Sylvia Plath in the Grecourt Review

Sylvia Plath's colleague at Smith College, Marlies Kallmann Danziger, passed away in March 2018. She taught at Smith when Plath was a student and a colleague in the department of English at Smith College in the 1957-1958 academic year.

This copy of the Grecourt Review 1 from November 1957, which prints Plath's poem "All the Dead Dears", may have been her's as it bears the ownership inscription "Miss Kallman" on the cover (bottom left). I acquired this copy back in 2012 and never did anything with it (I had always meant to present it on the blog but just never did; got distracted by a little project on her Letters). But, having just learned of her passing, I felt it was worth writing about now.

Danziger appears in Plath's journals in several entries (12 January 1958, 22 January 1958, 8 February 1958, 27 February 1958, 5 May 1958 (twice), and 19 May 1958).

Kallman apparently lived in Albright House and had her office in Library 52, according to a staff directory for Smith (pictured below). Smith College archivist Nanci Young informed me that back then, each house had a house mother and a faculty adviser living in residence with the students. However, according to Plath' journals, Marlies lived with her husband, Erwin, at the weekends... which makes sense as after seeing a performance of Denis Johnston's adaptation of Finnegans Wake in Holyoke, Plath and Hughes went to Marlies' house for whiskey and it is not likely that this was in Albright House!

I have not yet tracked down where Erwin Danzinger lived at the time but if I do I will add it to the post.

All links accessed 7 May 2018.

Famous Quotes of Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath inspires us all in various and wonderful ways. She is in many respects a form of comfort to us, which is something that Esther Greenwood expresses in The Bell Jar , about a bath: "There must be quite a few things a hot bath won't cure, but I don't know many of them. Whenever I'm sad I'm going to die, or so nervous I can't sleep, or in love with somebody I won't be seeing for a week, I slump down just so far and then I say: 'I'll go take a hot bath.'" We read and remember Sylvia Plath for many reasons, many of them deeply personal and private. But we commemorate her, too, in very public ways, as Anna of the long-standing Tumblr Loving Sylvia Plath , has been tracking, in the form of tattoos. (Anna's on Instagram with it too, as SylviaPlathInk .) The above bath quote is among Sylvia Plath's most famous. It often appears here and there and it is stripped of its context. But I think most people will know it is from her nove...

Sylvia Plath's Gravestone Vandalized

The following news story appeared online this morning: HEPTONSTALL, ENGLAND (APFS) - The small village of Heptonstall is once again in the news because of the grave site of American poet Sylvia Plath. The headstone controversy rose to a fever pitch in 1989 when Plath's grave was left unmarked for a long period of time after vandals repeatedly chiseled her married surname Hughes off the stone marker. Author Nick Hornby commented, "I like Plath, but the controversy reaching its fever pitch in the 80s had nothing to do with my book title choice." Today, however, it was discovered that the grave was defaced but in quite an unlikely fashion. This time, Plath's headstone has had slashed-off her maiden name "Plath," so the stone now reads "Sylvia Hughes." A statement posted on Twitter from @masculinistsfortedhughes (Masculinists for Ted Hughes) has claimed responsibility saying that, "We did this because as Ted Hughes' first wife, Sylvia de...

Sylvia Plath and McLean Hospital

In August when I was in the final preparations for the tour of Sylvia Plath The Bell Jar sites, I found that I had long been mistaken about a couple of things. This is my coming clean. It was my intention in this blog post to discuss just McLean, but I found myself deeply immersed in other aspects of Plath's recovery. The other thing I was mistaken about will be discussed in a separate blog post. I suppose I need to state from the outset that I am drawing conclusions from Plath's actual experiences from what she wrote in The Bell Jar and vice versa, taking information from the novel that is presently unconfirmed or murky and applying it to Plath's biography. There is enough in The Bell Jar , I think, based on real life to make these decisions. At the same time, I like to think that I know enough to distinguish where things are authentic and where details were clearly made up, slightly fudged, or out of chronological order. McLean Hospital was Plath's third and last...

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