“Song for a Summer’s Day”: Sassoon and Sawdust

Plath finished “Song for a Summer’s Day” on April 20, 1956 per her pocket calendar, where it is referred to as “Through Fern & Farm and Walking.” It was first titled “Song” in an early, darker version published in Letters Home, which she mailed to her mother on April 21, 1956 (LH, 238-239). There are many changes from the first version of this poem to the last. The final “Song for a Summer’s Day” ends far more brightly in mood (CP, 30). Plath ultimately turned this poem into cinquains, rewriting the original sixteen lines of the last stanza completely. The final draft of “Song for a Summer’s Day” maintains its bright happiness from start to finish. The first version of this poem, however, is a different story entirely. In this first draft, published in Letters Home,[1] the last long stanza sent to her mother suggests that an “artful spider spun / a web” for her man. But was this man Ted Hughes? And was the spider Plath? Judging from Plath’s journal entries, which at this time were still writing to and about Richard Sassoon abandoning her, Plath addressed Sassoon’s abandonment, not Hughes.’ It seems that at this time, Plath considered both Sassoon and her future husband, Ted Hughes, as dangerous and incapable of loving her. Other girls were in Hughes’ life and judging from Plath’s journals and calendar entries, it is they who are the “spiders.” Her calendar notes on April 17, 1956, that she “felt he’d slept with 5 girls” since she last saw him the day before.
It is worth noting other influences on Plath that may have directly or indirectly inspired this poem: Plath’s beloved grandmother was dying of cancer in April 1956, and Ingmar Bergman’s film Sawdust and Tinsel was one of the more popular movies released that month. Plath loved Bergman’s films and we know from her journals that she had seen both The Magician and The Seventh Seal. It is therefore likely she also saw Sawdust and Tinsel, typical dark Bergman films, dealing with seduction, sexual humiliation, and other themes that well-fit the first draft of Plath’s “Song for a Summer’s Day,” called “Song.”[2] In Sawdust and Tinsel, a very sick circus comes to town on a beautiful summer’s day. Through sexual games and humiliation, those caught up in it are destroyed. The lovemaking in the first version “Song” does not seem to be tender. Plath calls it a “ransacking,” with the line: “I range in my unease”. It appears that Plath feared losing Hughes next, as she likely believed she would lose all men.

[1] The first completed draft of “Song for a Summer’s Day,” called “Song,” may be found on pages 238 and 239 of Letters Home, Correspondence 1950-1963, by Sylvia Plath. Selected and Edited with Commentary by Aurelia Schober Plath. First HarperPerrenial edition, 1992.
[2] The 1953 film Sawdust and Tinsel was known as The Clown’s Evening in Sweden, and released as The Naked Night in America in 1956. It is not clear which title was released in the United Kingdom.
INGMAR BERGMAN, PLATH POEM, RICHARD SASSOON, SAWDUST AND TINSEL, SONG, SONG FOR A SUMMER'S DAY, SYLVIA PLATH, TED HUGHES, THE CLOWN'S EVENING, THE NAKED NIGHT, THROUGH FERN & FARM AND WALKING