Defining a Movement with Hilda Dolittle (Imagist Mini-Series)

Maiya: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Beyond the Verse, a poetry podcast brought to you by PoemAnalysis.com and Poetry+. My name's Maiya, and I'm here co-host, Joe today to kick off our second episode in our mini-series on the Imagist movement. Now we're gonna be talking primarily about Hilda Doolittle today, otherwise known as H.D., the evolution of the Imagist movement, the importance of the classics, and the significance of personalities within the movement, and how that kind of impacts their reception.

But for now, I'll hand over to Joe to give us a little bit of breakdown on who Hilda Doolittle was.

Joe: Thanks, Maiya. So Hilda Doolittle was born in Pennsylvania In 1886 and she lived a fairly long life passing away in 1961. She studied at Bryn Mawr College Where she met another member of the Imagist movement, William Carlos Williams, who we're gonna be talking about in next week's episode, and she was studying Greek literature at the time, and that's gonna prove really, really [00:01:00] significant later on, as Maiya alluded to in her opening. Now, in terms of her kind of earliest involvement with other members of the movement, actually predates meeting William Carlos Williams, because she first met Ezra Pound in 1901 while she was still a teenager, and they began an on-off relationship in 1905. So they were kind of associates, maybe even friends for those first few years, but they began a romantic relationship in 1905.

They were actually engaged at one point, and we touched upon this last week, when we were talking about one of Ezra Pound’s poems, but, the tumultuous nature of their relationship is gonna play a part in the story to come. She moved to London in 1911 and this is really where kind of the movement takes hold we discussed this last week, so if anyone wants kind of a more detailed breakdown of the earliest stages of the Imagist movement to the formation of the movement.

Go back in this that episode and there's a pound because we did a little bit more detail there. She married fellow Imagists poet Richard Aldington in 1913, and this early group of Imagists, poets were very, very close. As I've mentioned, she was engaged to Ezra Pound and she was married to another member of the movement.

She was a [00:02:00] college friend of William Carlos Williams. There was a real close proximity to this group, which I think is really, really fascinating. Once we get into reading the poems themselves, especially in the knowledge that they were editing each other's work, especially Ezra Pound, she published collections over the course of the decade, and one I'm really interested in talking about later on is her 1916 collections. Sea Garden. obviously this period is the period of the first World War and this will paid a huge pine in hill to Doolittle's life. Her brother was killed. Her father sort of is said to have died of grief. Her husband, Richard Aldington, as I mentioned, fought in the war. He came out with PTSD. She also suffered a miscarriage during this time, which she in part attributed to the stresses of the war itself.

So this period of history is really, really significant when we're looking at. Not only the individual lives that were affected, but also the cultural atmosphere that Imagism arrives into. And we talked about that a lot last week about how the changing nature of politics, of science, of sociology, of philosophy is very much front and center when it comes to us discussing the Imagist movement. After the war, her [00:03:00] marriage to Richard Aldington broke down. She ended up in a long, long relationship with a novelist, Annie Winifred Ellerman. She split her life largely between England, but also living later in life in Switzerland. Now, as we alluded to last week, the Imagist movement doesn't last very long.

It breaks down during the 1910s and. Particularly sort of by the 1920s, it splits off into factions. Amy Lowell, who is another Imagists poet, goes in one direction and Ezra Pound's, the forefather of the movement goes in another. So we are looking at a relatively short period of Hilda Doolittle's career today, and that's what we're gonna be focusing on.

But it's always really important to remember that these poets have long lives and long careers that span beyond the Imagist movement. And maybe we'll get into this towards the end of today's episode, but I'm really curious as to what we can read into from their later careers and how does that kind of allow us to look back at these Imagists years?

How influential were they? How much, relevance should we place on them when discussing Hilda Doolittle’s entire career, for example. . But Maiya, is there anything I've. Forgotten to mention there anything you wanna particularly draw listeners attention [00:04:00] to.

Maiya: I think one of the really interesting things about Hilda Doolittle is also how her upbringing really relates to some of the work that we see in the advent of her poetry with the Imagist movement. So, as Joe mentioned, you know, she had a relatively large family. She had, five brothers. She was the only daughter, and her mother and father had some really interesting careers as well. Her father was a celebrated professor of astronomy. Her mother was very artistic, but she was described as quite distant, from many of the accounts and.

The way that she was brought up was in the Moravian community. So this is a mystic Protestant sect called Unitas Fratrum, they have, an inordinate focus on love and peace. They have these really unique traditions, such as love feasts, the kiss of peace, and I think that really starts to play into some of the work that we're going to look at today because one of the things that Hilda Doolittle is exceptional at is subverting.

Within these poems. So, before we even launch into the poems, I really want to flag that it's so [00:05:00] important to look at the symbolism she uses and the language she uses and how this could play into not only the religious aspect of her upbringing, but also how it might change her outlook on day-to-day life. So Joe, with that said, what poem would you like to start with?

Joe: I think when it comes to H.D., , It comes to the Imagist movement. It would be remiss of us not to start with Oread, and, this is kind of held up as not just in her poetry, but actually in the, terms of the whole movement. One of the most iconic. Poems to come out of the Imagist movement probably up there within the station of the metro that we discussed last week by Ezra Pound. it's one of my favorites as well that we're gonna be discussing over the course of this mini-series. And, I will read it for us now. So this is Oread by Hilda Doolittle. Whirl up. Sea Whirl up your pointed pines. Splash your great pines on our rocks. Hurl your green over us. Cover us with your pools of fir. So from the brevity of that reading, [00:06:00] listeners are already getting a sense of how condensed this poem is. And we spoke last week about that drive to economy of language, that ability to condense down to the purest image, not a single word wasted. And I can't wait to get into this poem with you, Marcus. There's so much going on. But I'll give a little bit of information kind of about the background of the poem and what that title might refer to. So, ‘Oread’ was published on the 20th of June, 1914 in BLAST magazine, which is a short-lived Vorticist magazine that was very, very interested in the Imagist movement.

So it's relatively early. Remember Hilda Doolittle, this will only arrived in London in 1911. The movement only really kind of came to exist in 19 12, 19 13. now let's focus in on that title 'cause regular listeners will know how much Maiya, and I love talking titles in poetry. Oread is the name of a type of nymph in ancient Greek mythology, specifically mountain nymphs. Now nymphs are a minor deity. In ancient Greek mythology, so they're not gods, but they're kind of the personification of certain natural forms.

So you would have river [00:07:00] nymphs, tree nymphs, sky nymphs and Oreads are mountain nymphs. Now, I think this is really, really important because actually when we read the poem it itself. There's not so much the evocation of mountains, but the evocation of the sea and of trees, and particularly the clash between these two elemental forces. Now, there's no mountains really discernible in the poem, which I think is really, really interesting. But again, worth pointing out Doolittle studied Greek literature at university. She translated Greek poems, and many of her later poems were explicitly about, classical figures such as Helena, Troy, we're gonna talk about that later on. So her decision to frame the poem. In this way I think is fascinating. It's also worth pointing out this title was added after the poem was written, I think only for the publication itself. So the poem previously existed without a title, and I think listeners might enjoy the process of going to read the poem and pretend they don't know the title, because when you remove that context of the semi divine figure, the associations with Oread and with kind of these nymph like figures. The poem can seem oddly dislocated. It [00:08:00] doesn't, I don't really know where to begin with it, but when you have that title, you immediately become aware. This is meant to be read in the voice of one of these nymph figures. This is the voice of an ancient Greek mythological figure, calling upon the sea and the trees.

The forest and the ocean to kind of coalesce. To merge in striking in often quite violent ways. But Maiya, what do you think about this poem? What do you wanna draw listeners attention to?

Maiya: Well, I absolutely love that you've chosen to focus on the title as a first stop. As you have said, it will massively help how you shape and frame a poem when you have a title that's added later. Now, I think what this title serves to do, and it does a lot of the work for this poem, don't get me wrong, but it really calls out, I think some of those fundamental of Imagism is. In that every single word within the poem has a purpose. And I think that applies to the title as well. It would've been very easy to call this something simple, the mountain nymph, the Sea, the calling, [00:09:00] but instead we have a title that is layered with history and as such that does so much of the work in getting the reader to understand what this poem.

What this speaker is aiming for now, the voice of the Oread, the voice of the nymph is so incredibly powerful here. As Joe mentioned a moment ago, if we didn't have that understanding of what the Oread was, it seems a little dislocated. You don't understand who the speaker is, you don't understand the intention.

But what I love here is the sense of. Boundary crossing. We have a mountain nymph calling to the sea. These two things that couldn't be further apart and the demand for power, the demand for the sea to swell up and come all the way inland to reach this mountain, to reach these forests, to cover them is such an important calling.

And I think the reason I say boundary crossings here is that Oread in itself has location, it has specificity. You know, . Joe and I [00:10:00] were talking before the podcast. Recording today about how really, when you're talking about ancient Greek nymphs, there is actually specificity. So you have dryads, you have, Oreads they have really specific locations, specific histories, specific intentions. But here because you have that crossing, and the reason I say boundary crossing is really critical in this poem Because you have this really wide lens, instead of focusing on the specificity of the location of the mountain nymph, instead the calling is widened to really reach out towards the sea, towards the trees, and here it creates a sense of. Epic scale. I think it creates a commanding sort of nature, and I think that is only. Kind of strengthened by the fact that you have the specificity of who the Oread is, because if it was just a nymph, there would be far less power in this. It would be far more obvious that they have the power to command the sea. But the movement that [00:11:00] we get in this poem suggests that the Oread has the power to command this, and the fact that they are poles apart only makes this stronger.

Joe: I think that's a great, great point. And I love the fact You mentioned that word movement because it struck me, as I was reading this poem just in, preparation for this episode, just how much movement there is, just how much kind of vitality is In this poem, we get the verbs, whirl, splash, hurl, cover, and what it reminded me of was that conversation we had last week about Ezra pound, in which, in that poem, in the station of the metro, there were no verbs at all. It's completely without. Explicit movement and yet imbued with the kind of energy in itself. and what I want to, draw, listen attention to here is we often think of Imagism as being this very, very narrow and prescriptive, form of writing poetry.

Almost kind of an authoritarian view of what poetry is and ought to be. And yet that doesn't mean that we don't have variation. I mean, like I said, I think these are two of the very, very best Imagists, poems, one of them without any mention of movement explicitly the other full of [00:12:00] intensity, full of verbs, full of action, and yet both able to be great examples of the form. So I, love that variation between the two. Regular listeners will be unsurprised to learn. I've done a little bit of a deep dive on Oreads and, and the most famous Oread in Greek mythology is a figure called Echo. Now. Many people will know that word. Some of you will know the story. I will try to be brief. Echo was an Oread, a mountain nymph who was cursed by Hera very unfairly as. Greek myths often are, and the curse was very specific as Greek curses often were that Echo could only repeat the last thing she heard. And that, of course is where we get the modern English word echo from. this is particularly tragic in her case because it meant she couldn't tell the person she was in love with Narcissus, that she was in love with him, and instead had to sort of simply. observe him only able to repeat his words as he fell in love with his own reflection. That's a whole other, Greek myth that we don't need to delve into right now. But the reason I'm pointing this out, I, think is twofold. One, because I think there are, if you'll pardon the pun, echoes of that myth and that story [00:13:00] within the poem itself, but also because of what it tells us about how H.D.'s poetry is different from other Imagists, and how her feminine perspective, I think really adds something that Ezra Pounds didn't have. Let's start with the first of those. We have repeated words. In this poem, we have the word whirl, which is the first word of the poem, and also the first word, of the second line that anaphora. We then have the word pines, which is the final word of line two, and the final word of line three. Now, again, not loads of repetition. But in the context of a poem is condenses this, where the priority and the absolute aim of the poem is to be condensed and to be economical with language. Every moment of repetition is significant. So we have that kind of evocation of a literal echo, which I think is a nod from Hilda Doolittle to the most famous, in Greek mythology echo herself, but. Why else is it relevant? That in itself for me might be an interesting tidbit, but I dunno how much it really allows us to get under the skin of the poem. I think we have to look at. The [00:14:00] kind of tone of the poem to really get a sense of why this matters. This is a aggressive poem. This is a poem in which the established order is being challenged and being overthrown often violently.

I mean, there is a real desire here for these two contrary states of nature, the pines and the sea to be thrust together. Almost without thought of the consequences. There is a real passion and intensity and almost rageful in this poem. And again, I think that it's impossible to think of Hilda Doolittle's poetic career.

Her interest in classical myth, her status as a woman in a literary world that was dominated by men without piecing those things together and looking at a poem like this as kind of a, an expression of ancient female rage. I mean the injustice that was done to the Oread echo, the way in which female writers were treated even in Hilda Doolittle's era. I think so much of that kind of radical intensity is present in this poem to view her career. and I think it's so important that. [00:15:00] Over the course of this miniseries, we're obviously

talking about three of the Imagists. There were other female Imagists. And for its time there were more women than you would expect compared to other literary movements, for example. But nevertheless, Hilda Doolittle is still growing up, working, writing in a world dominated by men, a very patriarchal society, both in England and in the United States of her youth. I think that. The feminine quality to this poem is something that's really worth focusing on.

Maiya: I couldn't agree more. And one of the things I find so fascinating about this poem is the amount of traditions it manages to reject and reshape. Now, I know in our last episode, we talked a little about how the Imagists as a whole were looking to really break away from the tradition of romantic poetry.

Romantic poetry was something they really honed in on as something to walk away from. It was seen as overly wrought. And one of the key focuses of that was its focus on the pastoral. Now. The pastoral for romantics. I mean, I know Joe and I have done a ton of episodes on [00:16:00] this already, but there's a real focus on areas such as the lake district in the uk, this sense of calm and beauty and nature that's been undisturbed by humans and.

What I find really interesting is how nature so often correlates with femininity. There is an expectation that. You know, with a lot of these kind of male poets, especially in the romantic era, you were looking at men as the figurehead of innovation, and they were walking through these spaces, these natural spaces, and reflecting.

They were the thought leaders of the time, and yet the pastoral being reflected on the feminine here becomes something powerful instead of the pastoral being a. A place of retreat and a place of calm and a place of peace here. Nature has power and energy and divisiveness. There is a real sense of anger here, and I think that movement only serves to play into that more.

So what Hilda Doolittle is doing [00:17:00] here is. Not only taking the, tenets of the Imagist movement and rejecting the romantic, but she's also rejecting the patriarchal as well. There is just this strong feminine voice because of course, ards were all women. So not only is she providing a voice to, as we've seen ARDS that were often rendered voiceless. Echo being a perfect example, only left to echo the words of the men that she was interacting with. But we have this sense of provision for the woman in this poem, and I just love that. H.D. manages somehow to not just reject the romantic and cement herself in the Imagist movement, but also in way reject the patriarchal values that were kind of woven into that as well. I think it's so clever

Joe: I couldn't agree more. And I think on That point about transcending or transgressing these boundaries, I wonder actually whether this is as much of a statement about [00:18:00] what the Imagists and the modernists more broadly are trying to do as any individual poem. I mean, it doesn't have the iconic status that the wasteland will go on to acquire when it's published in 1922, but I think by taking something as simple as. Disparate states of nature, the forest and the sea, which never interact. Why would they, I mean, how could they. And conflating them violently, aggressively challenging this boundary, which seemed impermeable, and yet in the, over the course of the poem, is completely dissolved. That to my mind is as much of a metaphor of the modernist maxim. Make it new as any I've seen in the poem, this notion that just because things are the way they have always been doesn't mean that you can't break them. Remember that we spoke about this in our Ezra Pound episode.

These are not people who don't know. The traditions they're inheriting. These are people who are incredibly well versed. I mean, like I said, she studied Greek literature at university. She translated poems. She was multilingual. She's well aware of the kind of parameters of the poetic canon in which she's writing, and [00:19:00] she is very deliberately trying to break those. And I think whenever we're doing these episodes, I want to really remind listeners that these are people who are writing back against a canon. They know well, not writing back against a canon they're ignorant of, because otherwise the Imagists cease to be radical. They just become petulant. This is something far greater than that.

Maiya: Now Joe, I know one of the poems you really wanted to talk about today was Sea Rose, and I find that this poem has so many ties to Oread. And actually one of the things I think would be really interesting to talk about, so I'd love to know your opinion on this. Is how it links to the symbolism of the rose as a symbol of femininity, as a symbol of love and lust and romance.

I know in our first episode of season four we talked about love poetry, and one of the poems we talked about was a red red rose. This poem sits as such a contrast to that. So I'm gonna read it for all of our listeners today, and then I think we should dive right into [00:20:00] it.

So this is Sea Rose by H.D. Rose, harsh rose, marred, and with stint of petals, meager flower, thin sparse of leaf, more precious than a wet rose single on a stem. You are caught in the drift. Stunted with small leaf, you are flung on the sand. You are lifted in the crisp sand that drives in the wind. Can the spice rose drip?

Such accurate fragrance hardened in a leaf? Now this poem is exceptional, but Joe, where would you like to start?

Joe: Well, I think we have to begin with your wonderful reading. . That was very nice, ma, thank you so much. No, but I think we should begin with, again, the title, but kind of the central image, I suppose, of the poem. This notion of a rose sort of growing up out of the sea itself or, perhaps beside the sea. And again, I'm not a horticulturalist, but. My brief research has told me that most roses cannot survive. In, saline soil, in, in soil that is salty. So [00:21:00] even near the sea will be a difficult place for this rose to survive. So right away we have this tension, from the poem's title, this, these two things that struggle to coexist. And yet over the course of this poem, do. Again, we have boundary crossing. We spoke about that in Oread, and I agree. Maiya, this is a fascinating kind of companion piece to that poem. So we have the notion of two contrary states of being somehow coexisting, but Maiya's right the central premise of this poem is to strip away. The associations that Roses traditionally have had. We spoke about this as I mentioned in our Love poems episode, and I would love for listeners to go and check that one out. We're building our own kind of beyond the verse canon. that you can go back and refer to. Roses are associated with love, with passion, also with violence and with blood, and we'll talk about that perhaps, but with femininity, with largely positive qualities here. This language is defined by paucity, by brutality, by scarcity, by transgression, the rose in this poem as Maiya, alluded in that reading isn't [00:22:00] beautiful. Doesn't smell sweet, doesn't grow, as tall and as strong as one might want it to, but it grows all the same. So there is a sense of kind of defiance. The very existence of. The rose in these conditions is defiant. And can we view that as a metaphor for, again, being a woman in the patriarchal society, being a, being an artist, a female artist in a male dominated artistic world? The idea that the very. Environment in which the rose exists is designed to destroy it. You know, we can very much view Hilda Doolittle's career as one that is overshadowed wrongly, I think, by her male counterparts. I mean, Ezra Pound is a much more famous poet than Hilda Doolittle. I'm not convinced he's necessarily a better one. And actually lots of female critics in the eighties and nineties have done a brilliant job of reestablishing Hilda Doolittle as one of the most, formative and foundational modernist poets because. For many decades she wasn't considered as such. So I think that central metaphor is such an interesting one, and I've got kind of ideas I'd like to explore about what might be lurking beneath the surface. But before I [00:23:00] do that, Maiya, I'd love to know your take on this perm,

because I mean, it's such a fascinating one. 

Maiya: Well, for me, I think that H.D.'s focus on femininity and the female body particularly is woven through poems like Sea Rose. I think the address in this poem is something I'd really like to focus on. The fact that this poem is addressed to you rather than the rose as something that is either I or not personified in the sense that by addressing this rose, as you, the reader becomes involved, the listener becomes involved, you invoke a certain amount of female personality, I think comes through this. . And I think what's really critical is where you as an address comes in.

You are flung on the sand. You are lifted in the crisp sand that drives in the wind. The image of this rose being kind of embattled by the conditions around it. The idea that the rose itself has no agency, it has [00:24:00] been weathered, it has been worn. It has suffered, is something that I think you cannot separate from the commentary on being a woman at this time.

As Joe said, being a female artist. Being a woman in this century, there is a real sense of. Adversity here and strength through adversity, because of course the accurate fragrance hardened in a leaf. The hardening, the strengthening of this rose against the conditions that it has suffered through. The majority of this poem becomes so foundational to the future of this rose. I love that this poem actually. Gives us an impression that the story is not over instead of most poems where the story is encompassed within the lines. We end on a question here. We end on a question that has been addressed to you. Can the Spice rose drip such accurate fragrance hardened in a leaf?

And I love the sense of strength and community that's actually brought through here. H.D. manages to [00:25:00] play with what I think is the intersection of femininity and strength here, and I just think it's so skillfully woven in, because of course we could look at this as a commentary on nature. We could read this as we did Oread, and it's more of a mythology or an epic story.

But instead, I think there's a real simplicity here. the way that she describes this rose is, it's embattled. You know, there's a. A strong, strong sense of fear and suffering. But what we are left with by the end of the poem is hope.

And I think it's really subtle. I think it's really subtle, and it took me a few tries reading this poem to figure out where that lay, because the first time I read it, I, I thought that this poem was. Sad, I thought I felt the weight of all that pressure, and instead, I think that question at the end and the focus on you as the addressee.

Puts weight onto the reader, puts weight onto the listener, [00:26:00] and leaves the future of the rose, the female body, however you wish to kind of interpret this poem with you. And I think that's such a beautiful way to explore poetry because of course every poem means something different to every reader. It's based on your experience, it's based on your interpretation, it's based on how you've been taught to read poetry, you know, I mentioned the word community, and I think that's what is created in this close of the poem because you and every reader, every listener who's ever heard this poem, ever looked at this poem on the page, becomes implicit in answering that question. And do we have the answer to that question?

Absolutely not. But the fact that it lingers is so important.

Joe: No, I think that's fascinating. And I think you mentioned how. Readers take different things, different poems, and you'll know this, you know, as a poet yourself, but I think the thing that sometimes we forget is that poems don't come from one place for writers either. The writers are drawing on different parts of their lives, different parts of their imagination [00:27:00] to create something. It's not. Coherent in the way that we often kind of, I think, project backwards, especially onto great famous purposes of the past. We, we often kind of assume more intention and more acy than there was, and I think never is that more clear than this poem. For me, there's two factors that I wanna focus on. They're both related to the time in which this poem was written and published. One of them is a personal factor and one of them is a kind of geopolitical factor. So the poem was published in 1916 in her collection Sea Garden, and obviously 1916, we're getting up to the midpoint of the First World War. Now I'll start with the kind of geopolitical context of that because as we all know, anyone who's studied the first World War, as many of our listeners I'm sure will have done, one of the really interesting kind of sociological developments of that period is the increased prominence of women in the workplace. Men were fighting away from home. This isn't just in the uk of course this is elsewhere, with men fighting on the Western and Eastern Fronts, women were required to take up positions in the workforce they hadn't previously done. Now, if we view the rose as a traditional symbol of femininity, beauty, et cetera, but also fragility flowers are [00:28:00] by their very nature to be looked at, to be gazed at, but not to be handled roughly. The decision to frame this rose as not beautiful, as not kind of traditionally sweet smelling or or attractive, but as a survivor, I think could be viewed as a kind of broader metaphor for the changing nature of what femininity meant in the early 20th century. This notion actually, there is something. to be lauded and to be, admired about women shaking off those previous associations and actually thriving in very, very difficult conditions.

I mean, not only were they forced to take up positions of work they'd never previously, been asked to do, but also they were doing so while dealing with existential dread about what happens if the war is lost while dealing with personal loss. In the case of Hilda Doolittle, her brother died, her husband was away at war. All of these circumstances would shake a person to their core. And this rose is shaken, is battered, is flung, and nevertheless survives. And I think that sense of hope that Maiya mentioned is where that comes from. That sense of defiance in the face of these circumstances. Now the other factor I think is important here, and this is where we go back [00:29:00] to the personal, and I wanna stress, I think poets are. Drawing on these things at the same time, often subconsciously. So I've got absolutely no sense of whether or not here to do little had these things at the front of her mind, the back of her mind, or out of her mind altogether. That's not the job that we have as critics. We're not here to work out what she was thinking. We're here to analyze where things could have come from and what they could mean. And always remember that when you're reading poetry. The factor I think I would look to, to tease out is the personal loss that she suffered in 1915. She suffered a miscarriage, the previous year, so the year before this poem was published around the time this poem was being written. And the idea of this rose that exists in these inhospitable conditions, I think. It's so interesting to read that in the context of this pregnancy that she had, which did not come to term, and she was also told after the pregnancy that there was a good chance if she fell pregnant again, that she would die, that she wouldn't survive another miscarriage.

Actually, she ended up having a child a few years later, but. At the time this poem was written, all of that emotional weight, the [00:30:00] expectation, placed upon women in the early 20th century that of, the importance of motherhood, the fear that, she might die herself, where she to fall pregnant again, the idea of her own body as somehow failing to. Nurture the thing that it was meant to do according to the conventions of the time. I think there's so much of that complexity, that guilt, that frustration in this poem. But like my said, I, I love the fact that actually the enduring emotion that I leave this poem with is a sense of possibility, a sense of hope, a sense that the future is not set in stone despite all of that complexity and that kind of threatened loss.

Now moving on to the final poem we're gonna discuss today, which is Helen. and I know Maiya's got lots to say on this, but before I hand over to her, I'll just read the poem. All Greece hates the still eyes in the white face. The luster as of olives where she stands, and the white hands. All Greece Reviles the one face when she smiles. Hating. Its deeper still when it [00:31:00] grows. Wan and white. Remembering past Enchantments and past ills, Greece sees unmoved. God’s daughter, born of love, the beauty of cool feet and slenderest knees,. could love indeed the maid, only if she were laid white ash amid funereal cypresses. . Maiya, why this poem? Why did you want finish on this one today?

Maiya: Thank you for that reading. Joan. I think part of the reason I wanted to finish on this poem is it is a little bit later than our other poems. It suggested that this poem was written around the 1920s , but what I think this poem does. Is frames our understanding of how brilliant H.D. was at bringing in the classical, but also as I mentioned at the top of this episode, how she handles subverting kind of traditional figures.

So the story of Helen, of Troy in classical mythology is that very famous idea that she was so beautiful, a [00:32:00] thousand ships were launched to save her. she was widely regarded to be one of the most beautiful people in the Greek world at the time, and it was said that she rivaled Aphrodite. So we really have this tension already between beauty and a lack of, and what I find really clever in this poem is the subversion of that beauty, because instead of describing her as this fair and beautiful woman. Instead, we have these descriptions that really detract from her sense of beauty. They make her feel weak and tired and you know, Just to pick out a few of the words that really cement this, we have the still eyes in the white face, the one face, the past ills, cool feet.

There is really a sense of rigidity and stillness here. The, instead of exploring this power and this movement that we've seen in the other poems, sea Rose Oread, [00:33:00] we instead have the destruction. Of a really traditional story, and the purpose of that I think is something, you know, Joe and I, we can, we can talk about this for hours, I'm sure, but we'll try and distill it down in, in this episode.

What I find with this poem is that context is really important. As Joe mentioned a moment ago, we are in a period of massive upheaval. You have the end of the World war, you have the negotiation of how to live in an.

Extremely changed world, and I think what H.D. does here is use a mythological war and the repercussions of that to reflect on what the time the era represents. The 1920s were not stable by any means , and I think that lack of stability is something that is reflected in this poem because we have this impression in Helen that.

Hatred is really at the core of everything. The opening line of this poem is All Greece hates. Now, hates is such a powerful word when in [00:34:00] history. When we talk about Helen, the word and the key operative word we use to describe her is love, love, obsession, desire. So hate really has a part to play here. But Joe, I'd love to know with that opening.

All Greece hates and then immediately reverting to her appearance. comment do you think that makes on, the wider perception of the mythological war as a whole, but also how it's kind of shoehorned into blaming Helen. I don't think it's purposeful from H.D. in the sense that I don't think she's saying this woman was the cause of everything. It was her fault, but the way it's handled is really interesting. So I'd love your thoughts.

Joe: Well, I think it's really, really interesting, isn't it? And I think, for me, this repetition of her pale skin, the whiteness that defines her is so crucial. Here because what we have in the very first line is a person who's defined by people who hate her, not by people who love her, and not crucially by herself. Helen is one of the most discussed, written [00:35:00] about kind of vilified and deified figures of all human history. I mean, she's the most iconic woman of the ancient world, And yet everything we know about her, everything is defined by others, often by men, both within the context of the stories. In which she features, but also by the people writing those stories. With the exception of course of friend of the podcast, Sappho. I think that color white is so interesting because there's many, many layers to that color. And again, we're doing an Imagists series here. The ability for a single word to contain those multitudes I think is fascinating because these poems are trying to push for something condensed and yet what I think Hilda Doolittle's poetry is able to do, one of the reasons that she's, my favorite of the Imagists poet is to. Be condensed, but not to flatten meaning and the repetition of that color white, I think does it so well here. 'cause on the one hand, well. is a blank canvas. White is something that can be projected upon. And I think Helen is a figure that ultimately reflects the prejudices and the desires of the men who have [00:36:00] written about her throughout human history. she's been vilified. She's been a very modern term, but she's been slut shamed. She's been vilified, she's been, reclaimed, denigrated. I mean, all of these things have happened to her because people want Helen to represent different things depending on their own context, their own societies, their own outlook on the world. And I think that status of her as a canvas to be projected upon is really something, deeply embedded in this poem.

She's not a character here with loads of agencies. She's a character who's, Meaning is defined by others in this poem. But the other reason I'm interested in that color white is because I think there is a kind of an interesting historical interpretation to be had here because pale skin was something that was celebrated in the ancient world, and it was celebrated not because, it was a purely aesthetic quality. It was celebrated because if you had pale skin, it meant you didn't need to work outside. You could avoid the heat of the day. Obviously Greece is a very hot country. You could live, weighted upon inside. You didn't have to work the fields that would've required your skin to burn or tan. Now again, the ancient Greeks might have viewed the white skin of a woman as something deeply kind of celebratory [00:37:00] because it meant she was wealthy. Hilda Doolittle is probably looking back and thinking that means women had to stay inside. That means women couldn't participate in public spheres like men could. And again, I think. By repeating that word again and again, she forces the reader to contend with it. She forces the reader to consider what does that word mean? And the more that word is repeated, the more I think she's trying to remind us that Helen's pale skin, Helen's appearance is her prison as much as it is her liberation. She doesn't succeed because of her beauty. Ultimately, her life is defined by tragedy and her life is defined by, the men who fought and died for her. And likewise the color of her skin. The color of the skin of lots of ancient, wealthy women might meant that they were free in Inver from the labor that, often other people had to work. But it also means that they were cut off, they were isolated. They were forced to exist in a world where they couldn't participate in wider society. And I think he doolittle's ability to balance those things is, one of the reasons that I think this is such a great poem and I'm so glad you chose [00:38:00] us to discuss it.

Maiya: I am really glad you actually brought up that sense of isolation, because I don't think it solely applies to the isolation of the woman as a whole, but one of the things I would like to draw listeners' attention to is the fact that in this poem, Helen doesn't have a voice. She's reduced to all of her constituent parts.

We discuss her face, the color of her skin, her knees, the idea that she is just. A collection of parts made up into this grand story, and yet we don't ever hear. Her voice absolutely intentional. There is no sense of defense or recourse for Helen as a character. She has no defense here. She has no ability to take what everyone is saying about her and defend herself. The lack of voice here couldn't be more intentional from H.D.. I think there is absolutely a purpose to doing this and what I think would be a really interesting kind of route to explore with this poem is actually what you mentioned earlier, Joe, is that. Women coming off the back of the World War had [00:39:00] been introduced to labor. They were suddenly allowed in spaces where men previously were Obviously, this absolutely sparks a feminist approach to what women's lives should look like.

And here, as you rightly say. Women were not previously allowed in these spaces , even in the ancient world. So the whiteness, this sense of sterility and purity isn't being celebrated here by H.D.. It's not being celebrated even by the mythological collective that are judging Helen. So there's a subversion here as well, because instead of looking at this woman as someone to be revered, instead, all of the things that made her beautiful and made her worthy of the affection and love and going to war for are instead rejected. So of course, when suddenly we're not placing value on beauty anymore, we're instead placing value on.

work might look like, what she may represent that [00:40:00] isn't just a pretty face, is rebellious in itself. This is a, a poem that absolutely inspires some sort of rebellion. And actually one of the closing lines, you know, before we end this episode that I'd really like to explore is the symbolism of the Cyprus tree because Cyprus were. Often used in funerals. They are very, very important in Greek mythology, particularly to Apollo. There is a in Greek myth of Cyparissus, who was a youth tranSapphormed by Apollo into a tree, which of course eventually became the Cyprus tree to eternally weep because he'd accidentally killed his pet stag. Now. The sense of sadness that comes with the symbolism of the cypress tree, I think is a really critical note to finish this poem on because of course, as we've been going through this poem, hate is kind of the center we revolve around the rejection of Helen.

We revolve around this sense of anger and pain, And instead, the visual that we're left with [00:41:00] the cypress tree. Something that represents the funeral, the passage into the afterlife, an enduring sense of sadness. So again, I think what H.D. is so effective with is using her final lines of.

Or zeros to really change the narrative. She's exceptional at presenting something one way, and then in the very last moment, switching it around. I think Helen as a poem, I know she went on later to write a much longer poem called Helen in Egypt.

But I think Helen, this early poem really sets the tone for what those later poems could accomplish.

Joe: That was fantastic, and Maiya and I, I'm sure could go on for much, much longer, but we are gonna leave this episode there. We obviously have one more episode coming up in our miniseries on William Carlos Williams to kind of tie together the different threads of Imagism that we've been discussing over the course of the first two episodes. I love that conversation, Maiya, and I cannot wait for the next one. Until then, it's goodbye from me. 

Maiya: And goodbye from me and the team at PoemAnalysis.com and Poetry+. Until next [00:42:00] time.