While
in college, I was an avid fan of the poet Sylvia Plath. Years later, I made a summer jaunt to a book
reading by her biographer, Edward Butscher.
I had a dog-eared paperback copy of his book on my desk that I often
referred to. That day, Mr. Butscher--a tall slender man with a mostly
dark-brown beard--was gracious and cordial.
I was, perhaps, the most eager Sylvia Plath fan he’d met in a long time, for I’d read most--if not
all--of her poetry, her novel The Bell
Jar, and Letters Home--a
compilation of Plath’s letters.
I
vaguely remember first reading about her in a women’s magazine. Her life story struck a chord with me. At the time, I was reading and exploring an
assortment of poets and authors with a small group of friends and
classmates. We all wrote poetry. Once I discovered Sylvia Plath’s poetry,
however, I eschewed sharing her poems with the group. I waded in on my own. And I was fascinated by her history. She was a young woman haunted by her German ancestry. The famous poem, “Daddy,” however, held no sway with me. She was too angry (like Thor in one of her poems). But the poem explained Sylvia’s need to overachieve: she won prizes and excelled academically, as her father and taskmaster, a biologist, demanded. “I learned, I learned, I learned elsewhere/From muses unhired by you, dear mother,” she wrote in ”The Disquieting Muses”--a lesser-known poem about her mother, a Boston University professor. After graduating from Smith College in 1955, Sylvia pursued graduate studies in England at Cambridge University. One night at a party, she met a young man named Ted Hughes. Several weeks later, she wrote to her mother:
On
June 16, 1956, Sylvia and Ted wed in
secret—both convinced that he was a poet-genius fated for greatness. She completed her studies and settled into
married life. Soon she had little time
to devote to her own writing. She
promoted Ted’s writings and she worked odd jobs (with a brief teaching stint at
her alma mater, Smith). Nearly four
years later, the couple’s baby daughter was born.
Ted,
now her handsome and brilliant husband, was quite popular on the Cambridge
campus. As they sought to sub-let their town
apartment, Sylvia and Ted met a young
married couple, the Wevills, and invited
them to dinner. The young wife, Assia,
was a dark-haired beauty Ted no doubt found mesmerizing. Soon afterward, he
received a whispering phone call from her. Sylvia yanked the telephone cable from the
wall. She made a scene. She
demanded fidelity, after all she had sacrificed herself and her talent for the
great future together. So she asked him
to leave. Almost immediately, Ted went
to Assia--who was, as he describes her in a poem, sheathed in “flame-orange
silks”—with champagne in hand. It’s a woeful yet classic story of love gone awry. As in Sade’s song, This was no ordinary love.
Eventually, it all became too much—Sylvia had lost (or thrown out) her soulmate who was now partnered with a woman who, by most accounts, was just like herself—beautiful, bi-polar, a budding young poetess madly in love with a genius and now pregnant with his child. Except that Assia Wevill did not long for fame: she seemed to only want Ted.
In
late 1962, during her last winter in Devon, England, Sylvia’s days were dark
and grim. She was ill, had lost weight,
and was in between nannies. (In previous
months, she’d had a miscarriage after an appendectomy, followed by the birth of
her son.) In a letter to her mother
dated October 18, 1962, she wrote, “I guess my predicament is an astounding
one, a deserted wife knocked out by flu with two babies and a full-time job!” Yet, by waking up before dawn to write, she
had regained the confidence in her writing--which she had virtually lost during
the marriage: “I am a genius of a
writer. . . . I am writing the best
poems of my life; they will make my name.”
She was thirty years old.
But
for all the emotion in Sylvia Plath‘s real life, and even in her poems, none of it is reflected in her only
novel, The Bell Jar. At least once, she referred disparagingly to
the novel as a “pot boiler”; for this reason, she’d published it under a
pseudonym. Of course, the timespan for The Bell Jar occurs before Ted. And perhaps he had awakened emotion in Sylvia
that only emerged in her later work. (In
the months leading up to her death in 1963, Sylvia Plath had been writing a
second novel that was destroyed.)Nevertheless, I found The Bell Jar’s lack of emotion disturbing. For most of the novel, Esther, the main character, is depressed. To quote Plath, it was “A time of darkness, despair, disillusion. . . .” and “[Esther’s] warped view of the world around . . . seems the right way of looking at things.”
In
contrast, the letters express Sylvia’s true personality and spirit in a more
well-rounded way. I've pondered on her
fate and what might have prevented it.
It's true she had a brash happy side; but a dark mood also pervaded her
life. Moreover, although today Sylvia
might have been categorized as bi-polar, Ted Hughes bears some
responsibility. Stated bluntly, he
behaved like a cad. His crass actions
sent Sylvia (and later, Assia) into a depression from which she never
recovered.
Years
ago, I read a long article by Sylvia Plath’s daughter, Frieda Hughes, about her
mother. Ms. Hughes bears no rancor toward her father: to
her, he was a good dad. (In fact, he became the Poet Laureate of England.) Not surprisingly, the writing gene manifested
itself in her, for she is a poet. Whether Sylvia Plath influenced a generation of young women--for good or ill--is difficult to assess. That said, her best poems are masterfully crafted, beautiful, imagistic. As a wordsmith, she is triumphant. For instance, her superb poem, “Pursuit,” is a personal favorite: “Flayed by thorns I trek the rocks,/Haggard through the hot white noon. . . .” And "Tulips," too, is a beautifully crafted poem. Of the poetry books, my favorite is the incandescent Ariel.*
For
me, however, Sylvia Plath’s poetic legacy is inseparable from the
biography. As a twenty-year-old, I began
reading her poems only after I had learned a bit about her life. And since I wrote poetry back then, I must
admit to Plath’s influence (among other poets) on my own poems. I learned the merits of the unusual word and the exact word. For instance, in “Channel Crossings,” she
uses the word caterwaul—which I
like. That taught me how to build a poem
as if I were laying bricks.
Today,
though, I no longer write poems. My
reason is that poems demand a laser-like intensity that is unsustainable
long-term. Sylvia Plath hinted at this
in an interview: “Poetry, I feel, is a tyrannical discipline. . . . You’ve got to go so far, so fast, in such a small
space. . . . I find that in a novel I
can get more of life. Perhaps not such
intense life, but certainly more of life.” So, many years ago, I switched to writing prose exclusively. I strive to infuse poetry into my prose, and I find it is enough.
http://allpoetry.com/TedHughes
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/oct/28/featuresreviews.guardianreview8
