Hymen

by H.D.

H. D. (1886-1961), born Hilda Doolittle, was an American poet, novelist and memoirist. She is best known for her association with the key early 20th century avant-garde Imagist group of poets. Her later writing represents a move away from the Imagist model, towards a distinctly female-centric version of modernist poetry and prose. Her first published writings, some stories for children, were published in a local church paper between 1909 and 1913, mostly under the name Edith Gray. Although the early models for the imagist group were Japanese, H. D. derived her way of making poems from her reading of Classical Greek literature. She continued her association with the group until the final issue of the Some Imagist Poets anthology in 1917. All of her poetry up to the end of the 1930s was written in an Imagist mode, with a spare use of language. Amongst her other works are Hymen (1921), Palimpsest (1926), The Hedgehog (1936) and Tribute to the Angels (1945).

Genres: Poetry, Classics, American, Queer, Feminism

60 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1921

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

[Alejandro Teruel · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 1916, H. D. (Hilda Doolittle) published Sea Garden her first book of verse, which helped define imagism as an exciting new movement. It included several poems which vividly and imaginatively recreated the world of ancient greek seafarers. In The God(1917), as well as her extraordinary and sure-footed 1915-1920 translations of choruses from Euripides, she continued to delve into moments of heightened awareness, the life-altering moments a god casually and unexpectedly touches the inner and the outer eye with inspiration and awe, as well as the myths which spoke more deeply to H. D. as a creator, such as Pygmalion:

Shall I let myself be caught
in my own light?
shall I let myself be broken
in my own heat?
[...]
I made god upon god
step from the cold rock.
I made the gods less than men
for I was a man and they my work;

or Eurydice -arguably her finest, most original and perhaps most feminist poem in the book- with her brilliant and utterly convincing depiction of the lover egotistically dragged back from hell and transmuted into pure fury:

So for your arrogance
and your ruthlessness
I have lost the earth
and the flowers of the earth,
and the live souls above the earth
[...]
hell is no worse than your earth

These explorations of her "Greek mask", as D. H. Lawrence rather critically called them, continue throughout Hymen as H. D. slips in and out of the persona of Demeter, grieving for her daughter Persephone, Thetis roaming her domains from wave crest to sea depths, Circe pining for the voice, for a glance from Odysseus, Leda adrift under a red swan breast, Hippolytus melting in forbidden desire for Phaedra, Phaedra´s lamentation:

The poppy that my heart was,
[...]
like flame upon an altar,
fades and shrinks, a red leaf
drenched and torn in the cold rain.

or Sappho (Fragment 113) and in the sheer incantory power of The islands running on like a dark catalogue of iliadic ships:

What are the islands to me,
what is Greece,
what is Rhodes, Samos, Chios,
what is Paros facing west,
what is Crete?

What is Samotrace,
rising like a ship,
what is Imbros rending the storm wave
with its breast?
[...]
What are the islands to me
if you are lost
what is Paros to me
if your eyes draw back
what is Milos
if you take fright of beauty,
terrible, torturous, isolated,
a barren rock?

What is Rhodes, Crete,
what is Paros facing west,
what, white Imbros?

What are the islands to me
if you hesitate,
what is Greece if you draw back
from the terror
and cold splendour of song
and its bleak sacrifice?

In order to appreciate the richness, the allure and the blinding power and originality of this poetry you need to know something about Greek myths, you need to have read and been moved by the Iliad and Euripides and Sappho and "the white necklace" of the Greek islands anchored to

green water dark
with the blue from the pools beneath.

[Uther Pendragon · Rating 5 out of 5]

H. D. was a major poet, among the best ever. This book is filled with some of the loveliest images in English language poetry. (And it's filled with many other things, like profound sadness and beautiful sounds for example.)

If you like H. D.'s poetry, read this book.

[[archived] · Rating 4 out of 5]

http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/worl...

[Tahira Tahsin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Randomly came across this masterpiece through a Dark Academia thread. Woah! These poems are so beautiful. I don’t think if I’ll be able to describe this book with mere words.
If you’re in love JUST READ THIS BOOK
Dropping my favourite prose :

“I send you this,
who left the blue veins
of your throat unkissed.”

Excerpt From
Hymen
H. D.
This material may be protected by copyright.

[Cat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Honestly, though this well written, I'm not sure how much of it I grasped. It's clear how H D used the Ancient World to comment on our modern one. What those comments are, and what they mean, isn't really clear to me.

[Ross · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lover to lover, no kiss,
no touch, but forever and ever this.

[Tara McGowan-Ross · Rating 3 out of 5]

Weirdly unsettling in a way I liked.

[David Anthony Sam · Rating 2 out of 5]

I do like H.D., but not this collection. The writing is derivative of Keats and the Romantics at their gushingest. The classical references and dramatic monologues of mythical figures do nothing new. And every poet should be allowed only one "ah" and one "O" in their careers. H.D. uses up a century's worth here.

[Merinde · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just love H.D. Which means I loved almost every poem in this book - every poem but one - Egypt, dedicated to Poe. I just didn't understand what exactly she had against Egypt. But hey, I loved all the rest. This book contains some of my favourite H.D. poems; Evadne and Circe.

[Aileen · Rating 5 out of 5]

H.D.'s revisionary myth-making is clear in this collection where she takes a feminist perspective with these classic myths, giving a voice to the women in the myths who had none before.

[Shelley · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Ida Aasebøstøl · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sexual fantasy with so much gold and choir singing it's nauseating.

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars, but mainly because of her technical ability. I have a hard time connecting with poetry that uses, as its main reference, greco-roman myth and etc.