The Letters of Sylvia Plath Volume 1

by Sylvia Plath

  Oh, Teddy, I am now for a hot bath, and hot milk, and perhaps tomorrow it will not rain. I dont think I want to eat until I taste your lovely mouth again my very very enormous dear teddy how I love you . . .

  your own wife,

  sylvia

  with her love

  TO Aurelia Schober Plath

  Tuesday 2 October 1956

  TLS, Indiana University

  Whitstead

  Tuesday morning

  October 2, 1956

  Dearest darling mother . . .

  Enclosed please find the exquisite Atlantic check endorsed for deposit to me. I would appreciate it if you would keep it, and subsequent checks, in a separate account for me, so I can see how it grows in my simple childlike way, toward my lovely coming wedding.

  Something very wonderful has happened: On my return to Whitstead in rain, weariness and general numb sadness yesterday, I received a lovely letter from poetry magazine (Chicago) saying they found my poems admirable and are buying SIX (!) for publication! Do you know what this means! First, about $76 (they pay 50 cents a line); then, Ted’s long poem “Bawdry Embraced” was published there in August so we “share” another magazine; then, they are all my new poems, written after “Pursuit” and glorifying love and Ted!---they are obviously in the market for a new lyrical woman! And they are happy poems. This also means that my manuscript of poetry which I am going to get ready to submit to the Yale Series of Younger Poet’s Contest this January will have a terrific list of introductory credits---already, nine of my poems were published; add seven, this fall, and perhaps more this winter, and its rather impressing. My manuscript should have much more chance; and, bless it, Poetry is a magazine of poets (I wish I could get Mrs. Prouty to help endow it subtly---it’s always got pleas for funds in the front by T. S. Eliot, Auden, Sitwell, etc.) and not commercial! That, combined with my commercial publications, is also fine. I am very happy. They are publishing: “Two Sisters of Persephone”, “Metamorphosis”, “Wreath for a Bridal”, “Strumpet Song”, “Dream with Clam-Diggers” and “Epitaph for Fire and Flower”, a longish one which I began on the beach in Benidorm, Spain! I’ll enclose a copy.

  Also got a lovely letter from Peter Davison, who is now associate editor of the Atlantic Monthly Press, saying he wants to encourage me from his new position, and wouldn’t it be nice if they could publish a novel by me some day? I wrote him a colossal letter,* telling him of Ted’s stuff, and my novel plans, asking advice, etc. He can be a most valuable friend. Your little daughter will be a writer yet! When I listed the prizes I’d won for the Poetry biography, I was rather surprised at myself; from Seventeen, through Mademoiselle (story and guest ed); Irene Glascock tie, Lyric Young Poets Prize; Acad. Of American Poets Prize at Smith---all that help. My life is, praise be, going to be crammed daily with writing and my darling Ted.

  So much to ask you, too. Will go to London some Saturday late this fall to shop for silver (stainless steel) patterns, perhaps china; want to buy Ted a leather brief-case for Christmas; we both need one; our manuscripts are the most valuable part of our luggage; the darling one needs so much, gifts are no problem; want to get him a leather shaving kit; also, that Viyella bathrobe (as unbulky, but as warm as possible---could you possibly try to send it? Or shall I try to shop for one here?) By the way, a huge favor to ask you:

  Please, please, shop for two small nice presents to send M. B. Derr* and Nancy Hunter as wedding gifts; and mail them; I want to ask them to my wedding, and would like to establish a precedent for gift-giving: the suavest modern present to Nancy; a silver candy dish (hoho) to M.B.---no, but something sweet and simpery and cute; she’s like that. Nan’s home address is 302* Noah Avenue, Akron, Ohio. (302 that is); Mary Bailey Derr (now Mrs. David Knox) should be 260 Quinobequin Road, Waban. I was invited to wedding and reception at both, it seems.

  Now, some time at your convenience, could you send me my two German grammars---I believe the one from Summer School (the most necessary) is a big thinnish gray one, the Smith one, a red squat review;* I want to start German next term, after I get through Chaucer and Philosophy. Also: bless you, could we have a few packets, at least three, of corrasable bond?* You have no idea the horror of getting type paper here: it’s not our standard ms. size, and I have to have it cut, which is expensive, and there is no corrasable. Ted has the children’s book of about 70 to 100 pages which I want to type and send off this month (could you investigate about addresses of children’s book publishers---I have no addresses here; you could just look in the bookstores, perhaps; or ask about): also, I want to type up a poem-book ms. for each of us. Ted is producing terrifically---the Atlantic has had his poems for four months; I have fingers crossed. You would be so touched---he wants to get his fables printed especially for you, so you would not worry that he can support me! He thinks you would be pleased. The dear one.

  Naturally, it will be hard work here, but I am happy alone, want to see no one, but live in the spirit of Ted, writing daily; I’ll see him in London before he leaves for Spain, so there is that to look forward to; he waits now, word from the BBC. You must tell Mrs. Prouty about my new poem acceptances! It shows what true love can produce!

  If only you knew how happy I am with Ted! I have been with him every minute for over four months, and every day I love him more and more; we share everything, and never run out of growing conversation: we talked one whole day on our bus-trip to London, and it is so exciting, both of us writing, producing something new every day, criticizing, dreaming, encouraging, mulling over common experiences; I am walking on air; I love him more than the world and would do anything for him: he is the dearest, kindest, gentlest, most loving darling person alive! We want to work and work, and are both recluses at heart; success will never spoil either of us; we are not dependent on the social arty world, but scorn it, for those that are drinking and calling themselves “writers” at parties, should be home writing and writing; everyday, one has to earn the name of “writer” over again, with much wrestling.

  Our last days at Ted’s were lovely, even under the strain of coming parting; we listened to Beethoven after dinner, by the light of the coal fire, the stars shining outside the big windows, and read in bed together quietly and happily; I finished my drawing of Wuthering Heights and will do a little article on it. By the way, I’d love red geraniums around the front of our house! I always thought petunias straggly and messy, and geranium are so sturdy, and My Color! I don’t know what records you have of Beethoven, but would be overjoyed if you would stock up before our coming: esp. “The Grosse Fugue”, The Emperor Concerto; and the 4th and 7th Symphonies, etc. Beethoven is the only music big enough for Ted. He can whistle all the themes by heart.

  Both of us yearn so for our wedding in Wellesley, which we work to now, for it will mean that we are never apart again, but together all our lives; I will try to get the ship date set, and pray for the 29th of June; all money I earn goes toward wedding, dress, reception; Ted’s will go to rent and food for two months on Cape. We are hard, disciplined workers, and he wants me do do very well on my exams, and is always giving me peptalks about them. He is the dearest person there is; I never thought I could feel so holy and exalted from day to day, doing dishes, making his meals; it is so wonderful to love someone incalculably more than oneself; such freedom: everything I do now, is for him, to please him and make him proud . . . do write a lot this year . . .

  much love, your happy

  sivvy

  One of the poems Poetry accepted:

  Epitaph for Fire and Flower

  You might as well string up

  This wave’s green peak on wire

  To prevent fall, or anchor the fluent air

  In quartz, as crack your skull to keep

  These two most perishable lovers from the touch

  That will kindle angels’ envy, scorch and drop

  Their fond hearts charred as any match.

  Seek no stony camera-eye to fix

  The passing dazzl
e of each face

  In black and white, or put on ice

  Mouth’s instant flare for future looks;

  Stars shoot their petals, and suns run to seed,

  However you may sweat to hold such darling wrecks

  Hived like honey in your head.

  Now in the crux of their vows, hang your ear

  Still as a shell: hear what an age of glass

  These lovers prophesy to lock embrace

  Secure in museum diamond for the stare

  Of astounded generations; they wrestle

  To conquer cinder’s kingdom in the stroke of an hour

  And hoard faith safe in a fossil.

  But though they’d rivet sinews in rock

  And have every weathercock kiss hang fire

  As if to outflame a phoenix, the moment’s spur

  Drives nimble blood too quick

  For a wish to tether: they ride nightlong

  In their heartbeats’ blazing wake until red cock

  Plucks bare that comet’s flowering.

  Dawn snuffs out star’s spent wick

  Even as love’s dear fools cry evergreen,

  And a languor of wax congeals the vein

  No matter how fiercely lit; staunch contracts break

  And recoil in the altering light: the radiant limb

  Blows ash in each lover’s eye; the ardent look

  Blackens flesh to bone and devours them.

  Sylvia Plath

  TO Edward Weeks

  Wednesday 3 October 1956

  TLS (photocopy), Yale University

  Whitstead

  4 Barton Road

  Cambridge, England

  October 3, 1956

  Mr. Edward Weeks Editor

  THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY

  8 Arlington Street

  Boston 16, Massachusetts

  U.S.A.

  Dear Editor Weeks,

  It was with great pleasure recently that I received your kind letter accepting my poem “Pursuit”; I am very happy that it will appear in the Atlantic. About the other poem you mentioned---“Two Lovers and a Beachcomber By The Real Sea”---that was bought by Mademoiselle and printed as part of an article on the Irene Glascock Poetry Contest, “Poets On College Time”, in their August 1955 issue. I am, however, enclosing a sheaf of recent poems,* among which I hope you may find something which interests you as well.

  I have just returned to Cambridge for my second and last year on the renewed Fulbright grant to complete work for my Honours B.A. in English Literature. It is one of those rare, cloudless delicate blue days, with the glossy chestnuts breaking from green pods, the rooks clacking like scraped metal, and that unique mellowed gold light over the Backs where I like to walk and sketch. Best of all, here there is the leisure to write for quiet, uninterrupted mornings (as there would never be, at an American graduate school, I think, with the crammed class schedule and frequent exams). I am working daily on poems, articles with little pen sketches which the Monitor publishes from time to time, and a pack of short stories about Spain, bull-fights, quirky widows, Yorkshire moor people, and so on. This year I’m beginning a longish fiction piece on Cambridge itself, of the impact of an American on this particular Cambridge University society, part humorous, part serious: having this second year is ideal: whereas I participated furiously last year, discovering and tasting experience, this year I feel seasoned and objective enough to write about it all.

  I’ve also taken advantage of the long vacations to satisfy much of the eager wanderlust which has been accumulating these past twenty-three years of being a steadfast New Englander---have lived much in Paris, Spain, and Yorkshire, writing and sketching everywhere. But now I am looking most forward to returning to my home in Wellesley next June, for a summer of writing on the Cape, followed by teaching English at some New England college.

  Thanking you again for your kind interest,

  Sincerely yours,

  Sylvia Plath

  TO Ted Hughes

  Wednesday 3 October 1956

  TLS on RMS Queen Elizabeth

  letterhead, family owned

  Wednesday morning: Oct.3

  Dearest Teddy . . .

  It is early yet, a clear miraculous guileless blue day with heather-colored asters, shining chestnuts breaking from green pods (I wait till after dark to collect these) and rooks clacking like bright scraped metal; I find myself walking straight, talking incessantly to you and myself, and painfully abrased by the crowds of people---the motion, chatter and nip and tuck of cars and throngs in Petty Cury nearly drove me home screaming yesterday; I’ve been, for four months, conscious really of only living in and with you, with the great sense of complete contained safe aloneness and protection that grew to mean in my deepest bone and marrow. Now the voices in the desert assail me; but, somewhat like your “egg-head”* (which, by the way, peter-pumpkin-eater* sent me with a sweet letter saying how very happy they were to have us and we’re very welcome any time) I am already “walling myself in”, and the part of me really operating in the world of people and commerce is so small, so merely politic, that it’s like a grain of sand in my holy nun-eye. I smiled at the bank man who greeted me with enthusiasm, told me how Lloyd’s had missed me, grieved over his his miserable rainy summer and said how lucky I was. He also said, n.b., that I can keep a dollar account for you there (I said you’re American to avoid complication) if you endorse the checks you get: “For deposit to the account of Miss Sylvia Plath” and sign your name to that. Then no one can cash it, and I’ll deposit it to our next summer.

  I am writing this in my bathrobe after a lousy little breakfast of queer-tasting honey on white (ugh) toast and nescafe---regular breakfasts don’t start here till tomorrow; the way I miss you makes that hissing small anemic word look ridiculous. I have very simply never felt this way before, and what I and we must do is fight and live with these floods of strange feeling; my whole life, being, breathing, thinking, sleeping, and eating, has somehow, in the course of these last months, become indissolubly welded to you; it is difficult to describe---sort of as if I had innumerable tender, sensitive tentacles joined to you, and suddenly, except for those in my mind, all were cut off, left wavering loose; now people affect me like vinager does our lovely poached eggs; I contract, concentrate, withdraw, and not a tentacle is left out; I marvel at how well I can get along without giving anything of myself to anyone. I sat at supper at Newnham for the first meal last night amid the seven girls returned, one of whom I knew, and ate rapidly listening to the most incredibly pained conversation: “I always thought they expected girls to do worse than boys at things, you know.” “What?” “Worse than boys.” “Oh.” “Really?” “But here, you know, it’s quite the opposite; there’s such competition for girls to get in the boys are quite terrified of them.”

  Whereupon I tore my long white hair, clawed my wrinkles, rejected the pale bilious green dessert (dyed custard) poured over a lady-finger biscuit and left for the college library.

  You would be amazed at what I did yesterday; I felt like hell, the numbness of Monday leaving, with a sick, rather mad feeling; in a daze, I tromped through most of my colossal errands; everything needed to be repaired: my bike had to get a new tire & tube, my watch is gone for a good three weeks to an invisible force of tick-tacking jewelers upstairs in the glittering suave Samuel’s, whose clock we told time by in Alexandra House;* my clothes to the cleaner’s (I discovered my pleated skirt must be taken apart* and put together again; very depressing thought; the woman said I should order coffee without milk for breakfast because coffee-with-milks-stains don’t, alas, come out; I learn so much merely by being civil and listening; somehow, every tradesperson, from banker to cleaner to wine-merchant decides to explain the quirks of their trade to me; I will write a Quirks of the Trade Book).

  I banked, got a postal order for the Dinner Dress Contest, mailed innumerable letters---my demand for a new book allowance backed by the itemized and receipts for last term.

&n
bsp; A plea for an early sailing date---the earlier we go, the longer writing summer we have; a warning note to the ignorant passport office who still have my damn passport, but sent a small official slip here to “Mrs. S. Hughes” which looked opened and peered-into when I found it on return, saying “Née Plath” inside; I wrote begging them to return it in my maiden name; If, however, Miss Abbott or snotty snooper Milne ask about it, they can have not the face to admit they opened it; I shall say blandly and blithely---“Oh, a silly confusion” and smile snakily into their eyes. Saw my dear pretty tutor MissMorris* who is so vague and really sweet; made her sign my University Library slip and she congratulated me on getting poems published (the grapevine---Mrs. Milne was there when I opened the letter from Poetry and screamed; so fast, so far it goes). All was gray yesterday; it was dead; it stuck in my craw. I have a way of glaring at people now; they quail and look the other way.

  Sent check to Dr. Kaplan* after calling up about address; just got a bill for same from him this morning; with compliments; well, he’s taken care of: DO see him when you go to London no matter what; I am all-American* (what a misprint that was going to be) in my hygienic mania for prevention etc. Will go see tailor soon and try to have him send suit and jacket to you; please wear them to London, so I and Mr. Carne-Ross can admire you. I live for seeing you there. I shall live with this loneliness, in myself, and must begin to find solace in turning my force on reading, drawing and writing; it will be good, but this first week or two will be hardest---with the joy of living with you so vivid and present by the dour contrast of your absence; but I am in a queer way, capable of being happy completely alone; living with my god, which is you; like a nun; I talk to you each night before I go to bed, opening the window wide, leaning out, looking at clouds of stars, smelling the wet earth and concentrating hard and completely on you, whatever you’re doing, wherever you are. It will be best if I see you the weekend just before you go; by then, I’ll have made the happiest sort of routine of work here, and seeing you won’t be escape from establishing work then, but a right thing, because I’ll be settled to this queer ascetic way of life.