Sylvia Plath: Drawings

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Ocr tesseract 5.3.0-3-g9920 Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 0.9038 Ocr_module_version 0.0.20 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA-NS-1200515 Openlibrary_edition Hers was an epitome of standard-issue 50s white, middle class American childhood, the kind of supposedly idyllic upbringing which no small number of people still remember today in a glowing, nostalgic haze. In Plath’s excavations of the identities that she cultivated herself and those she had pushed upon her, she gazed with radical intensity at America’s patriarchal social fictions, and the violence and entitlement that lay beneath them. The collage above from 1960 presents us with the kind of layered, cut-up, hybrid text that William Burroughs had begun experimenting with not long before. You can see more highlights from the Plath exhibit, “One Life: Sylvia Plath,” at the National Portrait Gallery. Also featured are Plath’s family photos, books, letters, her typewriter—and, in general, several more dimensions of her life than most of us know.

There are lots of photographs of the time they spent on the road trip in America which is very heavily recalled by Ted Hughes in Birthday Letters, for example. In terms of a portrait of their marriage, it’s really a very beautiful thing,” he added. Haberkamp, Frederike, Sylvia Plath: The Poetics of Beekeeping, International Specialised Book Services, 1997. Letters Home: Correspondence, 1950-1963, selected and edited with a commentary by mother, Aurelia Schober Plath, Harper (New York, NY), 1975. But beyond a point, fighting only wears one out and one has to shut off that nagging part of the mind and go on without it with bravo and philosophy… Your present life is the important thing. I’ve discovered my deepest source of inspiration, which is art: the art of the primitives like Henri Rousseau, Gauguin, Paul Klee, and De Chirico. I have got out piles of wonderful books from the Art Library (suggested by this fine Modern Art Course I’m auditing each week) and am overflowing with ideas and inspirations, as I’ve been bottling up a geyser for a year.After Plath’s death, The It-Doesn’t-Matter Suit, a book for children, was also discovered among her papers and published posthumously. The story features Max Nix, a resident of Winkelburg, who happily acquires a modest “woolly, whiskery brand-new mustard-yellow suit.” Nicci Gerrard wrote in the Observer,“There’s no disturbance in the world of Winkelburg: even Max’s desire for a suit is as shallow and clear as the silver stream that runs like a ribbon through the valley.” Despite the lasting impression of Plath’s bleak art and early death, Gerrard concluded that “small pieces of happiness like this little book remind us of her life.” Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams: Short Stories, Prose, and Diary Excerpts, Harper (New York, NY), 1979. Concise Dictionary of American Literary Biography: The New Consciousness, 1941-1968, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1987.

Sylvia Plath’s meteoric posthumous rise as a pre-eminent American poet has eclipsed the fact that she was a talented artist as well. When she initially enrolled at Smith College, her first choice of major was studio art. After discovering her talent for writing, her professors encouraged her to major in English instead.

Chronicle of Higher Education, June 22, 2001, Carlin Romano, "Martin and Hannah and Sylvia and Ted," p. B21. Look at that ugly dead mask here and do not forget it. It is a chalk mask with dead dry poison behind it, like the death angel. It is what I was this fall, and what I never want to be again. The Colossus, Heinemann (London, England), 1960, published as The Colossus and Other Poems, Knopf (New York, NY), 1962.

In a letter to Hughes she penned one Sunday morning in October of 1956, twenty-four-year-old Plath traces her initial toe-dipping in art:

The Imaginative Art of Sylvia Plath

The 32 letters are made up of those written to Hughes in October 1956 and others she sent to her in-laws up until 1961. Heaton says the letters are not only desirable objects but offer an insight into several elements of Plath’s life. Los Angeles Times, March 25, 2000, Marjorie Miller, "Sylvia Plath's Uncensored Journals, to Be Published in April, Shed Light on Her Dark Moods and Tumultuous Marriage," p. A2. Plath, Sylvia, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, 1950-1962, edited by Karen V. Kukil, Anchor Books (New York, NY), 2000. Hargrove, Nancy Duvall, The Journey toward Ariel: Sylvia Plath's Poems of 1956-1959, Lund University Press, 1994.

Much of the art-school work is not representative of Plath’s best. While she made the difficult decision at age 20 to abandon aspirations for an art career and focus on her writing, Plath continued to make visual art. For example, at 23, she produced a confidently-rendered series of pen-and-ink drawings—such as the fishing boats below—while she and Ted Hughes honeymooned in Paris and Spain.

Sylvia Plath’s poetic talent should go unquestioned, but as Plath fans will know, she first intended to become a visual artist, and some of her earliest work—illustrated childhood letters like the adorable dog below—remained hidden away in the family attic until 1996. Editor Kathleen Connors included this juvenilia in a 2007 collection of Plath’s work entitled Eye Rhymes: Sylvia Plath’s Art of the Visual, which also features sketches, photographs, and portraits—such as the brooding 1951 self-portrait above—that represent Plath’s work while an art student at Smith College. Dr Gabriel Heaton, Sotheby’s English literature and historical manuscripts specialist, said the sale, which opens on 9 July, is without precedent and the items sold by the Plath family show Plath’s creative development, her love for Hughes and her sense of humour.