Book Review: Sylvia Plath Day by Day, Volume I, by Carl Rollyson

Sylvia Plath Day by Day, Volume I (1932-1955), by Carl Rollyson, University of Mississippi Press (2023), 400 pp., $24.14 at Amazon.com.

If you want Sylvia Plath without poetry, dip into this timeline of gleanings from diaries, letters, personal calendars, and other Plath biographies and sources, spanning her life from birth to September 1955. Biographer Carl Rollyson has published 40-plus books including two Plath biographies which elided Plath's early years. Currently he is completing a biography about Plath's early years. Sylvia Plath Day by Day Vol. 1 assembles his source facts, quoting the published and unpublished. According to Rollyson this chronicle restores "precious details" and the objectivity lost when biographers shape facts into narratives. His introduction says:

In effect, you are presented with the raw data, without commentary, so that you become the biographer.

Rollyson edited this raw data, so it is not raw data. The introduction explains:

The entries in this book are shorter than the sources they are taken from. My principle of selection has been to record the most striking events and comments that reveal Plath but also to minimize repetition, except when repetition . . . seems important . . .

Examples (I'm choosing interesting ones):

1946

October 14: Writes up the program of a school assembly, featuring a reading, a piano solo, choral singing and reading, a harmonica solo, a skit, a vocal trio, tap dance, and an accordion solo.

October 15: A sixteen-line poem for Miss Cox, which ends "But behind the cold, white stillness / There's the promise of a spring."

October 16: Clippings about World Series games, visual-aid education, physical exams.

October 17: "World news is really discouraging--wish I could run things for a while."

October 18: Orchestra rehearsal, pleased to realize she has left her ancient history book at home, "Oh! Well! I'll get along."

October 19: Wears a yellow evening gown with black velvet bows to a dance. One boy steps on her toes, but she has fun dancing with another partner who is "very nice" [drawing of a heart].

October 20: "All the girls were talking about last night happenings and were comparing partners."

October 21: "Dear Diary, I don't know what possesses me to mess you up by such scribbling. Some old nagging things inside me prompts me to waste such nice paper. . . . From now on I won't let the weak side of my character hold sway."

1953

April 28, 9:30 a.m.: "Hair."

10:00 a.m.- 12:30 p.m.: News office.

2:00-6:00 p.m., 7:00-10:00 p.m.: "STUDY MILTON."

April 29, 8:30 a.m.: Chapel.

9:00-10:00 a.m.: In News Office.

10:00 a.m.- 12:30 p.m.: Studies Milton.

2:00 p.m.: "Davis paper due."

3:00 p.m.: "Milton Exam."

6:00 p.m.: Press board banquet, Auden in attendance.

April 30, 8:00 a.m.: "Activities board."

9:00 a.m.: Audits science class.

10:00 a.m.: Bells.

Hampshire Book Shop.

2:00 p.m.: Class with Professor Davis.

3:00 p.m.: Milton class.

4:00-6:00 p.m.: Sally.

"Phi Beta Banquet."

Day by Day is the first Plath bio to poach lots of direct quotations from Plath's childhood diaries, so I focused there. Those diaries remain unpublished because they are boring. From art teachers to camp counselors, every authority every hour dangled rewards and awards for doing as they asked. Plath responded like a trained seal. The flip side was that she grew up firmly disciplined and knowing her own value. She could control the situation when "parking" with dates. Plath fighting off a rapist (December 3, 1950) Day by Day however renders as "She strongly rejects the idea."

I did like Day by Day's glimpses of Plath's grandfather, who gave her hugs, gifts of money, and violets for planting. Extremes of mood, symptoms of Plath's mental illness, emerged when she was 16 or 17.

It is a standard joke that writings about Plath must be faultless, so I will fine-tooth and fume over Day by Day's errors, and omissions not only of childhood events I think significant but those important enough for Dr. Heather Clark to flesh out in her definitive biography Red Comet. For example, Red Comet (p. 93) gives most of a paragraph to Sylvia's diary entry of July 25, 1947, a rare hateful one calling her mother a stinker and a "damn cuss'd old thing" for not buying her a dress she wanted. Sylvia then recanted her angry words. Rollyson's version reads:

July 25: "It's good to be able to spread out and stretch again, knowing that I have a new diary waiting." Buys "a dream of a dress" at Filene's "aquamarine with black bands around the neck, waist, the sleepers, and a narrow black-square outline all through the material."

Maybe these are not the same diaries?

Understanding that the text I read was in galleys, I think if Rollyson had taken a minute to check the first few pages of Plath's Letters Vol. 1 he'd know it's incorrect to say that "Plath's first extant letter to Aurelia Plath is a postcard dated July 14" [1944] (note 102, p. 329). It was Aurelia Plath, not Sylvia, who inscribed Sylvia's diary with "Not to be written in after 8 p.m." Visitors designated Uncle Henry and Aunt Elizabeth "Aldrich" -- the surname of Plath's neighbors -- were in fact Sylvia's blood relatives Henry and Elizabeth Schober (9, 31). And "Grampy" died in 1965, not 1963.

Now I feel better. (What made me feel better?)

The accuracy improves and, oddly, interest heightens as the timeline enters and atomizes familiar territory. I was grateful that author comments were few. When in May 1945 12-year-old Plath rescued and fed a baby bird, a comment says this prefigures the baby bird that Plath and her husband tried to save in 1958. This has nothing to do with her art and growth, and in this world of real fire and bombs through the roofs I felt it should be embarrassing to care.

And I wonder how every detail about Sylvia Plath's life has come to be so precious there's a market for barrel scrapings and granules ever smaller, as if by crafting lists and footnotes and smartmaps instead of prose we stay safe.

"Family Reunion"'s Real People

Sylvia Plath published the satirical poem "Family Reunion" in The Bradford, her high-school newspaper (she was co-editor) in April of 1950, her senior year; she was 17. Aurelia Plath first read the poem in the paper and was shocked, in part because it names real family members. The poem's speaker is upstairs at home, listening as relatives arrive for a visit:

Oh, hear the clash of people meeting--

The laughter and the screams of greeting:

Fat always, and out of breath,

A greasy smack on every cheek

From Aunt Elizabeth;

There, that's the pink, pleased squeak

Of Cousin Jane, our spinster with

The faded eyes

And hands like nervous butterflies;

While rough as splintered wood

  Across them all

Rasps the jarring baritone of Uncle Paul;

The poem is witty but at the expense of the real-life Elizabeth and Paul, Aurelia's aunt and cousin, both by marriage. Elizabeth C. Schober, nee Etlin, married Aurelia's uncle Henry Schober in 1912. They named their only child Esther, then a fashionable name.

Paul McCue, college grad, 1931

Esther Schober might have been the model for the poem's pallid "Cousin Jane." After high school Esther got a secretarial job and lived with her parents until she was 30, escaping spinsterhood by marrying Paul McCue in 1943. In the extended family there was no one named Jane.

Esther's wedding was late enough in 1943 so that Boston's 1944 city directory (above) still shows her as one of three Schobers employed in Boston. Her husband Paul McCue, a college graduate, worked at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts as shipping clerk and custodian, finishing his career at Harvard University Art Museums, which threw him a retirement party in 1973.

The poem does not name or describe "Schober Herman F," a more distant relative. Yet he was close enough that Aurelia in her preface to Letters Home transferred Herman's job title "cost accountant" -- an industrial job -- to her own father, Frank Schober, a waiter like his brother. In the 1930s Frank managed a tearoom and after 1942 was maitre d'hotel in a country club outside of Boston. Good at his job, Frank was bad with money, losing family funds to the stock market, prompting his wife to take control. He was never a cost accountant. Why Aurelia wanted readers to see her father more prestigiously titled and employed than he was, we don't know.

"Family Reunion" specifies and belittles maternal relatives. Yet before assuming, because Sylvia in this early poem said so, that all of them must have been laughable or gross, know that Sylvia never met a paternal relative until she was 26 and went to visit one.

Aurelia Plath Videos and Audio

Mini-cassette, 1967

Delighted by a lively 1976 radio interview with Aurelia Plath from WGBH-Boston, a recording recently recovered by Peter K. Steinberg, I have created and will keep at the top of this blog a page with links to all publicly available Aurelia media, audio and video, mostly educational films. Click here to access the 30-minute radio interview, interwoven with recordings of Sylvia reading her poems.

Top-Rated Plath Research Posts of 2023

Studious me with manual typewriter, junior year

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Diary of an Aurelia Plath Researcher (May 16) Thank you for your interest in what I'd tell you privately.

Aurelia and Sylvia Plath Had Black Cousins (November 14) The most emotional, heart-pounding research I've ever done.

How Did Aurelia Plath Control and Manipulate Sylvia? (July 18) They sadly underestimated Sylvia.

Books About Sylvia Plath That I Hate to Love (July 11) This was fun to write.

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Sylvia Plath's Hungarian Roots (September 26) Genealogy proves Sylvia Plath was not a Jew.

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Hype: The Sales Numbers of Ariel (February 7) Neglected business papers shatter a 50-year-old fantasy.

Personal Favorites

Aurelia Goes to a Poetry Reading (June 27) A Cape Cod archivist's help plus research revealed an Aurelia facet totally new.

Prussia: What Does It Mean? (September 19) I am proud of having condensed thick dusty histories of Prussia into an easy "Prussia for Plath fans" post.

There were 48 weekly posts in 2023, my tenth year of posting. It's having the effect I wanted. Thank you for being so interested in Sylvia Plath's world that you want to know more. There is more.

       -Your researcher,

          Catherine

Guest Post: One Sunday in 1973, by Evelyn C. White

Evelyn C. White is the author of Alice Walker: A Life (2004).

I met Sylvia Plath’s mother in the 1970s shortly after I’d begun college in a Boston-area suburb. Reportedly drawn to the enclave because of its excellent public schools, Aurelia Plath, a widow, had lived in the town since 1942. Then age 10 and already published, young Sylvia was soon lauded as one of the most gifted students in the community.

Encouraged by her mother, Sylvia joined a prison ministry during her teenage years. “She traveled into Boston with her Sunday school group to visit the Charles Street jail,” writes Andrew Wilson in Mad Girl’s Love Song (2013) which details Plath’s life before her ill-fated marriage to British poet Ted Hughes. There, Plath mingled with a “smattering of murderers, gunmen and thieves” during church service, Wilson notes.

As for me? Mindful of the many 1960s-70s era Black freedom fighters who’d been incarcerated (among them Angela Davis, Huey P. Newton, and Assata Shakur), I’d entered college determined to become a prison warden.

Aurelia Plath signs a copy of Letters Home, 1976

In addition to my coursework, I longed for “hands-on” experience in the field of corrections and was thrilled to discover that a group of local women visited inmates at a nearby facility. I arranged to join them.

On a bright Sunday morning, I was picked up at my dorm. The driver introduced me to the other passengers whose names I barely registered but met with a nod. Settled into the backseat, I did note the lustrous crown of auburn hair on the woman next to me. It stood in stark contrast to her somber demeanor.

After clearing security at the prison we were escorted into a chapel for worship service. I don’t recall the sermon. But I’ll never forget the inmates who sat, stony-faced, on the opposite side of the sanctuary surrounded by armed guards. “This might not be a fun career,” I thought to myself.

After church, visitors were led to another room to “socialize” with the prisoners. Directed toward a ring of folding chairs, I took a seat. By chance, my backseat companion on the morning drive sat directly across from me.

Eyes trained on a stream of sunlight from a distant window, I listened as the inmates (still under armed guard) and guests introduced themselves. After a few people had spoken, the woman from the car said her name; one that hadn’t sunk in when I’d first met her: Aurelia Plath.

In the sliver of silence before the next voice, I locked eyes with the woman whose daughter, in the small hours of February 11, 1963, had gassed herself in a frigid, London flat. Aurelia Plath held my gaze until a mutual flash of recognition passed between us. She knew that I knew. And vice versa.

Astonished by the realization that I was in the presence of Sylvia Plath’s mother, I went blank. I couldn’t concentrate as I thought about the brilliant writer who’d chronicled her debilitating depression in The Bell Jar and later, in Ariel, the posthumous poetry collection (“The woman is perfected”) that secured her international acclaim.

Back then, I didn’t have the capacity to convey my condolences to Aurelia Plath nor to understand the impact of our encounter in that setting. But I was indelibly shaped by the experience which effectively ended my prison warden ambitions. In hindsight, I know I couldn’t handle all the sorrow that marked the day.

Credit Where It's Due

Vera Zorina as Ariel with Arnold Moss in The Tempest, 1945.

As my eyes continue to open I see critical essays about Sylvia Plath using the passive voice and just plain disregard to delete her mother from her life. Biography is subjective; so is scholarship. Neither genre can include every detail. The dodge happens most, though, when Aurelia Plath was not a detail, or she is due some credit:

"Plath's own copy of Thus Spake Zarathustra is much annotated, and its importance for her creative work is shown in her 1955 poem "Notes on Zarathustra's Prologue". . . Where did Plath get her own copy of Thus Spake Zarathustra, so important? From her mother. For Christmas 1949.

"Plath's upbringing may have been strongly pacifist." If true, who brought her up that way?

"The Tempest in Boston was the first play that Plath ever saw." It was January 20, 1945 and Plath was 12. The experience resonated throughout her life. Who bought the tickets to that play?

"Sylvia and Ted went to Paris on their honeymoon." Yes, but the newlyweds tagged along, all day for eight days, with Aurelia, who had planned to tour Paris by herself.

Family photo from Sylvia's wallet

At the time of her death Sylvia had in her purse Aurelia's Christmas card from 1955, printed with a photo of Sylvia and Warren. Aurelia said so. That's so poignant it might not be true. We know for sure Sylvia carried in her wallet a photo of herself with her brother and their mother.

"From childhood Sylvia showed a talent for poetry." In childhood, showed whom?

"Unsurprisingly, for someone brought up with Unitarian beliefs, Sylvia's intellectual development was not inhibited by any narrow religious dogma." Then credit Aurelia for bringing up her kids as open-minded Unitarians.

I do not blame critics of years past for not having the information we do. I do wonder what made and still makes for unease about acknowledging Aurelia Plath's presence when she was present, or as a sometimes positive factor in her daughter's life and artistry.

Tempest photo by Eileen Darby: Special Collections, Cleveland State University Library. "her wallet": Plath's wallet with its contents was auctioned in 2018.

The Verger's Bastard

Train station at Budzyn, point of departure for three generations of ambitious Plaths.

The young couple whose parents wouldn't consent to their marriage could and did produce what was then called a bastard, shaming both sets of parents into giving the consent required by law.

The would-be bride and groom were not kids. They were both 26. The trouble was that she was Catholic and he was Lutheran.

Baby Theodor -- Sylvia Plath's future grandfather -- was ten months old when his parents Johann and Karoline Plath were at last married. The pious pair then argued about raising their children in this faith or that.

Station still stands at Budzyn (now in Poland).

Theodor's birth record in the town of Budzyn, Prussia, November 5, 1851, shows his mother's name, Karoline Kaszmarek, but in the space for his father's name is "ignatus" (unknown). Oddly, the record then shows the father's occupation: verger.

A verger was a layman hired to clean and maintain a church and help the priest or minister as a messenger and greeter. For public processions, vergers took up a stick or wand called a virge and cleared a path through the crowds. Thus our phrase "on the verge" -- the leading edge.

A verger didn't have to be literate -- Johann Plath was not. But he respected education or the educated. Maybe Johann wished he could have been a minister, and verger was as close as he could get.

When Johann, emigrant to the U.S., heard that Theodor's teenage son was super-smart, Johann generously paid for young Otto Plath to come to the U.S. and for Otto's tuition for Lutheran prep school and college, on the condition that Otto become -- a minister.

But when Otto told his grandfather he would rather teach than be a minister, Johann crossed Otto's name out of the family bible, an act of Christian righteousness sowing alienation and Otto's future bitter atheism.

It was meant to be a memorable scene, and Otto long remembered and told about that one selfish act.

"argued about raising their children": Clark, Red Comet, 6. "A verger didn't have to be literate: Johann Plath was not": U.S. Census, Wisconsin, 1910. See also Somerset Maugham's short story "The Verger" (1936). "bitter atheism," The Bell Jar. Spelled "Budsin" in Prussia, the Plaths' hometown is now Budzyn, Poland.