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Sylvia Plath: Two Films

On Sunday 2 March 1958, Sylvia Plath wrote a letter to . . . her mother! I know! #Shocking. Wholly omitted from Letters Home but available to read at the Lilly Library, the typed letter was written on the now famous pink Smith College Memorandum paper. Among other things, Plath writes that the night before --1 March-- was spent lazily seeing two films: one on Goya and another on a documentary on a bullfighter.

The film on Spanish painter Francisco De Goya (info) was The Glory of Goya (1950) and featured music by Andres Segovia, a musician Plath saw perform at Smith College as an undergraduate on 10 April 1954.

The documentary on the bullfighter was the 1956 Mexican film Torero! (YouTube) about the Mexican bullfighter Luis Procuna (info).

The film on Goya is interesting as within three weeks Plath was on Spring Break, writing nearly a poem a day and all largely influenced by art, specifically modern art. Also this creative outbreak was inspired by both her auditing of Priscilla Van der Poel's course on modern art (Art 315) and receiving a request for poems from the magazine ARTNews. The course description for Van der Poel's Art 315 course reads: "Contemporary art and its backgrounds from Jacques Louis David and the French Revolution to the present. Open to sophomores by permission of the instructor. Open also in the second semester to students who have had a course in nineteenth-century art abroad. Recommended background, [Art] 11 [Introduction to the History of Art]. M T W 10" (49).

The French painter Jacques Louis David (info) was a contemporary of Goya's and both artists likely influenced the work of future artists to which Plath responded to verbally in her Spring Break poems inspired by Giorgio de Chirico, Henri Rousseau, Paul Klee, and Paul Gaugin.

The film names above were provided by Dianne Weiland, a College Archives Intern at Smith College. For her help and research on this I am extremely grateful. The films were listed in the 23 February 1958 issue of the Smith College Weekly Bulletin. Grateful thanks also must go to Nanci Young, College Archivist, of Smith College.

All links accessed 14 June 2014 and 19 February 2015.

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