Birthday Letters

‘A Picture of Otto’ is Hughes’ response to the poetry of his deceased wife who negatively portrayed both Hughes and her father throughout her poetry collection Ariel. Written long after Sylvia’s suicide, the poem combines themes of guilt, love, and rivalry, portraying Otto as both a haunting presence and an authoritative force in Sylvia’s life. Unlike the previous poems, ‘A Picture of Otto’ is addressed in apostrophe to Otto, not Sylvia Plath, as Hughes attempts to confront Otto’s symbolic role in Sylvia’s suffering and, by extension, the conflict Hughes feels over his own part in her tragic death. This poem is written in free verse with no steady meter, enhancing its authentic nature and evoking the feeling that the reader is witnessing a raw conversation or emotional expression. Throughout the catharsis, Hughes reflects on his relationship with Plath and how it has irrevocably connected him with Otto, a man he never knew.

The poem opens with Hughes describing a photograph of Otto standing by a blackboard, which alludes to his career as a university professor. More broadly, readers might consider the poem a work of ekphrasis. The opening line “You stand there at the blackboard” presents us with the immediacy of the present tense and the directness of the second person pronoun “you.” This is followed by the somewhat jarring enjambment of “Lutheran / Minister manqué,” a religious metaphor as Lutheranism is a major branch of Protestantism. It is closely tied with the theology of Martin Luther, the 16th century German monk and reformer whose efforts to reform the practices of the Catholic Church triggered the Reformation. Hughes describes him as “manqué,” meaning someone who has not lived up to their potential. Thus, Hughes critiques Otto as a failure, as well as hinting at some religious or moralistic rigidity. The polysyndeton of “Heaven and Earth and Hell” conflates all aspects of the universe, reinforcing the all-consuming force of Otto Plath which “radically / Modified the honey-bee’s commune.” In addition to invoking Otto’s other career as an entomologist, this is an intertextual allusion to Hughes’ other poem ‘The Bee God’ and Sylvia Plath’s ‘The Arrival of the Bee Box,’ drawing upon Plath’s metaphor of a bee to characterise her haphazard mental state. A commune refers to a group sharing possessions and responsibilities; therefore this symbolically expresses Otto and Plath’s sharing of “bees,” causing them to “radically” conflate their worldly perceptions with great emotion instead of thinking rationally. This could also suggest that Otto, a professor and an expert on bees, finds his structured beliefs disrupted by the metaphorical bees of his daughter’s mind. The honeybee commune could thus represent a contrasting view of cooperative, interdependent, and complex thought, thereby suggesting that Otto’s beliefs weren’t as rigid as they appeared on the surface.

In the second stanza, Hughes dissects Otto and his influence on both him and his relationship with Plath. With “Your Prussian backbone,” Hughes references Otto’s Aryan heritage in acknowledgement of Plath’s perception that Hughes was constricting. The imagery of “Prussian backbone” suggests Otto’s German heritage and the associated stoicism, discipline, and perhaps authoritarian nature implies his rigid principles were then “conjured into poetry,” perhaps by Sylvia, Hughes, or both. In the next lines Hughes imagines Otto “rising from [his] coffin” shocked to see himself entangled with Hughes. This line suggests a clash or tension between Hughes and Otto, even posthumously, as Hughes feels inextricably linked to him through Sylvia. Some critics have also read this as a veiled allusion to Otto Plath’s Nazi sympathies and Hughes’ belief that Otto would have disapproved of his relationship with Sylvia.

This interpretation perpetuating Otto’s disappointment demonstrates a lowered self-perception on Hughes’ part, which digresses from his enduring, accusatory tone. Hughes deliberately personifies his relationship with Otto, and both of their relationships with Sylvia, as “tangled” which emphasises the turbulent and convoluted nature of their connections. He accepts the merging of his existence with that of Otto’s through the use of collective pronoun in “our guilt” – they become one, sharing the same pain. However, the fact that he describes their guilt as “occult” suggests something hidden or difficult to understand, alluding to unresolved or inexplicable guilt that haunts both men. This is furthered by the metaphor, “Your ghost inseparable from my shadow

/ As long as your daughter’s words can stir a candle.” The imagery implies that Plath is conjuring this shadow but that Hughes is attempting to distance himself from Plath. He refers to her as Otto’s “daughter” and not his wife, and through the diction of “ghost” he suggests an enduring legacy tied to Otto, whereas Hughes is cast as a mere “shadow” – flat and incorporeal. “You had assumed this tunnel your family vault” apostrophises to Otto an accusation of his self-perceived legacy. His use of the word “vault” denotes the captivating power Otto has over his family even after his death.

The setting then amplifies the tone, creating a narrative in an “underworld” – or more specifically “the dark adit,” where Plath and her father are buried. Hughes descends to the land of the dead ostensibly to “come looking for your daughter,” suggesting that he is a mythological figure who will attempt to rescue her. However, to critical responders it also appears that his intention is to confront his doppelgänger, Otto, and to tell another side of the story regarding his history with Plath that lessens Hughes’ culpability. The underworld’s darkness also symbolises the difficulty of uncovering the full truth in the poem. This katabasis is a common feature in classic Greek myths and literary works. This enhances the narrative which tactfully posits Sylvia and Otto dead in the underworld, while Hughes remains alive above, troubled by his experiences.
 
The fact that Sylvia “could hardly tell us apart in the end” implies that Hughes and Otto had become intertwined figures in her mind as influential, yet possibly oppressive, male presences. This line points to Sylvia’s complex feelings toward both men and suggests that her feelings about Hughes and Otto blurred over time. Hughes also describes a resemblance between Otto and his own son, perhaps suggesting that there is a cyclical nature of inherited traits or unresolved trauma. The return to the symbol of Otto’s portrait implies that Hughes feels Otto’s presence or influence in the lives of future generations. Hence, Hughes conveys how the men have a common bond over their relationships with Plath, and how through her writing she has condemned them to join in her suffering for an eternity. “Inseparable, we must remain” leaves the two men theoretically joined by their shared hardship, despite the reality of death dividing Hughes and Otto.

In the fifth stanza, Hughes adopts an apologetic tone in apostrophe to Otto by understanding that “you never could have released her. / I was a whole myth too late to replace you.” This remorsefully describes his existence as mythical, eradicating Hughes’ individual responsibility and arguably suggesting that Sylvia Plath was solely Otto’s responsibility or posession, unable to be released or salvaged. The final stanza contains an allusion to Wilfred Owen, the WWI poet who wrote of horrors and brotherhood among soldiers from opposing sides. Here, Hughes references Owen’s “dark poem” entitled ‘Strange Meeting’ where Owen describes a soldier descending into a tunnel of hell and meeting with an enemy soldier who killed him. This intertextuality, strengthened by Hughes other allusions to a dark adit and the underworld, frames Hughes and Otto as enemy combatants navigating the battlefield of Sylvia’s psyche. Hughes envisions himself and Otto as similarly entangled, like soldiers with unresolved conflict lying side by side in a catacomb.

‘A Picture of Otto’ concludes with an image of eternal rest in a standalone line where Hughes and Otto, like soldiers from opposite sides, lie together in death’s solitude. Hughes seems to reach a resigned peace, accepting that he and Otto are bound together, unable to truly separate, just like Wilfred Owen and his “German” brother-in-arms. Thus, this poem depicts Hughes grappling with Otto’s lingering presence and the shared guilt and pain between them, bound by their relationships with Sylvia, but ultimately shifting the responsibility to Otto for her suffering.