Visions and Ecstasies: Selected Essays

by H.D., Michael Green (Introduction)

H.D’s writing continues to inspire generations of readers. Bringing together a number of never-before-published essays, this new collection of H.D.’s writings introduces her compelling perspectives on art, myth, and the creative process.

While H.D. is best known for her elemental poetry, which draws heavily on the imagery of natural and ancient worlds, her critical writings remain a largely underexplored and unpublished part of her oeuvre. Crucial to understanding both the formative contexts surrounding her departure from Imagism following the First World War and her own remarkable creative vision, Notes on Thought and Vision , written in 1918, is one of the central works in this collection. H.D. guides her reader to the untamed shores of the Scilly Isles, where we hear of powerful, transformative experiences and of her intense relationship with the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci. The accompanying essays, many published here for the first time, help color H.D.’s astute critical engagement with the past, from the city of Athens and the poetry of ancient Greece. Like Letters to a Young Painter (2017), also published in the ekphrasis series, this collection is essential reading for anyone interested in the creative process.

Genres: Essays, Poetry, 20th Century

92 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1927

About the author

An innovative modernist American writer, Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961) wrote under her initials in a career that stretched from 1909 to 1961. H.D., most well known for her lyric and epic poetry, also wrote novels, memoirs, short stories, essays, reviews, a children’s book, and translations. An American woman who lived her adult life abroad, H.D. was engaged in the formalist experimentation that preoccupied much of her generation. A range of thematic concerns resonates through her writing: the role of the poet, the civilian representation of war, material and mythologized ancient cultures, the role of national and colonial identity, lesbian and queer sexuality, and religion and spirituality.

Reviews

[Niall · Rating 3 out of 5]

A jellyfish theory of aesthetics with some great H.D. moments

'Our minds, all of our minds, are like dull little houses, built more or less alike – a dull little city with rows of little detached villas, and here and there a more pretentious house, set apart from the rest, but in essentials, seen from a distance, one with the rest, all drab, all grey.
Each comfortable little home shelters a comfortable little soul – and a wall at the back shuts out completely any communication with the world beyond.
Man's chief concern is keeping his little house warm and making his little wall strong.

Outside is a great vineyard and grapes and rioting and madness and dangers.
It is very dangerous.'

[Hannah · Rating 3 out of 5]

four stars for the first essay in this book which was really wonderful, the ones that followed didn't leave much of an impression on me though were not unpleasant. It felt like they were just added by the publisher to flesh the book into something longer than a short essay.
Worth reading the first one anyway imo

[Sarah Allen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Her writing in this is ambiguous and sketch-like. Her meaning is hard to catch, but when you finally do grasp it, you really do - in all her intimate renderings of distant ancient worlds and her understanding of the larger collective consciousness veining through all art.

[a.d. · Rating 5 out of 5]

needed these essays, to remind me of why i want to study art

[Harrison · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Too blue a swallow with too sweet a note!
“‘Let joy not be intense,’ says Eros, though he knows not what he means. ‘Spring has come,’ says Eros again, but a spring, so tender, so gentle, so gradual, insinuated with such delicate subtlety that it can never go.” (68)

[kait nicks · Rating 4 out of 5]

i read the notes thinking “damn she sounds crazy - i love this” (especially when she hit me with the jelly-fish metaphor. then as i read the other essays i thought “damn i kind of sound like her in general essays - i love it” imagists for the win i guess

[Doe · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Notes On Thought and Vision" conveys a kind of meta-thinking, a thinking about thinking, that I think may be too easily confused for a purely esoteric spirituality, or purely a commentary on selfness as the spur of artistry. Quite the opposite, I find it rooted in the real, experienced, sensitive realm not only of love, or amatory feelings, or the womb, or however H.D. refers to it in any given section, but also literal, total experience. Experiencing experience, for a more appropriate terminology, is what I think H.D. wants you to examine and uncover.
I was struck by the poet's precision as she seeks analogues, ways of conveying and communicating, this manner of thought, which I think she does in just the right way to generate the experience of her thoughts, of her feelings. I do find the analogues themselves in isolation generative to a certain extent, as insights into how one thinks of ancients and myth and art-- I want to internalize forever the idea that a shoulder rendered just right in the sun could drive a physical impetus, a kind of actual impulse to make alongside feel, that this external thing acts on the mind directly, as it acted she says on Da Vinci's mind, in dots and dashes, in code and spirit alike.

[Klara · Rating 4 out of 5]

beautiful luminous prose of course - but there’s probably a reason notes on thought and vision is both the only previously published piece and the best one here. the other shorter essays, while beautiful examples of hds attention to color and light, are lighter on intellectual heft and don’t provide the same insight into hds alternative historical/mystical readings. the only one i see myself returning to is notes on thought and vision, a true standout which i’ve returned to more times than i can count since first reading it.

[Rush Falknor · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Satire, the death-blow, resounding of hammer-strokes on already broken bones, virulent acid to eat away decay, has too its death-blow, meets in the end defeat. For when the body is purged or slain or dead, there is a new body, whether of individuals, of nations, of modes of thought, of literatures, or feelings, or emotions. Beyond life there is death, beyond exuberance, there is inevitable decay. Equally beyond death, there is life, old forms in new environments.”

[Pascal Ross · Rating 4 out of 5]

pretty damn excellent book. reading this after vernon lees ekphrasis is really nice i think they feed each other well. love everything hd said about jellyfish. completely blew me away. she writes so beautifully, maybe too beautiful sometimes i felt i couldn't properly absorb it all. oh well guess i well just have to read again !

[Lindsey W McLaughlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beguiling and beautiful. I found the over mind essay to be accurate although I prefer the serpent to the jelly fish as a metaphor for it. Her musings on Greek art and poetry are quite striking. As a poet she writes in a lyrical way about these topics. Kind of wish it were longer and included her other work as well. Too short, finished in one sitting.

[Vershneim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful collection of short pieces. HD looks at Greek literature not as a scholar but as a poet and a thinker. There ought to be room for both of these approaches. And if she is in some ways antiquated, will not we be so nary a century hence?

[Urja Gaurav · Rating 3 out of 5]

this was a stretch for me, I think there are some valiant insights (largely on the first few pages for me) but the deep dive into Greek history and figures made this difficult to grasp. certainly there’s a vision, I only could see it in pockets

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

A worthy set of essays (mostly) on ancient Greek, but not my scene.

[Nelson G Nelson]

i read this in public sometimes and hot people ask about it

[gabriela · Rating 4 out of 5]

she’s so weird I love her

[Langer Sandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

For anyone interested in H.D., This is among the must-reads on your bookshelf. I love the lyric, experimental, mythic poetics of her writing. I really don't think the categories applied to her, for example, imagist are the best fit. She is a philosopher steeped in classic greek literature and art, and her interests are wide-ranging, as this small sampling demonstrates.
Granted, it is not a read for everyone. Even so, I think for anyone interested in new women, Modernism, and experimental writing, it is well worth the time.