H. D. and Hellenism

Book excerpt: H. D. and Hellenism: Classic Lines concerns a prominent aspect of the writing of the modern American poet H. D. (Hilda Doolittle): a lifelong engagement with hellenic literature, mythology and art. H. D.'s hellenic intertextuality is examined in the context of classical fictions operative at the turn of the century: the war of words among literary critics establishing a new 'classicism' in reaction to romanticism; the fictions of classical transmission and the problem of women within the classical line; nineteenth-century romantic hellenism, represented in the writing of Walter Pater; and the renewed interest in ancient religion brought about by anthropological studies, represented in the writing of Jane Ellen Harrison. Eileen Gregory explores at length H. D.'s intertextual engagement with specific classical writers: Sappho, Theocritus and the Greek Anthology, Homer and Euripides. The concluding chapter sketches chronologically H. D.'s career-long study and reinvention of Euripidean texts. An appendix catalogues classical subtexts in Collected Poems, 1912-1944, edited by Louis Martz.