Δυο ποιητές στον κήπο με τις Αζαλέες Two Poets in a Rhododendron Grove

June 11: Wednesday (1958)
[…] The evening was dim, light grey with wet humid mist, swimming green. I took a pair of silver-plated scissors in my raincoat pocket with the intent to cut another rose - yellow, if possible -from the rose garden (by the stone lion's head fountain) just come into bloom - a rose to begin to unbud as the red, almost black-red rose now giving out prodigal scent in our livingroom. We walked round on the road to the stucco house & were about to descend to the rose garden when we heard a loud crackling sound as of the breaking of twigs. We thought it must be a man we'd seen in another part of the park coming through the thick rhododendron groves from the frog-pond. The yellow roses were blowzy, blasted, no bud in view. I leaned to snip a pink bud, one petal uncurling, and three hulking girls came out of the rhododendron grove, oddly sheepish, hunched in light manilla-colored raincoats. We stood regnant in our rose-garden and stared them down. They shambled, in whispered converse, to the formal garden of white peonies & red geraniums, stood at a loss under a white arbor. "I'll bet they're wanting to steal some flowers", Ted said. Then the girls evidently agreed to walk off. I saw an orange rosebud, odd, which I've never before seen, and bent to clip it, a bud of orange velvet, after the girls were out of sight. The grey sky lowered, thunder rumbled in the pines, and a warm soft rain began to fall greyly as if gently squeezed from a grey sponge. We started home through the rhododendron groves where the girls had come out. I saw, as we had half-envisioned, but yet saw with a shock, a newspaper loaded with scarlet rhododendron blossoms neatly tucked behind a bush. I began to get angry. We walked farther, and saw another newspaper crammed full of bright pink rhododendrons. I had a wild impulse, which I should have followed to satisfy my blood lust, to take up all the rhododendron flowers and set them afloat in the frog-pond like rootless lilies to spite the guilty-pickers & preserve the flowers as long as they would be preserved in water for the public eye. I picked up bunches of the scarlet ones, but Ted, also angry, wouldn't have it. But as we passed the pond and had come out onto open grass, we both turned back, of one accord to put the blossoms in the pond. As I must have sensed, the girls were back - we heard muffled laughter & the cracking of branches broken carelessly. We came up slowly with evil eyes. I felt blood-lust - sassy girls, three of them -"O, here's a big one", a girl ostentatiously said. "Why are you picking them?" Ted asked. "For a dance. We need them for a dance." They half-thought we would approve. "Don't you think you'd better stop?" Ted asked, "this is a public park." Then the little one got brassy & fairly sneered "This isn't your park." "Nor yours," I retorted, wanting strangely to claw off her raincoat, smack her face, read the emblem of her school on her jersey & send her to jail. "You might as well pull up the bush by its roots." She glared at me & I gave her a mad wild still stony glare that snuffed hers out. Showily she directed another girl to get the other rhododendrons. We followed them to the pond, where they stood, consulted, then doubled back on their tracks. We followed to the edge of the rhododendron grove in the rain, lightning flashed, almost clear red, and we saw them hurrying down to a waiting car & loading the rhododendrons into the openback trunk. We let them go. If we made them uncomfortable it is almost enough. But we were angry. And I wondered at my split morality. Here I had an orange and a pink rosebud in my pocket and a full red rose squandering its savors at home, & I felt like killing a girl stealing armfuls of rhododendrons for a dance: I guess I feel my one rose a week is aesthetic joy for me & Ted & sorrow or loss for no one - yellow roses are gone blowzy - why not conserve one bud through full bloom to blowzy death & replace it with another: to possess & love an immortal many-colored rose during rose-season while leaving a gardenful -but these girls were ripping up whole bushes - that crudeness & wholesale selfishness disgusted & angered me. I have a violence in me that is hot as death-blood. I can kill myself or -I know it now - even kill another. I could kill a woman, or wound a man. I think I could. I gritted to control my hands, but had a flash of bloody stars in my head as I stared that sassy girl down, and a blood-longing to fly at her & tear her to bloody beating bits.[...]

The Journals of Sylvia Plath 1950-1962, edited by Karen V. Kukil,(2000), Faber and Faber Ltd, pp.393-395


Η Σύλβια Πλαθ παρουσιάζεται ως καλλιτέχνης του μήνα με το έργο της The Journals of Sylvia Plath 1950-1962

Η Σύλβια Πλαθ γεννήθηκε το 1932 και αυτοκτόνησε το 1963. Τα λεπτομερή ημερολόγια που κρατούσε από 11 ετών εκτός από ντοκουμέντο της ζωής μιας θυελλώδους προσωπικότητας αποτελούν και το βασικότερο εργαλείο στα χέρια κάθε μελετητή του άκρως προσωπικού και εξομολογητικού λογοτεχνικού της έργου. Την πρώτη έκδοση τους, το 1982, επιμελήθηκε ο ποιητής και σύζυγος της Τεντ Χιουζ, ο οποίος και κατηγορήθηκε ότι παρέλειψε αποσπάσματα που τον χαρακτήριζαν αρνητικά.. Λίγο πριν το θάνατο του, και με αφορμή την επικείμενη επανέκδοση των ημερολογίων το 2000, ο Χιούζ παραδίδει στην δημοσιότητα τριπλάσιο υλικό που μέχρι προηγουμένως ο ίδιος είχε αποκρύψει. Με το υλικό αυτό καθίσταται δυνατή μια εκ νέου ανάλυση των τελευταίων ποιητικών έργων της Πλαθ. Η ζωή, ο θάνατος και το έργο της Πλαθ μοιάζουν να γράφονται και να ξαναγράφονται καθώς προκύπτει νέο υλικό που αναιρεί ή επιβεβαιώνει υποθέσεις των μελετητών και βιογράφων της.
Την αποτυχία κάθε προσπάθειας συνολικής κρίσης επισφραγίζει η ιστορία των δύο χαμένων ημερολογίων*: Όπως αναφέρει ο Τεντ Χιούζ στην εισαγωγή της πρώτης τους έκδοσης, το ένα ημερολόγιο «εξαφανίστηκε». Το δεύτερο, που περιείχε τις κρίσιμες καταγραφές των τελευταίων ημερών της ζωής της Πλαθ, καταστράφηκε από τον ίδιο γιατί όπως δήλωσε αργότερα «εκείνες τις μέρες πίστευα ότι η λήθη είναι απαραίτητη για την επιβίωση».

*Τα δύο αυτά χαμένα ημερολόγια, που υπάρχουν δια της απουσίας τους, αποτέλεσαν και την έμπνευση για το έργο της Νίνας Παπακωσταντίνου Σύλβια Πλαθ: Το χαµένο ηµερολόγιο, 2008 το οποίο επίσης παρουσιάζεται στην έκθεση heart in heart