . . . some of the snapshots I took of you in newport came out really well, and five of them are circling the border of my mirror now . . . so this makes seven yous in all that are in my room . . .
please love me this year, darling . . . I don’t know how this year will work work out yet . . . and I’m a little scared and uncertain even . . . but more than anything I need you around, believing in me, while knowing my limitations, loving me, while knowing my weaknesses . . .
you are very dear
sylvia
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Monday 27 September 1954*
TLS with envelope,
Indiana University
monday morning, 11 a.m.
dearest mother . . .
I am now sitting at my desk in my warm, colorful room typing on someone else’s typewriter (mine’s at the repair shop for a week and I feel lost without it) and looking out my one window into a lovely tangle of green leaves. at last I can write you more definitely about my program, since plans are at last settling out and I see the desirable and constructive outlines of a regular schedule of studying shining through this last week of chaos and countless faculty appointments.
unfortunately I have my first runny twitchy cold of the season which threw off my period so I
never had more than that one day . . . but as I just spent the frightful sum of $7 on nosedrops, pyrobenzamine and a big bottle of vitamins, I feel much better psychically with my little medicine cabinet handy. I think the dry climate and heat here is responsible for my cold (I’ve been keeping good bedtime as I’m a breakfast waitress six days a week) and so I bought a humidifyer for my radiator, and hope to keep the air breathable that way!
the house group is wonderful this year, as the snobby powerful senior group clique of last year has vanished, and our class is most friendly. mrs. kelsey is back and jane truslow is our house president, so you can imagine that the atmosphere is highly convivial. (this unfamiliar typewriter is rather unstable!)
my main bother this month is my fulbright application . . . I’ve had numerous interviews with the head of the graduate office and all my former professors, all of which have at least resulted in most gratifying results: elizabeth drew, newton arvin, and mary ellen chase have agreed to write my letters of recommendation, and as they are all very big names in their field internationally, I should have an advantage there that might compensate for my mental hospital record. I think I definitely am going to write dr. beuscher for my personal reference as I have to tell about mclean anyway, and a letter from her would serve the double purpose of eloquent recommendation and also of leaving no doubt as to the completeness of my cure. in addition to the fantastic red tape of the fulbright, all of which is due in a month, I am applying separately to both oxford and cambridge, my two choices for university, through the american association of university women since often fulbright recipients are arbitrarily placed and I want either of these two erudite institutions . . . so that makes about 12 letters of recommendation, 3 health exams, 12 statements of purpose, etc. . . . you can see how I’d love a private secretary! however, I hope to be able to have several photostats made of my three Big letters, so I can just send them out. fortunately my applications to harvard, yale, and columbia don’t have to be in till the middle of winter! (harvard is the only place I really want to go!)