― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
[text ID: God, who am I? I sit in the library tonight, the lights glaring overhead, the fan whirring loudly. Girls, girls everywhere, reading books. Intent faces, flesh pink, white, yellow. And I sit here without identity: faceless. My head aches. There is history to read… centuries to comprehend before I sleep, millions of lives to assimilate before breakfast tomorrow. Yet I know that back at the house there is my room, full of my presence. There is my date this weekend: someone believes I am a human being, not a name merely. And these are the only indications that I am a whole person, not merely a knot of nerves, without identity. I’m lost.]
— Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
[text ID: It seems to me more than ever that I am a victim of introspection. If I have not the power to put myself in the place of other people, but must be continually burrowing inward. I shall never be the magnanimous creative person I wish to be. Yet I am hypnotized by the workings of the individual, alone, and am continually using myself as a specimen.]
“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my lids and all is born again. (I think I made you up inside my head.)”
–from “Mad Girl’s Love Song - A Villanelle”, 1954
“I made a model of you”
–from “Daddy”, 12 October 1962
“How we need another soul to cling to, another body to keep us warm. To rest and trust; to give your soul in confidence: I need this, I need someone to pour myself into.”
–The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, entry no. 25, 1950
“I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real.”
–from “Lady Lazarus”, 23-29 October 1962
“I thought, ‘This is what it is to be happy.’”
–The Bell Jar, Chapter Eight, 1963
“It was my first big chance, but here I was, sitting back and letting it run through my fingers like so much water.”
–The Bell Jar, Chapter One, 1963
“Perfection is terrible, it cannot have children.”
–from “The Munich Mannequins”, 28 January 1963
“For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge For the hearing of my heart–”
–from “Lady Lazarus”, 23-29 October 1962
“Everything is the same but different.”
–The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, entry no. 132, 1952
“I am myself. That is not enough.”
–from “The Jailer”, 17 October 1962
“If you expect nothing from somebody you are never disappointed.”
–The Bell Jar, Chapter Five, 1963
“I desire the things which will destroy me in the end…“
–The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, entry no. 63, 1951
“I should have loved a thunderbird instead; At least when spring comes they roar back again. I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead. (I think I made you up inside my head.)”
–from “Mad Girl’s Love Song - A Villanelle”, 1954
“I felt very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo.”
–The Bell Jar, Chapter One, 1963
“It is so much safer not to feel”
–The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, entry no. 155, 1952
“I am calm. I am calm. It is the calm before something awful“
–“Three Women: A Poem for Three Voices“, March 1962
“We should meet in another life, we should meet in air, Me and you.”
–from “Lesbos”, 18 October 1962
“Out of the ash I rise with my red hair And I eat men like air.”
“And I am married to a poet. We came together in that church of the chimney sweeps with nothing but love & hope & our own selves: Ted in his old black corduroy jacket & me in mother’s gift of a pink knit dress. Pink rose & black tie. An empty church in watery yellow-gray light of rainy London. Outside, the crowd of thick-ankled tweed-coated mothers & pale, jabbering children waiting for the bus to take them on a church outing to the Zoo.
And here I am: Mrs. Hughes. And wife of a published poet.”
—fromThe Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, Cambridge Diary, Monday afternoon: February 25 1957
***
Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes first met on 25 February 1956 at party in Cambridge, England. They married only four months later on 16 June 1956 at St George the Martyr, Holborn, Camden, London in honor of Bloomsday with Plath‘s mother Aurelia being the only wedding guest. They have been married for six years and four months until Plath commited suicide on 11 February 1963.
Even though they have been separated for five months since September 1962, they never got a divorce. Maybe today would have been their 65th anniversary, if they were alive and stayed together.
Picture: Sylvia Plath & Ted Hughes photographed by by Lettice Ramsey at Ramsey & Muspratt in Cambridge, England in 1956.
This picture is one of 10 Plath and Hughes had taken a few moths later in November 1956 as their official wedding photos. They are wearing their actual wedding attire and Plath wore a “pink knitted suit dress”.
They both ended up hating the photographs.
If you want to find out more on their wedding and the story of these wedding pictures, I highly recommend you to read Ann Kennedy Smith‘s blog post at https://akennedysmith.com/
Sylvia Plath meets René Magritte meets Princess Prazsky’s drawing
“How we need another soul to cling to, another body to keep us warm. To rest and trust; to give your soul in confidence: I need this, I need someone to pour myself into.”
“I am jealous of those who think more deeply, who write better, who draw better, who ski better, who look better, who live better, who love better than I.”
-Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
