by Sylvia Plath
well, I felt like mothercary; they clucked, crowded, and I made them laugh, and all the time some machiavellian little part of me was sitting in a corner scribbling notes and laughing and laughing; it is so strange now, to me---my social self is no longer all of me thrown out on a long leash and sniffing about enthusiastically---it is seated way deep down and doesn’t give itself or commit itself, but watches and notes, and manages this other part which talks and gestures & so on . . .
for some reason, now, I seem to attract married couples. I was invited to dinner after this affair by the queerish british couple* yet---a little oddly shaped man with staring gog eyes thinning hair, on the british council who knew louis macneice in greece, has had a book of criticism published* by geoffrey cumberledge or some such spelling, and a book of 100 poems* coming out this month, and has appeared in the london magazine* & writes for time etc. all of which he modestly informed me immediately upon my introduction to him & his strange big soft towering wife who looks like his mother and wears no ring and has graying hair. we all, or rather the little man & I, quoted enough lines in chorus of crowe ransom, wallace stevens, etc. etc. to realize we had common talking ground, while the wife bent, smiled, crooned, and made herself generally pleasant. they promised to give me a list of all the magazines & addresses in england, information about a poetry book contest, and a cheese souflee served up by their “german girl” if I came home to dinner with them . . .
it was already too late for all, so I went. I have never heard such talk: they knew, with the accuracy of history, the marital affairs of spender, macneice, kathleen raine, hugh sykes-davis* (whom I met at johns last year) and natasha and hedley* (louise macneice’s wife) and auden and erica mann.* I never heard such a fascinating and disgusting story: they are all, linked by some first, second or third wife and have simply traded off wives in the most incredible and burlesque fashion; now, teddy, I’m sure this would make a terrific play---very dramatic, say three of the young poets in the 30’s and, over the years (much could have happened previously and come out in the story---like have the first or second round of marriages already happened) because of intellectual novelty, fashion, etc. have them trade about & divorce, and new women come on. this could be a terrific thing, I think---say, a new young innocent woman marries, in innocence, one of the old warhorse poets, is invited to dinner by his first or second wife and all the others, etc. am I giving you plots? but it’s rich . . .
Spender whose first wife* ran away with someone of the others as the other’s 2nd or 3rd, married a russian pianist Natasha by whom he now has offspring; louis macneice whose wife* also ran away or something, married this hedley for whom auden wrote many cabaret songs; hedley is not liked by many in the london circle because at the anniversary of dylan thomas’s death when they all got together to read his poems---macneice was reading some, she insisted on getting up and singing something; the london wives think she wants to be a prima donna. oh, god, how I chortled inside and begged them to go on. roy campbell,* evidently, is the only virile, honest man going.
anyway, this couple (mr. and mr. john press) had some (2) children upstairs, the souflee and dark bread was good; I entertained them with stories of american poets and editors, admired the lyric mr. press had in the london magazine.
I told them about you, and they were very interested. they seemed quite sympathetic, in spite of a queer over-niceness about most things. over indulgent, I mean, not over-precise.
well, now, this is the thing: I sat on the white fur greek rug on the couch, admired the stylized black white and red print covers, and took down the address of this contest which, without my going to the sherry & to their dinner, I never would have run across in time; so I am sure your book will win. I’ll write the borestone, but have no faith in them whatever.
this contest is american-sponsered by harper’s and as a prize offers only publication of the book, which is the usual prize for such things and would be good auspices to get your book out under. it must be by a poet who has not yet published a book (anything in the english language is eligible) and is due by november 30. it must be double spaced and about 60 pages. now, I ran right home and counted, estimating your poems double-spaced. 55 pages. almost exact. let me do this typing (it will give me the excuse of having a carbon of all your stuff to keep eternally, which I wanted anyhow). I’m sure you’ll win this; I feel very queer about it.
the hitch, if such there be, is that the judges are: wh auden, marianne moore and, o god, stephen spender. what queer bed-fellows. but I trust miss moore’s exactness & love of form; and you certainly have enough wit to win auden and social war consciousness to please spender. I’ll bring your poetry ms. again to london for you to title and arrange it in order, checking each copy of each poem to see if it’s the final form you want it. how about it? I’m strangely sure that the whole purpose I went to this dull gathering was to find out about this contest. I feel our luck coming.
your letter* this morning was lovely. your voice is like the spirit of god on the waters. I really move in it and with it. I love you to tell me things about reading. I loved the american indians and their tails. I am hoping and hoping about your dear fables. I wish to hell I could see you every two weeks at least during the year; I could live on you for a week after, look forward for a week before; a week from tomorrow now.
I love you and perish to be with you and lying in bed with you and kissing you all over and go just wild with thinking & wishing & remembering of your dear lovely mouth & incredibly lovely made flesh and oh how warm you are. I love you teddy teddy teddy and how I wish I could be with you, living with you, and you writing in granchester or something.
all my love ever
your own lone wife
sylvia
TO Ted Hughes
Saturday 20 October 1956
TLS on Newnham College
letterhead, family owned
Saturday morning
october 20
dearest love teddy . . .
in a week from today I shall be taking a very early train to meet you in london and commence living my 25th year. it is a rainy, blowy, gray ten thirtyish time; I am still in pajamas, having spent this hour after breakfast reading the latest new yorker stories---a moving one by william maxwell,* one of the editors, whom I heard speak eloquently and shyly at a college symposium*---a most “inward” man; story called “the french scarecrow”, very tenderly, slowly told unfolding the fear of a man whose second wife is 3 months pregnant & who hasn’t yet any children. dreams & the psychoanalyst play too much; but it’s an honest thing; “something small”,* another story set in rome about the haunting yearnings for lost youth; it makes me feel, that as soon as my poor dear “remember the stick man” comes back, I’ll send them the “wishing box,” “all the dead dears” and “the invisible man” (which I sat up last night typing the final copy, revised, of---such dangling prepositions!) they are all very wistful stories; heard rumors yesterday that j. d. salinger is supposed to be in a mental hospital. I feel very strangely about him for some reason; I am sure insanity is the most necessary state for a fine artist---that “divine madness” where the terror & piercing insights he has daily are not locked in retreat or raving but made into works of art; a kind of flickering wild light of susceptibility playing over psychic states which, if frozen, would become intolerable and result in madness. I wish I knew about j. d. salinger.
your news* about the children’s hour which came this morning is just another documentary to my vivid conviction that england is not your place. people have the right of judging your life and work here who are narrow, bigoted, and just plain ignorant; worse, there is no higher court of appeal than this monolithic london. any mind which is quirked and limited enough to write “abstract and nebulous in conception and execution” is close to pathetically poverty-stricken. I am not saying this because they are your stories and I love them. it is a flannely false excuse---conception and execution are both jargon words; the stories are exactly t
he opposite of abstract and nebulous; they are as concrete and symbolic as the old fox-and-grapes aesop. every detail is vividly concrete---from fox renting deck-chairs to god burning his fingers. you say in your letter “they are abstract in conception”---well, what, for god’ sake, isn’t? conception is the “power of the mind to form ideas”;* ideas themselves, however concrete they may be (ideas of bricks & markets) are abstract until made vivid in stories, paintings or the objects themselves. so the conception being abstract, as an accusation, is ridiculously irrelevant---and “nebulous”---cloudy, hazy, misty, is simply false: what more conceptually clear than vanity, as in polar bear (concretely realized throughout the story in her staying home on muddy days, preening & prinking, etc.) or sly deceitfulness in fox & dog story---“concrete” as any detective story plot. “Execution”, it seems, means how they’re written and embodied in form. there is nothing abstract or nebulous about this---torto’s skin (one could make this a symbol for so much---discrimination, the smugness of the individualist who is “different”---all those human foibles which can, but don’t have to be, read into each one of your tales). what is more concrete and clear than races, beauty contests, the demon making the bee, bumbo’s rescue of the animals in the fire. teddy, these words of rejection were written by a very ignorant, pretentious person; they are, quite simply, arrant lies. they are not true.
I am going to send the stories off to peter davison* this week. even if they do not accept them, he will have a valuable point-of-view; he is a very imaginative man, and I remember he told me some stories, impromptu, that he made up about spotted dogs and children swinging and talking to the sun. alice in wonderland, the little prince, tolkien’s “hobbit”--- all the classic, best loved fairy tales are loved by grownups and children alike: why? because the adult mind, accustomed as it is in dealing with “abstract” ideas---about love, vanity, etc. (how about the bible stories---that is “fable” style, realizing an abstract concept in symbolic terms) finds rich food in, for example, the problems of alice and the mirror; the fox & the little prince discussing “friendship,” etc., while the child loves the simple story, with, I am sure, an instinctive apprehension of the deeper levels of meaning. your fables are of this order. I know this with my head, and with my simple, childlike love of such fairy-tales, the uncritical, instinctive power of just “feeling” what is good.
I only wish I were with you. the thought of your work being at the mercy of such jargon-slinging idiots (their verdict, worded as it is is patent evidence that they liked them somehow, or felt they had some certain excellence “imaginative and well-written”, but were disturbed, and afraid, and didn’t know how to explain this but in impressive and utterly absurd rigmarole words).
I feel, in taking you to america, I am bringing, as it were, the grail to a place where it will be reverenced properly. time it may take; but in america, your voice will, increasingly, be heard. and loved.
carne-ross is taking two poems. that is something very good. realize, you haven’t published in england yet (I wish lehmann would hurry up with a verdict), so here, at least, you are unknown; even though our international consciousness is sure, and rightly, that poetry and the nation are seething in wait for your next batch, which, by mail, should be there now. so sweet c-r is taking a risk, as it were. although he no doubt in a year or two or three will be famous and, by proxy, immortal for being the first british organization to spread your work. be glad of this. we are new, green yet, in their tremulous eyes; you are reading two; that is in itself wonderful. forget about the money, for god’s sake.
I got my october fulbright check today for £70, meaning my book allowance is on it. of this, about £60 must go for college term bill. but there will be hotel money for next week, and food money out of it. november, I’ll have to deduct the £18 for books out of £52, which should leave £34 clear; for you, for me, for getting me to spain. so forget about money. we are eating, sleeping. and will do.
NOW: with my incorrigible american weather-eye cocked for windfalls & contests I have a project for you to work on this year, for the next 5 or 6 months, and I want you to give it all you’ve got. you have enough “rightness” in your writing already to make this a real possibility. the observer, as you may already have heard, is running a competition* for a full-length play with three prizes of £500, £200 and £100 respectively, and a promise to put the winner on at the arts’ theater (with royalties in addition) If the winner’s good enough. the due date is not till next april 14th! exactly a year from when I came back from rome and our life together began.
judges are alec guinness, peter ustinov, michael barry, peter hall and kenneth tynan. action must take place in the period since the last war. must be submitted under psuedonym. and that is that. now, dear ponk, I want you to revolve several play ideas and work on a couple this year. write them or It to your own true standards. your integrity is the most magnificent I’ve ever known in this lousy corrupt world. the judges would appreciate this; your technique is essentially and naturally dramatic. even third prize would be wonderful. how about it?
I loved your last story plot about country girl and city boy; is very potential.
I am about to brave weather to go to market, tailor and all the practical extroverted places I’ve been putting off all week; I hate doing errands for some reason. wrote small slight poem* yesterday morning, all morning: on reverse side:
please, please, though, darling, do not start thinking of writing first “to sell.” I was very angry to hear the stupid children’s hour verdict give you such pause. I’m sending the stories as is to peter davison; your next book of 10 is another thing. write for you, for me, and for our unborn children. and that is that is that is that.
separate page for poem now. since I had to get so righteously indignant.
and how I love you – I want you to feel it, to think of me, sitting here in the flesh & quick & loving you with all my mind, heart & body. it is so hard for me to be deprived of doing all the woman-things for you – cooking & bedding & listening & telling you how fine you are & how all my faith is in you. I walk in the thought & love of you as in a sheath of radiance which keeps me. in spite of the nightmares, the strange instinctive guilt I feel at being your wife, and cut off from all the symbolic, rich gestures and acts of a wife. (read schopenhauer’s ridiculous essay “on women”* last night – according to him, we are the indian’s vain lying tails! what poverty of experience he must have had to deny us minds & souls – & make us mere procreating animal machines!) I am living only for next saturday – birthday, day of being born again with you – my love – all of it & let it burn your mouth –
sylvia
TO Ted Hughes
Sunday 21 October 1956
TLS, family owned
Sunday noon October 21
dearest ted . . .
it is just before noon, and now clouds are covering a sheeny clear morning; I took my little notebook and walked along the river for an hour, making my way through mud and a quag of wet decayed leaves along by where you called the owls that night; I saw a strange animal that looked at first like a squirrel but wasn’t, climbing up by the mud bank; was it a muskrat? an otter? passing three quiet fisherman, I went and sat up on the bank, writing a page of very simple description* of the scene, watching a translucent amber spider stitch his shiny thread from grass blade to stinging nettle, listening to the fall of yellow willow leaves, and breathing it all in.
when I came back to the house, zahida,* the little brown birdlike indian girl on my floor was ironing all her saris; they were hung along the stair railing like butterfly wings and peacock feathers; I have never seen such vivid jeweled colors, shining in gossamery silk---yellows, scarlets, purples, and all the spectrum of greens and blues like the head of a mallard duck; it was an incredibly joyous sight.
yesterday, granta came out with my story I wrote last year, very nicely illustrated (a guitar and a girl) by ben nash,* the editor, with whom I left the wishing-box and the invisible ma
n. I shall bring a copy to london for you to look at. I wish they’d print these latest ones.
yesterday in late afternoon I saw two good films at the arts---a short incident about the civil war, “time out of war”, very fine, and jean gabin in the french versionoof “le jour se lève.” both of which I enjoyed. I had got a ticket to go see michael marland’s* production of “deirdre of the sorrows”* with jess & the malayan girl, but was so full up at the end of the movies, that I extravagantly didn’t go; the play got lousy reviews* & sounded terrible anyway---marland starred his pregnant wife who was his mistress and wardrobe mistress last year, and evidently she just was peasanty and munched apples through the whole thing. I got into one of my bad times, missing you terribly, biking through sheep’s green under the dark poplars past all the kissing couples feeling hellish; I walked about in the blue frost of moonlight in the park, staring at all the empty benches upon which we’d sat and loved, wearing my black gown still stained white with relics of unborn children. I get these electric shocks of knowing how I miss you, which my general numbness protects me from during the day, unless, I masochistically let myself brood and brood on you. which I do often enough.