While at the Lilly Library in October doing research before the Sylvia Plath 2012 Symposium, one of the folders in Plath mss II that I wanted to look at contained Plath's letters from 1963. For the several times that I had been out there, I really had not spent much time at all with her correspondence, which is a great embarrassment and a regret, especially because I know the letters that were published in Letters Home are heavily edited and often do not bare any likeness to the original!
The letters are organized in rough chronological order... Rough because some researchers working with these papers lamentably get careless and as a result the letters can be out of order... Anyway, while working my way through those letters, I encountered, inevitably, the letter that Plath sent to her mother dated 4 February 1963 - 50 years ago today. It is the last letter included in Letters Home and other than hearsay -- that Plath wrote her mother a letter the night before she took her life -- it is the last known letter Plath wrote to her mother.
Did you know... Shockingly...distastefully...ashamedly...there is a piece of the letter missing?! A corner has been ripped off jaggedly. This came as a very great and distburbing surprise. I pulled up a copy of Letters Home on my computer and read what I could of the original against the published version. There were words in the published version that are now absent, which means that in circa 1974 the letter was intact...and that at some point in time between 1977 when the collection was sold to Indiana and my working with the letter, some immoral-thief had done his or her naughty deed.
It occurred to me after comparing the published version against its original what, in fact, was missing: Plath's signature. Plath's signature, presumably on the last letter (or the penultimate letter) she sent to her mother - which her mother received probably whilst her daughter was still alive - has been callously torn from the letter.
I will not type out what I am thinking and hoping happens to the person that did this. I'll just say, shame on you.
The letters are organized in rough chronological order... Rough because some researchers working with these papers lamentably get careless and as a result the letters can be out of order... Anyway, while working my way through those letters, I encountered, inevitably, the letter that Plath sent to her mother dated 4 February 1963 - 50 years ago today. It is the last letter included in Letters Home and other than hearsay -- that Plath wrote her mother a letter the night before she took her life -- it is the last known letter Plath wrote to her mother.
Did you know... Shockingly...distastefully...ashamedly...there is a piece of the letter missing?! A corner has been ripped off jaggedly. This came as a very great and distburbing surprise. I pulled up a copy of Letters Home on my computer and read what I could of the original against the published version. There were words in the published version that are now absent, which means that in circa 1974 the letter was intact...and that at some point in time between 1977 when the collection was sold to Indiana and my working with the letter, some immoral-thief had done his or her naughty deed.
It occurred to me after comparing the published version against its original what, in fact, was missing: Plath's signature. Plath's signature, presumably on the last letter (or the penultimate letter) she sent to her mother - which her mother received probably whilst her daughter was still alive - has been callously torn from the letter.
I will not type out what I am thinking and hoping happens to the person that did this. I'll just say, shame on you.
I noticed that when I was there, too. It was despicable. Utterly despicable and maddening.
ReplyDelete!!!
ReplyDeleteJust horrid.
"And there is a charge, a very large charge For a word"(Plath)
ReplyDeleteLet's hope Lady Lazarus isn't too annoyed either
Interesting, people are so rude these days.
ReplyDelete