DISCLAIMER! This post touches on issues like self-harm, suicide and depression. If you are in a mentally fragile state, you may want to meet me instead in one of my upcoming posts: bookstores, knitting and summer fun! Cozy things.:))
But, for now - today's topic is...
Sylvia Plath vs Ted Hughes - or Plath and Hughes?
...for their infamous and turbulent relationship seems to have been just as much of an impending catastrophe as a fruitful and creative partnership. But who's to tell what their truth was - exactly? Well they, probably, but at this point of history - 2024 - both of them are long dead. However - and this is exactly why this post is being written - while Plath got to tell her version of their story at first solely through the editing (according to some - including the author of this post - censoring) of Hughes (from whom she had initiated a separation not long before her death), Hughes did publish his version of their marriage completely uncensored by her (as at that point she had been dead for long decades).
Wait, what? - you might ask.
Okay. Let me say something first. I wanted to come up with an excuse, but having strong feelings, especially against injustice should not make us feel ashamed. I have very strong feelings about (currently - against) Ted Hughes. But if this changes over time, I shall certainly report on my having been wrong. I promise. Also, I must emphasise in advance that I kind of fell out of love with Plath too. You'll see why.
I don't think art comes first. I think the human comes first. The soul comes first. And, of course, I'm in no position to play God - and I certainly don't intend to - but I do have feelings about some of the stronger actions of my fellow humans (just as they should have about my actions). And sometimes, they make me so uneasy, I must write a whole post.
Let me start again, this time with our two literary giants:
Plath attempted suicide in 1953 (and published her only novel, the heavily autobiographical) The Bell Jar in 1963. She eventually ended up taking her life at her second attempt - at the age of 30 - leaving behind her two young children and her last poetry manuscript: Ariel and other Poems. She was the first one to receive the Pulitzer Prize posthumously.
Plath was born in the US (in Boston, Massachusetts) she started publishing very early and was very successful at her academic pursuits. She won a scholarship to the University of Cambridge and moved to England in 1955, where she met and married the English poet, Ted Hughes. They separated in 1962 due to his cheating.
Hughes had a significantly longer life, he had decades to hone his craft. He was born in England (Yorkshire) in 1930 and attended Cambridge where he met Plath. He passed away in 1998.
So, this is what happened: I read Ariel: The Restored Edition - first published in Great Britain in 2004 by Faber & Faber. But why is the restored edition so special? In Plath's case, it's the original manuscript (with the original poems in the originally intended order: the original arrangement) - in contrast to the one that got published after Plath's suicide: Hughes's version of Ariel had been first published in 1965.
In Ariel, Plath touched on her feelings towards her children, her husband and his cheating, and a few family members and friends. She had a clear vision as to how her collection should look like. Unfortunately, she'd died before the collection was published. Hughes, as the husband and father, came in and changed the collection excluding poems that he either found ‘weaker’ or disclosing too much of their family affairs. The 'problematic' poems he replaced with poems written around the same time but that were not originally added in Ariel. (Also, be careful - Ariel is the title poem of the collection and the title of the whole book: Ariel and Other Poems). Hence, though all of Plath's poems were accessible (in her Collected Poems), Ariel, as a collection, was published altered: you know... a bit censored. Once again, to make it better - but also less 'harmful'. (To people in her life...but also...to Hughes.) Plath was dead at this point, so could not object.
Thirty years - or so - on and what Hughes did was that he moved on to publish his version of the events - about PLATH - in 1998... obviously uncensored by her. His collection was titled Birthday Letters.
I read these two poetry collections side-by-side. And I have so many feelings.
My very first encounter with Ariel was, I think, a decade ago - I was dumb and completely oblivious to the fact that I was reading the by-Hughes-*edited* version. My second time was completely random; I picked up the same version - Hughes's version - in Dublin. As I was about to move countries at that time, my copy ended up staying in Ireland - and hence, I met and devoured the restored edition (Plath's original - intended - edition) only this year.
This very recent encounter happened completely by chance in one of the best English language bookstores in Budapest. They had only one copy and after a brief intermezzo of wanting to buy it, leaving the bookstore for days without having bought it, feeling bad about it and going back to purchase it and finding Birthday Letters a shelf away - I ended up buying both.
Let me try to summarise Plath and Hughes' relationship timeline - as I understand it:
Plath and Hughes got married in England and had two children; Frieda and Nicholas. Both kids were still pretty young when Hughes started an affair with Assia Wevill. After Plath found out about it, she initiated their separation and moved away to London with the kids. She was famously prolific in her last few months - most of the poems of Ariel were written around that time. She committed suicide at the age of 30 but left behind a completed copy of Ariel - neatly placed on her desk, title page added; a whole, finished product. (I keep repeating this, but only to emphasise: there was no confusion about how she wanted her work to be arranged. My new restored edition has the poems in the original manuscript scanned, and neatly added at the end of the book! There was no room to misunderstand what she wanted.)
After her death, Hughes was, of course, criticised for censorship, as at this point Plath's suicide was widely followed by the media.
But why am I writing about their private life? - you may ask. Good question. I did not intend to. The reason I decided to read Ariel and Birthday Letters side-by-side was because it's rare that we have access to such literary giants having lived and created in such close (emotional) proximity. I was wondering how two such creative worlds might align (or clash) in their art. Would their styles aggressively differ? Would their identities merge? Call me crazy, but I thought it was possible to focus (at least partly) on this - instead of all the gossip, juice, draaamaaaa.
In Hungary, we have a famous writer-poet couple (although they - from here, outside, at least - look like two peas in a pod, not at all like Plath and Hughes): Anna T. Szabó and György Dragomán. Both very successful, much loved - and can be read in translation. Their duality (but also their differences) are so very interesting.
(Read about them - from them - here: https://hlo.hu/news/new-release-anna-t-szabo-trust.html and here: https://hlo.hu/news/forthcoming-gyorgy-dragomans-third-book-in-french.html)
What I did not expect from the story of Plath and Hughes was how truly ugly it got.
My restored edition of Faber & Faber was published in 2007 and includes a facsimile of Plath's manuscript. I found it fascinating, gaining access to a genius's brain and creative process isn't something we often can do.
It has a foreword by Frieda Hughes - which I read, for I seem to have grown some odd love for forewords, sometimes I enjoy them more than the book itself. Frieda set such a context though, that there was no way back from there. I ended up reading both poetry collections through the lens of hers: through private information, although shared apparently due to having been hurt so very much by the media, but also as an attempt to defend her father. She made me learn the lesson that context is, in fact, everything. It is a very personal introduction, and I must say, though being the child of such a couple must be a trauma of a lifetime, indeed, I think publishing Frieda's foreword was an unfortunate move.
Hence, this post is - oddly - not a review of Plath or Hughes, but a review of Frieda Hughes's foreword and the power of her statements.
Let me sketch out a few of her remarks - and add my sole and pretty ordinary thoughts - criticism:
1.) Frieda's thoughts on how the world seized her parents:
Frieda does sound quite exhausted by all the attention her parents received, especially the obsession with her mother's suicide. My heart genuinely aches for her, I find her complaints completely fair. She recalls a memory of hers of a fight she had with a (very rude) superfan of Plath about where - and how - Plath should be remembered in London.
As she writes:
'Since she died my mother has been dissected, analyzed, reinterpreted, reinvented, fictionalized, and in some cases, completely fabricated.' (p.xvii of the foreword)
I must give this to her, there are many myths circulating about Plath - and they all cannot be true, as especially resources online are sometimes pretty contradictory. Also, Plath has risen to become one of the most important feminist icons of all time. Frieda seems to feel bothered by this, she draws light to a few of her little cruelties (including her alleged artistic jealousy towards Hughes) - which I can completely believe, as she was a human too, after all. One note on flaws: something that got me completely off guard while reading Plath's poems was that some of them are surprisingly racist - and this is a fact that is grossly overlooked about her. It's unfortunate that certain humans have managed to rise to such heights in our society that they are apparently not to be criticised or seen fallible. Had she lived longer, a good editor could have warned her to revise some of her metaphors - especially those about black people and minorities. I do identify as a feminist. Hundred per cent. But I still think Plath should be held accountable. Or, at least her memory. Go and read Ariel - and find those very poems, check them out for yourself.
2.) Frieda's very detailed notes on which poems of Ariel were taken out by Hughes - and what they were replaced with:
I found her precision very refreshing. She describes the process straight to the point: The difference between the US and the UK editions (I didn't know there were two different versions!), the exact years of publication, and a few notes on the evolution of Plath's poetic voice. I found this section fascinating - it gave me what I expected from the foreword to begin with. It was very well done indeed, and here lies the strength of this Faber & Faber edition: notes, essays, biographical remarks, blog posts and so on and so forth are abundant and everywhere (and look.... I'm contributing to them too...), but I did not find anything as well-composed, short and clear as Frieda's foreword.
3.) And the points where I do not agree with Frieda:
And then, there are the points where the foreword goes astray (at least, for me). Frieda seems to turn her words into a plea for Hughes, and if anything, it just made me dislike him to my core - hence the title of my post. I gave the case a good few months (just to make sure this post would not turn into a furious feminist fuming). I'm happy (or unhappy?) to announce that my opinion has not changed.
There were personal details that I did not want to know, nor did I need - namely, the details of his affair. Hughes started his affair in 1962, Plath found out, she proposed their separation, and as Frieda writes - and these are the points confusing me the most -
'Despite her apparent determination, he thought my mother might reconsider,'
but after her suicide, Hughes
'continued to see the other woman.' (p.xi)
Uhmmm I'm sorry, what? This is how it happened that I ultimately ended up wondering: was he chasing two rabbits at once... but expecting full reconciliation with his estranged wife? - The latter, according to Frieda, Hughes did indeed hope for. And did I need this information in my life? I'm quite certain that I did not.
Frieda also tries to build empathy for Hughes (trying to clasp back at the 'vilification' of her father) by claiming things like
'until her death, my father visited us there almost daily, often babysitting when my mother needed time for herself.'
And now, this makes me think things like darling, that's the absolute minimum a parent can do - given that they were supposed to be equally responsible for the children, even though they ended up separating... due to his cheating... Frieda paints a warm-hearted and benevolent version of her father and a furious, jealous version of her mother - a woman with such a temper and so jealous of her husband that she would burn some of his poems. (Though Hughes did burn some of her diaries too.) Even if abuse was prevalent in the marriage - and I do believe it completely as something potentially true of Plath as well - cheating, unfortunately, is not the solution, and I cannot really feel sorry for him.
After Plath's death, Hughes's aimed to make the collection the best it could be - according to Frieda. How very generous of him, you might say. What I learned at university is that editing will make everything better, but I'm not sure this rule applies when the poet left behind a very intentional manuscript about her husband's cheating and betrayal - and the husband decides to 'make it better' by eliminating (the harshest) poems about himself. A third, independent soul (or team) might have been a better choice. And call me crazy, but even leaving the manuscript as it was - due to the poet's passing - sounds like a reasonable solution. To me, at least. Here is, where I think humans (and their rights) must come first.
Is Ariel (edited by Ted Hughes) a stronger version? I don’t know. It’s a milder, a kinder one, for sure. But it’s not hers. She apparently didn’t aim to be mild or kind. She knew what she was saying, and she obviously felt deeply hurt by him, by the world.
Ariel: The Restored Edition is brutal indeed. It is ferocious and occasionally racist. But even after having thought a lot about ownership, intentionality, rights - and editing - I always end up with the same line of thoughts: the timeline in facts.
At the end of the day, this is what happened:
Hughes seemed to have collected all the rights for himself: Hughes got to speak, and Hughes only.
I cannot say I know the answers. How Hughes should've acted. And whether there was any morally superior solution. What I can and will say, though, is that when a strong sense of uneasiness remains after going through the facts over-and-over-and-over again, this solution was (probably) not quite it, Mr Hughes.
I did not mean to dive so deep into their personal lives (although it is highly debated, especially in their case, whether personal lives could ever be separated from that of the work itself). I do not know, but I do feel that Frieda Hughes ended up sharing far too much - possibly due to the pressure of publishers? Based on how personal her foreword is, I'd say it might have been at least partly a war of gossip and obsession with her parents she wanted to conclude - for good. But there's a reason celebrities - if they are wise - do not comment on gossip or scandal.
This foreword set such a context that when I read Ariel, but especially upon reading Birthday Letters (- this edition:)
...I could not not see their private affairs everywhere.
That's why I have a few points about Birthday Letters too:
Hughes seems to be using astrology, conjunctions and planets as an excuse for his cheating. And now, that is just absurd. He also mocks Plath's aspirations – that she was so very ambitious. Would have that made you so bothered – had she been a man, Mr. Hughes?
And one last, additional point: whereas Plath's poems are so very abstract that even if you know exactly whom she's writing about, there's MUCH room for interpretation, Hughes is incredibly clear and straightforward when it comes to his discussing and criticising her. He seems to display some strong feelings against Americans too - at one point making the very questionable parallel between Plath and an American bat with rabies biting him.
By the way, AI imagined their duo like this:
If you disagree or find factual mistakes in this post, please do let me know. I'd LOVE TO change my mind. I wanted to see Hughes differently – given that he was a poet laureate and very highly regarded in England.
Also, I wanted to be prepared to write this post - and hence went down the Plath rabbit hole; there's tremendous literature about them out there - be it highly academic texts or The Guardian articles. Be it precise and informative studies, literary parallels (Plath and Dickinson, Plath and Pizarnik...Plath and everyone) or... personal essays and accounts. And it is very hard to separate gossip around their personal lives from relevant information about their poetry. There is a (certainly interesting) article on the Guardian about the woman Hughes cheated on Plath with and how she - Assia Wevill - also committed suicide with their four-year-old daughter only seven years after Plath's passing. (And let this sit with us for a minute.)
After a while - for her mental health - the writer of this article had to quit consuming all that’s out there. (It's truly maddening.)
It was Hughes's right to share his side of the story in his art, even if one might find it tasteless here and there... But you know... Plath, too, should have had her rights...
This is all for today - exhausting it was. I'm so happy to move on to something new... I don't really want to see either Plath or Hughes for a good while.
Hugs from the Fearless Frock!:))
(and some resources on Plath, Hughes and Assia Wevill:
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