The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath -- literary history or invasion of privacy? A Trinity alumna is at the center of the debate.

Six days before she killed herself, Sylvia Plath wrote her last poem, "Edge." It begins:

   The woman is perfected.
   Her dead
   Body wears the smile of  
      accomplishment.

Perfected or not, today's literary sleuths doggedly try to fill in all the biographical blanks. And Trinity graduate Karen V. Kukil is at the center of hot debate over what, if any, privacy dead writers deserve. Kukil, the Smith College archivist who edited the recently published The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (Anchor Books), has earned international recognition and widespread praise for presenting the poet's every word--from malicious gossip to juvenile jottings.

   Still, critics--novelist Joyce Carol Oates most prominent among them--call that publish-everything stance "pathography." Oates questions the ethics of releasing words writers obviously didn't intend to see in print. She and others argue that even famous writers don't always intend their most private thoughts to be seen. However, many advocates of full disclosure reply that every diatribe, every misspelling, sheds scholarly light on the mysterious act of creativity. Kukil's view is simple. Since Plath's children authorized the publication of hitherto-censored details, she "didn't want to delete any information. I wanted to preserve the journals exactly as she wrote them, so you can see her evolution as a writer."

   The book is an exact transcription of the 23 journals and fragments Smith College owns--from Plath's freshman year at Smith in 1950 to her death in 1962. Kukil's work on them has drawn front-page reviews in leading British and American periodicals, and led to speaking engagements at London's PEN International Writers' Day and the New York Public Library.

   Trinity professor Dianne Hunter--whom Kukil credits in the introduction of the book--introduced her to Plath's work. After graduation, Kukil worked with renowned Horace Walpole scholar Wilmarth Lewis at Yale, and earned a master's of library sciences degree at Southern Connecticut State University. For 10 years, she has supervised the scholarly use of Smith's extensive Plath and Virginia Woolf collections.

   But she hasn't confined her efforts to the stacks. She teaches a course on examining and editing various drafts of Plath's famous "Ariel" poems. Kukil says Plath "was hot" when she was writing "Ariel." "Her best images were in the first draft. She was almost possessed, writing feverishly." By assigning Plath's journals, recorded readings, and Plath's husband Ted Hughes's own version of their marriage, Kukil found "students who had thought of the poet as a tragic icon starting to appreciate her as a flesh-and-blood human being."  They could then draw their own conclusions about Plath and her work, as debate continued over Plath as "feminist victim" or Plath as "calculating careerist"/Hughes as "villain" or Hughes as "long-suffering muse."

   Kukil stresses the need for serious writers to keep regular journals, noting that even Plath's undergraduate description of a hamburger is full of imagery. "It's fascinating to see how her writing evolved." But what about images, notes, jokes that Plath and others never thought to publish? What about family and friends' feelings? Alive, literary figures have extensive rights to their work. J.D. Salinger has successfully sued a biographer for invasion of privacy and copyright infringement. A federal appeals court ruled that quoting or paraphrasing large portions of his early letters exceeds the boundaries of "fair use." The deceased must depend on their executors, who must decide how much of artists' lives to reveal to the world. Is an executor's primary duty to shield family members and friends, or to let the world probe every creative cranny? Kukil recognizes that "it's hard to have private information about a loved one in circulation. I understand their reluctance. I honor the agreement we make with heirs" to withhold materials.

   In Plath's case, Hughes authorized Smith College to unseal two journals he had sold to the college. After his death, their children approved Kukil's suggestion to publish the 933 pages precisely as Plath banged them out on her Royal manual typewriter or jotted them down in her neat, cursive hand. Sitting in the quiet third floor of Smith's Neilson Library, amid 4,000 pages of Plath documents, Kukil contends that the expanded journals give a more nuanced picture of the poet as much happier than her traditional portrayal as a tragic victim. "Two currents run through her life," Kukil says, "happy and sad, and we haven't until now seen the happy, joyous, the very strong, light side. She had an absolute love of life."

    Kukil says Plath's accounts of her therapy sessions shed important light on her work. "She was subjected to barbaric therapy, including low dosages of electroshock, which produces the sensation of being electrocuted. Electrocution imagery runs throughout her poetry." Even Plath's omissions are revealing, Kukil says. She points out that the poet's voluminous records detail neither her and Hughes's wedding nor their cross-country drive through America.

     United States privacy laws dictated the deletion of 12 lines from the British edition of The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, Kukil notes, and a few living people are identified only by their initials. "These are blanks to be filled in when they die," the archivist says. "My obligation is to get information out--not what I, her mother, or Ted Hughes wanted her to have written. I'm really for full disclosure. The more information you know, the better you understand someone's writing. That's my angle."

 

-- Bill Kirtz '61