 Hughes placed Plath’s poem, “Landowners,” in the year 1956 in the Collected Poems. Plath referenced in her journals writing a poem on the subject of landowners two years later, on July 4, 1958, (UJ, 399). It is of course possible that she had another poem on the same subject.
If we agree with Ted Hughes’ placement and read “Landowners” and “Departure” both as 1956 poems, South African Apartheid had been in place for a little over a year, beginning with the forced removal of Blacks from Sophiatown to Soweto. Sophiatown was once the Black epicenter of jazz, blues, and politics. Plath’s most beloved professor, Dr. Dorothea Krook, was from South Africa, as well as some of her closer friends at Cambridge. Plath’s journals reveal that she felt an obligation to give to a scholarship to Black students at Cambridge coming from an apartheid government. And Plath, like her father, was a pacifist. Plath’s “Landowners” poem is loaded with hints of South Africa, most especially with its word “Indigenous” (CP, 53). The removal was part of the government’s plan to turn the country’s urban and residential areas white. Blacks were moved to ghettos or townships, and the town was flattened over the next eight years and removed from the maps of Johannesburg. “Landowners” suggests that those white as ghosts were “envious,” and had to “define / Death as striking root on one land-tract.” Meanwhile, at the northern end of Africa, the Suez Canal had been seized and claimed for Egypt in 1956. Britain, France, and Israel were at war against Egypt. In an unusual alliance, the United States, Soviet Union, and United Nations attempted to persuade them to withdraw. This was a different kind of departure from the forced removal of Blacks. Plath’s poem, “Departure,” ultimately illustrates evacuations at both ends of Africa (CP, 51). The first two stanzas are full of the North African figs and grapes, brick-red porch tiles (Britain’s architectural mark upon the area), brassy sun, and lack of money. Plath’s third stanza serves to reflect upon these two moments in history occurring simultaneously. She casts the sun and the moon as the north and the south, both weighted with “The leaden slag of the world.” Slag has a number of definitions, from the least to greatest in vulgarities, especially in Britain. To match it with the word “expose” in Plath’s next line suggests the definition of a whore, to be used and not paid for her riches. It is also left over waste metal from mining or smelting operations, yet another connection to South Africa, famous for its mines of diamond, gold, and other valuable metals. Judging from the words in “Departure,” Sylvia Plath believed it was important to “always expose” the truth. The last two stanzas perfectly describe the rocky cliffs of the South African coast, with its many blue bays. It was time for Britain to lick the salt in their wounds, as Plath’s last line of “Departure” suggests. The withdrawal upset Europe greatly, even breaking apart close friendships back at Cambridge due to cultural and familial alliances (Sophian). “Landowners” is also a term for Britain’s landed gentry, the aristocracy born into owning large deeds of land and thus not having to work. Landowners took over a great deal of Northern Ireland, and all of the orange in Plath’s poem is a nod to England’s William of Orange who reigned over England, Scotland and Ireland until his death in 1702. Because of a mass emigration due to famine, this land was “Flimsily peopled.” If “Landowners” and “Departure” are read as 1958 poems, the imperialist theme of accumulating territory in these poems remains: Apartheid continued on in South Africa, and by that year the Egyptians were fully in control of the Suez. Yet there was a new twist: In America, President Dwight D. Eisenhower was getting ready to sign the Alaska Statehood Act into United States law, another great claim on property. “Flimsily peopled,” Alaska was another kind of whiteness with its “ghost’s / Eyeful” with its snowy mountains and their “vaporous wayfarings.” Whether “Landowners” is a 1956 or a 1958 poem, the struggle for land and power is always relevant. AFRICA, AFRICANS, ALASKA, ALASKA STATEHOOD, APARTHEID, BLACK SOUTH AFRICANS, BLACKS, BRITAIN, BRITISH IMPERIALISM, DEPARTURE, EGYPT, FRANCE, ISRAEL, JOHANNESBURG, LANDOWNERS, PLATH POEMS, POEMS, SOPHIATOWN, SOUTH AFRICA, SOUTH AFRICAN BLACKS, SOWETO, SUEZ, SUEZ CANAL, SYLVIA PLATH, TED HUGHES, WHITENESS
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