Scan barcode
bluehaneul's review against another edition
Sylvia Plath has that Greek goddess figure. she's so sentimental and has a lovely poetic magic that makes her describe the most awful feelings in the most astonishing way. She's a hopeless romantic, and definitely a drama queen.
I find star-rating journals/diaries unreasonable and unfair. It's a privilege to get a chance to read someone's diaries, to get inside their mind, to hear their honest, unfiltered thoughts.
It took me a long time to finish this book, because it's not the type that you read for the plot/story. It's a lifetime. A very complex and special experience. I felt like an intruder at times and wondered why the hell did I choose to read this book in particular. I have no opinion on it and I don't feel like I have the right to judge anything in it.
I find star-rating journals/diaries unreasonable and unfair. It's a privilege to get a chance to read someone's diaries, to get inside their mind, to hear their honest, unfiltered thoughts.
It took me a long time to finish this book, because it's not the type that you read for the plot/story. It's a lifetime. A very complex and special experience. I felt like an intruder at times and wondered why the hell did I choose to read this book in particular. I have no opinion on it and I don't feel like I have the right to judge anything in it.
fbroom's review against another edition
5.0
I’ve read about Sylvia and the sucide incident and wondered why people were obessed with her until I started reading this book and I became obessed myself. I don’t know but there is something special about Sylvia and the way she writes, definitely poetic. The book is really long. Some parts are more interesting than the others. And some parts you’ll want to just skim over.
- Beautiful and poetic writing
- Sylvia writes with a passion
- She was hard on herself yet she was confident in her writing skills
- She lost her father at the age of 8 and never got over that
- She doesn’t like/respect/love? her mother, in her eyes the mother murdered the dad (she didn’t). Although talking about her mother came way later in the journal (After seeing regularly her therapist RB)
- Loved Ted and saw herself in him
- Connected with Virigina Woolf and D.H. Lawrence.
From the Journals
- 1953 Sylvia tried to commit suicide (age 20), she didn’t have summer classes nor a job to keep her busy from herself.
“Today you made a fatal decision – not to go to Harvard Summer school.”
“November 3 – God, if ever I have come close to wanting to commit suicide"
"I am drowning in negativism, self-hate, doubt, madness – and even I am not strong enough …”
- Always worried/concerned
"I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between.”
“Please let him come, and give me the resilience & guts to make him respect me, be interested, and not to throw myself at him with loudness or hysterical yelling; calmly, gently, easy”
"Main Questions: What to do with hate for mother. What to do for money & where to live: practical. What to do with fear of writing: why fear? Fear of not being a success?”
“Why do I feel I should have a PhD, that I am aimless, brainless without one, when I know what is inside is the only credential necessary for my identity?”
“What I fear worst is failure, and this is stopping me from trying to write because then I don’t have to blame failure on my writing: it is a last ditch defense…”
"What horrifies me most is the idea of being useless: well-educated, brilliantly promising, and fading out into an indifferent middle-age. Instead of working at writing, I freeze in dreams, unable to take disillusion of rejections. Absurd. I am inclined to go passive,"
- Always hard on herself:
“CAN A SELFISH EGOCENTRIC JEALOUS AND UNIMAGITIVE FEMALE WRITE A DAMN THING WORTH WHILE?"
"Life was not to be sitting in hot amorphic leisure in my backyard idly writing or not-writing, as the spirit moved me. It was, instead, running madly, in a crowded schedule, in a squirrel cage of busy people. Working, living, dancing, dreaming, talking, kissing – singing, laughing, learning. The responsibility, the awful responsibility of managing (profitably) 12 hours a day for 10 weeks is rather overwhelming”
“Anyway, if I am not writing, as I haven’t been this last half year, my imagination stops, blocks up, chokes me, until all reading mocks me (others wrote it, I didn’t), cooking and eating disgusts me (mere physical activity without any mind in it)”
“I’d rather have it this way, if either of us was successful: that’s why I could marry him, knowing he was a better poet than I and that I would never have to restrain my little gift”
“I have had the most unfortunate hap: the bright glittery youth from 17 to 20 and then the break-up and the dead lull while I fight to make the experiences of my early maturity available to my typewriter."
- Yet confident in her skills
"I have an amazingly interesting biography, am young, promising. Why won’t they give me one”
- And ambitious
"I could not picture my environment – Wellesley, the old homestead – or Smith, the new untried independent field? Smith it became, and with it my horizons popped open – New Haven, New Jersey, New York – Dick, Marcia – and Mrs. Koffka – all the rest. Seems impossible now that anything else could have happened to me – such is the poverty of my imagination.”
“My joy now will be my first Children’s Book accepted, and my first New Yorker story.”
“How many girls go to sleep on marrying after college: see them twenty-five years later with their dew-eyes turned ice, same look, no growing except in outside accretions, like the shell of a barnacle. Beware”
“A deep wish to leap to Columbia and get a Phd."
- Always working hard and making study schedules and plans
So that looks like it: Application (maybe) for a Fulbright, and if I don’t get it, application for a scholarship to summer school in Britain and travel a bit after that, (maybe.) Johns Hopkins, or possibly Columbia as an alternate – and (maybe) I’ll have to work my senior summer and plan to go abroad the next summer. After that: what? A job, obviously. Marriage, I hope, by the time I’m twenty-five, at least. Work in psychology, sociology, or bookishness.
"I must do a little reading of French (one hour) every day after this week. And two hours of writing (only, when I do poems, it eats up the whole day in a slow lust which I can’t resist).”
"New Year’s Rules: get only one supervision next term; enough time to write and read languages. Think up ideas for articles. My God, Cambridge is full of scientists, printing presses, theater groups, and all I need is guts to write about them. That’s why reporting on assignments is good, because it gives an excuse to overcome the initial shyness. …”
Every day from now till exams: at least 2 to 3 solid pages describing a remembered incident with characters & conversation & descriptions.
“write every story, not to publish, but to be a better writer”
"a poem every ten days. Prose sustains me. I can mess it”
vision: I want one like that. After this book-year, after next-Europe-year, a baby-year? Four years of marriage childless is enough for us? Yes, I think I shall have guts by then. The Merwins want no children – to be free. Free to be narrow, selfish & confined in age. I will write like mad for 2 years – & be writing when Gerald 2nd or Warren 2nd is born, what to call the girl?
"If I write eleven more good poems I will have a book. Try a poem a day: send book”
Her first new yorker acceptance in 1957 or 58?
"I saw “MUSSEL-HUNTER AT ROCK HARBOR seems to me a marvelous poem & I’m happy to say we’re taking it for the New Yorker …” – at this realization of ten years of hopeful wishful waits (& subsequent rejections) I ran yipping upstairs to Ted & jumping about like a Mexican bean.”
- Virginia Woolf and D.H. Lawrence
But her suicide, I felt I was reduplicating in that black summer of 1953. Only I couldn’t drown. I suppose I’ll always be over-vulnerable, slightly paranoid. But I’m also so damn healthy & resilient. And apple-pie happy. Only I’ve got to write. I feel sick, this week, of having written nothing lately.
I felt mystically that if I read Woolf, read Lawrence – (these two, why? – their vision, so different, is so like mine)
- Her Father
visiting his grave “1885–1940”, right beside the path, where it would be walked over. Felt cheated. My temptation to dig him up. To prove he existed and really was dead.”
“I have lost a father and his love early; feel angry at her because of this ..”
- Her Mother
“Mother wrote today with a good letter of maxims; skeptical as always at first, I read what struck home: “If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter – – – for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here”
“This part of the woman in me, the concrete, present, immediate part, which needs the warmth of her man in bed and her man eating with her and her man thinking and communing with her soul: this part still cries to you: why, why will you not only see me and be with me while there is still this small time before those terrible years …”
"I could pass her in the street and not say a word, she depresses me so. But she is my mother.”
"When she dies, what will I feel? I wish her death so I could be sure of what I am: so I could know that what feelings I have, even though some resemble hers, are really my own. Now I find it hard to distinguish between the semblance and the reality.”
- Ted Hughes
Never in my life have I had conditions so perfect: a magnificent handsome brilliant husband (gone are those frayed days of partial ego-satisfaction of conquering new slight men who fell easier and easier), a quiet large house with no interruptions, phone, or visitors; the sea at the bottom of the street, the hills at the top. Perfect mental and physical well-being. Each day we feel stronger, wider-awake.
"So this American girl comes to Cambridge to find herself. To be herself. She stays a year, goes through great depression in winter. Much nature & town description, loving detail. Cambridge emerges. So does Paris & Rome. All is subtly symbolic. She runs through several men – – – a femme fatale in her way: types: stolid Yale man critic Kraut-head Gary Haupt; little thin sickly exotic wealthy Richard; combine Gary & Gordon; Richard & Lou Healy. Safe versus not safe. And of course: the big, blasting dangerous love. Also, double theme: combine Nancy Hunter & Jane: grave problem of identity. Peripheral boys: characters for amusement. Chris Levenson: lispy puppy.”
I am so glad Ted is first. All my pat theories against marrying a writer dissolve with Ted: his rejections more than double my sorrow & his acceptances rejoice me more than mine – – – it is as if he is the perfect male counterpart
But I got rid of my gloom, & sulking sorrows by spending the day typing sheafs of Ted’s new poems. I live in him until I live on my own. Starting June 1st. Will I have any ideas then? I’ve been living in a vaccuum for half a year, not writing for a year. Rust gags me. How I long again to be
"I am perfectly at one with Ted, body & soul, as the ridiculous song says – our vocation is writing, our love is each other – and the world is ours to explore. How did I ever live in those barren, desperate days of dating, experimenting, hearing mother warn me I was too critical, that I set my sights too high & would be an old maid. Well, perhaps I would have been if Ted hadn’t been born.”
"TED. I sometimes feel a paralysis come over me: his opinion is so important to me. Didn’t show him the bull one: a small victory.
"I do fight with Ted: two acrid fights. The real reasons: we both worry about money: we have enough till next September 1st. Then what? How to keep concerns about money and profession from destroying the year we have?”
Dangerous to be so close to Ted day in day out. I have no life separate from his, am likely to become a mere accessory. Important to take German lessons, go out on my own, think, work on my own. Lead separate lives. I must have a life that supports me inside
addytunn's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
5.0
TED HUGHES WHEN I CATCH YOU
miwakoxq3's review against another edition
2.0
kinda boring but she puts the way i feel into words in the way i can’t
ulan's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
5.0
you wouldn't last an hour in the asylum where they raised me
leaheve's review against another edition
I did not love the writing style, I won’t say it was a bad book since it’s a biography , the writing style of this one was just not for me, I may come back to this in the future.
wischmopp's review against another edition
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
sad
medium-paced
5.0
is_book_loring's review against another edition
3.0
Intense and fascinating read into the life of Sylvia Plath; A brilliant writer and a passionate, complex woman whose mind in eighteen years of age had such depth and keen insight. The Unabridged Journal itself unfortunately has missing parts of her significant, critical period in life that were destroyed by her husband. The journal is better to be read in small bites, as it can be a slog to get through at times, as journal naturally is.
“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.”
“I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between.”
“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...”
“I want to taste and glory in each day, and never be afraid to experience pain; and never shut myself up in a numb core of nonfeeling, or stop questioning and criticizing life and take the easy way out. To learn and think: to think and live; to live and learn: this always, with new insight, new understanding, and new love.”
“And the danger is that in this move toward new horizons and far directions, that I may lose what I have now, and not find anything except loneliness.”
“I do not love; I do not love anybody except myself. That is a rather shocking thing to admit. I have none of the selfless love of my mother. I have none of the plodding, practical love. . . . . I am, to be blunt and concise, in love only with myself, my puny being with its small inadequate breasts and meager, thin talents. I am capable of affection for those who reflect my own world.”
“Being born a woman is my awful tragedy. From the moment I was conceived I was doomed to sprout breasts and ovaries rather than penis and scrotum; to have my whole circle of action, thought and feeling rigidly circumscribed by my inescapable feminity. Yes, my consuming desire to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, bar room regulars--to be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recording--all is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always in danger of assault and battery. My consuming interest in men and their lives is often misconstrued as a desire to seduce them, or as an invitation to intimacy. Yet, God, I want to talk to everybody I can as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night...”
“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. ”
“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.”
“I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between.”
“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...”
“I want to taste and glory in each day, and never be afraid to experience pain; and never shut myself up in a numb core of nonfeeling, or stop questioning and criticizing life and take the easy way out. To learn and think: to think and live; to live and learn: this always, with new insight, new understanding, and new love.”
“And the danger is that in this move toward new horizons and far directions, that I may lose what I have now, and not find anything except loneliness.”
“I do not love; I do not love anybody except myself. That is a rather shocking thing to admit. I have none of the selfless love of my mother. I have none of the plodding, practical love. . . . . I am, to be blunt and concise, in love only with myself, my puny being with its small inadequate breasts and meager, thin talents. I am capable of affection for those who reflect my own world.”
“Being born a woman is my awful tragedy. From the moment I was conceived I was doomed to sprout breasts and ovaries rather than penis and scrotum; to have my whole circle of action, thought and feeling rigidly circumscribed by my inescapable feminity. Yes, my consuming desire to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, bar room regulars--to be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recording--all is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always in danger of assault and battery. My consuming interest in men and their lives is often misconstrued as a desire to seduce them, or as an invitation to intimacy. Yet, God, I want to talk to everybody I can as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night...”
“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. ”