The Letters of Sylvia Plath Volume 1

by Sylvia Plath

  as for my classes: shakespeare (thursday, friday saturday: at noon) is magnificent under miss dunn, a sort of mrs. koffka in the english department . . . I am so wrapped up in her lectures that the hour leaps by on wings. my interview friday, with george gibian, was, as I said before, encouraging, and I’m busy making a bibliography for my reading, after which I’ll plunge into skimming through all the works of fedor d. in preparation of a detailed study of his Double characters . . . mr. gibian is young, married, with three dear little boys (one pair of twins) and got his degree in comparative literature at harvard under harry levin, so he is most helpful.

  german, as you may gather, gave me the most trouble. however, I feel I’ve worked out the best possible approach, given my appalling limitation of not speaking german at all, or writing it, or ever having heard it spoken in class! I am taking german 12 (the intermediate course in reading, conversation and composition) for credit . . . it meets five times a week, and is conducted in german, which will be a big handicap for me these first months. in addition I have permission to audit the literature course with mr. graham, the head of the german department, which is advanced and concerns goethe, schiller and lessing. the first class in this course met this morning, and I was amazed that I could understand mr. graham (he speaks very distinctly, of course) as well as I could . . . I could (except for technical words I didn’t know) intellectually understand what he was saying for the most part, although I couldn’t write the words down in german as my ear hasn’t been trained to spell from dictation. it is my hope that by spending eight hours a week in german class, plus ten or twelve outside, that even if I do abominably in german 12 first semester, eventually my extra work will compensate so that I can contribute in articulate german in the literature course. naturally it is hard for my ego to have intelligent literary remarks to make and to be unable to articulate them in german . . . but I feel that I am not to blame for my lack of speaking ability, and that with constant listening, I will gradually begin to feel how german should sound and learn to say more than “Ich habe Deutsch gelesen, aber ich habe nicht Deutsch gesprochen!” also, I hope to be able to learn to write it correctly. the one amazing thing is that my pronunciation is as good as it is, since I have never heard or spoken german at all at harvard. so this will be gruelling, but I hope to improve rapidly with work.

  this weekend I was pleasantly surprised to have clem and al goldstein turn up at our house . . . clem to take out lynn fisher.* al asked me to come out to supper with them saturday evening, and the pleasant break was good for me . . . I missed warren, naturally, and hope he will come up with them next time, as there is a charming girl in the house I would like him to meet . . . outwardly like margo in that she is tall and brownhaired, but much more softspoken, I think. I sent a letter down to warren via al.

  gordon wrote a nice letter this week,* and I plan to see him up here next weekend, and we will both study together . . .

  I hope to get over this cold soon, but my schedule is settling out well, so that I feel psychically happy, if physically nasty. My brownhaired personality is most studious, charming and earnest . . . I like it, and have changed back to colorless nailpolish for convenience and consistency . . . I’m so happy I dyed my hair back, even if it fades and I have to have it touched up once or twice more, I feel that this year, with my applying for scholarships, I would much rather look demure and discreet . . .

  this letter has been much longer than it should have been, but I did want to tell you all these developments . . . and especially to ask you to take good care of yourself for my sake . . . and to send you my very best love . . . .

  your own sivvy

  TO Aurelia Schober Plath

  Friday 1 October 1954*

  ALS (postcard), Indiana University

  Friday – 5 p.m.

  dearest mother . . .

  greetings to you in your new temporary dwelling,* and heartfelt sympathy if it is as sweltering and damp there as it is here! although its not ideal weather for sinus victims, I gladly left the infirmary in time for classes this morning, feeling a bit groggy, but infinitely better for all the shots of penicillin & cocaine sprays. I was sorry to miss classes, but I can catch up in German reading this weekend – I work about twice the time that the other 9 do, but will get my reward by 2nd semester, I hope. George Gibian, my thesis advisor, and I, are getting along extremely well & we both are excited about my topic: Aspects of the Double which, now that I am beginning reading is no longer the ominous monster it once was! best of all – Gordon came up to visit me at the infirmary Wednesday afternoon for three lovely hours – I’d called him just 5 minutes before he’d planned to call me: sort of psychic. girls in house are all awfully nice & I feel that a good year is beginning, with both feet firmly on ground – even if I do not get a good mark in German (it is so hard) I feel I should by dint of hard work, be able to speak it & write a little by 2nd sem. – then, if I were good enough, I’d love to switch to the Goethe course which I’m auditing in addition this sem. Hope your tests all show you to be a paragon of potential longevity – Gordon joins me in sending love

  xx

  Siv

  TO Aurelia Schober Plath

  Monday 4 October 1954*

  ALS (postcard), Indiana University

  Monday – 2:30 pm

  Dear Mother . . .

  Whew! Say hot! Hope that by now you are home from hospital: does “bed rest” mean you’ll be at home in bed & not teach the rest of the year, or what? let me know if I can be of any use whatever. One thing, I’m desperate for cotton clothes – all I have up here is woolens, & wonder if you or grammy (when she comes home) could make up a box of all my cotton jerseys & my 2 linen dresses: brown & black print and peacock-blue one – if I wear my woollens now I shall both suffocate & wear them all out by February! Gordon was up all this last weekend & it was nice to study together – Warren called last night, & I’ve got him a date with a lovely freshman in our house – Kathy Preston* – this coming weekend. as yet, I’m pretty tired from working on all my back work & scholarship application blanks & jobs, & am looking forward to Mountain Day this week sometime in which to catch up on sleep & homework – I’ll be glad to get everything squared away – although I’ll have another round of blanks to attend to come Christmas vacation – how I’d love a private secretary! I do hope you can arrange to have a good rest at home – and only wish you could somehow arrange to go to florida, arizona or california to recuperate with relatives or friends out there! Please keep me posted on your health reports!

  Lots of Love

  Sivvy

 

  PS. – Rejection blow from Ladies Home Journal softened by personal note asking me to try again. Hope they realize what they’re getting into!

  TO Aurelia Schober Plath

  Tuesday 5 October 1954*

  TLS on Smith College Press Board

  letterhead, Indiana University

  Mountain Day

  Dearest mother . . .

  Today being Mountain Day, I bade most of my housemates goodbye as they headed for Yale and settled down to the blissful task of catching up on the backwork I missed last week. This day came just in the nick of time, and I plan to get caught up in German, Shakespeare, and thesis reading, so that this weekend I can really enjoy the feeling of doing current assignments!

  Thought I’d enclose the little corrected example of my first German “composition”,* since it is drawn from one of our family anecdotes. My task of writing it was most difficult, as I’d never written any German before and had to refer constantly to the lovely big Cassell’s German dictionary* which I’ve bought. I’m so glad I’m taking this Intermediate Course; as I said, it’s hard for me, very hard, and I spend twice as much time on it as the others have to, but I’m going to learn German or perish in the process . . . if only I’d spoken it at home!

  I have asked to do the papers and participate in class in the German literature course I’m au
diting, and can understand him pretty well, but can’t as yet say a word in class . . . I just don’t have the vocabulary or feeling for sentence structure to ennable me to express my intellectual ideas, which is very frustrating. We are now reading Lessing’s “Minna Von Barnhelm”, and although it’s tedious to look up thirty words per page, the subtle characterizations and word nuances are rather enjoyable.

  I’m still working on scholarship applications. Saw Miss Mensel, who informed me that my whole scholarship is the Mrs. Prouty one, so I wrote a long note to Mrs. P. today, thanking her and giving her the latest news. Also wrote Cantors at long last. I’m awfully tempted not to apply to Yale grad school, although it’s supposed to be excellent in English, because they require the graduate record exam (which Harvard and Columbia don’t) and it’s just alot of bother. However, every now and then I get scared that if I only apply to Oxford, Cambridge and Harvard, nothing may come through, and I’ll be left. Or, on the other hand, that if I apply also to Yale and Columbia, that I may be offered ten $1000 scholarships all at once, out of malicious fate!

  Have a wonderful idea of how to get clothes up here: Warren is driving up Saturday afternoon: why not call him up to stop at home and pick up the linens and jerseys, etc. . . . will save bother and postage! Meanwhile, do let me know your plans for the year, because I do want to be sure you are happy and well cared-for!

  Much love,

  Sivvy

  TO Gordon Lameyer

  Tuesday 5 October 1954*

  TLS, Indiana University

 

  TO

  The Ensign

  FROM

  The English Major

  (please note double entendre)

  SUBJECT

  Cabbages and Kings

  DATE

  Mountain Day

  Sky being requisite shade of blue, sun being benevolent, yellow leaves falling in appropriate quantity on black mirror of Paradise, and chapel bells ringing: my last (sob) Mountain Day. And just in time too, I am inclined to add. I went to bed at the incredibly early hour of 11.30 last night without having done my German paper, just because I was sure it had to be Mt. Day. 2000 Smith women can’t be wrong. It was.

  Today is lovely: a generous wastebasket of all this-and-that: the things I’ve been meaning to do for the last three weeks: catching up in all courses, writing letters of various natures to my favorite people, applying for my pyramiding stack of more application blanks, u.s.w. I am applying for blanks from Yale today, although that is the only college that requires the Graduate Record Exam which I am highly tempted Not To Take, but I’ll have the application blanks on hand, anyhow. I really don’t want to bother applying to Columbia either, because getting four letters of recommendation, health certificates and transcripts for each college is a hell of a Bother. However, always comes up the nagging thought: what if nothing at all comes through if I only apply to Harvard and Oxford and Cambridge, in my snobbish intellectual pride, and what if none of them want me??? On the other hand, just for the malicious pleasure of fate, I may be offered ten scholarships of $1000 each all at the same time. Jolly prospect, wot?

  Hello hello hello again. It was good having you up here last weekend. Everybody who met you told me specially afterwards how charming they all thought you were. I have, to my delight, fixed Warren up with Kathy Preston for this coming weekend, and am looking forward to having Sunday breakfast with him . . . he is such a dear! I do hope Pat and John* go out together soon. I am most fond and admiring of both of them! I really would like to fix Joe or Reese or someone up for the weekend after that . . . we’re having a great jazz band and dance at the house on Sunday, I think, and if you could let me know ahead of time, it might be fun to help two more people meet! Ah me, I shall start a dating service . . . it gives me such vicarious pleasure to see couples coupled!

  They have discovered that I am Anemic because of sinus. So I am taking iron, and feel very suddenly strong and ironic. I went out for crew practice for the first time in a year-and-a-half yesterday, and after I got the feel of the boat back, it was extremely good. Our 2nd crew is ridiculously unpracticed and heterogeneous, but it does me no end of good to be out on the water in a shell . . . the feeling of pulling hard and skimming along in a unanimous sweat of stroking is really potent!

  I have rashly offered to write papers and “participate” in the German class I’m auditing, so out of pride, I’ll have to keep it up . . . it will be good practice, but arduous at first. Well, isn’t everything?

  I feel like writing poetry and stories most in fall and spring, and it is so damn frustrating not to be able to allow myself to go off on a drunken timeless Thesaurus Binge . . . I feel like a genie (not “us”) stuffed into an Alladin’s lamp that is too rigid and small . . . I think I’ll explode next spring! Oh, to be in England!

  Love to you, my love . . .

  from your Smith harem . . .

  Concubine, white, age 22

  (well, almost)

  TO Gordon Lameyer

  Friday 8 October 1954*

  TLS on Smith College Press Board

  letterhead, Indiana University

  friday evening

  dear gordon . . .

  and a sleepy friday evening it is. a week of finishing up fulbright application and oxford admission blanks: just put on the final touches tonight, and on monday will go up to graduate office to make sure all my letters of recommendation, health certificates and transcripts are in, in good form, and then to hell with applications till january!

  every night I vow to go to bed early it seems that some imp of the peverse manages to fix it otherwise: housemeeting to elect new house president, as jane truslow has to take the place as head of house of reps (one of the Big 4 offices) since the president* is leaving smith to get married, then fire drills at unseasonable times, and we having to run out-of-doors to freeze in pajamas at 2 a.m., and so forth.

  you’ll be glad to hear that I’ve been out on the water crewing three times this week, position 2. this morning a white frost mist was blowing, and it was all very cold and invigorating. we won our first house race with tenney* this afternoon (we’re only 2nd crew) and I’m sure it was because I wore your sailor hat, which I just love!

  I want to ask a big favor of you about next weekend: I learned today that the first chapter of my thesis is due friday, october 22, and this shocking information makes me beg of you to come up late next saturday afternoon If Possible, instead of friday night: I’ll be in a much more sociable mood if I can enjoy you solidly for saturday supper and the sunday afternoon jazz concert if you’ll just leave me in my grubby solitude friday and most of saturday. perhaps you could persuade joe to drive up saturday in late afternoon with the lure of a date, or some such worldly chattel; please do realize that the actual process of writing the first draft of my “golyadkin” chapter is going to be fantastically difficult, as I have to do so much reading and hard thinking in these next two weeks, so that the weekend you come up will be the only time I’ll have a chance to write things down, and for that part of it, I do need to be alone and conscious of nothing else, which is not quite possible when you’re there, because I am too tempted to talk or look at you suggestively!

  anyhow, do write and tell me if you’ll bring anyone, what time sat. you can come, and if pat and john are got together yet! warren is coming up this saturday with one of his roommates, and I’ve fixed them both up.

  I am very happy in spite of the fact that I have so much work to do. if I can keep barely treading water in german, and do a good thesis, all will be well. wish me luck, darling!

  much love,

  sylvia

  TO Gordon Lameyer

  Sunday 10 October 1954*

  TLS on Smith College Press Board

  letterhead, Indiana University

  sunday night

  dearest gordon . . .

  home now growing cosily to be the carrel in the
library . . . that corner labeled mine, which is on the same convenient level with dostoevsky, hoffman, psych journals and the ladies lavatry and a drinking fountain which, I hope, will never run dry, lest I take it too symbolically!

  came back to house tonight with german undone because I’d gotten so fascinated with reading about the doubles in hoffman that I couldn’t stop as scheduled, and now just want to read and read on my thesis topic: supreme irony, the main article of importance in my field is written in german by otto rank,* and I can’t even translate a paragraph of the damn thing: mr. gibian, as I perhaps said, took notes on it for me, but I’m still hoping to get a complete english translation.

  to bed early last night and up rested at 8.30 this morning for a change to practice crew in the rain, with warren and his date, kathy preston, looking on. the more practice I get the better I feel, and if I am supremely audacious, will try out for senior crew this spring!

  tonight was damp and foggy, with the lamps hanging each in its nimbus of blurred light, and the sound of water dripping from sodden leaves. soft and fertile, everything, and in between one waking and another I think of you with love, and want you to know it, even if the note is brief, for each articulate message represents a hundred others unspoken.

  your last letter was really dear, and I have read it several times over with increasing pleasure. I want you to be proud of me too for having the discipline (which you help me to have so wonderfully) to work hard and enjoy it, without feeling in the least resentful: this, after all, is thinking, discovering, and inner living: outer living I have to say is more important in the life scheme, precisely because I am so inclined to introversion, and therefore must overbalance toward actual living in order to come out anywhere near even! I do hope you will not be too inconvenienced by coming up saturday! it will be doubly (whoops! there goes that word again!) delightful to see you then, having worked so much in preparation for your coming!