The Letters of Sylvia Plath Volume 1

by Sylvia Plath

  I could read all day every day for the rest of my life and still be behind, so I do balance my mornings of lectures (which I love) and reading with a kind of cultural and social life. people are still infinitely more important to me than books, so I will never be an academic scholar. I know this, and know also that my kind of vital intellectual curiosity could never be happy in the grubbing detail of a phd thesis. I simply don’t believe that kind of specialization is for me. I like to read widely, in art, psychology, philosophy, french and literature, and to live and see the world and talk deeply to people in it, and to write my own poetry and prose, rather than becoming a pedantic expert on some minor writer of 200 years back, simply because he has not been written about yet. ideally, I would like to write in at least half of my vacations here, and publish enough to get some sort of writing fellowship, saxton or guggenheim, which would let me live without academic obligations (which I can make up myself after these 2 years) and write steadily, which is impossible here during the packed term. this is all rather private musing, and I would rather you kept it in the family and shared the more extroverted passages with other people.

  perhaps what I do miss most here is the lack of my friends who have known me in my past. I can’t explain fully how much it means to have people who have shared years of one’s life and with whom you can assume a deep understanding and common experiences: people like marty, patsy, sue weller, gordon, phil, and, of course, my own dear family. while I am very happy here, and have many too many invitations to accept even half, all my acquaintances are at the same “historical stage” in knowing, and it takes only much time to achieve anything like the deep and vital friendships I left behind me at home. everyone here is so “new” and untried. I am glad that I am outgoing and open and intense, now, because I can slice into the depths of people more quickly and more rewardingly than if I were superficial and formal.

  (next letter)

  TO Aurelia Schober Plath

  Monday 14 November 1955*

  TLS (aerogramme),

  Indiana University

 

  monday morning, continued

  well! it seems I have a good deal to spill over this morning, so I shall go on before my morning lectures in 17th cen. metaphysical poetry and ibsen.

  to continue: it is a lovely blue and gold day: when it is nice here is is “very very nice, and when it is bad, it is horrid.”* I have gotten used to clouds of frosted air surrounding me as I breathe in the bathtub, and to concentrating on the cloud formations outside the diningroom windows as I eat my soggy sludgy mass of daily starch foods. my room is more and more a delight, and I now have my big earthenware plate heaped with a pyramid of fruit: apples, oranges, pineapple, bananas, grapes, and a large vase of bright yellow dahlias, which bring the sun inside to worship.

  this week has been a rather mixed one as far as feelings go. I have mixed both sorrow and joy in fairly equal parts. I’ve told you about the problems. the nicer things involve people. last monday, I spent the whole afternoon and evening with mallory wober. he played the piano for me about two hours, and one of his friends dropped in and sang some songs for us. then he read aloud some light verse from lewis carrol which he made excruciatingly funny, and then, at about 10, we went for a late dinner at the indian restaurant, the taj mahal, where mallory is very much at home and we have our own favorite waiter. I biked home over the cam and down the starlit road feeling very happy.

  dick wertz, sassoon’s roommate at yale and nancy hunter’s old flame, who is reading theology here, dropped over wednesday afternoon, and we had the first good talk we’ve ever had. I have been constantly surprised how much I miss sassoon, who is now at the sorbonne, and spent hours talking about him with dick. ironically enough, the boy’s here are sassoon’s age, but in maturity and integration they are babies compared to him. having created such vivid, brilliant worlds of talk and people and plays and art exhibits and eating and all those many minute and important things that make up shared experience, I find fragments of the things I so admired and appreciated in him scattered here & there among other chaps, but naturally miss not having them all together.

  thursday I went to tea with john lythgoe, this sweet botanist who has traveled all over the world and is going to help me find out about exchange rates and travel to paris. we were going to motorcycle to ely (the cathedral town) sunday but it was too cold and raw and gray.

  friday I had a lovely time with the first english boy I’ve met who is temperamentally like me: david buck.* he played the lead in one of the ADC nurseries (dr. triceps in mirbeau’s “epidemic”) and I have admired him ever since. he is reading english in his 1st year, after serving 2 years in the army in germany, and is very strong and versatile. he is a champion swimmer, and has a large role in “bartholomew fair” where I have five lines as a rather screaming bawdy woman* who gets into a fight. I think I will do it, even if it is so little a part, because it will give me a kind of stage presence and keep me active in the ADC. the advantage is that 5 lines will mean I only have to go to one or two rehearsals. it is a “cuttable” part, and I hope I can be good enough for them to keep it in. I have to be very rough and brazen, which might be fun. anyway, david and I had sherry at his rooms in christ’s (I still can’t get over the way people casually talk about: “come on over to jesus” or “I live in christ’s”!) and we went for an enormous and delicious dinner at the cambridge arms hotel,* very formal and victorian and gloriously ugly. we had fish, and turkey, and lots of lovely red wine. saturday we went to visit the editor of the “big” magazine at cambridge where, at david’s recommendation, I left a few stories and poems. david writes for them, too. we lunched at “the eagle”,* one of the arty bouffet pubs in town, which was lots of fun.

  saturday afternoon, mallory took me punting on the cam, which was lovely, as he looks like a dark-haired, red-cheeked jewish greek god (if that is possible) standing at the helm and poling along perfectly straight (a feat) under the bridges where people leaned over and stared and took pictures, and he told me about the cambridge architecture we could see. afterwards, he came back for tea at my place (I had fixed up the room with fruit and flowers and gotten all kinds of breads and cakes . . . I love to have people in for a change, after going out so much). I had refused another date for the evening, as I figured it would be anticlimactic, so I just sat and mused nostalgically on the paradoxes of life.

  yesterday was most amazing. I was, as I said, to have gone to ely with john, but mallory had invited me to lunch, and it was a bad day, so I left a note on my door telling whoever read it to come to tea, and mallory delivered a note to john postponing seeing him. well, mallory took me and some of his jewish friends from israel, around king’s and the chapel, which was exquisite at dusk, with all the colored stained-glass windows (which mallory explained the stories of, and the history & architecture) and myriads of candles and lacy fan-vaulted ceiling. then mallory played the “emperor concerto” on his vic, and “greensleeves” and some other favorite ballads on his piano for me. we were biking back to my place with sandwiches for tea-lunch when john pulled up on his motor cycle, having read the note on my door and not having got my letter. well, nothing remained but to have them both for tea, which bothered me a bit as they are very different, john being most shy and sensitive and retiring and mallory being outwardly very witty and amusing. believe it or not, they both stayed from 4 till 10 at night, talking about everything from “is there a purpose in the universe” to the belgian congo no mention of supper! john left only after I invited him to tea today, and mallory took me to a lovely late steak dinner at the taj. my first “salon”, and most stimulating.

  xxx

  sivvy

  TO J. Mallory Wober

  Wednesday 16 November 1955*

  ALS with envelope,*

  Cambridge University

  Wednesday also pm

  Dear, dear Mallory* . . .

  No, (I hadn’t quite rea
lized, but I hoped I wasn’t the only one to be enjoying it). If so, re company, the pleasure was quite mutual. YES! (I would like to repeat, continue and magnify it). YES! (we shall discuss this and much else on Friday). YES! (I received the note of yesterday, delivered, I presume, by one of those large carnivorous black ravens). NO! (I must admit I did not fully understand the contents until I received the more detailed explication in today’s missive).

  Now, Mallory (I like to say that name out loud, because it has just the right number of syllables to give it so many kinds of dramatic expression – ask me to demonstrate some time –) I have come to a very difficult time where I have to make an important choice, specifically affecting the next two weeks & perhaps more. All day the pros & cons have been adding up on either side & the total seems to come out even. It is an extremely complex conflict, with large philosophical issues woven into apparently simple social phenomena. May I talk to you about this huge chaos Friday? Since you are, rather definitely, involved in some of this? It might be a good idea to meet earlier than 8 if we are going to discuss more than the weather during intermission. Then too, I always feel a little desperate if I’m conscious of the clock racing toward twelve – my bicycle might just turn into a pumpkin on the way back to Whitstead & then where would I be? If you possibly could or care to meet me before 8, let me know when & where & I shall appear at your bidding.

  (next page!)

  Hello again! I am being most wicked & prolonging this while I should be polishing off at least five Romantic tragedies before my supervision tomorrow! Why? I enjoy talking to you, even via paper, which is, in many ways, inferior to the experience in all four dimensions, instead of just these two: ↓

  remind me to read you some eecummings, edith sitwell & dylan thomas when we next have a few quiet hours together . . .

  I am, by the way, becoming quite delectably inebriated with your letters (the opposite of “fed up” – I am beginning to feel like an opium fiend – I need more & more to live on!) you definitely ought to make a wholesale deal for stationery. You are already a diplomat par excellence. (I favor a lawyer, who composes in his leisure time!)

  No, I am not listening to your music from France, because you haven’t invited me to. I can’t spend my life in a room with no music, so that is why I am irresistably drawn to haunt yours (the only reason?) – and I sincerely wish you would wheel your piano up here at least once a week & fill my room with enough music to last till the next week! please do! (I have so much to talk to you about Friday!)

 

  There is something quite mystical that happens to me when I think of you. Strange isn’t it, this process of learning to know & understand someone else!

  Until Friday,

  Your unmusical

  Sylvia

  *It must mean something, musn’t it???????????????????

 

  TO J. Mallory Wober

  c. Thursday 17 November 1955*

  ALS (picture postcard),

  Cambridge University

 

  Henri ROUSSEAU: The Sleeping Gypsy. 1897. Oil. 51 x 79 inches. The Museum of Modern Art. Gift of Mrs. Simon Guggenheim.

  Dear Mallory . . .

  Like Alice-in-Wonderland, I have gone through the looking-glass, and now, (translated to the land of the Jabberwock) I find myself seized with a remarkable affinity for purple ink.

  I am sending you a close friend of mine, the Sleeping Gypsy, watched over by three eyes: the moon, the innocent lion, and the guitar. Please treat him well & do not speak too loudly, or you will waken him. I hope you will see that the stars & planets are obedient until Saturday, at which time I shall cycle up on Fortune’s wheel. My room is most eager for you to see it & really behaving with scandalous impatience!

  Until then . . .

  S:

  TO Aurelia Schober Plath

  Monday 21 November 1955

  TLS (aerogramme),

  Indiana University

  Monday morning

  November 21

  Dearest mother . . .

  It has been so good to get your letters this week, and to hear via dear Patsy too how well your driving is going! I am so proud of you. Also, I look most forward to my Christmas present which I promise faithfully not to open till the Day. It might, you know, if it is at all weighty or bulky, be better to send it to me care of American Express, 11 Rue Scribe, Paris V, as I shall be leaving Cambridge about Dec. 16 and would appreciate not having anything extra to carry. Vacation plans, while yet very tentative, at least are coming into focus. I am staying in Cambridge for a blissful two weeks after classes stop on Sat., Dec. 3 and reading and resting and meditating on this life and gathering “my selves into myself again”* before flying to Paris (round trip from London, by the way, being only about $25). I have a very nice invitation from Katharine Tansley, D.Sc. (Mrs. Lythgoe, mother of John, that sweet, weak botanist) to stay in London with them as long as I want. I shall welcome not being forced to go to the cold & depressing Y, and plan to spend about 3 days in London before going to Paris, where John has promised to show me the London Life (or as much of it as possible in 3 days). His sisters are very musical and artistic and his mother works at her research in color vision all day, and maybe I’ll have a chance to do some cooking!

  As for Paris, I am roughly going to be in Europe from Dec. 20 to Jan.10 (filling out the 3 weeks allowed by the Fulbright Comm.) I am most happy to have made a very warm, good friend in Nat Lamar (the negro writer from Harvard) who is a wonderful sort of psychic brother. Had him to tea this last week and we talked more concretely of plans. Since he is flying over about a week earlier than I, to stay with his very attractive, intelligent, Clem-Moorish type friend at the Sorbonne, they will look around and get me a cheap, good place to stay on the Left Bank so when I come I won’t be lost in a strange city. Then, we plan to see Paris together and celebrate some sort of American-in-Paris Christmas there. All this will be very nice if it works out, and I like the idea of having two “brothers” to go around with, both as guides and sort of champion protectors. There is left the week in January, during which I may go skiing (Jon Rosenthal is stationed in Germany) or seeking the sun and Hieronymus Bosch (my favorite middle-age Salvador Dali) in Spain. It is fun not to have everything planned rigidly, so I can see what comes up in Paris. Well, I’ll let you know how things work out.

  Life here is at present packed to the brim. I have a small speaking part in “Bartholomew Fair” and lots of pantomime acting to do in the crowd of lower-world characters (I am, I must admit, a rather colorful woman-of-ill-fame) and the experience of working on the same stage with Big Actors of Cambridge is something I’m happy not to miss. Daniel Massey (Raymond Massey’s son) is the hero of the piece, the towering, childlike old Bart. Cokes, and the character parts are many and most richly Ben Jonsonian. I love our group, and am very happy to be in the centenary production. As one more experienced actress told me: take any part, no matter how small, and watch the professionals. Acting here is as professional as can be for “amateurs.” The revue shows, written and sung and directed by Cambridge students, go to the West end in London or on summer tours, and one of the most talked-about student actors left Cambridge to play on in London in “Waiting for Godot” which I saw my first night there. Watching our rehearsal yesterday was old Miles Malinson,* the chinless executioner in “Kind Hearts & Coronets” and Polonius to John Gielgud’s* “Hamlet.”

  The show runs 10 nights, from Nov. 24 – Dec. 3 and I must admit, is almost a relief as it absolves me from giving a 2nd thought to all the invitations I have been getting to parties and balls (I refused 3 balls this week). I think I will wait till the fabulous dances in the spring (which run through breakfast) before staying out till 4 am. As it is, I am in bed by 12 every night. Read “Faust”, “Peer Gynt
” and Schiller’s “The Robbers” (not time for German, alas) among other Romantic tragedies at the beginning of the week. Last Sunday, by the way, was a sort of comedy of errors. By accident, John Lythgoe and Mallory Wober both came to tea here at 4. I was worried at first, for they are extremely different, John being very shy and easily hurt and Mallory being outwardly vividly handsome and witty, although really very sensitive and thoughtful. Well, we began talking about life, and went on and on. 8 o’clock came and no mention of supper from either of them. By this time we were arguing about purpose in the universe. Finally, at 10, I got John to leave by asking him to tea the next day and went to the Taj Mahal for a lovely late supper with Mallory. I think I shall start a salon in Paris! Mallory, by the way, was born on April 27th (!!!) and is, believe it or not, a year younger than Warren! I am, naturally, much older and have probably lived much more than most of the boys here. I enjoy, however, the chance to influence them, and Mallory is an especial delight. We saw the “Glass Menagerie”* Friday, went for a long walk around moonlit Cambridge. Saturday, I read Oscar Wilde and Dylan Thomas aloud to him (practising some experimental ideas of mine in getting people to like poetry by hearing it without analytic fanfare) and he made the nicest picnic in his room: cold ham, dark bread and cheese, ending with mangoes; then I listened to him play Scarlatti for me. Imagine, he lived for 9 years in the Himalayas! Has a fascinating and amazing family background: Moorish Jews, Russian Jews, Syrian Jews, etc. We can do a lot for each other. Ah, well, must dash to ADC rehearsal.