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Ted Hughes – Signed Letter – with connections to Sylvia Plath
£600.00
Single sheet, on one side, dated 14th October, 1985: A short typed letter from Hughes thanking the recipient for their letter and stating:
‘Here is something to put in your album:
“The mind reigns,
The mind slaves,
The mind pastures geese.”
Hughes has then added ‘(Proverb)’ in ink and signed the letter in ink. Centre fold-line else in fine condition. A REMARKABLE INSCRIPTION.
Research tells us that this is not the first time that Hughes has written this ‘proverb’. Sylvia Plath had typed out a copy of Stevie Smith’s poem, ‘Magna Est Veritas’, Latin for ‘Truth is Great’ or ‘Great is truth’ in November 1962, a few months before her death. Scholars of Sylvia Plath’s work, including Peter Steinberg and Elizabeth Sigmund, have intimated that the title of the poem and the poem itself was the origination of what Plath had said to others at the time in those final few months, that the truth had ‘come to her’. On the same page is a drawing by Plath which she signed ‘Sylvia Hughes’. This was underneath what Sigmund had called ‘Aphorism’ by Ted Hughes. Clearly visible on this haunting page in Ted Hughes’ hand was ‘The mind reigns, The mind slaves, The mind pastures geese.’
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- Description
Description
Single sheet, on one side, dated 14th October, 1985: A short typed letter from Hughes thanking the recipient for their letter and stating:
‘Here is something to put in your album:
“The mind reigns,
The mind slaves,
The mind pastures geese.”
Hughes has then added ‘(Proverb)’ in ink and signed the letter in ink. Centre fold-line else in fine condition. A REMARKABLE INSCRIPTION.
Research tells us that this is not the first time that Hughes has written this ‘proverb’. Sylvia Plath had typed out a copy of Stevie Smith’s poem, ‘Magna Est Veritas’, Latin for ‘Truth is Great’ or ‘Great is truth’ in November 1962, a few months before her death. Scholars of Sylvia Plath’s work, including Peter Steinberg and Elizabeth Sigmund, have intimated that the title of the poem and the poem itself was the origination of what Plath had said to others at the time in those final few months, that the truth had ‘come to her’. On the same page is a drawing by Plath which she signed ‘Sylvia Hughes’. This was underneath what Sigmund had called ‘Aphorism’ by Ted Hughes. Clearly visible on this haunting page in Ted Hughes’ hand was ‘The mind reigns, The mind slaves, The mind pastures geese.’
