by Sylvia Plath
Love, your returned prodigal,
sylvia
TO Melvin Woody
Wednesday 26 January 1955
TLS on Smith Review Make-Up
Sheet letterhead, Smith College
Wednesday morning
January 26, 1955
Dear Mel . . .
Such an unheard of thing I am doing, answering a letter in the same month wherein I received it! But I am blessed with a whole voluptuous week between semesters, and certainly your last missive deserved more than placement in the: to be-answered-within-the-year file! I dutifully quoted your words to Amy, who, as I said before, is amazing and most lovely . . .
The life here is fantastically varied and the future is drastically up in the air, and will be for months: I feel like a juggler in pink tights tossing up a multitude of flaming colored balls, none of which land, but just tilt beyond reach of the finger tips. Finished thesis two weeks early and bled the cool sum of $20 for a typist, which was more than worth it in the mid-exam coffee mill. Result: a 60 page study of “The Doubles in Dostoevsky’s Novels” called “The Magic Mirror” and rather neat; I am honestly terribly proud of it, for it is a starting place, and I have discovered much. Dostoevsky, I think, will always be my favorite novelist (if I can be strong enough to keep to blazing polemics all my life) and Nietzsche my favorite philosopher (the wit and poetry and shock of his epigrams makes my soul “sneeze” itself awake, to use a Nietzschean verb!)
My course with Kazin, as I no doubt said before, has made rough drafts for several potential stories. You will no doubt be disgusted, but I wrote the first plotted story this fall, a frothy, hysterically funny thing, very much on the cocktail party (small letters, no caps) side of my personality. The “Ladies’ Home Journal” asked me to rewrite it, not in diary form, and they are now looking at it again. Having just gotten my second semester bill, which is a tragic $15 over my combined checking and banking balance, I am waiting in daily dread and desire. No, I did not sell my integrity down the river, I just played up my sense of humor, that’s all. It’s much harder than being tragic and depressing, you know! Anyhow, if $850 should some through, I might be able to afford the luxury of a summer of writing.
My poetry is coming much better, and this private course in The Theory and Practice of Poetics (doesn’t that sound impressive? I made it up myself) is coming superbly, with me turning in about 5 poems a week, reading all the little magazines, and having “nimble, fiery and delectable”* discussions with my professor (he’s the one who is on his 3rd Smith wife). Apropos of poetry, Nancy Hunter (no doubt worn out by my deluge of rejections) has taken upon herself the role of poetess--Dorothy Parker type--and writer. She has borrowed all my writing yearbooks for addresses, is taking the first sophomore creative writing course at college next semester, and just wrote three sonnets which have no words less than five syllables, ambiguous pronouns, and otherwise are rather posed and postured. I am harsh, but honest, I think. The stardust has long gone out of my eyes. We speak, that is all. I shall wait with interest to see if she can either get out of herself long enough to write a good story, or dramatize herself enough to do so. Perhaps the latter is possible. God and David Furner know about the first. So amusing, really, Mel, last year, last spring, I worshipped and imitated (in a way) that girl, this summer I learned about her, about the hypochondria, the hysterics if things didn’t go her way, the fantastic need for security in one so poised (outside) and beautiful, and now she becomes a gesturing poetess. Enough.
Had the most gruelling interview at Harvard last Saturday. Four men, all brilliant professors, grilled me for over half an hour for this Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, picking up every remark I made, twisting it to their purposes, tossing it back, asking loaded questions, until I felt like a painted wooden toy at the rifle booth in the circus. I argued on everything from my philosophy of education and teaching to would I marry a teacher and what about babies and was W. H. Auden odd to want to teach comp and why did I put down Oxford, Cambridge and Radcliffe in that order, and did I know it was next to impossible to get a Fulbright to Oxford or Cambridge (which, alas, is probably true.) Anyhow, they left me with the comfortable feeling that American Fellowship Committees are highly selective and damn pragmatic.
Fell on a plane to NYC, my first night flight, and I was in St. Exupery ecstasy the whole way, reading the riddles of the universe in the braille of lights, tracing radiant enigmas and wondering how the rest could sleep or read in that flying temple. New York soothed, assuaged, gorged, glutted, indulged. Saw that new Japanese film “Gate of Hell” which the critics are raving about: a series of color poems, the fantastic ritual and order of Oriental passions, sets of poised and balanced bamboo poles, with floating gauze curtains to enclose space. That night: the last performance of “The Dybbuk”, a Russian-Jewish drama in the small 4th street Theater, where the audience sits on either side of the stage and the actors use the aisles. An intriguing performance about the soul of onedead before his time possessing the body and finally the mind and soul of his beloved. An uneven play, but when good, very good.
The Museum of Modern Art took up a whole afternoon. They were selling hot roasted chestnuts outside in the frigid gray air; inside I got reacquainted with Braque and Picasso. The movies I saw there that afternoon was the most shattering work I’ve ever endured. A silent French film, the “Temptation of Saint Joan.” At first I wondered, why only visual subtitles, why only piano music that is quite casual, meandering on in utter unconcern for the emotional drama on the screen. Soon I understood that the dynamic tensions in the film were partly absorbed by the indifferent piano music, otherwise, they would have been insupportable . . .
The movie was in black-and-white, a study mainly of facial expressions which built up so that the least drop of a monk’s eyelid conveyed the impact of centuries of spiritual blindness. I’ll never forget the final scene at the pyre, a strong and terrible masterpiece of understatement, with the flames licking the wood, smoke rising, the faces of peasants, the innocent unconcerned closeup of a baby sucking a nipple, turning casually to the flaming light, and then back to the nipple, unmoved. The tension built (the way it did when I read “The Penal Colony”,* in utter sick horror) but I was physically unable to stop looking, even though my mind screamed for release. With the final tension of the film dissolved, I went for a long walk in the cold dark of Central Park, crying and crying, those cold pure tears of Greek tragedy. Then I was treated to a ride in one of the horse cabs, and fed a lump of sugar to the horse which I’d saved from lunch, and felt better. Human kind connot bear very much reality. That kind of reality.
Contrasting to this shuddering rape of the soul, I was feted in one French restaurant after the other . . . “Le Gourmet”, “Le Veau D’Or,” the “Cafe Saint Denis,” among others, until the world was a field of white linen table cloths laid with vichysoisse, soupe a l’oignon, oysters, escalope de veau, aperatifs, steak, white wine, lamb chops, cognac, french pastries, crackling bread and resilient green salads, and all the other sinful sensualities that flesh is heir to. I learned an incalculable lot about myself this week. One can never know what enough is, as Blake remarked, unless onehas had too much. I returned to Smith gladly (which last week I thought was both physically and psychically impossible) and will subsist happily for months on cold water and brown bread, hotdogs and bitter coffee. Of such also is the kingdom of heaven.
Oh, Mel, I am running out of typewriter ribbon and time, and again feel that I can pick up in the middle of nowhere and have a verbal communion with you. It is like that with a few people. Next year: que sais-je? The Fulbright to Oxford or Cambridge looks like a dubious dream, now, although my application has been sent to Washington. I do know that if I get admitted at either place (which also looks dubious) that no lack of funds will stop me going. If I have to write a hundred Ladies’ Home Journal stories. Radcliffe and Harvard are the places I want to get my degrees, to study eventually, but only after I’ve been around the world. I know I
’ll be disillusioned in many ways about England, Mel, but that doesn’t stop the vacations in Italy (where I am a daughter---body-and-soul) and France, or, if I have a gallant master, even Africa. My blood, like yours, has a definite southern metabolism . . .
Cross your fingers for me Mel, and hope that I’ll be running into you in the Channel or something, before you come back to the land of the chromium plated bathroom, the ivory soap opera and the league of women voters!
My love to you,
syl
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Thursday 27 January 1955
TLS with envelope on Smith Review
Make-Up Sheet letterhead,
Indiana University
Thursday morning, Jan. 27, 1955
Dear mother . . .
I always hate being a harbinger of bad news, but I am really pretty miserable this morning. Evidently my interview decided the committee against me, and this is the first time I have been really rejected after having all the chances, and I have been terribly sad all morning. Perhaps at last those four little men will stop arguing and asking me sarcastic questions in my head. It simply doesn’t do any good to say: “Don’t worry, it’s only one scholarship.” It is, unfortunately, everything. Letters from Kazin, Phi Beta Kappa, all that did absolutely no good: my interview canceled all that.
The worst thing is that they told me it was practically impossible to get a Fulbright to Oxford or Cambridge (and they know, having been over there) and that Dean Rogers is now merrily receiving my Radcliffe applications for admission and scholarship no doubt with a pre-conceived rejection all ready in his mind. Obviously, if this American regional committee refused me, I have no chance for a Fulbright in national competition with countless PhDs. And also obviously, if Rogers says in his letter to apply to a grad shcool with no overcrowding in the Department, he doesn’t mean Radcliffe, where only a few make the grade every year. Even if I got admitted, that would be something, but I honestly am dubious about even that last hope, which was the very bottom one on my list, after the Fulbright, England admission, Woodrow Wilson, Radcliffe Scholarship. On this one simple fact of admission hangs my whole future. They can quite easily cut off my whole chance to expand my intellectual horizons, with one little: “We regret to in-form you.”
Oh, I really will have to fight with myself to weather the repeated discouragements of this. I’ve borne the tens of rejections I’ve gotten for my writing this year with a gay philosophy, but this, after all, is my life. You were only too right when you challenged me about my ability to be an English teacher on the college level. I don’t think I’m organized or positive or well-informed enough to teach anybody a damn thing: I’ll be lucky if I can teach myself to be a practical file clerk or waitress.
To top all this off, my 2nd semester bill came this morning with $15 more than I had expected for graduating fees. My checking account is thus about $10 short, for I had cut it just “close enough” to cover what I thought my bill would be. Would it be possible for me to have you withdraw about $15 from my dwindling bank account and deposit it in my checking account? The damn check has to be paid in ,10 days.
Well, at least my thesis is all right, and my work here, these last months of what may be my only academic experience, seems to look promising. Several girls in the house are running themselves ragged on theses which they now hate, and having typist problems, so I should count my blessings. At least Smith loves me and I love Smith. If I can’t get into Harvard with all Smith behind me, and top grades, I don’t see how poor Gordon can expect to, with his low average marks. It’s so discouraging, because it implies a rejection of personality and potentiality as well as just “a superfluous applicant.”
I’m enclosing a letter to Dean Rogers, in addition to his depressing refusal,* for your opinion. I think the letter to him is all right and doesn’t sound bitter, which was very hard for me, but I must have some idea about my failings,* because they are inextricably involved with my Radcliffe chances. Dean Rogers only needs to say to a wavering committee at Radcliffe: “She is too risky. I saw her for an interview and she had no grasp of questions, was too cocky, or too nervous, or too God knows what . . . ” and I’m done. The thing I’m worried most about now is being admitted even. I never thought I’d fall to such a level!
One fortunate thing is that after I’ve stopped crying about this and deluging my typewriter, I shall plunge into my work here, a little defiantly to be sure, but with renewed vigor. I still haven’t heard from the Journal, and even if they too say “We regret to inform you . . . ” it’s been 10 days now, and I’ve learned that bad news is quickest. If only I knew what they disliked about me! I think it’s only fair for him to give me some inkling, where my application to Radcliffe is so related to his decisions and so I won’t go through life repeating that half hour interview and wondering what I said or did wrong. It’s appalling to think that my application and letters were good enough to get me there and that something about my personality was so bad that it cancelled all the rest.
Well, I sat and wrote 10 back letters yesterday, Mrs. Prouty’s among them, and am caught up there. This morning I wrote one short story* for the Christophers,* and will write the other* this afternoon. If even one of my three big contest prizes came through, I might be able to earn enough waitressing this summer to go to Graduate school without financial scholarship. But now I am really scared about even being admitted. If admitted, I will go, of course, but at present I hate Dean Rogers, which is not exactly charitable, but rather easy to do at this point. Today this refusal, a SatEvePost rejection, my 2nd semester bill, and your forwarding of my check balance all came, and it is enough to make Vanderbilt wince.
Hello again: it is now after lunch, and I am beginning to think a little. I shall write immediately to Columbia and ask if it is too late to apply for A Scholarship there (the due date is February 20, but they said to send for applications before January 15). I do not think they require the Graduate Record Exam at Columbia as they do at Yale (which is why I am ineligible for Yale, on top of the fact that New Haven leaves me totally cold and the department there is stricter than Harvard about languages). Columbia, at least, evidently has a huge graduate department, and may be more generous about admission than Radcliffe. It is where Pat O’Neil wanted to apply next year, and certainly has a good name, even if it is a huge machine. But I am old enough to adjust to a huge machine where the graduate department in English is as large as our senior class at Smith. In fact, I am beginning to think that Harvard is too small to hold both Dean Rogers and myself: he is a big fat man. Ugh.
Even if it is too late to apply for scholarship blanks at Columbia, I can still apply for admission, and I trust they do not know Dean Rogers. I would rather go there, now that I think of it, than be a waitress in Florida. I never could get the orders straight.
Thank goodness I don’t have courses now and can spend time on a blank to Columbia. I was foolish to assume that Harvard would be panting to have me and put all my eggs in one basket. It is just that sometimes when all your chickens come home to roost at the same time, broken and bloody, it is a little discouraging.
Forgive me for spilling all this over to you, but if you have any pertinent advice, I’d be glad to have it. You seem to be more of a realist than I about my future prospects. I’d appreciate it if you’d send off the letter to Rogers immediately upon checking it for subtle malice. Keep the refusal for my grandchildren: “See what a brilliant career mother had in spite of Woodrow Wilson, Dean Rogers and various hardhearted professors!” And they will look admiringly at a picture of me, just elected most popular waitress at Howard Johnson’s.
Oh well, something will work out. I’ll keep fighting.
Lots of love,
your rejected offspring,
sivvy
P.S. I’d really appreciate it if you could send the final copy of my Mary Ventura story* up in a week or two – forget about the 17 story – I’ll do it my
self spring vacation. Also will send grammy’s overshoes off in a day or so when I’m downtown. Sorry for the discouraging facts in this letter, but they are, unfortunately, facts.
xx
s.
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Saturday 29 January 1955
TLS with envelope,
Indiana University
SATURDAY MORNING
Dear Mother . . .
Just thought I’d sit down and write you a little note on this bright sunny day. I hope you are much better and am sure that a good part of your attack (which you are so careful not to elaborate upon) was due to worry and brooding over Dotty and stopping on hills. I don’t know whether it is an hereditary characteristic, but our little family is altogether too prone to lie awake at nights hating ourselves for stupidities---technical or verbal, or whatever---and to let careless cruel remarks fester until they blossom in something like ulcer attack or vomiting . . . I know that during these last days I’ve been fighting an enormous battle with myself . . .
But beyond a point, fighting only wears one out and one has to shut off that nagging part of the mind and go on without it, with bravo and philosophy. Dotty, as you know, is no doubt jealous of you subconsciously for many important things---like having children of your own (and what children!)--and managing to be so much more attractive than she, though older and with much much more responsibility. Therefore, instead of being understanding, she no doubt said something cutting when she saw you making a try for yet a new independence. I must admit I felt a little the same way a week ago when Nancy Hunter began posing as a poet and sending things out. I honestly was glad that they were all bad, which is not a sin, but very natural, and must not be whipped but understood . . .