The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  PUBLISHER'S NOTE

  PREFACE

  JOURNAL - July 1930-July 1953

  JOURNAL - 22 November 1955-18 April 1956

  JOURNAL - 15 July 1956

  JOURNAL - 22 July 1956 - 26 August 1956

  JOURNAL - 3 January 1957 - 11 March 1957

  JOURNAL - 15 July 1957 - 21 August 1957

  JOURNAL - 28 August 1957 - 14 October 1958

  JOURNAL - 12 December 1958 - 15 November 1959

  APPENDIX 1 - Journal Fragment 17-19 October 1951

  APPENDIX 2 - Back to School Commandments

  APPENDIX 3 - Journal Fragments 24 March 1933-9 April 1953

  APPENDIX 4 - Journal Fragment 19 June 1953

  APPENDIX 5 - Letter June - July 1953

  APPENDIX 6 - Journal Fragment 31 December 1955 - 1 January 1956

  APPENDIX 7 - Journal 26 March 1956-5 April 1956

  APPENDIX 8 - Journal Fragment 1 April 1956

  APPENDIX 9 - Journal Fragment 16 April 1956

  APPENDIX 10 - Journal 26 June 1956- 6 March 1961

  APPENDIX 11 - Journal June 1957 -June 1960

  APPENDIX 12 - Letter 1 October 1957

  APPENDIX 13 - Journal Fragment 5 November 1957

  APPENDIX 14 - Hospital Notes

  APPENDIX 15 - Journal 1962

  NOTES

  Photo Insert

  Acknowledgments

  ABOUT THE EDITOR

  About the Author

  ALSO BY SYLVIA PLATH

  Copyright Page

  PUBLISHER'S NOTE

  In the years before his death, Ted Hughes was working towards the publication of Sylvia Plath's unabridged Journals both in Britain and America. In 1997 he passed the responsibility for the project to his children, Frieda and Nicholas, who had already held the copyright for some time. To this end, he authorized the opening of the journals that he had previously sealed.

  Frieda and Nicholas entrusted the task of editing the book to Karen Kukil, Associate Curator of Rare Books at Smith College, Massachusetts. The project continued under the guidance of Ted Hughes until his death in October 1998, and was completed in December 1999.

  These journals contain Sylvia Plath's opinions and not those of the publisher. Readers should keep in mind the colloquial meanings of words appropriate to the time period of the journals. For example, Plath used the word 'queer' to denote an eccentric or suspicious person, according to her annotated dictionary, and not a homosexual.

  PREFACE

  Sylvia Plath speaks for herself in this unabridged edition of her journals. She began keeping diaries and journals at the age of eleven and continued this practice until her death at the age of thirty. It is her adult journals from 1950 to 1962 that comprise this edition. The text is an exact transcription of twenty-three original manuscripts in the Sylvia Plath Collection at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. This collection of handwritten volumes and typed sheets documents Plath's student years at Smith College and Newnham College, Cambridge, her marriage to Ted Hughes, and two years of teaching and writing in New England. A few journal fragments from 1960 to 1962 complete the edition.

  In 1981 when Smith College acquired all the manuscripts remaining in the possession of the Plath Estate in England, two of the journals in the archive were sealed by Ted Hughes until February 11, 2013. Plath's professional career as an instructor of English at Smith College, followed by a year as a writer in Boston, and her private therapy sessions with Ruth Beuscher are the focus of the two sealed journals written between August 1957 and November 1959. Both journals were unsealed by Ted Hughes shortly before his death in 1998 and are included in this edition.

  The two bound journals that Plath wrote during the last three years of her life are not included in this publication. One of the journals 'disappeared', according to Ted Hughes in his foreword to Frances McCullough's edition of The Journals of Sylvia Plath (New York: Dial Press, 1982); it is still missing. The second 'maroon-backed ledger', which contained entries to within three days of Plath's suicide, was destroyed by Hughes.

  The goal of this new edition of Sylvia Plath's journals is to present a complete and historically accurate text. The transcription of the manuscripts at Smith College is as faithful to the author's originals as possible. Plath's final revisions are preserved and her substantive deletions and corrections are discussed in the notes. Plath's spelling, capitalization, punctuation, and grammar, as well as her errors, have been carefully transcribed and are presented without editorial comment. Every nuance of the physical journals has been preserved, including Plath's practice of underlining certain words and passages in her journals. Original layout and page breaks, however, are not duplicated. Detailed descriptions of the physical features of the journals are contained in the notes.

  The text is complete, except for a few names that have been shortened to initials and dashes to protect the privacy of living individuals. In two places, six sentences have been omitted (for a total of twelve omitted sentences). Ellipses that appear in the text were made by Sylvia Plath.

  Eight main journals, written between 1950 and 1959, comprise the central narrative of this edition and are arranged separately in chronological order. Fifteen journal fragments and notebooks, written between 1951 and 1962, are arranged chronologically as appendices. Since a few journals and notebooks were kept simultaneously, there is some overlap. General biographical information is presented on the appropriate half-title for each of the eight principal journals. A few editorial notes, contained within square brackets and clearly marked 'ed.', direct the reader to relevant journal fragments in the appendices. These are the only extraneous notes that appear within the journals. Every effort has been made in this edition to give the reader direct access to Sylvia Plath's actual words without interruption or interpretation.

  Factual notes have been provided at the end of the journals and appendices in order to preserve the flow of the text. Significant places, family, friends, and professional contacts are identified at their first mention. Annotations, textual variants, and specific physical characteristics of the journals are described, particularly when this information affects the meaning of the text. Marginalia such as exclamation points and tick marks are not recorded. The presence of a note is indicated by a superscript n after the term to be identified or described. Notes for each separate journal and appendix are keyed to appropriate page numbers. References to additional manuscript at Smith College and at other institutions are included in the notes when appropriate.

  Karen V. Kukil

  JOURNAL

  July 1930-July 1953

  Sylvia Plath was born on 27 October 1932 at 2:10 p.m. in Boston, Massachusetts, to Otto and Aurelia Schober Plath. Her brother Warren was born on 27 April 1935. They lived at 24 Prince Street, Jamaica Plain, until 1936 when the family moved to 92 Johnson Avenue, Winthrop, Massachusetts, to be near Aurelia Plath's parents. Otto Plath died on 5 November 1940 from complications of diabetes. In 1942, Sylvia Plath moved to 26 Elmwood Road, Wellesley, Massachusetts, with her mother, brother, and maternal grandparents.

  Sylvia Plath began writing the following journal during the summer of 1950 before leaving home for college in Northampton, Massachusetts. Some of the entries are excerpts from letters to friends. Plath matriculated with the class of 1954 at Smith College, but did not graduate until June 1955 because of the semester she missed during the fall of 1953.

  Sylvia Plath

  Aubade

  by Louis Macneice

  Having bitten on life like a sharp apple

  Or, playing it like a fish, been happy,

  Having felt with fing
ers that the sky is blue

  What have we after that to look forward to?

  Not the twilight of the gods but a precise dawn

  Of sallow and grey bricks, and newsboys crying war.

  "We only begin to live when we conceive life as tragedy..."

  W. B. Yeats

  "Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past..." James Joyce

  1.

  July 1950 - I may never be happy, but tonight I am content. Nothing more than an empty house, the warm hazy weariness from a day spent setting strawberry runners in the sun, a glass of cool sweet milk, and a shallow dish of blueberries bathed in cream. Now I know how people can live without books, without college. When one is so tired at the end of a day one must sleep, and at the next dawn there are more strawberry runners to set, and so one goes on living, near the earth. At times like this I'd call myself a fool to ask for more...

  2.

  Ilon asked me today in the strawberry field, "Do you like the Renaissance painters? Raphael and Michelangelo? I copied some of Michelangelo once. And what do you think of Picasso... These painters who make a circle and a little board going down for a leg?" We worked side by side in the rows, and he would be quiet for a while, then suddenly burst out with conversation, speaking with his thick German accent. He straightened up, his tan, intelligent face crinkling up with laughter. His chunky, muscular body was bronzed, and his blonde hair tucked up under a white handkerchief around his head. He said, "You like Frank Sinatra? So sendimental, so romandic, so moonlight night, Ja?"

  3.

  - A sudden slant of bluish light across the floor of a vacant room. And I knew it was not the streetlight, but the moon. What is more wonderful than to be a virgin, clean and sound and young, on such a night? ... (being raped.)"

  4.

  - Tonight was awful. It was the combination of everything. Of the play "Goodbye My Fancy," of wanting, in a juvenile way, to be, like the heroine, a reporter in the trenches, to be loved by a man who admired me, who understood me as much as I understood myself. And then there was Jack, who tried so hard to be nice, who was hurt when I said all he wanted was to make out. There was the dinner at the country club, the affluence of money everywhere. And then there was the record... the one so good for dancing. I forgot that it was the one until Louie Armstrong began to sing in a voice husky with regret, "I've flown around the world in a plane, settled revolutions in Spain, the North pole I have charted... still I can't get started with you." Jack said: "Ever heard it before? So I smiled, "Oh, yes." It was Bob." That settled things for me - - - a crazy record, and it was our long talks, his listening and understanding. And I knew I loved him.

  5.

  - Tonight I saw Mary. Jack and I were pushing out of the theater in a current of people, and she was edging the other way in a dark blue jacket. I hardly recognized her with her eyes downcast, her face made up. But beautiful. "I've been looking all over for you," I said. "Mary. Call me, write me." She smiled, a little like the Mary I used to know, and she was gone. I knew I would never have a friend quite like her. So I went out in a white dress, a white coat, with a rich boy. And I hated myself for my hypocrasy. I love Mary. Betsy is nothing but fun; hysterical fun. Mary is me... what I would be if I had been born of Italian parents on Linden Street." She is something vital, an artist's model, life. She can be rude, undependable, and she is more to me than all the pretty, well-to-do, artificial girls I could ever meet. Maybe it's my ego. Maybe I crave someone who will never be my rival. But with her I can be honest. She could be a prostitute, and I would not give a damn; I'll never deny her as a friend...

  6.

  - Today is the first of August. It is hot, steamy and wet. It is raining. I am tempted to write a poem. But I remember what it said on one rejection slip: After a heavy rainfall, poems titled RAIN pour in from across the nation.

  7.

  - I love people. Everybody. I love them, I think, as a stamp collector loves his collection. Every story, every incident, every bit of conversation is raw material for me. My love's not impersonal yet not wholly subjective either. I would like to be everyone, a cripple, a dying man, a whore, and then come back to write about my thoughts, my emotions, as that person. But I am not omniscient. I have to live my life, and it is the only one I'll ever have. And you cannot regard your own life with objective curiosity all the time...

  8.

  - With me, the present is forever, and forever is always shifting, flowing, melting. This second is life. And when it is gone it is dead. But you can't start over with each new second. You have to judge by what is dead. It's like quicksand... hopeless from the start. A story, a picture, can renew sensation a little, but not enough, not enough. Nothing is real except the present, and already, I feel the weight of centuries smothering me. Some girl a hundred years ago once lived as I do. And she is dead. I am the present, but I know I, too, will pass. The high moment, the burning flash, come and are gone, continuous quicksand. And I don't want to die.

  9.

  - Some things are hard to write about. After something happens to you, you go to write it down, and either you over dramatize it or underplay it, exaggerate the wrong parts or ignore the important ones. At any rate, you never write it quite the way you want to. I've just got to put down what happened to me this afternoon. I can't tell mother;n not yet, anyway. She was in my room when I came home, fussing with clothes, and she didn't even sense that something had happened. She just kept scolding and chattering on and on. So I couldn't stop her and tell her. No matter how it comes out, I have to write it.

  It rained all afternoon at the farm," and I was cold and wet, my hair under a silk print kerchief, my red ski jacket over my sweatshirt. I had worked hard on beans all afternoon and picked over three bushels. Since it was five o'clock, people were leaving, and I was waiting beside the cars for my ride home. Kathy had just come up, and as she got on her bike she called, "Here comes Ilo."

  I looked, and sure enough, there he was, coming up the road in his old khaki shirt with his familiar white handkerchief tied around his head. I was on conversational terms with him since that day we worked together in the strawberry field. He had given me a pen and ink sketch of the farm, drawn with detail and assurance. Now he was working on a sketch of one of the boys.

  So I called, "Have you finished John's picture?"

  "Oh, ya, ya," he smiled. "Come and see. Your last chance." He had promised to show it to me when he was done, so I ran out and got in step with him on his way to the barn. That's where he lives.

  On the way, we passed Mary Coffee. I felt her looking at me rather strangely. Somehow I couldn't meet her eyes.

  "Hullo, Mary," Ilo said.

  "Hello, Ilo," Mary said in an oddly colorless voice.

  We walked by Ginny, Sally, and a crowd of kids keeping dry in the tractor shed. A roar went up as we passed. A singsong, "Oh, Sylvia." My cheeks burned.

  "Why do they have to tease me?" I asked. Ilo just laughed. He was walking very fast.

  "We're going home in a little while," Milton yelled from the washroom.

  I nodded and kept walking, looking at the ground. Then we were at the barn, a huge place, a giant high ceilinged room smelling of horses and damp hay. It was dim inside; I thought I saw the figure of a person on the other side of the stalls, but I couldn't be sure. Without saying a word, Ilo had begun to mount a narrow flight of wooden stairs.

  "You live up there? All these stairs?"

  He kept walking up, so I followed him, hesitating at the top.

  "Come in, come in," he said, opening a door. The picture was there, in his room. I walked over the threshold. It was a narrow place with two windows, a table full of drawing things, and a cot, covered with a dark blanket. Oranges and milk were set out on a table with a radio.

  "Here," he held out the picture. It was a fine pencil sketch of John's head.

  "Why, how do you do it? With the side of the pencil?"

  It seemed of no significance then, but now
I remember how Ilo had shut the door, had turned on the radio so that music came out.

  He talked very fast, showing me a pencil. "See, here the lead comes out, any size." I was very conscious of his nearness. His blue eyes were startlingly close, looking at me boldly, with flecks of laughter in them.

  "I really have to go. They will be waiting. The picture was lovely."

  Smiling, he was between me and the door. A motion. His hand closed around my arm. And suddenly his mouth was on mine, hard, vehement, his tongue darting between my lips, his arms like iron around me.

  "Ilo, Ilo!" I don't know whether I screamed or whispered, struggling to break free, my hands striking wildly, futiley against his great strength. At last he let me go, and stood back. I held my hand against my mouth, warm and bruised from his kiss. He looked at me quizzically, with something like surprised amusement as he saw that I was crying, frightened. No one ever kissed me that way before, and I stood there, flooded with longing, electric, shivering.

  "Why, why," he made sympathetic, depreciating little noises. "I get you some water."

  He poured me out a glass, and I drank it. He opened the door, and I stumbled blindly downstairs, past Maybelle and Robert, the little colored children, who called my name in the corrupted way kids have of pronouncing things. Past Mary Lou, their mother, who stood there, a silent, dark presence.

  And I was outdoors. A truck was going by. Coming from behind the barn. In it was Bernie - - - the horrible, short, muscular boy from the washroom. His eyes glittered with malicious delight, and he drove fast, so I could not catch up with him. Had he been in the barn? Had he seen Ilo shut the door, seen me come out? I think he must have.

  I walked up past the washroom to the cars. Bernie yelled out, "Why are you crying?" I wasn't crying. Kenny and Freddy came by on the tractor. A group of boys, going home, looked at me with a light flickering somewhere in their eyes. "Did he kiss you?" one asked, with a knowing smile.