Oh, Mother, I hate to bother you with this, but I could cry. Life is so black, anyway, with my two best friends, Dick and Marcia, so far removed I hardly see them. And this course: I actually am worried over my mental state! What earthly good is this going to do me in my future life? I hate it, find it hideous, loathsome. I have built it up to a devouring, malicious monster. Anything but formulas, anything but. And it is only a grade I course. God, what a mess my life is. And I know I am driving myself to distraction. Everything is empty, meaningless. This is not education. It is hell; and how could I ever persuade the college authorities to let me drop a year course at the half year? How could I convince the psychiatrist I would go mad if I didn’t escape from these horrible formulas and, for me, dry, useless chunks of memory? My reason is leaving me, and I want to get out of this. Everybody is happy, but this has obsessed me from the day I got here.
I really am in a state of complete and horrible panic. I feel on the one hand that I must get out of this course: I can’t reconcile the memory and rote with my philosophy of a creative education, and I am in a very embarrassing position as far as the authorities of the college are concerned: I have managed to make a pretty good impression so far, but to have me go insane over what I thought was a horrible, wasteful course would only make them expel me or something. Every week I dread opening my science book; it is the subject of the course that annihilates my will and love of life. Not the fact that if I studied more I could take it calmly. Of course I am behind a few chapters (I skipped them to keep abreast of the present work) but I feel that if I only could drop it second semester (how I would fill the science requirement I don’t know!) I could at least see the light of life again. Even now I have a unit paper due—a new week’s work of science to vomit over. I am childish? Maybe, but the series of hideous adjustments thrown in my lap this year doesn’t help. Science is, to me, useless drudgery for no purpose. A vague, superficial understanding of molecules and atoms isn’t going to advance my understanding of life. I can’t deny that to myself.
Oh! Every fibre of me rebels against the unnecessary torture I am going through. If only I wanted to understand it, but I don’t. I am revolted by it, obsessed. How can I ever explain this to anyone plausibly, even the psychiatrist? I am driven inward, feeling hollow. No rest cure in the infirmary will cure the sickness in me.
I will wait till Thanksgiving before getting actively desperate. But oh! how very desolate and futile and trapped I feel!
Love,
Your hollow girl, Sivvy
[During the Thanksgiving recess, Sylvia caught up with her work and seemed to regain confidence and buoyancy.]
[UNDATED; WRITTEN ABOUT DECEMBER 1, 1952]
Dear Warren,
So glad I have a few minutes to write my favorite man. There is so much to tell you. Life is certainly looking up for your old sister, even if she is practically in danger of flunking an amateur science course because she can’t seem to understand beautiful euphonic words like erg, joules, valences, watts, coulombs and amperes….
Dick is coming home [from the sanatorium] for a few days for Christmas, at the time of the Cotillion, darn it, so I will have to give up the idea of going and stay home, the way he did for me last year when I was sick. But really, dances aren’t as important as people, and I’ll be glad to see him. I am leaving with him by train or plane for the sanatorium right after Christmas for a few days. I will be living with the family of a doctor who writes novels and short stories in his spare time and meeting all sorts of tubercular New York truck drivers, so it should be lots of fun…. Wot a giddy life!!
The best thing happened the day after you left Thanksgiving. Did mother tell you? I went to Perry’s [Dick Norton’s brother] for supper and he had two roommates home from Yale. One is engaged to be married this Christmas, and Perry said over the phone that the other one, Myron Lotz, was first in his class at Yale (Perry is second). I envisioned a short, dark little boy with glasses. What was my amazed surprise when I walked into the Nortons’ living room and saw a tall, handsome guy get up and grin. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever been so immediately attracted to anyone. He looks anything but the brilliant scholar. Guess what he does in the summer! He pitches for the Detroit Tigers, and last summer he earned $10,000! Isn’t that amazing? Not only that, he comes from Austro-Hungarian immigrant parents who work in the steel mines and can hardly speak English. And he is going through Yale in three years, starting Yale Med School next fall. Did you ever hear of such a phenomenal character? Best of all, he is coming up to our Lawrence House Dance with me the weekend of December 13, so we’ll really have a chance to get to know each other. Keep your fingers crossed that my beautiful intellectual charm will captivate the brilliant lug. Maybe you could help me with information about the Detroit Tigers. I don’t even know what league they’re in! Ah, me…
Well, I must needs go to bed now. Remember that I love you, baby, as Mickey Spillane would say. And I do hope you let me know what you are doing and thinking about. After all, there is no one in the world but us who has shared our particular common past and childhood—everything from the feast and the beast and the jelly bean to skal-shalala meat, remember? And it is not every sister who has such a tall, handsome, brilliant brother to be proud of. Wonder what you’d think of Myron. Of course he has had women going gaga over him at baseball games and talking about their hopechests, but I don’t have to worry about scaring him away, because I’m the last one to get matrimonial avarice in my eye. Poof, for a few years yet, anyway. There is so much to do in life anyway. Anyway.
Write if you get work.
Lots of x x x x x x
Sivvy
DECEMBER 15, 1952
Dear Mother,
… We [Sylvia and Myron Lotz] changed then, for the cocktail party, and walked over to the professor’s house. On the way we decided to keep on walking for a while longer, and so walked up to the mental hospital [Northampton], among the buildings, listening to the people screaming. It was a most terrifying, holy experience, with the sun setting red and cold over the black hills, and the inhuman, echoing howls coming from the barred windows. (I want so badly to learn about why and how people cross the borderline between sanity and insanity!)
… Sunday … as we went walking out in the fields, we saw some airplanes landing close by, and so hiked over to watch them landing like toy gliders at a small airport. As we approached the field, a tall, lean, blue-eyed man with a moustache came toward us … We chatted for a while and he showed us his private plane … and [we] listened to the pilot describe his experiences. He looked at us: “I’m going up this afternoon, want to come?” I stared at Myron, who gave me an understanding, benevolent grin: “She’d sure like to, sir,” he told the pilot. So we went back, and they strapped me into the two-seater little plane … We taxied across the field, bumping along, and it felt like being in a car. I didn’t believe we would go up, but then, suddenly, the ground dropped away, and the trees and hills fell away, and I was in a small glass-windowed box with a handsome, mysterious pilot, winging over Northampton, Holyoke, Amherst, watching the small, square, rectangular colored fields, the toy houses, and the great winding, gleaming length of the Connecticut River. “I am going to do a wing-over,” he said, and suddenly the river was over my head, and the mountains went reeling up into the sky, and the clouds floated below. We tilted rightside up again. Never have I felt such ecstasy! I yelled above the roar of the motor that it was better than God, religion, than anything, and he laughed and said he knew. “You fly it,” he told me, and I took the stick and made the craft climb and tilt. For half an hour we were up …
Today I am probably going to the infirmary because of my insomnia, so don’t worry if you get a notice. I have an appointment with the psychiatrist this afternoon about my science, and will ask her if I can go up there for a few days to rest and get rid of a slight sore throat. Also, Mary Ellen Chase called me this morning and I hope to see her sometime this week, too. [In her little book, “Recipe f
or a Magic Childhood,” which she gave Sylvia on December 18, 1952, Mary Ellen Chase wrote: “For Sylvia Plath with admiration and confidence.” She recommended Sylvia for a Fulbright grant in 1955 and in 1957 for an instructorship in English at Smith College.]
x x x Sivvy
{Telegram}
JANUARY 5 [?], 1953
BREAK BREAK BREAK ON THE COLD WHITE SLOPES OH KNEE ARRIVING FRAMINGHAM TUESDAY NIGHT 7:41. BRINGING FABULOUS FRACTURED FIBULA NO PAIN JUST TRICKY TO MANIPULATE WHILE CHARLESTONING. ANYTHING TO PROLONG VACATION. NORTONS WERE PLANNING TO MEET ME SO WHY NOT CALL TO CHECK. MUCH LOVE. YOUR FRACTIOUS FUGACIOUS FRANGIBLE SIVVY.
[After the Christmas holidays, Sylvia and Dick had gone to Ray Brook, New York, where Dick was being treated for tuberculosis. Sylvia borrowed skis and without any previous professional instruction skied on the advanced slope. Result: a collision and a broken fibula. Her grandmother was the first to read the telegram and looked at me, puzzled. “What does she mean?” she asked. “She’s broken her leg!” I exclaimed. “Oh, no! Where does she say that?” Grammy queried.]
JANUARY 9, 1953
… All in all, my leg has made me realize what a fool I was to think I had insurmountable troubles. It is a sort of concrete symbol of limitations that are primarily mental, or were. And now that I see how foolish I was in succumbing to what I thought were mental obstacles, I am determined to be as cheerful and constructive about my mental difficulties as I am going to be about this physical one. Naturally I will be a bit depressed and blue at times, and tired and uncomfortable, but there is that human principle which always finds that no matter how much is taken away, something is left to build again with.
JANUARY 19, 1953
Dear Mother,
Well, the world has a miraculous and wonderful way of working. You plunge to the bottom, the way I did this fall, and you think that every straw must be the last … Then you break your leg, decide to be gay and merry, and the world falls like a delicious apple in your lap …
First of all, my petition for auditing science without credit went through … As you may imagine, during my agonies of this fall, I felt that I could see no light ahead for the rest of the year. Now I will be taking a course in Milton instead of the hated science, and concentrating heart and soul on modern poetry and creative writing. Isn’t it wonderful?
This is my three weeks’ anniversary, and I have proved that a broken leg need not handicap a resourceful woman. Thanks so much for your encouraging letter. It was just what I needed. Oh, mummy, I am so happy. If a hideous snowy winter, with midyears and a broken leg is heaven, what will the green young spring be like? How can I bear the joy of it all!
Much overflowing love,
Your own Sivvy
FEBRUARY 21, 1953
Dear Mother,
Well, this will go down in history as Plath’s Black Month. Myron called last night, car hasn’t been delivered yet, so no weekend date … The cast came off Thursday night, and I felt as if the doctor were lifting a coffin lid when I saw the hairy yellow withered corpse of my leg lying there. The emotional shock of admitting it was my leg was the hardest (ugh). He took an x-ray and said the leg wasn’t completely mended (which was also a nice shock)….
Thursday night I felt like hell; took a razor and sheared off the worst of the black stubble and the skin of course is all coming off and raw, my ankle is swollen and blackish green, and my muscles have shriveled away to nothing. Needless to say I am never going skiing again. I am going to live in a southern climate the rest of my life and play tennis (a nice safe sport), bicycle, swim, and eat mangoes … From the way things look now I’ll be lucky to go to junior prom in my long black dress with a taped ankle … To make myself feel better I wrote two villanelles today and yesterday: a rigid French verse form I’ve never tried before, where the first and third line have to be repeated as refrains. They took my mind off my helpless misery and made me feel a good deal better. I think they are the best I’ve written yet, and of course sent them off blindly, one to The Atlantic and one to The New Yorker. Oh hell. Life is so difficult and tedious I could cry. But I won’t; I’ll just keep writing villanelles.
Love, Sivvy
FEBRUARY 23, 1953
Manuscript came yesterday, and I can’t thank you enough. When I am rich and famous I will hire you for my private secretary and baby-tender, and pay you scandalously high wages and take you on monthly jaunts in my own shocking pink yacht. Needless to say, I love you very dearly.
x x x Sivvy
FEBRUARY 25, 1953
Dear Mother,
… Had a sad, longing … letter from Dick. He told me last fall that he wanted me to tell him all about my dates so he wouldn’t imagine things. I did so as painlessly as possible, yet I should have realized that in his heart he wouldn’t want to hear about them … I never went steady with him or committed myself in any way other than that I liked being with him more than any other person, but I always went out with the other persons. Also, I went out all last summer … and he wasn’t bothered. Now, at the sanatorium, I have taken on an unusual importance as I am the only girl he knows, and he is inhibited from making new contacts. If he were in the real world he wouldn’t feel so sorry for himself. I really Don’t Want to go up there spring vacation at all, but if they will go for only a day and two nights, I might be persuaded … The thing I am afraid of is that he will try to extort a promise to him to try again when he comes out … I know as well as I’ve known for a long time now, deep down, that I could never be happily married to him: physically I want a colossus … mentally, I want a man who isn’t jealous of my creativity in other fields than children…. I have always been very rational and practical about the prospect of marriage; … I’m not leaping rapidly into anything for some time yet … Graduate school and travel abroad are not going to be stymied by any squalling, breastfed brats. I’ve controlled my sex judiciously and you don’t have to worry about me at all. The consequences of love affairs would stop me from my independent freedom of creative activity, and I don’t intend to be stopped.
Love, Sivvy
FEBRUARY 28, 1953
Your lovely long letter came today, and I am once again forcibly made aware of what a superlative mother you have been to me. In the great whirlpools of responsibility you have had these last ten years and more of “bringing me up right,” you deserve the most verdant laurels. Honestly, I appreciate your rational understanding of me so much. In return I have always felt I can be completely honest with you, and want more than anything to make you proud of me so that some day I can begin to repay you for all the treats you’ve given me in my two decades of life …
Last night and yesterday I finished this month’s Mlle assignment: a story I just wrote about a Big Weekend: I took a dance at Harvard Med School to get the bizarre touch they like so well, and tried to make it quick-moving and sophisticatedly glittery, somewhat like “Den of Lions,” only much smoother, dramatic and better. I feel I’ve come such a long way since then. Mailed that with my “Ideal Summer” this morning; thanks again for saving me by typing it …
… I was sitting in [the] bone clinic last Monday and started talking to a freshman from Newton. She exclaimed, “Oh, you write for Seventeen and Mademoiselle, don’t you? I have read all your things, and felt so proud you were going to Smith, too!” … As I left I heard her telling the nurse: “Oh, she’s a wonderful writer, does stories for all sorts of magazines.” Really, does one’s heart good. Sometimes I feel so stupid and dull and uncreative that I am amazed when people tell me differently.
Glad you like the villanelles … felt that I am getting more proficient with the singing, uncrowded lyric line, instead of the static adjectival smothered thought I am usually guilty of.
{Plans for a weekend at Yale with Myron Lotz}
MARCH 3, 1953
Dearest one,
… The dress is hanging up in my window in all its silvern glory, and there is a definite rosy cast to the skirt (no, it’s not just my attitude
!). Today I had my too-long hair trimmed just right for a smooth pageboy, and I got, for $12.95, the most classic pair of silver closed pumps … With my rhinestone earrings and necklace, I should look like a silver princess—or feel like one, anyway. I just hope I get to be a Junior Phi Bete this year so I can use it for my Phi Bete dress, too. (Do you realize that I got the ONLY A in the unit from Mr. Patch!)