by Sylvia Plath
But the torch and its faint
Chinese yellow on appalling objects
Black asininity. Decay.
Possession.
It is they who own me.
Neither cruel nor indifferent,
Only ignorant.
This is the time of hanging on for the beesthe bees
So slow I hardly know them,
Filing like soldiers
To the syrup tin
To make up for the honey Ive taken.
Tate and Lyle keeps them going,
The refined snow.
It is Tate and Lyle they live on, instead of flowers.
They take it. The cold sets in.
Now they ball in a mass,
Black
Mind against all that white.
The smile of the snow is white.
It spreads itself out, a mile-long body of Meissen,
Into which, on warm days,
They can only carry their dead.
The bees are all women,
Maids and the long royal lady.
They have got rid of the men,
The blunt, clumsy stumblers, the boors.
Winter is for women
The woman, still at her knitting,
At the cradle of Spanish walnut,
Her body a bulb in the cold and too dumb to think.
Will the hive survive, will the gladiolas
Succeed in banking their fires
To enter another year?
What will they taste of, the Christmas roses?
The bees are flying. They taste the spring.
II
Facsimile of the manuscript for Ariel and other poems
III
Facsimile drafts of the poem ‘Ariel’
To give a sense of Sylvia Plath’s creative process, here follow the working drafts in facsimile for the title poem ‘Ariel.’ The drafts are variously numbered and dated by Sylvia Plath. The first four drafts were written on the pink Smith College Memorandum paper, as were various other drafts of the Ariel poems. The poem ‘Ariel’ was accepted for publication by the Observer and was eventually published in the Observer on the third of November 1963, under a variant title, ‘The Horse.’ A typeset proof of the poem from the Observer is appended to the end of this section. It was corrected by Sylvia Plath in mid-December 1962.
APPENDIX I
‘The Swarm’
The bee poem ‘The Swarm’ appears on the contents page of the Ariel and other poems manuscript with parentheses around it in Sylvia Plath’s own hand. She did not include the poem within the manuscript itself. Ted Hughes included it in the U.S. version of Ariel when it was first published in 1966. This restored edition maintains Sylvia Plath’s editorial decision and does not include the poem in the main body of Ariel and other poems. The poem follows, along with a facsimile of a typescript draft.
The Swarm
Somebody is shooting at something in our town——
A dull pom, pom in the Sunday street.
Jealousy can open the blood,
It can make black roses.
What are they shooting at?
It is you the knives are out for
At Waterloo, Waterloo, Napoleon,
The hump of Elba on your short back,
And the snow, marshalling its brilliant cutlery
Mass after mass, saying Shh,
Shh. These are chess people you play with,
Still figures of ivory.
The mud squirms with throats,
Stepping stones for French bootsoles.
The gilt and pink domes of Russia melt and float off
In the furnace of greed. Clouds! Clouds!
So the swarm balls and deserts
Seventy feet up, in a black pine tree.
It must be shot down. Pom! Pom!
So dumb it thinks bullets are thunder.
It thinks they are the voice of God
Condoning the beak, the claw, the grin of the dog
Yellow-haunched, a pack dog,
Grinning over its bone of ivory
Like the pack, the pack, like everybody.
The bees have got so far. Seventy feet high.
Russia, Poland and Germany.
The mild hills, the same old magenta
Fields shrunk to a penny
Spun into a river, the river crossed.
The bees argue, in their black ball,
A flying hedgehog, all prickles.
The man with grey hands stands under the honeycomb
Of their dream, the hived station
Where trains, faithful to their steel arcs,
Leave and arrive, and there is no end to the country.
Pom, pom. They fall
Dismembered, to a tod of ivy.
So much for the chariots, the outriders, the Grand Army.
A red tatter, Napoleon.
The last badge of victory.
The swarm is knocked into a cocked straw hat.
Elba, Elba, bleb on the sea.
The white busts of marshals, admirals, generals
Worming themselves into niches.
How instructive this is!
The dumb, banded bodies
Walking the plank draped with Mother France’s upholstery
Into a new mausoleum,
An ivory palace, a crotch pine.
The man with grey hands smiles——
The smile of a man of business, intensely practical.
They are not hands at all
But asbestos receptacles.
Pom, pom! ‘They would have killed me.’
Stings big as drawing pins!
It seems bees have a notion of honor,
A black, intractable mind.
Napoleon is pleased, he is pleased with everything.
O Europe. O ton of honey.
APPENDIX II
Script for the BBC broadcast ‘New Poems by Sylvia Plath’
In a letter from December 14, 1962, later published in Letters Home: Correspondence, 1950–1963, Sylvia Plath wrote to her mother, Aurelia, that she ‘spent last night writing a long broadcast of all my new poems to submit to an interested man at the BBC’. The man referred to at the British Broadcasting Corporation was Douglas Cleverdon. The script that follows includes notes for ‘The Applicant’, ‘Lady Lazarus’, ‘Daddy’, ‘Sheep in Fog’ (which was not included in Sylvia Plath’s manuscript Ariel and other poems), ‘Ariel’, ‘Death & Co.’, ‘Nick and the Candlestick’, and ‘Fever 103°.’
These new poems of mine have one thing in common. They were all written at about four in the morning—that still, blue, almost eternal hour before cockcrow, before the baby’s cry, before the glassy music of the milkman, settling his bottles. If they have anything else in common, perhaps it is that they are written for the ear, not the eye: they are poems written out loud.
In this poem, called ‘The Applicant’, the speaker is an executive, a sort of exacting super-salesman. He wants to be sure the applicant for his marvelous product really needs it and will treat it right.
This poem is called ‘Lady Lazarus’. The speaker is a woman who has the great and terrible gift of being reborn. The only trouble is, she has to die first. She is the phoenix, the libertarian spirit, what you will. She is also just a good, plain, very resourceful woman.
Here is a poem spoken by a girl with an Electra complex. Her father died while she thought he was God. Her case is complicated by the fact that her father was also a Nazi and her mother very possibly part Jewish. In the daughter the two strains marry and paralyze each other—she has to act out the awful little allegory once over before she is free of it.
In this next poem, the speaker’s horse is proceeding at a slow, cold walk down a hill of macadam to the stable at the bottom. It is December. It is foggy. In the fog there are sheep.
Another horseback riding poem, this one called ‘Ariel’, after a horse I’m especially fond of.
This poem—‘Death & Co.’—is about the dou
ble or schizophrenic nature of death—the marmoreal coldness of Blake’s death mask, say, hand in glove with the fearful softness of worms, water and the other katabolists. I imagine these two aspects of death as two men, two business friends, who have come to call.
In this poem, ‘Nick and the Candlestick’, a mother nurses her baby son by candlelight and finds in him a beauty which, while it may not ward off the world’s ill, does redeem her share of it.
This poem is about two kinds of fire—the fires of hell, which merely agonize, and the fires of heaven, which purify. During the poem, the first sort of fire suffers itself into the second. The poem is called ‘Fever 103°’.
Notes
By David Semanki
SECTION I, Ariel and other poems
The printed poems follow the order of Sylvia Plath’s manuscript Ariel and other poems. The definitive edition of each poem derives from Sylvia Plath’s manuscript. All of the poems in the manuscript are present in The Collected Poems, edited by Ted Hughes.
Sylvia Plath in the manuscript uses three dots under punctuation that she wants to restore. All the dashes within the poems of this edition are now one standard length unlike in The Collected Poems. All the underlined words that appear in the manuscript have been changed to italics. Some poems contained within this volume differ from the version published in The Collected Poems. The poems, as previously published, may contain punctuation and spelling not dictated by the manuscript. We have here printed the poems in accordance with Sylvia Plath’s manuscript.
Here follows a complete listing of Sylvia Plath’s punctuation and word choices in contrast to the version printed in The Collected Poems, arranged thus: restored edition] Collected Poems
Morning Song 4 statue] statue. 8 distils] distills
The Couriers 10 Alps,] Alps. 12 grey] gray
Thalidomide 5 appal] appall
The Applicant 1 person] a person
A Secret 17 secret!] secret … 26 head!] head – 27 drawer.] drawer! 33 Do] ‘Do 40 stampede –] stampede! 41 twirling,] twirling gutterals.] gutturals!
The Jailor title: Jailor] Jailer 28 subversion] subversion, 45 me.] me!
Cut dedication: for] For
Elm dedication: for] For the dedication has been placed in parentheses
The Night Dances an extra line-space reintroduced between stanzas 7 and 8, dividing the poem into equal halves of 14 lines each
The Detective 15 No-one] No one
Death & Co 1 Two. Of] Two, of
Lesbos 10 a schizophrenic] schizophrenic 11 panic.] panic, 26 you,] you. 27 Mama] mama 39 t.b.] T.B. 41 Hollywood] in Hollywood 52 jewel.] jewel! valuable.] valuable! 63 They] He
The Other an extra line-space reintroduced between stanzas 8 and 9, dividing the poem into equal halves of 16 lines each
Poppies in October the dedication for Helder and Suzette Macedo has been restored 12 cornflowers!] cornflowers.
The Courage of Shutting-Up 3, 5, 16 discs] disks 5 heard,] heard – 20 going.] going! 21 by] by, 25 time!] time.
Nick and the Candlestick 2 stalacmites] stalactites
Berck-Plage 2 inflammation!] inflammation. 32 throat!] throat … 64 whitely,] whitely 73 grey] gray 91 unnatural] natural
Getting There 4 appal] appall 56 an is placed between parentheses in Plaths’s typescript
Medusa 13 you,] you 26 Paralyzing] Paralysing 31 X ray] X-ray
Purdah 8 valuable.] valuable! 19 arrives,] arrives 20 mirrors.] mirrors! 25 curtain.] curtain 35 macaws.] macaws! 45 plies] flies 46 crystals,] crystals
The Moon and the Yew Tree 5 Fumey] Fumy
A Birthday Present 14 all,] all 39 cotton –] cotton. 50 cold,] cold
Letter in November 14 Wellingtons] wellingtons 28 grey] gray
Amnesiac 1 Recognize.] Recognize! 4 wife] wife – 6 cocker.] cooker! 15 barren.] barren! 18 rears,] rears 19 tail.] tail!
Daddy 9 grey] gray 27 a period replaces a comma after the final ich 38 gypsy] gipsy 43 moustache] mustache 45 o You] O You 60 do] do.
Fever 103° 52 Nor] Not
The Bee Meeting 15 beanfield,] beanfield. 39 cow parsley] cow-parsley
The Arrival of the Bee Box 17 appals] appalls
Stings 9 it.] it, 12 grey] gray
Wintering 16 the ‘s’ has been accidentally dropped from Chinese in Plaths’s typescript; the correct spelling has always been used in the published poem
SECTION II, Facsimile of the manuscript for Ariel and other poems
Sylvia Plath’s manuscript Ariel and other poems consists of sheets of 8½×11 inches cream-coloured typing paper. She used a black typewriter ribbon.
Sylvia Plath’s name and Devon address appear in the upper right-hand corner on the original and carbon copy sheets of the two discarded title pages of the manuscript in the Smith College archive. On both sheets, Plath has used black pen. The original discarded title page reads ‘Daddy’. ‘A Birthday Present’, ‘The Rabbit Catcher’, and ‘The Rival’ are deleted. On the discarded carbon copy title page of ‘Daddy,’ ‘A Birthday Present’ and ‘The Rival’ are deleted.
Plath created two identical dedication pages, again using carbon copy paper. Only the original is reproduced here.
She also created two identical contents pages by use of carbon copy paper. On the original contents page, all of Plath’s marks are in black ink, except for the mark in red over the ‘h’ of ‘Death & Co.’; the other mark in red is in the lower right hand of the page. On the carbon copy contents page, she underlined in red the titles of poems that were accepted for publication and typed or wrote the place of publication next to each title. All handwritten annotations are in black ink except for the word ‘Poetry’ opposite ‘Purdah’ and ‘Fever 103°’, which is written in red. It is possible that some of the annotations were made as late as January 25, 1963, when the London Magazine accepted a number of Plath’s poems for its April 1963 issue.
SECTION III, Facsimile drafts of the poem ‘Ariel’
On all the original working drafts of ‘Ariel’ where Sylvia Plath has typed her name in the upper right-hand corner, she has also included her Devon address. The original typeset proof of ‘Ariel’ from the Observer contains Sylvia Plath’s Devon address in two places under her name.
APPENDIX I
The Swarm 5 What] Who 9 marshalling] marshaling 10 Shh,] Shh! 11 Shh.] Shh! 16 Clouds! Clouds!] Clouds, clouds. 23 pack dog] pack-dog 26 high.] high! 27 Germany.] Germany! 33 grey] gray 37 Pom, pom.] Pom! Pom! 39 chariots] charioteers Army.] Army! 40 Napoleon. Napoleon! 43 sea.] sea! 51 grey] gray 55 Pom, pom!] Pom! Pom! 58 black,] black 60 Europe.] Europe! honey.] honey!
The four previously published volumes of Sylvia Plath’s poetry
Ariel [A] Faber & Faber, London, 1965; Harper & Row, NY, 1966
Crossing the Water [CW] Faber & Faber, London, 1971; Harper & Row, NY, 1971
Winter Trees [WT] Faber & Faber, London, 1971; Harper & Row, NY, 1972
The Collected Poems [CP] Faber & Faber, London, 1981; Harper & Row, NY, 1981
The following are the dates of composition for Sylvia Plath’s poems in Ariel and other poems as established in The Collected Poems and on the manuscripts at Smith College. The bracketed abbreviations indicate the Sylvia Plath volume in which the poem first appeared.
‘Morning Song’ (19 February 1961) [A]
‘The Couriers’ (4 November 1962) [A]
‘The Rabbit Catcher’ (21 May 1962) [WT]
‘Thalidomide’ (4–8 November 1962) [WT]
‘The Applicant’ (11 October 1962) [A]
‘Barren Woman’ (21 February 1961) [CP]
‘Lady Lazarus’ (23–29 October 1962) [A]
‘Tulips’ (18 March 1961) [A]
‘A Secret’ (10 October 1962) [CP]
‘The Jailor’ (17 October 1962) [CP]
‘Cut’ (24 October 1962) [A]
‘Elm’ (12–19 April 1962) [A]
‘The Night Dances’ (4–6 November 1962) [A]
‘The Detective’ (1 October 1962) [WT]
> ‘Ariel’ (27 October 1962) [A]
‘Death & Co.’ (12–14 November 1962) [A]
‘Magi’ (1960) [CW]
‘Lesbos’ (18 October 1962) [A]
‘The Other’ (2 July 1962) [WT]
‘Stopped Dead’ (19 October 1962) [WT]
‘Poppies in October’ (27 October 1962) [A]
‘The Courage of Shutting-Up’ (2 October 1962) [WT]
‘Nick and the Candlestick’ (24 October 1962) [A]
‘Berck-Plage’ (28–30 June 1962) [A]
‘Gulliver’ (3–6 November 1962) [A]
‘Getting There’ (3–6 November 1962) [A]
‘Medusa’ (28 October 1962) [WT]
‘Purdah’ (28 October 1962) [WT]
‘The Moon and the Yew Tree’ (22 October 1961) [A]
‘A Birthday Present’ (30 September 1962) [A]
‘Letter in November’ (11 November 1962) [A]
‘Amnesiac’ (21 October 1962) [WT]
‘The Rival’ (July 1961) [A]