Letter to a Purist
Letter to a Purist - fact Summary
Addressed to Ted Hughes
This short lyric is thought to be addressed to her husband Ted Hughes. Plath contrasts mythic grandeur with an intimate, mocking portrait: the beloved eclipses a "grandiose colossus" yet is called a "great idiot" caught between earthly limitations and lofty, absurd yearning. The poem compresses affection, exasperation, and ironic humor into a single image of a lover split between "muck-trap" and "cloud-cuckoo" aspiration.
Read Complete AnalysesThat grandiose colossus who Stood astride The envious assaults of sea (Essaying, wave by wave, Tide by tide, To undo him, perpetually), Has nothing on you, O my love, O my great idiot, who With one foot Caught (as it were) in the muck-trap Of skin and bone, Dithers with the other way out In preposterous provinces of the madcap Cloud-cuckoo, Agawp at the impeccable moon.
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