by Sylvia Plath
this next week I’ll catch up on all the subjects I’ve neglected for my thesis. my shakespeare course is fascinating, and if you come up on a friday in the spring, I want you to hear the saturday lecture with me: you’d love the vivid, whitehaired, fiery miss dunn! we’ve read richards 2 & 3 so far, and I have to devote next weekend to reading for the exam. german is, and no doubt always will be, very hard. if I continue to get B- I will consider myself lucky. my ideas are A Ideas but my writing (which I’ve never done before) is C writing . . . the grammar and sentence order is so hard. however, the young fraulein sonnenfeld is very nice and is giving me an extra hour a week in reading conversation. I had to cut the german literature classes this week because of writing golyadkin, but hope to start up again tomorrow, keeping with it on the off chance that I could switch courses midsemester.
one very nice thing has happened this week. I don’t know if I told you, but the brilliant young jewish writer and critic alfred kazin* (wrote “on native grounds” and “a walker in the city”) has a chair here for a year, and I felt badly, since he was in the english department, that I’d have no chance of coming in contact with him. then the alumnae quarterly conveniently assigned me an interview* with him.
he is notoriously hard to see and even more impossible to interview, but after about 20 phone calls I finally persuaded him to give me 5 minutes. at first, he was very brusque, and then he asked me a few direct questions about myself. as soon as he found out that I was working my way through college and had a few things published and wanted to teach and write, he became charming and said he’d thought I was just another pampered smith baby like the rest. he offered to criticize my writing, invited me to audit a class friday, and told me to come back and talk to him again because he thought I was interesting!
well, when I went to his writing class of 10, I was delighted with him, but appalled at the weak, mealy-mouthed apathy of the girls, who either were just too scared or just too stupid to have opinions. as an auditor, I found it hard to keep quiet. finally, at the end of the class, mr. kazin turned to me and said: “well, what do you think?” I told him, and he said, “why don’t you join the class. I think we need you!” I was really thrilled. the chance to write for a semester under such a man, and to have him “invite” me, while countless other girls have wanted to get into his small course, seemed rare and wonderful. I thought it over carefully, and decided that it is much more developing for my character to maybe get two B’s in my other courses while grinding my rusty writing gears into motion under mr. kazin than it would be to rigidly strive for A’s and sacrifice the rare opportunities of life: mr. kazin will not happen again, and it will be good for me to have the impetus of his criticism while starting out again . . . I can apply it to the things I want to write this coming summer.
the thing about writing is not to talk, but to do it, no matter how bad or even mediocre it is, the process and production is the thing, not the sitting and theorizing about how one should write ideally, or how well one could write if one really wanted to or had the time.
as mr. kazin told me: “you don’t write to support yourself; you work to support your writing.”
I’ve thought over your advice about jobs, and have narrowed down to one afternoon a week reading to mr. gray, a delightfully dickensian old blind man who was an ancient history teacher at smith for thirty years or so. right now I am reading from a history book about the hellenic age. claiborne had the job last year, so I feel I’m carrying on a good work.
mr. gibian is the best kind of thesis adviser I could have . . . went over to talk to him yesterday, and sat happily holding one of his twin baby boys on my lap while he held the other, and discussed dostoevsky while the baby gurgled happily and pulled my hair. it is amusing that I’m writing on the double, while my adviser has twins.
gordon is up this weekend, as I said, but I’ve got to discipline myself and get to bed early and work, even though he’s here. it is unfortunate that he insists on coming for three whole days, because I just can’t afford to give up reading for more than one evening or afternoon, and my work is so interesting that I don’t like to stop. however, he is perfectly glad to study with me, although I can’t do any really creative concentrated work while he’s around.
I look forward to seeing warren next weekend, and am glad he’s taking out kathy again.
feel very beatific and birthdayish: gordon gave me a lovely light brown cashmere cardigan, mrs. lameyer sent a gay red-and-white striped apron, and ira* mailed up a lovely light blue brooks brothers shirt to match the pink one, while nancy gave me three lovely pieces of brown and aqua pottery like the pitcher I gave you once . . .
hope you continue to get fat and healthy . . . and please do demand that you don’t take business machine job . . . you’ve a good excuse now . . .
lots of love
sivvy
TO Gordon Lameyer
Wednesday 27 October 1954
TLS in greeting card,*
Indiana University
October 27
Dearest Gordon . . .
A note to you on The Day that I begin my 23rd year (sounds so impressive that!) As I look out through the yellowing leaves at the gray rain, I am tempted to borrow trouble in the way of metaphors and liken myself to an agéd eagle* who has just been run over by time’s wingéd chariot* . . . but enough . . .
I am thinking of you, and wanting to tell you about paradoxes in me which are hard for anyone to understand, even if they know me as well as you do, which is as well as can be, almost. I am serene and happy, despite the heavy pressure of thesis, German, Shakespeare, et. al. (all of which is really a “labor of love”, you know) . . . and one of the main reasons I am so interiorly placid is not because I’ve found God or learned Yogi, but rather because I am learning how to select between the important and unimportant things in my life, to make difficult choices, to relegate clamoring demands on my time to a sort of valued graded system . . . all of which is yet more of an ideal, than an achievement.
However, you are one of the strongest sustaining forces I have . . just knowing you are there (be it in Boston or Bombay) somewhere in the same world, feeling as you say you do about me, that is the important thing for me at present. And this feeling is mine also (“Dare I name it?” as Clark-Gable-Butler would say)* and very strong, yet consistent with my apparently difficult attitude about your visiting me as often as you would like.
In order to make ends meet this year, both psychic and financial, I literally have to hibernate for about eight months, and really I enjoy it, as long as I know you’re there, like the genie in Alladin’s lamp, to incandesce my days when they become dulled. I know you want to see me whenever you can, but I also know you understand I work better, can write and think better, when I am alone, grubby and asocial, without the conflicting loyalties which your presence arouses. Somehow, when I know you’re around, I perversely want to throw concentration to the winds, and that, at this point, cannot be. Only remember even though I keep disciplining myself to see you more rarely than you wish, that underneath I love you VERY VERY MUCH . . . and it’s that feeling, and not the daily demands that stoically regulate and curb its manifestation, that matters . . . nicht wahr?
Affectionately,
Sylvia
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Tuesday 2 November 1954*
ALS (postcard), Indiana University
Tuesday 5:30 p.m.
Dear mother . . .
Thank you so much for the delicious cookies – it’s so comforting to nibble on them while studying. I hope Warren told you that I shared my tasty birthday cake with about twenty girls in the house – all of whom pronounced it excellent! I hope that your taking up teaching will not prove too arduous – my blind professor, Mr. Gray, is very sympathetic about your ulcers, as he has had them himself – and he showed me a cookbook by Jordan called “Good Food for Bad Stomachs”* which contained many tasty recipes. I do feel that this dear old Dickensian man looks most fo
rward to my Monday afternoons with him: we get along very well. It was wonderful to have Warren up here this weekend. I thought he looked astoundingly handsome and mature – and so did the other girls. As far as I’m concerned, he and Kathy look as if they were brother & sister! I enjoyed having coffee with him Sunday morning & a good talk. Edwin, the professor from M.I.T., drove up Sunday afternoon and left after supper (he is very peculiar and archaic, but amusing.) Gordon called & we had a lovely talk – it seems the colorshots we took of each other this summer came out beautifully* – I can’t wait to see them when he comes up the 13th – Shakespeare exam this Friday, for which I’m deserting thesis this week. All goes well. Hope you’re fine
xxx
sivvy
TO Gordon Lameyer
Thursday 4 November 1954*
TLS in greeting card,*
Indiana University
thursday
1.40 p.m.
dear gordon . . .
in brief respite between lunch and my favorite class of the week . . . namely the great god alfred’s, I pause to refresh and tell you about things past, and passing and to come. first, your letters have been magnificent, especially the official one!* such a sustaining force! I was happy to hear you’d visited my favorite brother* and think you’ve no need to worry about his thinking you’ve ulterior motives: he is honestly very admiring of you, I know that for a fact!
I am really beat but beatific: my status quo, it seems. last night sat up so late to write a german composition which is a labor of blood, sweat, and sentence structure, after a three hour siege at my instructor’s home . . . she is very kind about tutoring me an extra hour a week. tomorrow is the shakespeare written, next week the 2 three hour Cambridge exams and a german written, and as I haven’t looked a fyodor once for two weeks, I’ll have to somehow postpone my 2nd chapter for a week or so . . . I’ve still all the reading to do. the state of my study affairs perhaps reveals my guilty, secret and consuming love: my first conference with kazin yesterday about the 1st prose paper I’ve written for two years creatively was unbelievable . . . he told me it’s my holy duty to write every day, spill out all, learn to give it form, and is going to let me go off on my own every week, only asking that I turn in lots and lots and not to bother with the regular class assignment. he is extremely critical and encouraging, and the fortuitous accident of interviewing him is something I’ll praise fortune for all my life long. I adore him!
tomorrow night I’m going to hear mary ellen chase talk about her new book* at the hamp bookshop, and hope to make time to hear margurite higgins (my ideal newswoman)* hold forth tuesday. the roster of visiting lecturers this year is fantastic: claude raines, thornton wilder,* ogden nash, kazin etc . . . I hope you can get up to hear one or two of them . . . life is full to the brim, and always overflowing . . . my main philosophy of life is: “things will work out” (with a highly optimistic inflection). if I get accepted at either oxford or cambridge and don’t get a fellowship, I’ll spend the summer in new york as a call girl, or, better still, you can solicit for me among your esoteric navy men!
most of all, it’s wonderful having you in my future . . . immediate and otherwise!
much love
s.
TO Gordon Lameyer
Saturday 6 November 1954*
TLS, Indiana University
TO
Darling
FROM
Smith Doll
SUBJECT
Minutia & Momentia
DATE
Saturday
I feel damn lovable and good and scrubbed and my hair is washed and soft and my mouth is red and I am in my rough old Navy sweater and suave oxford gray Bermudas and knee socks and oh how agreeable I am but I need fifty blazing brutes to tell me so and how drastically I need to be appreciated . . .
I broke Safety Rule No. 2 this afternoon because it was such a bang crash blue screaming act of god day. Persuaded Sue Weller* to bike out to Connecticut River after lunch in the sparkling burgundy air and tramp through the asparagus fields with me. Well, what do you know, there is the La Fleur airport* with all the little planes lined up looking like gaudy painted toy gliders, and that Icarian lust came upon me again. So we went over and hung around talking to some hood pilots and being very young and innocent and enthusiastic and broke and talking about how god damn blue it was and good for flying and how we wanted to ski this winter and how was the best way to learn, and then I am bumping along the ground in this sweet yellow job and the shadow is parting from the earth, and we are up, tilting over hamp, me screaming about how this is the fourth dimension and god isn’t it a fantastic day, and how the gravestones are white chess pieces, and for heavens sake there is Lawrence House, and so on till we come tilting down with the yawning of eternity still in my ringing ears. Oh it was all very naughty and dashing . . .
Please, darling one, try to borrow me a pair of skis over Christmas so we can take off now and then . . . Sue said she’d go with me whenever we could manage this winter, and I want so to learn.
Somehow I have to have my thesis chapter postponed a week as I haven’t done the reading even yet for this one, but must study for a German written this Friday, having just had Shakespeare yesterday. I hope I can get a ride down Wednesday with some of your friends, and am toying with the idea of going back with you, or someone the preceding Sunday and staying home for a week . . . which would be bad because I’d miss three German classes, but good because I’d rest and study at Widener . . . I think . . .
I love Saturday nights at home here because it’s the one night I can luxuriate in not having any classes the next day. I told you I’m reading aloud to that dear old blind man every Monday afternoon, didn’t I?
Please let me know when to expect you next week, dear, and Don’t forget to bring the pictures! I am dying to see if you are an unbiased observer about my unparalleled native beauty! Personally, I think your biases were cut with pinking shears . . . very crooked . . .
Last night I heard Mary Ellen Chase give an initiatory talk on her new book “The White Gate”. Her publisher and illustrator* also talked, and it was an enchanting evening in the Hampshire Bookshop . . . she wrote the warmest inscription in my book* and is making me homemade cookies for my exam trial next Tuesday and Wednesday mornings, which I think is supreme dearness on her part . . . if I ever get to England that magnificent woman will be at the bottom of it!
Oh, back to all the never-ending work: Henry IV (how I love Falstaff, Hotspur and Hal!), Kazin paper, German subjunctives, Lessing, and all the rest. Somehow there is always such a pull between wanting to extend my horizons in width and the necessity to plunge in depth if I want to be proficient in any field . . . you know, if you write all the time you don’t live, if you act, you don’t think enough, if you study, you don’t develop your body enough . . . all the planets whirling seductively around the chosing ego . . . you are the dearest planet of all . . .
love,
sylvia
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Thursday 11 November 1954
ALS (postcard), Smith College
Thursday
Dear mother . . .
seems unbelievable that Thanksgiving is only TWO weeks away – I’m glad Gordon is coming for dinner – I will have a good deal of concentrated work to do – reading for thesis, complete revision of 1st chapter, which will involve condensing 30 pages to 20 – appointments to make at Harvard, with Dr. Beuscher, etc. Thus Thursday will be my one “social” day, and I hope to sleep & work the rest of the time. I took my cambridge (England) exams at Miss Chase’s house Tuesday and Wednesday morning (3 hours each). The questions were so general that it would have taken a year to answer anywhere near properly: “e.g.” The Art of The Novel. What is that? Or “The importance of metaphor in poetry.” I just hope I pass these exams, because Miss Chase & her friend Miss Duckett* have been so kind & encoura
ging. By the way, do you suppose you could write Warden* at Smith to give me blanket permission to go up in planes – I now know so many pilots that it’s silly to break a rule & go up without permission – just write Warden, College Hall, smith: “My daughter SP has my permission to go up in planes, both private & public” – or something. A nice, intelligent little Amherst grad* took me out for a delicious lamb chop dinner last night – he’s rooming with Bob Riedeman at Fort Dix & stayed with him in Wellesley. German written tomorrow – wish me luck –
xxx Sivvy
P.S. Do you suppose you could call Anthony’s hairdresser* in Boston & ask how much a re-dye job would cost (my hair’s faded a little) & tell him I went to him before and MAKE AN APPOINTMENT for me over Thanksgiving? Danke schön!
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Saturday 13 November 1954*
ALS (postcard), Indiana University
Saturday night
Dearest mother . . .
Oh, this is such a wonderful year – the pressure of work is of course a good deal, but I love it all so and work best under a healthy tension. Gordon is up this weekend & we had a good afternoon at a party at Amherst, meeting all his old friends, one of whom is driving me home Thanksgiving (I should be home Wednesday, for supper!) Just as I was wondering how I’d break even financially at the end of the year, a small blessing occurred today – Cyrilly Abels wrote* to say that I got an “honorable mention” in Mlle’s Dylan Thomas poetry contest, & they’re buying one of my lyrics* for $30! It is so lovely to contemplate this coming check! I can buy all the necessaries I need, now, in perfect joy: a girdle, brush & comb, bedroom slippers, blue shoes, etc! I am so happy. Also, my German teacher is so sweet – tutoring me an extra hour or 2 a week! I Rose from a B- in my first exam to an A- in my last! I am really most happy here – busy and occupied of course, but oh! with such a healthy, philosophical outlook! LIVING best is most important, & no matter what the reward in marks or money, I’m happy knowing I’m “keeping faith”