Sylvia Plath's transformations of modernist paintings

Introduction

Sylvia Plath's letters and journals document her knowledge of and interest in painting - especially modernist paintings. In the letters and journals she mentions De Chirico, Gauguin, Goya, Gris, Klee, Matisse, Picasso, Rousseau, van Gogh and others.

Prior to 1956, Plath was already incorporating references to art works in her poetry. In "Midsummer Mobile"-a rather shallow poem of instructions to a would-be painter, she refers to "a sky of Dufy blue," to "Seurat: fleck[ed] schooner," "the mellow palette of Matisse," and "a rare Calder mobile" (Hughes 1981, 324). Furthermore, not only does the title of her "To Eva Descending the Stair" echo that of Marcel Duchamp's "Nude Descending a Staircase," but so does the poem's theme: that stasis is impossible and that "stillness is a lie," because "The wheels revolve" and "the universe keeps moving" (303).

Her first mature poems about paintings were motivated, as so frequently was the case with Plath, by the possibility of publication and payment for publication.1 In January, 1958, Art News wrote her offering her "from $50 to $75 for a poem on a work of art" (Plath 1975, 336). On the day she received the letter, she immediately thought of Gauguin. On January 26, referring to "the red-caped medicine man, the naked girl lying with the strange fox, [and] Jacob wrestling with his angel" she writes, "I shall sit and stare at Gauguin in the library, limit my field and try to rest, then write it." Two weeks later she writes," I'm hoping to go to the Art Museum and meditate on Gauguin and Rousseau" (1975, 336). On March 5, she writes that she plans "to have my art poems-one to three (Gauguin, Klee and Rousseau)-completed by the end of March," and exclaims, "I feel my mind, my imagination, nudging, sprouting, prying and peering" (Hughes 1982, 202). By March 20, 1958, she has "narrowed down poem subjects to Klee (five paintings and etchings) and Rousseau (two paintings)" (208).2 Two days later, after getting "piles of wonderful books from the Art Library," she feels she is "overflowing with ideas and inspirations, as if I've been bottling up a geyser for a year" (Plath 1975, 336), and she writes to her mother, "These [`Virgin,"Perseus,"Battle-Scene,' and `Departure of the Ghost'] are...