by Sylvia Plath
Love to all, your own
sivvy
ps – Tell Warren that Sean Sweeney* is here, too!
TO J. Mallory Wober
Monday 21 November 1955*
ALS, Cambridge University
Monday a.m.
Dear Mallory . . .
A hectic note from the ADC – the tyrants allow us a meager tea-break today from 4:30 to 5. May I come quietly to see you then & listen to music & you & calm my most hectic & tormented psyche? I’ll assume “yes” and materialize about 4:30. Next term I shall deny this riproaring life & become a sedate femme du salon with a “private life.”
Your ramping jade,
Sylvia
kindness of houdini
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Tuesday 22 November 1955
TLS (aerogramme),
Indiana University
Tuesday morning
November, 22, 1955
Dearest mother . . .
Your Saturday letter arrived today, and I felt the impulse to sit down and answer it, even though I’ve told you most of the relevant news in yesterday’s note. I must admit that now that Christmas draws near, I, too, feel occasional waves of deep homesickness flood over me which makes me want to go about and announce publicly from the cobbled corners in Cambridge just what a wonderful mother and brother and grandparents and friends I have and how noble and tragic and self-denying a figure I am to be away from all those I love so much for so long. No matter how old one is, there is so often the need to “let down” and spill over to those of one’s own flesh and blood, who accept one simply for oneself, without making any demands. When you think of it, it is so little of our lives we really spend with those we love. I really resent being away from Warren so much while he is growing and becoming a man, and I long to spend time with him and learn to know him and have him know me as I am growing to be, too. Perhaps, if the fates are kind, and he comes to Germany this summer, I may be able to travel to be with him a while. I do hope you can come to England, before June 22, if possible, when Newnham closes, to see the dear little room and house I live in and walk about the Newnham gardens, where I will show you my favorite little statue of an impish cupid delicately balancing and holding an amiable dolphin.
I shall be happy to carry your Christmas present with me whereever I go, and, probably in a cold and snowy Paris, open it on The Day. Perhaps the most difficult thing for me to keep up is writing letters to other people, who have been most wonderful about writing me. I get a large satisfaction about writing you, and also my brilliant and sympathetic Richard who, from paris, makes me feel I have a strong partisan just over the channel. But, although I’ve written Sue, Patsy, Gordon & Elly Friedman and Mrs. Prouty, I just haven’t had time or energy to write all the dear people I love so much (like Cantors, Crocketts, etc.) I hope to do this in a series of Christmas letters in the two weeks I am here in December. Also, if ever I am repetitious from letter to letter, do understand that I forget just to whom I have written what. You can help me immensely by telling Mrs. Prouty I am thinking often of her and love her dearly and will write in a few weeks. Also to dear Aunt Dot, how much I loved her birthday gift and letter. And to Mrs. Freeman (I did ask David to share my letter with her) that the picture of Ruthie’s wedding is on my bureau. I simply can’t write separate letters to them all until my vacation, but I dearly enjoy hearing from them and their letters are magnificent. So please be my ambassador, as I know you are, until I get time to write on my own!
I must admit that I find everywhere what a mixed blessing life is. Every choice involves advantages and disadvantages, and I welcome those heavenly two weeks in December when the play and classes will be over and I can muse in peace. I think this is much wiser than rushing off to Paris or London right away, for I have really had no time since I left New York to “take stock” in anything more than a hasty, immediate way. So picture me for two weeks here, having leisurely teas, curling up with many books by my cheerful gas fire, and being creative and contemplative. That images sustains me through these hectic days.
As I have probably said before, I am not meant by nature to be an academic phd person, and if I teach, it must be in vital combination with writing and living in this world of plays, music, new and old books, but foremost, living people. I see in Cambridge, particularly among the woman dons, a series of such grotesques! It is almost like a cariacature series from Dickens to see our head table at Newnham. Daily we rather merciless and merry Americans and South Africans and Scottish students remark the types at the dons’ table, which range from a tall cadaverous woman with purple hair (really!) to a midget Charles Addams fat creature who has to stand on a stool to get into the soup tureen. They are all very brilliant or learned (quite a different thing) in their specialized ways, but I feel that all their experience is secondary, and this to me is tantamount to a kind of living death. I want to force myself again and again to leave the warmth and security of static situations and move into the world of growth & suffering where the real books are people’s minds and souls. I am blessed with great desires to give of love and time, and find that people respond to this. It is often tempting to hide from the blood & guts of life in a neat special subject on paper where one can become an unchallenged expert, but I, like Yeats, would rather say: “It was my glory that I had such friends,”* when I finally leave the world.
I evidently made a rather fine impression on Lady Tansley when I was over for tea a few weeks ago (that wonderful 86 year old grandmother) and John Lythgoe says she would like me to come to a family wedding at a little parish church in Granchester on Dec. 17th, the day I’ll no doubt go to London to stay with John’s family. Somehow, I really welcome the chance to be a bit involved with family life. I have a feeling that I love dear Mallory primarily because he is a kind of substitute (although there can be no such thing) for Warren: strong, handsome, with a kind of integrity and strange dearness which is so tempting to help mold. I really feel that I could be a fine creator of children’s souls. Preferably my own children, where intense love could be involved, as well as the teaching part! I do enjoy your advice & feel very close to you in your letters. Shall talk to Miss Burton after Dec. 3rd, when I give her my renewal application to fill out and the hectic term is over and I can prepare a serious discussion. I do love you all so very dearly.
Much love,
sivvy
TO Richard Sassoon
Tuesday 22 November 1955
TL (excerpt),* Smith College
Excerpt from letter*
November 22, 1955
Words revolve in flame and keep the coliseum heart afire, reflecting orange sunken suns in the secret petals of ruined arches. yes, the glowing asbestos thorns and whistling flame flowers reflect the cells of the scarlet heart and the coliseum burns on, without a nero, on the brink of blackness. so words have power to open sesame and reveal liberal piles of golden metallic suns in the dark pit that wait to be melted and smelted in the fire of spring which springs to fuse lumps and clods into veins of radiance.
so sylvia burns yellow dahlias on her dark altar of the sun as the sun wanes to impotence and the world falls in winter. birds contract to frozen feathered buds on barren boughs and plants surrender to the omnipotent white frosts which hold all colors cruelly locked in hexagonal hearts of ice.
at midnight, when the moon makes blue lizard scales of roof shingles* and simple folk are bedded deep in eiderdown, she opens the gable window with fingers frozen crisp and thin as carrots, and scatters crumbs of white bread which skip and dwindle down the roof to lie in angled gutters to feed the babes in the wood. so the hungry cosmic mother sees the world shrunk to embryo again and her children gathered sleeping back into the dark, huddling in bulbs and pods, pale and distant as the folded beanseed to her full milky love which freezes across the sky in a crucifix of stars.
so it costs ceres all that pain to go to gloomy dis and bargain for proserpine again. we wander and
wait in november air gray as rat fur stiffened with frozen tears. endure, endure, and the syllables harden like stoic white sheets struck with rigor mortis on the clothesline of winter.
artificial fires burn here: leaping red in the heart of wineglasses, smouldering gold in goblets of sherry, cracking crimson in the fairytale cheeks of a rugged jewish hercules hewn fresh from the himalayas and darjeeling to be sculpted with blazing finesse by a feminine pygmalion whom he gluts with mangoes and dmitri karamazov fingers blasting beethoven out of acres of piano and striking scarlatti to skeletal crystal.
fires pale askew to pink houses under the aqua backdrop sky of “bartholomew fair” where a certain whore slinks in a slip of jaundice-yellow and wheedles apples and hobbyhorses from lecherous cutpurses. water scalds and hisses in the tin guts of the kettle and ceres feeds the souls and stomachs of the many too many who love satanic earthenware teasets, dishes heaped with barbed and quartered orange pineapple and cool green globes of grapes, and maccaroon cakes that soften and cling to the hungry mouth.
when the face of god is gone and the sun pales behind wan veils of chill mist, she vomits at the gray neuter neutralities of limbo and seeks the red flames and smoking snakes that devour eternally the limbs of the damned. feeding on the furies of cassandra, she prophesys and hears the “falling glass and toppling masonry”* of troy while hector pats her torn and tangled hair and murmurs: “There, there, mad sister.”
God is on vacation with the pure transcendent sun and the searing heat that turns the flawed white body of our love to glass: look! how the riddle of the world is resolved in this menagerie of mated glass, how clean and sparkling the light blesses these pure serene ones! suddenly from the bed of mire they ascend to astonish the angels of heaven who keep the light of their love enshrined in ice.
see, see! how the mind and mated flesh can make man the envy of god, who masturbates in the infinite void his ego has made about him. but do not ask for these tomorrow. he is a jealous god and he has had them liquidated.
I have talked to various little dark men who keep giving me, at my request, booklets colored yellow and titled: sunshine holidays . . . .
do you realize that the name sassoon is the most beautiful name in the world. it has lots of seas of grass en masse and persian moon alone in rococo lagoon of woodwind tune where passes the ebony monsoon . . . .
I am proud again, and I will have the varying wealths of the world in my hands before I come to see you again . . . I will have them, and they are being offered to me even now, on turkish tables and by dark alladins. I simply say, turning on my other flank, I do not want these jingling toys. I only want the moon that sounds in a name and the son of man that bears that name.
In the beginning was the word and the word was sassoon and it was a terrible word for it created eden and the golden age back to which fallen eva looks mingling her crystal tears with the yellow dahlias that sprout from the lips of her jaundiced adam.
be christ! she cries, and rise before my eyes while the blue marys bless us with singing. and when, she asks (for even eva is practical) will this ressurection occur?
TO J. Mallory Wober
Wednesday 23 November 1955
ALS with envelope on
Newnham College letterhead,
Cambridge University
Place: couch overlooking redtile rooftops, senile gray trees & white sheets struck with rigor mortis on winter’s clothesline . . .
Time: year of our Lord 1955, a pale gray November 23rd morning . . .
Scene: Louis XIV salon: Woman sits clad in blue-flowered pyjamas sipping dregs of coffee from gold-plated cup. She has scarcely bothered to comb her hair, which hangs in snarled locks over one eye. A few rough-cut emeralds on throat & arms are her only adornment, and the splendid color of the jewels brings out the quaint, cadaverous green pallor of her skin, the room is full of white camellias, sent by her countless admirers. Fighting heroically against an ominous cough (tubercular), she calls her small black serving-man to her, “I must Dictate,” she gasps in Hindustani, ‘a letter to my rugger’d crimson-cheeked Hercules!”
Cher Hercule,*
Bless you. Bless a certain King’s don Mr. E. S. Shire.* Tell him to have a jolly good time in Piccadilly Circus. Tell him to bathe in the fountain of Eros. I do not have much time left on this earth, but what there is of it I want to spend with you – such as Friday, such as afternoon & dinner. Shall you meet me here at 2 and read or talk before changing scenes to 7 Peas Hill? Or shall I have my black chariot (symbols will sneak in) drive me to your dwelling immediately? Is 2 p.m. still all right?
About the U*io* B*ll – have you ever heard about the rather disagreeable & ridiculous emotion called “altruism”??? It means “regard for, devotion to, the interests of others . . . as opposed to egotism or (heaven forbid) selfishness” – (courtesy of Webster).* → next chapter
* “Don’t know how to write Hindustani”: yours truly, small black servingman.
Agenda: Union Ball
To continue:
Out of regard for and/or devotion to the interests of one Mallory Wober, I (Sylvia) urged him to gather him roses, openly, too, simply because I felt I should not forcibly monopolize him, which happens to be a rather strong inclination of mine. His quite casual suggestion that some gallant from the cast could prevail upon me to go is most groundless, because I do not Go to Balls to Go To a Ball, but rather to be with someone I enjoy intensely, it may hap, at a Ball, or not, as he chooses. Now I enjoy many people at present, but only one intensely. And He remarks that “it would create a slightly embarassing situation if we were both to be there unawares.” This ambiguous remark implies that he intends to be there & would be annoyed if I turned up, suddenly, to confront him (unawares) and/or that He would be happier if I confessed that, dealing in intrigue, I were wickedly going with someone Else & hadn’t had the courage to honestly tell him (Mallory) that this was so, so He is giving me the opportunity to do it now & save myself maidenly blushes later.
All this foliage is unnecessary: “If I do not go to the Union Ball with Mallory, I go with no one.” (statement of witness at prosecution.)
By the way, your letter was THE FIRST I ever received at the ADC & made me radiantly feel “I live here now.”
For this, and the constant ways you “surprise me by joy,”
I am,
your
Sylvia
Kindness of the White Rabbit
TO J. Mallory Wober
Wednesday 23 November 1955
TL with envelope,
Cambridge University
Whitstead
4 Barton Road
Cambridge
November 23, 1955
Mr. Mallory Wober
King’s College
Cambridge
Dear Mr. Wober:
It has come to our (editorial) attention that one of us (not editorial) is going quite mad. Not that there’s anything off-key about walking casually into one’s room nearing the witching hour of midnight, turning on the light, gazing around gratefully and thinking: ah, home at last; now for a little supper of wormeaten apples and stale malt bread topped off by a brimming jug of scalded milk . . .
BUT, in the casual process of picking up a satanic earthenware cup one just happens to notice the back of an envelope, rather a familiar kind of stationery, too, perched on top of Cassell’s New French Dictionary (Funk & Wagnall’s Co., New York, c. 1930). Oho, one says to oneself (impersonal ‘one’, just to be safe), I must have forgotten to mail one of the letters I wrote this morning; strange.
One (still playing safe) carelessly picks up said envelope, turns it over, and gets a rude shock. The handwriting, rather weird, to be sure, with the W looking like a pitchfork without the handle, is our (editorial again) own. Fine, one says quietly to Jiminy Cricket, someone has returned a letter we wrote because maybe the stamp fell off or maybe they just don’t want to speak to us
any more and are subtly suggesting this fact by returning letters unopened . . . .
“BUT, my dear Watson,” says a still small voice, “the letter happens to be addressed to you.” So it is, thinks Sherlock. Smart chap, that Watson; I’ll have to make him a Doctor one of these days.
“What the devil,” one laughs nervously reading the letter one has apparently written to oneself when dozing unawares in the bathtub or slumbering peacefully under Braque, “it’s fashionable to have an alter ego these days!” We (very regal) always did think we had more personalities than ordinary people were blessed (?) with. We’re getting more versatile every day: haven’t even left the A’s yet: am doing a switch on Alice-in-W. and screaming in yellow satin as Alice, Mistress of the game, at Bartholomew F. Just you wait till we hit the B’s (Beginning By Borgia (Lucrezia() and Climb through Cassandra, Cleo, Cressida . . . whee . . . .
Meanwhile, watch out for schizophrenic women. We’re typing all our correspondence now, just so nobody can recognize our writing and tell who’s talking.
?????????????????!????!??????????
TO J. Mallory Wober
Thursday 24 November 1955*
ALS with envelope,*
Cambridge University
Time: 2:27 p.m.
Place: spinach-green dressing table amid red turkish towels, soiled once – white lace caps, black gloves, triptych mirrors which toss back a garish glitter of reflections, many-angled, simultaneous in space: a glass vision of the fragmented ego: o splintered self!