The Letters of Sylvia Plath Volume 1
Page 116
Christmas has always been the time for gathering together with our family and dearest friends, and I think of it as I do of Thanksgiving: a period of life where we can express the love and warm togetherness of our home which has lived through the year in our hearts while we were at college, or working. Christmas is a kind of realization of the dream of love of family and friends which sustains us with more power than we know, through travels and wanderings. Each gift is not so much important in itself as because it brings with it the time, thought, and love of the giver. I must tell you how beautiful those red shoes are! And what a blessing that plastic bag will be to protect my books from our ubiquitious rain! The slip was like a white nylon snowflake: pure and exquisitely-cut. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Now I have a few instructions for you! I have sent off a little package which I hope will arrive in time for Christmas. You can take out the little wrapped presents and put them under the tree. Then on Christmas morning (or New Year’s, if the post is late!) I want you to open the Christmas cards I will send you and read them with your presents. Actually, they are just little trifles I wanted to send you, and Warren, and Grammy and Grampy, but each one has a special thought with it, and an enormous amount of love. I really felt part of Christmas Cambridge when I chose these small tokens.
This week has been both pleasant and difficult. I realize now that it parallels that “unfolding” period I always go through when first I come home on vacation: I plan lots of work for every day, and then just drift about, sleeping, playing the piano, eating and assimilating: lying fallow, in preparation for beginning to be creative again. It is always hard, though, for me not to demand that I show a profitable work schedule for every spare minute. Well, I can work harder and better this coming week here for having rested and relaxed in this one. I didn’t realize how my cold had hung on & tired me, but this week I feel caught up again with health and sleep. My dear Mallory has stayed on to work (and will go home to London tomorrow and has come over every day for tea and the evening. I haven’t had such a healthy “co-ed” life since high school, really. Instead of going off on gay tangents of plays, wine and extravagant holidays on weekends as I used to at college, I live very simply, and much of my time with Mallory is spent placidly listening to music, reading aloud, making tea, biking, and just talking. This week I cooked another steak dinner for him, more elaborate then the first, with dessert of fruit compote marinated in sherry with cheese and crackers (we both eat great quantities of cheese, all kinds, yogurt, etc). Wednesday, I had dear, lovable Nat LaMar over for tea with Mallory and the three of us had a most pleasant time. Nat has already left for Paris and promised to get me some really cheap hotel reservations, on the Left Bank, which should be a relief to have on arrival. Mallory is really the most delightful chap. I am so happy to have such a dear person about, and he helps take up a good deal of the lonesomeness I have for my old friends and loved ones. He is the product of a very interesting progressive school called Bryanston (which I hope to visit some day) and the fact that he is 19 seems of no real importance whatever: he is so much more mature and strong and well-balanced than any of the other boys I have met here. And so kind and loving and thoughtful. He is not brilliant scholastically (reading in sciences where I think he would be happier in history) but quite simple and steadily thoughtful and happy and enchantingly whimsical & original. I so wish you could meet him. His mother would like me to come and stay with them in London (they evidently live in a very small flat), so I shall probably visit them next Sunday when I am at Lythgoes* and stay there a few days on my return from Paris. Evidently Mallory’s relatives are all gathering around to see me, too, for it is an Event to have a “christian” girl accepted, I gather. Ironically enough, I am not really a christian in the true sense of the word, but more an ethical culturist: labels don’t matter, but I am close to the Jewish beliefs in many ways. This family should be fascinating: the English Jews are a contradiction in terms: the vivid warmth and love in their personalities I find very close to home. Anyway, I am happy to have the experience of two London families to look forward to. Paris is a tremendous challenge and I’m glad I won’t be faced with it alone, because of the language problem. Nat & Sassoon should be a blessing at escorting me through the blazing lights and wonders of this city that never sleeps (not like London, which shuts up shop promptly at 11!). Know that I am thinking of you with much much love, and rather a bit of wistfulness, this Christmas.
your own loving –
Sylvia
TO Aurelia Greenwood Schober & Frank Schober
Sunday 11 December 1955*
ALS in greeting card,*
Indiana University
Greetings / With all Good Wishes / for Christmas / and the New Year / from
Sylvia
Dearest Grammy & Grampy . . .
Merry Christmas! This is a photo of the beautiful “Bridge of Sighs” under which I have punted with Mallory up the River Cam to tea & honey by a crackling fire in Granchester. Imagine me living surrounded by such loveliness!
I hope you are reading this on Christmas morning and remembering, as I am, the many wonderful Christmasses we have spent together: I tasted “home” in the delicious silver-wrapped cookies you sent (Mallory loved them, too) – my favorites – apricot jam & hazelnut – and I also thought back to the delicious apples & special avocados grampy always brought home at the bottom of his bag on Sundays & how we had club sandwiches, & lovely fireside suppers together. All these memories are especially precious to me now, my first Christmas away from those I love best. I really appreciated your card & gift (I shall spend it on something special in Paris!)
It was so nice to get your Christmas box! I have shared the cookies at several teas & wore the ski-pants for the first time yesterday on my first venture on horseback!* The horse had ideas of his own & broke into a gallop straight into a main intersection at which time my stirrup came off! Picture me clinging to the racing stallion’s neck, saying between bumps “Whoa! Sam!” to no avail, stopping traffic right & left & sending terrified pedestrians flying for cover! Such an adventure! I am still black & blue!
Your little gift – for both of you – is to be used at breakfast & each time you use them, I want you to think of how very much I love you both! They are made of hand-turned wood & came from my favorite craft shop. Merry Christmas & Happy New Year to the dearest grandparents in the world –
your loving
sivvy
TO Aurelia Schober Plath
Sunday 11 December 1955*
ALS in greeting card with envelope,
Indiana University
Dearest mother . . .
Merry Christmas! This should be Christmas Day (if you obeyed my instructions!) and I want you to feel, in spirit at least, that I am with you! This is a copy of one of my favorite Brueghels,* and if I remember rightly, Warren once had to write a paper* about it in relation to W. H. Auden’s poem – “Musée des Beaux Arts.” At any rate, I love this, and wanted to share it with you.
About my little gifts to you: they are very simple & small, but I want to tell you the associations that go with them: the decorative ashtray depicts the famous statue of Eros at Piccadilly Circus in the heart of London – which became so dear to me: the wingèd figure aims his arrows above a circular fountain in the center of traffic: it is on Piccadilly that I saw “Waiting for Godot” my first night in London. Incidentally, I thought the shade of blue matched our diningroom walls & peter’s wings!
The flat present is simply a picture of our Newnham College gardens where I walk daily, up & down the formal gravel paths by the box shrubs & sunken pool. The white windows are our dining hall, and around the corner out of sight is my favorite little winged bronze cherub, struggling gaily to hold a twisty dolphin. I hope we will stroll here this summer!
I want you to believe in mental telepathy & know that I am close to you in thought & spirit right now! I know I have the most wonderful famil
y in the world and want to share as much of this new world I am discovering as I possibly can. These little Christmas tokens I sent are only small symbols of the Cambridge I now love so much.
Wish me luck in Paris, where I shall be at the moment you are reading this. I am blessed with dear friends both in London & in Paris, so shall be as happy as possible. I do miss you, but look forward to being with you this summer.
Love from your very own
Sivvy
Sylvia
Do Not Open till Christmas!
TO Richard Sassoon
Sunday 11 December 1955
TL (excerpt),* Smith College
Excerpt: December 11*
What concerns me among multitudes and multitudes of other sad questions which one had better try to lure aside with parfaits and sunshine, is that there is a certain great sorrow in me now, with as many facets as a fly’s eye, and I must give birth to this monstrosity before I am light again. Otherwise I shall ressemble a dancing elephant . . . I am tormented by the questions of the devils which weave my fibers with grave-frost and human-dung, and have not the ability or genius to write a big letter to the world about this. when one makes of one’s own heavens and hells a few hunks of neatly typewritten paper and editors are very polite and reject it, one is, in whimsy, inclined to identify editors with god’s ministers. this is fatal.
Would it be too childish of me to say: I want? But I do want: theater, light, color, paintings, wine and wonder. Yet not all these can do more than try to lure the soul from its den where it sulks in busy heaps of filth and obstinate clods of bloody pulp. I must find a core of fruitful seeds in me. I must stop identifying with the seasons, because this English winter will be the death of me.
I am watching a pale blue sky be torn across by wind fresh from the russian steppes. Why is it that I find it so difficult to accept the present moment, whole as an apple, without cutting and hacking at it to find a purpose, or setting it up on a shelf with other apples to measure its worth or trying to pickle it in brine to preserve it, and crying to find it turns all brown and is no longer simply the lovely apple I was given in the morning?
Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything it is because we are dangerously near to wanting nothing. There are two opposing poles of wanting nothing: When one is so full and rich and has so many inner worlds that the outer world is not necessary for joy, because joy emanates from the inner core of one’s being. When one is dead and rotten inside and there is nothing in the world: not all the woman, food, sun, or mind-magic of others that can reach the wormy core of one’s gutted soul planet.
I feel now as if I were building a very delicate intricate bridge quietly in the night, across the dark from one grave to another while the giant is sleeping. Help me build this o so exquisite bridge.
I want to live each day for itself like a string of colored beads, and not kill the present by cutting it up in cruel little snippets to fit some desperate architectural draft for a taj mahal in the future.
TO Warren Plath
Sunday 11 December 1955*
TLS in greeting card* (photocopy),
Indiana University
With all Good Wishes / for Christmas / and the Coming Year
and much, much love / from / Sivvy / (see inside)
A very merry Christmas to you! I am remembering all the mornings which we have shared on Christmas, tiptoeing to take down our bulky stockings with a little jingle of bells, and opening the small presents first, and then the big ones, and then driving in the frosty air to dinner at Dot’s where there were more presents, and celery & anchovies and a big crackly golden turkey and wine and that sleepy, well-fed feeling afterwards. It seems almost impossible that the years whooshed by so fast, and here we are in our twenties all at once with the days of stamp-collecting and monopoly games far behind.
First of all, I want to tell you how much I enjoyed your long letter at my birthday, telling me about your new course of studies and activities. How I admire you! Your program of germanic languages and linguistics sounds magnificent: difficult, but stimulating, the sort of combination which is invaluable. I believe that you will be more and more pleased with your choice and hard work now later on. I have found it works out that the most arduous working periods bring forth most fruit, at a later date, as in my senior year at Smith, which I spent working on my many schemes and assignments and waiting, until they suddenly all blossomed forth with results in late spring. This past term has been hectic, and now that the smoke has cleared away and I ask myself what I have accomplished, the main achievement seems to be to have learned: “to Live in Cambridge, England,” including everything from where the best places to buy steak or tea cakes or apples are, how much social life I want and with whom, and that, enjoyable as the A.D.C. is, I shall give it up for a time to concentrate on the colossal amount of reading I have to do.
The most difficult thing is choosing between the greater of two goods in the long run. It is wrong, I think, to shut out the blue skies, vital people, and active participation in the immediate world of the present completely in order to work, but it certainly is hard to measure roughly what is the best proportion, to keep alive one’s simple, elementary joy in being while working for a better,
I am most interested to hear about your plans for a summer in Germany! Please, no matter what, do come to Europe. I am convinced that it is best to travel when one is young, because adapting to all kinds of rough situations is most possible then. And I want so much to see you and be with you again. Perhaps I could come visit you in your little town and try to learn how to speak German, or join you for a while if you went through Scandinavia. It would be such fun, and by then I should be at least a bit more of an experienced traveler than I am now! I am at last going to have my vague dreams of travel to egypt, greece, spain, africa, brought smack up against reality (i.e. very little money) and will be interested to see what ingenuity and simple living can work out. Paris is my first station of the way: I am flying over (the round trip fare, including busses from center of London to center of Paris, a rather large item, is only about $20) on Tuesday the 20th, and spending till January 6th in Europe. Nat LaMar is getting me a place to stay as he has already gone over to visit his friend Steve at the Sorbonne (by the way, Nat is a really lovely person: so open and friendly and kind . . . Sean Sweeney is here too: remember my reading stories by both of them in your Exeter magazine?) Anyway, for Christmas, I shall hang tinsel and green-ribboned bottles of Beaujolais wine from the Eiffel Tower, and open my jingling stocking in the middle of Paris! I’ll be thinking of you on this Day with much love, and preparing a table before you under the Arc de Triomphe.
The two small presents I am sending you from Cambridge are very British. The blue-and-brown woven tie comes from my favorite handcrafts shop where this card was discovered (reminding me of that little song: “and heplayedonaladla-aladle-aladle”*) and I thought it would go with your eyes. The scarf is the rich color of Cambridge chestnuts & earthenware, and somehow spoke of Harvard: to keep your neck both warm and colorful!!
with much love –
from sivvy
TO Elinor Friedman Klein
Monday 12 December 1955
TLS in greeting card,* Smith College
A KNIGHT HUNTING / From an old Danish peasant embroidery.
With All Good Wishes / for / Christmas and the New Year
not to mention / much love / from / sylvia
dear dear
elly:
your card, thank you. I am sitting with my right flank scalding by gas fire and my left as cold as the other side of the moon talking to all the people I love most. there are at least 10 or 15 of them. the term is over. the swallows have returned to sorrento, or wherever the hell they go for long vac, and I am recuperating: from flu, from being a whore for a week in “bartholomew fair”, from not stopping to think since I left new york and the homes of two attractive, creative rich bitches whom I would like to be in the glass slippers of in 10 years, from too many men and the Right One who is too young, and the sassoon one who came to see me last Sunday and who has shrunk, like gregor samsa,* to an insect, to my utter horror. BANG.
I am also black & blue from a horse named Sam. it was a beautiful day, last Saturday. never rode a horse before, but it was a day for a horse, & so friend from yale (sassoon’s ex-roommate, nancy hunter’s high school flame) dick wertz took me for a ride. ecstasy. like santa claus bouncing atop roof with reins around chimney. country: peat stacks, thatched cottages, misty fens. Sam decides to gallop as we near busy intersection. switches with originality to wrong side of street. cars pull to curb, white staring faces pass by like lotus flowers, stirrup suddenly comes off. I find myself hugging Sam’s neck passionately. old women & children run screaming for doorways as we heave up onto sidewalk. such power: like the old gods of chance: I felt like one human, avenging thunderbolt. every time dick tried to catch up on “Cherry Brandy”, Sam thought it was a race. I intend to have grandchildren immediately. I am here today. black and blue, to be sure, but with a new religion: I mean to marry Sam. any day now.
oh elly, there is this boy: tall, raven-haired, scarlet-cheeked, husky, Jewish, strong as the “giants in the earth” in the days of the old testament prophets. Mallory Wober. and god made me born about 5 years too early. He is 19, born on my brother’s birthday. when I was sick with flu he carried an organ to my room: bach, beethoven, scarlatti, tchaikovsky’s 1st piano concerto: worlds of music. he is dmitri karamazov, and I made him all myself. god, elly, he is the kind one could create a superman with. not brilliant, no. reading natural sciences. wanting to be a farmer in israel. only 19! but compared to gordon, to ira, to mr. kazin’s harvard-press boy, he is a MAN. fantastically strong, like a lion. yet o, so gentle. music: king’s college chapel advent service: millions of candles flickering on tall, lacy, fan-vaulting that henry 7th dreamed about, with tudor roses & gargoyles: crystal choir-boy voices singing 15th cen. carols about maid-mary. organ like roar of god, thousands singing “adeste fideles” and the young, black-bearded moses standing beside me. I am meeting his family in London this week: all the relatives are coming to see me: I am the tabu: the “Christian girl” (I can’t convince them I’m a healthy pagan). never in God’s o so green world will his like grow again. to think I’m making him ready for some girl who is teething innocently in her cradle! it is that first, very magnificent love. perhaps I shall burn my birth certificate & learn to give birth at the plow in israel.