Sylvia Plath -- 3 augustus 1958

August 3: Sunday: Felt a sudden ridiculous desire this morning to investigate the Catholic Church - so much in it I would not be able to accept: I would need a Jesuit to argue me - I am yet young, strong - must seek adventure & not depend on a companion. As for children - I'Il be happier to have worked a year on writing, had a holiday - before I begin with them: once I have a baby, I won't be able to go on writing unless I have a firm foundation for it. The apartment, small as it is, will encourage little house work & cooking. Peace, I must tell myself, so it becomes an instinctive sense, peace is interior, radiating outward. I must keep note books of people, places - to recall them. Now: a plane drones, cars whoosh by, a few birds are chirping, a car door bangs, Ted has just thrown down a paper, sighed, & his pen is scratching rapidly. I must learn to lead my own life with him, but not lean on him for every move. Note: A woman of twenty-five feels the shock of her age simply by saying: if I live as long as I have already lived I shall be fifty. Note: The sort of woman who, when it begins to rain and while it rains, can think only of open windows - car windows, second floor windows, everywhere - open windows, and the rain pouring in at a vicious slant, ruining woodwork, wallpaper, books & furniture irreparably.

Yesterday we sat in the rose garden at sundown, a lovely incandescent time, reminiscent of Yorkshire, of those late afternoons in granchester meadows watching the water-voles. Rose leaves red, deep-red tipped, the flowers in the formal garden white, yellow, lit up by the horizontal rays. A rainbow in the fountain. A man approaches a young woman in Trafalgar Square: "Pardon me. But you're standing on the wrong side of the fountain". "Why, sir, what do you mean?" He takes her around & shows her the rainbow waiting in the oppsite side. I shall write a complete fantasy life of tearful-joyful stories for women - tremulous with all varieties of emotion.


Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) was een Amerikaanse dichteres. Ze hield lange tijd een dagboek bij