Sylvia and Ted

A new biography on Ted Hughes is out, the poet who was married to Sylvia Plath, and, by some accounts, the man who tore her heart out. I want to keep a few quotations from a book review. I had not thought of it this way before, but the fatal relationship of Sylvia and Ted probably is one of literature's most famous stories of love gone wrong, perhaps second only to Romeo and Juliet.

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

“What an insane chance, to have private family struggles turned into bestselling literature of despair and martyrdom, probably a permanent cultural treasure.”

-- Ted Hughes


“Ted’s problem, when it came to women, was that he didn’t want to hurt anybody and ended up hurting everybody.”

-- Olwyn Hughes , Ted's sister


“Almost all art is an attempt by somebody unusually badly hit (but almost everybody is badly hit), who is also unusually ill-equipped to defend themselves internally against the wound, to improvise some sort of modus vivendi with their internal haemophilia, etc. In other words, all art is trying to become an anaesthetic and at the same time a healing session drawing up the magical electrics.”

-- Ted Hughes

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

[Source: Erica Wagner, "Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath: partners in martyrdom" in New Statesmen]