Nights: Novel

by H.D., John Helforth (Pseudonym)

H.D.’s Nights is about one woman’s attempt to get to the essence of her bisexuality and failed marriage through an illicit heterosexual affair––an attempt that eventually ends in suicide. Much like a mystery novel, we are given the clues to the writer Natalia Saunderson’s death: a muff and watch left beside a frozen pond and two parallel skating lines that meet. Following her drowning, Natalia’s manuscripts, a kind of experimental diary, are delivered to a publisher friend, and they provide the details which lay bare the often painful story.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, American

106 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 1986

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

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

First read in 2008, re-read regularly. This novella is disturbing and fascinating: sterile electric embodiment, bisexual / invert embodiment, breathplay & questionable consent, bed as epicentre of universe...an incredibly important part of my mad femme lineage. This is the too crazy, too slutty, too queer novella the white second-wave refused to claim as they resurrected H.D. imagiste's lineage & named it feminist.

[giuseppe manley · Rating 4 out of 5]

an interesting little book. the way perdita [schaffner] frames it in the introduction makes it difficult not to read as a deeply personal narrative of her mother's experiences. the trick with it, i think, is that despite the one-dimensional framings of the characters, one does get a sense of them as real people, or an idea of the people they might have been. i'm not sure i agree with her thoughts on the function of john helforth's prologue, but it seems easy enough to hold up as an explanation for how the characters feel more fleshed out than they seem to be. though prose, you get a sense of HD's voice being put through a certain filter, and the language dances as prosody does.

the copy i read was a bit heavily marked up, and the previous reader seemed unable to divorce their understanding of nat from the image john paints in the opening. i think i disagree, i think john is by nature a very domineering force in the prologue and a shaper much like nat recognizes david to be. the gender implications make it hard to decide whether nat is just what john paints her to be, and thus all the more a tragic figure, or someone else entirely, as her own writing and thoughts might indicate. again, it's very alluring to step back a level and consider how HD might have been feeling, and this might be the easiest way to reconcile what seem to be very antithetical depictions of nat.

[Kathryn · Rating 3 out of 5]

The framing device of this was the most interesting part, but some of the descriptions in the "narrative" (as much of one as there is) is arresting. Which makes sense given that H.D. was better known as a poet than a novelist.

[Juli Anna]

I love H.D., but this is too sad for me right now.

[Paige · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was research and co-reading. You wanna find out how two parallel lines meet? Read it.