#david compton

[dk-thrive]

There was no need for words

Sylvia and Ted seemed “incredibly close.” One spring afternoon the two couples took a walk near the Comptons’ home and paused on a bridge over a trout stream. Sylvia glanced down at the water and said to Ted, “See the color.” They exchanged looks, then both eyed the water below. “There was no need for words,” Elizabeth said. “They both knew; they both saw; they both felt it.” She sensed “a tremendous feeling of peace between them.”

— Heather Clark, Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath (Knopf; October 27, 2020)

[dk-thrive]

I was enormously aware that I was touching the hem of greatness

Soon David (Compton) realized that Sylvia was a writer too. He was writing avant-garde, German-influenced radio plays for the BBC, some of which Plath read and commented on. She seemed to understand what he was trying to do. “They were both very, very good to me. They took me seriously. Nobody else I think ever had, you know. They sponsored me for Arts Council grants and things.” Sylvia, he remembered, “had a great openness. What came into her head, she said.” She was warm and personable, “and more physical than the British are. She would come out and grab your hand and touch you….She was an enormous enthusiast for everything. Everything she was doing was just so exciting and interesting to her.” Ted, too, “would lean forward with blazing eyes and really listen to what you were saying and say a fascinating thing back. He was my height and dark, dark, and cadaverous and just terribly romantic.” It was hard not to be swept away by this intense, erudite couple. “I was enormously aware that I was touching the hem of greatness.”

— Heather Clark, Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath (Knopf; October 27, 2020)

[esther-pentecostal]

[dk-thrive]

This drive toward integrity, this drive to love, this drive to the occult, this drive to art….to become bigger in every way.

— David Compton, on Sylvia Plath, in Heather Clark's "Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath (Knopf; October 27, 2020)