Red Comet

by Heather Clark

  159. Harold Strauss to SP, 26 June 1952. Lilly.

  160. SP to Marcia Brown, 8 July 1952. L1, 465.

  161. Ibid., L1, 466.

  162. J, 118.

  163. Ibid. Elizabeth Bowen had used a similar phrase in her novel The Hotel, but Plath had probably not read it yet.

  164. Ibid.

  165. SP to Marcia Brown, 16 & 8 July 1952. L1, 470; 466.

  166. SP to Marcia Brown, 23–24 July 1952. L1, 473.

  167. Ibid., L1, 472.

  168. SP to Marcia Brown, 16 July 1952. L1, 469.

  169. J, 144.

  170. J, 119.

  171. SP to Marcia Brown, 23–24 July 1952. L1, 471.

  172. Ibid., L1, 473.

  173. SP to AP, 26 July 1952. L1, 478.

  174. Ibid.

  175. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Margaret Cantor, 1972. 1.16, MSS 1489, Emory.

  176. SP to AP, 26 July 1952. L1, 478.

  177. SP to AP, 4 Aug. 1952. L1, 487.

  178. SP to AP, 10 Aug. 1952. L1, 488.

  179. SP to AP, 15 Aug. 1952. L1, 492.

  180. J, 145.

  181. SP to WP, 24 July 1952. L1, 475.

  182. SP to AP, 26 July 1952. L1, 478.

  183. SP to AP, 2 Aug. 1952. L1, 481.

  184. Ibid., L1, 482.

  185. Art would eventually found the influential law firm Kramer, Levin; his brother, the playwright Larry Kramer, would write The Normal Heart.

  186. SP to AP, 2 Aug. 1952. L1, 482.

  187. SP to WP, 10 Aug. 1952. L1, 489.

  188. SP to AP, 2 Aug. 1952. L1, 482.

  189. SP to AP, 19–21 Aug. 1952. L1, 494.

  190. Ibid., L1, 495.

  191. SP to AP, 24 Aug. 1952. L1, 498.

  192. SP to AP, 15 Aug. 1952. L1, 492–93.

  193. SP to AP, 19–21 Aug. 1952. L1, 495.

  194. J, 125.

  195. Ibid.

  196. SP to AP, 2 Aug. 1952. L1, 480–81.

  197. SP to Margaret Cantor, 30 Sept. 1961. L2, 655.

  198. SP to AP, 24 Aug. 1952. L1, 500.

  199. SP to AP, 19–21 Aug. 1952. L1, 494.

  200. SP to AP, 15 Aug. 1952. L1, 491.

  201. SP to AP, 28 Aug. 1952. L1, 501.

  9. THE NINTH KINGDOM

  1. Mary Ellen Chase to SP, 16 Sept. 1952. Lilly.

  2. OHP to SP, 14 Sept. 1952. Lilly.

  3. SP to WP, 28 Sept. 1952. L1, 507.

  4. SP to AP, 25 Sept. 1952. L1, 504.

  5. SP to AP, 10 Oct. 1952. L1, 511.

  6. HC interview with Janet Salter Rosenberg, Sept. 2015, Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.

  7. SP to WP, 28 Sept. 1952. L1, 507.

  8. SP to AP, 10 Oct. 1952. L1, 512.

  9. HC interview with Janet Salter Rosenberg, Sept. 2015, Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.

  10. Nancy Hunter Steiner, A Closer Look at Ariel: A Memory of Sylvia Plath (New York: Harper’s Magazine Press, 1973), 37.

  11. SP to AP, 25 Sept. 1952. L1, 505.

  12. J, 147.

  13. J, 148.

  14. SP to AP, 5 Oct. 1952. L1, 510. These papers included the Springfield Daily News, Springfield Union, Daily Hampshire Gazette, and Springfield Sunday Republican. Peter Steinberg located fifty-five articles by Plath, most “printed primarily without a byline.” She wrote thirty-five for the Daily Hampshire Gazette. Her most frequent topic was religion. See Crowther and Steinberg, These Ghostly Archives, 76–78.

  15. SP to AP, 15 Oct. 1952. L1, 514.

  16. SP to AP, 5 Oct. 1952. L1, 509–10.

  17. SP to AP, 15 Oct. 1952. L1, 513.

  18. SP to AP, 5 Oct. 1952. L1, 510.

  19. SP to AP, 28 Feb.–1 Mar. 1953. L1, 572.

  20. Perry Norton to SP, 10 Oct. 1952. Lilly.

  21. Perry Norton to SP, 14 Oct. 1952. Lilly.

  22. J, 147; 143.

  23. DN to SP, 15 Oct. 1952. Lilly.

  24. DN to SP, 20 Oct. 1952. Lilly.

  25. SP to AP, 24 Oct. 1952. L1, 515.

  26. SP to AP, 27 Oct. 1952. L1, 518.

  27. SP to AP, 2 Nov. 1952. L1, 520.

  28. SP to WP, 6 Nov. 1952. L1, 523.

  29. SP to AP, 2 Nov. 1952. L1, 520.

  30. DN to SP, 30 Oct. 1952. Lilly.

  31. DN to SP, 23 Oct. 1952. Lilly.

  32. DN to SP, 5 Dec. 1952. Lilly. Dick quotes SP in this letter.

  33. DN to SP, 1 Nov. 1952. Lilly.

  34. DN to SP, 8 Nov. 1952. Lilly.

  35. DN to SP, 25 Nov. 1952. Lilly.

  36. SP to AP, 6 Nov. 1952. L1, 520.

  37. Ibid.

  38. SP to WP, 6 Nov. 1952. L1, 523.

  39. SP to AP, 17 Nov. 1952. L1, 525.

  40. SP to AP, 6 Nov. 1952. L1, 521; J, 141.

  41. Enid Epstein Mark to Harriet Rosenstein, 14 Nov. 1971. 2.19, MSS 1489, Emory.

  42. J, 149.

  43. J, 149–50.

  44. J, 151.

  45. J, 153.

  46. “Exeter Academy Pupil a Suicide,” New York Times (20 Nov. 1952); Harriet Rosenstein interview with Pat O’Neil Pratson, 1972, 3.12, MSS1489, Emory; Dr. Ruth Beuscher interview with AP, 15 Sept. 1953, 3.10, MSS 1489, Emory.

  47. SP to AP, 19 Nov. 1952. L1, 526–28.

  48. Eddie Cohen to SP, 2 Jan. 1953. Lilly.

  49. SP, n.d. (autumn) 1952. Lilly.

  50. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Alison Prentice Smith, 1971–72. 3.13, MSS 1489, Emory.

  51. Dr. Ruth Beuscher interview with AP, 15 Sept. 1953. 3.10, MSS 1489, Emory.

  52. J, 154.

  53. SP, Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom (London: Faber and Faber, 2019). The published version is based on a revised copy of the story, which Aurelia typed for Plath and sent to Mademoiselle in Jan. 1953 and is now in the possession of Judith Raymo.

  54. Later, in 1955, Plath considered entering a revised version of “Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom” in a contest sponsored by a religious organization, the Christophers. She finished her revisions in Dec. 1954, a little over a year after her Aug. 1953 suicide attempt. In the new version, Mary (now Marcia) makes her decision to board the train on her own; Plath cut Mary’s parents out of the story altogether. In a page-long introduction, she disguised it as a religious allegory about finding Christ: “This is the story of a teen-age girl who passes through the temptation of the material world, grows aware of her own idealism and power to help others, and discovers the City of God.” But Plath was an atheist, and she eventually decided not to enter the story. SP, “Teen-agers Can Shape the Future.” 8.15, Lilly.

  55. SP, “Dialogue,” 19 Jan. 1953, for English 347a. 8.11, Lilly.

  56. SP, “Manzi Notebook.” 10.4–8, Lilly.

  57. An abbreviated list of the pre-twentieth-century British authors Plath studied suggests both the depth and the scope of her literary education: Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spenser, Sidney, Marlowe, Jonson, Dryden, Milton, Bunyan, Donne, Swift, Defoe, Fielding, Sterne, Gibbon, Burke, Boswell, Pope, Goldsmith, Cowper, Blake, Burns, Scott, Austen, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Thackeray, Dickens, Eliot, Hardy, Carlyle, Arnold, Mill, Tennyson, Browning, Rossetti, Swinburne, and Hopkins. Twentieth-century authors included Yeats, Eliot, Auden, Stevens, Forster, Lawrence, Woolf, Joyce, Conrad, Wells, Richards, James, Dreiser, O’Neill, Cather, and Frost. In her notes for her creative writing class, she refers to Proust, Sartre, Flaubert, de Maupassant, Frazer, Shaw, Wolfe, O’Connor, Stafford, Salinger, Hawthorne, and Poe. During her senior year she studied American and Russian literature, and added even more heavyweights to this roster. (Lilly.)

  58. SP, “Modern Poetry Notebook.” 12.1–3, Lilly.

  59. George Gibian to Harriet Rosens
tein, 18 Oct. 1971. 1.30, MSS 1489, Emory.

  60. SP, “The Dualism of Thomas Mann,” 17 Jan. 1951, for English 11. 10.7, Lilly.

  61. SP, “Modern Tragedy in the Classic Tradition,” Mar. 1951, for English 11. 10.8, Lilly.

  62. SP, “The Imagery in Patterns,” 18 Apr. 1951, for English 11. 10.8, Lilly.

  63. BJ, 111.

  64. SP, “Fish in Unruffled Lakes.” 10.8, Lilly.

  65. Ibid.

  66. SP, “Edith Sitwell and the Development of Her Poetry,” 25 Mar. 1953, for Modern Poetry unit. 10.7, Lilly.

  67. See Marsha Bryant, “Queen Bees: Edith Sitwell, Sylvia Plath & Cross-Atlantic Affiliations,” Feminist Modernist Studies, published online 5 June 2019, for more about Sitwell’s influence on Plath.

  68. SP’s ellipses.

  69. SP, “The Age of Anxiety and the Escape from Freedom,” May 1954, for History 38b. 10.7, Lilly.

  70. SP, “The Devil’s Advocate,” 24 Mar. 1954, for Russian 35b with Mr. Gibian. 10.7, Lilly.

  71. TH, Winter Pollen: Occasional Prose, William Scammell, ed. (New York: Picador, 1995), 255.

  72. SP, “Notes on Zarathustra’s Prologue.” 8.1, Lilly.

  73. LH, 40. In her journal, Plath wrote, “I will be a little god in my small way” (22); “Frustrated? Yes. Why? Because it is impossible for me to be God—or the universal woman-and-man” (45).

  74. J, 106.

  75. J, 98.

  76. J, 98–99.

  77. J, 100.

  78. Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra in The Portable Nietzsche, Walter Kaufmann, trans. (New York: Vintage, 1974), 139. Although critics have focused on the Biblical allusions in “Ariel,” Plath’s identification with “God’s lioness” in that poem may also allude to Nietzsche’s philosophy of autonomy.

  79. J, 149.

  80. DN to SP, 5 Dec. 1952. Lilly.

  81. DN to SP, 11 Dec. 1952. Lilly.

  82. SP to AP, 2 Dec. 1952. L1, 529.

  83. SP to WP, 4 Dec. 1952. L1, 531.

  84. Harriett Destler, one of Plath’s Smith students, also dated Myron Lotz and remembered him as tall and “very, very smart.” HC phone interview, 23 Sept. 2015.

  85. SP to AP, 2 Feb. 1953. L1, 556.

  86. Ibid., L1, 557.

  87. SP to WP, 4 Dec. 1952. L1, 531.

  88. Ibid.

  89. DN to SP, 11 Dec. 1952. Lilly.

  90. SP to AP, 15 Dec. 1952. L1, 536.

  91. Ibid., L1, 536–37.

  92. She stayed with Dick’s friend Bill Lynn, a doctor and aspiring author who had become Dick’s main outlet for literary conversation. Dick wrote to her that January, “Bill remarked your interest in the crudities of life, swearing, fornication, and all.” (14 Jan. 1953. Lilly.)

  93. DN to SP, 30 Dec. 1952. Lilly.

  94. JP, 176.

  95. SP, “The Christmas Heart.” 8.11, Lilly.

  96. SP to Myron Lotz. 9 Jan. 1953. L1, 543–44.

  97. SP to AP, 28–29 Dec. 1952. L1, 538.

  98. DN to SP, 30 Dec. 1952. Lilly.

  99. SP to AP, 9 Jan. 1953. L1, 542.

  100. SP to AP, 8 Jan. 1953. L1, 539–40.

  101. SP to AP, 9 Jan. 1953. L1, 542.

  102. J, 157.

  103. Ibid.

  104. SP to AP, 25 Jan. 1953. L1, 555.

  105. J, 158.

  106. Eddie Cohen to SP, n.d. (late Jan.) 1953. Lilly.

  107. SP to AP, 4 Feb. 1953. L1, 558–59.

  108. DN to SP, 16 Jan. 1953. Lilly.

  109. J, 155.

  110. DN to SP, 27 Jan. 1953. Lilly.

  111. Ibid.

  112. Ibid.

  113. J, 153.

  114. DN to SP, 27 Jan. 1953. Lilly.

  115. SP to AP, 4 Feb. 1953. L1, 558.

  116. SP to AP, 5 Feb. 1953. L1, 559. SP’s ellipses.

  117. DN to SP, 21 Jan. 1953. Lilly.

  118. DN to SP, 26 Jan. 1953. Lilly.

  119. J, 156.

  120. SP to AP, 18 Jan. 1953. L1, 551–52.

  121. SP to AP, 5 Feb. 1953. L1, 559–60.

  122. SP to AP, 6 Feb. 1953. L1, 562.

  123. SP to AP, 5 Feb. 1953. L1, 560.

  124. J, 168.

  125. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Marcia Brown Stern, 1972. 4.16, MSS 1489, Emory.

  126. SP to AP, 21 Feb. 1953. L1, 567.

  127. Ibid.

  128. SP to AP, 28 Feb.–1 Mar. 1953. L1, 575.

  129. SP to AP, 21 Feb. 1953. L1, 567.

  130. SP, “Mad Girl’s Love Song,” 21 Feb. 1953. 7.13, Lilly; Mademoiselle (Aug. 1953), 358.

  131. SP, “Doomsday,” 21 Feb. 1953, for English 347b. 7.10, Lilly.

  132. SP, “To Eva Descending the Stair.” 8.4, Lilly.

  133. Helen Hennessy to AP, 11 Sept. 1954. Lilly. Helen confided to Aurelia about her career plans to get a graduate degree in English, writing, “I don’t know if that will work out.”

  134. SP to AP, 28 Feb. 1953. L1, 573.

  135. SP to AP, 25 Feb. 1953. L1, 570-71.

  136. SP to AP, 28 Feb. 1953. L1, 573.

  137. SP to AP, 25 Feb. 1953. L1, 570–71.

  138. AP to DN, 15 Mar. 1953. Lilly.

  139. DN to AP, 21 Mar. 1953. Lilly.

  140. SP to AP, 28 Feb.–1 Mar. 1953. L1, 572.

  141. SP to AP, 17 Mar. 1953. L1, 588.

  142. SP to AP, 25 Feb. 1953. L1, 571.

  143. William Norton to DN, Feb. 1953. Lilly.

  144. SP to AP, 28 Feb. 1953. L1, 575; HC phone interview with Harriett Destler, 3 Sept. 2015.

  145. SP to WP, 21 Mar. 1953. L1, 591.

  146. Ibid., L1, 589.

  147. SP to AP, 28 Apr. 1953. L1, 605.

  148. J, 539–40.

  149. SP to AP, 11 Apr. 1953. L1, 592.

  150. SP to AP, 30 Apr.–1 May 1953. L1, 607.

  151. SP to AP, 28 Apr. 1953. L1, 604.

  152. HC interview with Janet Salter Rosenberg, Sept. 2015, Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.

  153. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Peter and Jane Davison, 1973. 1.22, MSS 1489, Emory.

  154. J, 180.

  155. SP to AP, 28 Apr. 1953. L1, 604.

  156. Enid Epstein Mark to Harriet Rosenstein, 14 Nov. 1971. 2.19, MSS 1489, Emory.

  157. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Susan Weller Burch, 1974. 1.14, MSS 1489, Emory.

  158. SP to AP, 25 Apr. 1953. L1, 603.

  159. SP to AP, 28 Apr. 1953. L1, 605.

  160. SP to AP, 5 May 1953. L1, 610–11.

  161. HC interview with Janet Salter Rosenberg, Sept. 2015, Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.

  162. Mildred Norton to SP, 7 May 1953. Lilly.

  163. SP to AP, 12 May 1953. L1, 616.

  164. SP to WP, 13 May 1953. L1, 621.

  165. SP to AP, 13 May 1953. L1, 617. SP’s ellipsis.

  166. SP to WP, 13 May 1953. L1, 620–21.

  167. SP to AP, 13 May 1953. L1, 618–19.

  168. SP to AP, 15 May 1953. L1, 625.

  169. Ibid., L1, 625–26.

  170. SP to WP, 13 May 1953. L1, 621–22.

  171. SP to WP, 21 May 1953. L1, 629; J, 184–85.

  172. HC interview with Janet Salter Rosenberg, Sept. 2015, Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.

  173. DN to SP, 27 May 1953. Lilly.

  174. SP, “Edge,” Collected Poems (Faber and Faber, 1981), 272.

  10. MY MIND WILL SPLIT OPEN

  1. BJ, 111.

  2. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Marcia Brown Stern, 1972–73. 4.16, MSS 1489, Emory.

  3. SP, “Progress Report on The Bell Jar,” 1 May 1962. 5.47, SPC, Smith.

  4. “A shor
t, short history of MADEMOISELLE.” 12.7, Lilly.

  5. Janet Burroway, Embalming Mom: Essays in Life (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2002), 3.

  6. Laurie Glazer Levy, “Outside the Bell Jar,” Sylvia Plath: The Woman and the Work, Edward Butscher, ed. (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1977), 44.

  7. Harriet Rosenstein interview with Peter and Jane Davison, 1973. 1.22, MSS 1489, Emory.

  8. Mary Cantwell, Manhattan, When I Was Young (New York: Penguin, 1995), 74; 20.

  9. Nancy Hunter Steiner, A Closer Look at Ariel: A Memory of Sylvia Plath (New York: Harper’s Magazine Press, 1973), 44.

  10. BJ, 99.

  11. Elizabeth Winder, Pain, Parties, Work: Sylvia Plath in New York, Summer 1953 (New York: HarperCollins, 2013), 31.

  12. Mademoiselle Memo, Geri Trotta to All Guest Editors, c. May 1953. 12.7, Lilly.

  13. “Your Job as Mademoiselle’s Guest Editor,” c. May/June 1953. 12.7, Lilly.

  14. Mademoiselle Memo, Geri Trotta to All Guest Editors, c. May 1953. 12.7, Lilly.

  15. Mademoiselle Memo from Natalie Stack to All Guest Editors, 1 June 1953. 12.7, Lilly.

  16. SP to AP, 3 June 1953. L1, 630.

  17. Michael Callahan, “Sorority on E. 63rd St.,” Vanity Fair (Apr. 2010).

  18. SP to AP, 3 June 1953. L1, 630.

  19. Winder, Pain, Parties, Work, 11.

  20. SP to AP, 3 June 1953. L1, 631.

  21. HC phone interview with Laurie Totten Woolschlager, 27 Oct. 2014. When Laurie asked Plath that day what she would like to come back as after her death, Plath answered, “A seagull.”

  22. Neva Nelson email to HC, 6 Nov. 2014. Elizabeth Winder writes that the group talked about their virginity (or lack thereof) during that first meeting in Grace MacLeod’s room, but Neva Nelson said that particular discussion occurred much later, on 25 June, also in Grace MacLeod’s room. On that night, the girls threw Grace a small birthday party, and the discussion turned more “personal” after cake and champagne. (Neva still has the handwritten party invitation.) Ms. Nelson asked that I not use her married name.

  23. Winder, Pain, Parties, Work, 13.

  24. Neva Nelson email to HC, 10 Nov. 2014.

  25. Winder, Pain, Parties, Work, 39–40.

  26. Neva Nelson email to HC, 10 Nov. 2014.

  27. Ibid.

  28. Ibid., 11 Nov. 2014.

  29. Ibid., 10 Nov. 1014.

  30. Laurie Glazer Levy, “None of Us Understood,” Chicago Tribune (12 Oct. 2003), 18.