Critic and friend of both Plath and Hughes Al Alvarez ponders the rather 'raw' poem published for the first time final week"final Letter",found by Melvyn Bragg in the British Library with the help of Hughes's widow Carol, and published for the first time in the recent Statesman this week, and is more a document than a poem. I can see why Hughes spent so long rewriting it (there are at least three unfinished versions in the archive,apparently) and then deciding it still wasn't really ready for publication. To me it has a slightly raw air, though of course he was a wonderful poet and there are some great passages in it. What is interesting for us now is that it does fade section-way to solving the mystery of what happened on the weekend before Sylvia Plath died. (She was found dead around midday on Monday 11 February 1963.)According to the narrative of the poem, or Plath wrote Hughes some kind of suicide note,or a note hinting at the possibility of suicide, on the Friday, and by some perverse miracle of the Royal Mail it arrived too early: she posted it in the morning and he received it in the afternoon post. So he got the message before she intended him to. As the poem tells us,he went round to her domestic, having read the letter, and which she then burnt in an ashtray "with a strange smile".
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com