The Poems of H.D.

I.

I am reminded by “H.D.’s” poems of a certain discussion that once started in the columns of The Egoist as to the importance of what is called Imagism. For the one poet who represents that movement at its perfection is “H.D.”

It was in 1915, when Imagism, as a contemporary manifesto, was still young. Mr. Harold Monro, I believe, gave the first provocation when he complained that “the Imagists have not at any time taken the trouble to make themselves clear.” This, I think, was because he was then concerned with their theory rather than their practice; but, even as theorists, the Imagists of 1914–15 were fairly hoarse with trying to make themselves clear. Mr. Monro’s main contention seems to be that if Imagism is anything at all it is not a new thing.

I am not sure that I know any better than Mr. Monro what Imagism is. But I am pretty certain which of several things it is not. It is not Symbolism. It has nothing to do with image-making. It abhors Imagery. Imagery is one of the old worn-out decorations that Imagists have scrapped.

The Image is not a substitute; it does not stand for anything but itself. Presentation, not representation, is the watchword of the school. The Image, I take it, is Form. But it is not pure form. It is form and substance.

It may be either the form of a thing—you will get Imagist poems which are as near as possible to the naked presentation of a thing, with nothing, not so much as a temperament or a mood, between you and it—or it may be the form of a passion, an emotion or a mood, as in “H.D.’s” “Oread” and “Mid-Day.”

Whirl up, sea—
Whirl your pointed pines,
Splash your great pines
On our rocks,
Hurl your green over us,
Cover us with your pools of fir.

The shrivelled seeds
Are spilt on the path—
The grass bends with dust,
The grape slips
Under its crackled leaf:

Yet far beyond the spent seed-pods,
And the blackened stalks of mint,
The poplar is bright on the hill,
The poplar spreads out
Deep-rooted among the trees.

The point is that the passion, the emotion, or the mood is never given as an abstraction. And in no case is the Image a symbol of reality; it is reality itself. You cannot distinguish between the thing and its image. You can, I suppose, distinguish between the emotion and its image, but only as you distinguish between substance and its form.

What the Imagists are “out for” is direct, naked contact with reality. You must get closer and closer. Imagery must go. Symbolism must go. There must be nothing between you and your object. For “H.D.” the tossing pines are not the symbol of her “Oread” mood. They are the image of her mood. The “shrivelled seeds,” the “spent seed-pods,” the “blackened stalks of mint” are the image of her drought. But they are not its symbol. The fusion, the identity, is complete.

I am trying to state the Imagist position as far as I understand it. But there are difficulties. Who is to say where the Image ends and Imagery begins? When Dante says he saw the souls of the damned falling like leaves down the banks of Acheron, it is an image, and it is also imagery. It makes no difference whether he says they are leaves or merely like leaves. The flying leaves are the perfect image of the damned souls. Only the identity is incomplete.

But when Sir John Suckling compares his lady’s feet to mice, he is only using imagery. When Milton sees Satan perched like a cormorant he has got something between imagery and the image. When Keats sees magic casements opening on the foam of perilous seas, he is in one sense a perfect Imagist, since his Image is the thing he sees. In another sense he is hardly an Imagist at all, for he gets his thrill not directly through his Images but through adjectives. A true Image cannot lend itself to mush.

You cannot draw a hard and fast line except perhaps between Keats and Sir John Suckling. It is all a question of closeness. And Mr. Monro is right. Imagism is not a new thing. But in aiming at closeness, in discarding imagery, in rejecting every image that is not close enough, the Imagists are doing for the first time, consciously and deliberately and always, what the Victorian poets only did once or twice in a blue moon.


II.

Imagism, then, is more than a method; it is a state of soul. To see what may be wrung from it by pure genius, we must turn to the work of “H.D.”

In the face of her achievement the behaviour of some of her critics is instructive. Mr. Monro’s attitude in 1915 is typical. He is anxious to preserve a dignified equilibrium, anxious to support himself by Ben Jonson, Dryden, Addison, Burke, Johnson, Coleridge, Wordsworth, even Matthew Arnold, before he can make up his mind to praise the poetry of “H.D.”—poetry that for sheer emotion, for clean-cut and perfect beauty, stands by itself in its own school.

He quotes “Oread” and remarks: “That is all. It can be said in one minute before lunch.” He finds fault with “H.D.” not because she gives him images, but because she has given him one image. He does not see that in this one image there are many things—colour, movement, sound, energy, the whole appearance and passion of the pine-wood and the wind, and the desire of the Oread herself. The miracle is that “H.D.” has got it all into six lines, into twenty-six words.

Instead of thanking his gods for the miracle, he counts the words and says there are not enough of them. He calls it petty poetry, fragile as sea-shells. His fear is groundless. They are unbreakable. And it is precisely along the lines of her example that Imagism has developed.

Mr. Flint has described her poetry as “accurate mystery.” It must work as an evocation. Her scene is one you can place in no country. The thing seems to have happened in eternity.

The hard sand breaks
and the grains of it
are clear as wine.
Far over the leagues of it,
the wind,
playing on the wide shore,
piles little ridges,
and the great waves
break over it.

But more than the many-foamed ways
of the sea,
I know him
of the triple path-ways,
Hermes,
who awaits.

If “H.D.” had never written anything else, this would be enough to place her among the very small number of poets who have once achieved perfection.

I do not know how anybody who does not feel the beauty of “H.D.’s” poems is to be shown it. I think it is a question of magic. If you cannot feel the enchantment, the frisson of immortality impending, then you are past praying for.

To me “H.D.” remains the most significant of the Imagists, the one for whom Imagism has most triumphantly come off. She has demonstrated the power of the clean, naked, sensuous image to carry emotion without rhyme—not without rhythm—and always without decoration.

Her poems do not lend themselves to convenient classification. Passion, emotion, reflection, and the image are fused together in a burning unity of beauty. Even her most metaphysical ideas are presented under sensuous images solid enough to carry emotion. We are always moving in a world of clear colours and clear forms.

She has been reproached for obscurity. We must distinguish between obscurity of thought and obscurity of feeling. Her earlier poems have the finite Greek perfection. Nothing can be added or taken away. When formal perfection is achieved a poet risks repetition or decline. “H.D.” has escaped this disaster.

After the sharp simplicity of her earlier work comes a deepening of range and vision. Comparing her later poems with the earlier, one sees that she has gained immeasurably in depth. There is nothing tentative or experimental about them. They stand as accomplished expression.

If ever we thought of her as cultivating a narrow plot, tied by imagism, we can have no misgivings now. There is elegiac pathos without tears, metaphysical passion rendered sensuously, austere ecstasy, the beat of wings, the rise and fall of waves, ritual movement.

These are the poems some critics have found meaningless. Only a slight effort of attention is needed to reach their magic. Beauty is ageless and eternal. It is inconceivable that any true lover of beauty should miss the divine quality of “H.D.’s” poetry.

As for her detractors—could beauty be done to death—they would have killed her long ago, when first she appeared among the Imagists.

____
From The Fortnightly Review, March, 1927.