In early 1956, Sylvia Plath wrote a long, digressive letter to a man she thought she loved, during which she sarcastically demanded, “How symbolic can we get?”, mocking her own youthful desires. Within a few weeks, she would meet Ted Hughes, and the story of the two poets’ love affair and its tragic aftermath has left readers all over the world identifying with their story, endlessly amazed at how symbolic it could get.
After six years of marriage, two children and one miscarriage, Plath discovered that Hughes was having an affair. As they were moving painfully towards a breakup she wrote a poem called Burning the Letters: “I made a fire,” she said, “being tired / Of the white fists of old / Letters and their death rattle.” These letters taunted her, she implied: “What did they know that I didn’t?”
Related: Unseen Sylvia Plath letters claim domestic abuse by Ted Hughes
These letters are set to become one of the only sources of Plath’s voice from the end of her life, apart from her poetry
Related: The 100 best nonfiction books: No 17 – Ariel by Sylvia Plath (1965)
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