June 13, 2005

apex, indeed.

To my Dearest Fel,

I believe the extract below aptly summarises what we have and share with each other. the understanding, rapport and pure wit still astound me to this day. and for the record, it has been nothing short of wonderful. :)

--

In January 1961, Hughes and Plath were interviewed for a radio broadcast on the BBC, Two of a Kind, that displays them at the apex of their compatibility. The interviewer, Owen Leeming, asked whether theirs was "a marriage of opposites". As if in a movie by Woody Allen, Hughes said they were "very different" at the same moment Plath said they were "quite similar."

Explaining "different", Hughes allowed that he and Plath had similar dispositions, and worked at the same place--indeed, so deep were the similarities that he often felt he was drawing on "a single shared mind" that each accessed by telepathy. But he and Plath drew on this shared mind for quite different purposes, he said, and each of their imaginations led a thoroughly "secret life."

Explaining "similar", Plath said that although she and Hughes had very different backgrounds, she kept discovering unexpected likenesses. Hughes' fascination with animals, for example, had opened up for her the subject of beekeeping, which was one of her father's scholarly pursuits. More of her own history had become available to her poetry because Hughes was so interested in it, she said: that was how the similarities were developing in her work--though the work itself was not at all similar, she insisted. Did she too believe they had a single shared mind? No, Plath laughed. "Actually, I think I'm a little more practical."
gid posted at 23:47