DID TED HUGHES REALLY MURDER SYLVIA PLATH?

Ted and Sylvia when all was right with their world

I used to despise Ted Hughes. Not just because I considered him a mediocre poet, but because I blamed him for what happened to Sylvia Plath and Assia Wevill.

Then I read BIRTHDAY LETTERS. Sylvia was clearly not an easy person to know (or live with). And I had no choice but to become more objective: did she not try to take her own life during her late teens (as she so brilliantly wrote about in THE BELL JAR?) That suicide attempt happened before she even met Ted Hughes. So she had a history of clinical depression and self-destruction. Sad but true.

Regarding Assia Wevill. She was married (to another poet) at the time she and Ted were having their great love/lust affair. What exactly does that say about her ethics and state of mind?

I guess the bottom line is that poets are imperfect, and only their poetry comes close to that sacred place. So let's appreciate the poetry, and stop playing the blame game. Yes, Ted was something of a bastard (big time), but Sylvia and Assia were not exactly walking in the footsteps of Mother Teresa. So let's appreciate the sublime poetry, and do our best to forgive the all too human poets. Just my two cents.

Here's the last two stanzas of Sylvia Plath's LADY LAZARUS:


Herr God, Herr Lucifer

Beware

Beware.

Out of the ash

I rise with my red hair   

And I eat men like air.

******

Then a quite revealing (last) line from Ted Hughes poem RED:

But the jewel you lost was blue...



Essay © 2015 by Dylan Mitchell