The Poetry of H.D.

Originally published in The Egoist, Vol. 2, May 1, 1915.

The poetry of H.D. has been described as a kind of “accurate mystery.” I could not find a better phrase, for in detail it has the precision of goldsmith’s work, in ultimate effect it is mysterious and only to be comprehended by the imagination.

You take a poem like this, for instance:

ㅤㅤㅤㅤSITALKAS

ㅤㅤㅤㅤThou art come at length
ㅤㅤㅤㅤMore beautiful than any cool god
ㅤㅤㅤㅤIn a chamber under Lycia’s far coast,
ㅤㅤㅤㅤThan any high god who touches us not
ㅤㅤㅤㅤHere in the seeded grass.
ㅤㅤㅤㅤAye, than Argestes
ㅤㅤㅤㅤScattering the broken leaves.

And you cannot argue it out by syllogisms. It might have come out of some Greek anthology; but that does not bring you any nearer to it. In fact, the more you attempt to reason about it the less will you get out of it. It must work on you as an evocation.

You may see a woman in white muslin who has waited, not long, but long enough, in the long grass of June, under the shade of a large elm by a river’s bank, the Thames; and, if you are a male, you will lean over her and listen to the sound of her voice, without troubling much about the purport of her words, knowing that they are not a reproach but rather a responsive music. Or the strange names may affect you so that the time becomes a time that you do not know as June; and the dress of the woman is vague and lovely to you; and the scene is one that you can place in no country.

The thing then will seem to have happened in eternity, which is only time divested of its temporalities.

Or take this often-quoted poem:

ㅤㅤㅤㅤHERMES OF THE WAYS

ㅤㅤㅤㅤThe hard sand breaks,
ㅤㅤㅤㅤAnd the grains of it are clear as wine.
ㅤㅤㅤㅤFar off over the leagues of it
ㅤㅤㅤㅤThe wind,
ㅤㅤㅤㅤPlaying on the wide shore,
ㅤㅤㅤㅤPiles little ridges
ㅤㅤㅤㅤAnd the great waves break over it.
ㅤㅤㅤㅤBut more than the many-foamed ways
ㅤㅤㅤㅤOf the sea,
ㅤㅤㅤㅤI know him
ㅤㅤㅤㅤOf the triple pathways,
ㅤㅤㅤㅤHermes,
ㅤㅤㅤㅤWho awaiteth.
ㅤㅤㅤㅤDubious,
ㅤㅤㅤㅤFacing three ways,
ㅤㅤㅤㅤWelcoming wayfarers,
ㅤㅤㅤㅤHe whom the sea-orchard shelters from the west,
ㅤㅤㅤㅤFrom the east
ㅤㅤㅤㅤWeathers sea-wind,
ㅤㅤㅤㅤFronts the great dunes.
ㅤㅤㅤㅤWind rushes
ㅤㅤㅤㅤOver the dunes,
ㅤㅤㅤㅤAnd the coarse, salt-crusted grass
ㅤㅤㅤㅤAnswers.
ㅤㅤㅤㅤHeu,
ㅤㅤㅤㅤIt whips round my ankles.

The detail there is clear; it fits the experience of all of us so well that there is no need for me to insist on its truth by appealing to my memory for corroboration. But the introduction of Hermes into the poem takes it out of our experience; the sand-dune is one that we shall never visit; we are permitted to catch a wistful glimpse of it through the words of the poet; the sea that breaks over it surges in some far country of her imagination; and the wind rushes upon her from the four caves that are in no charted range of mountains.

She is lonely.

If you dwell on the poetry of H.D. you will feel this loneliness more and more. She has lived in the same world as you and I; but the things she has seen and the emotions she has felt have been transmuted in her mind into an unreality that reveals itself in images of an unsuspected virtue and in phrases that seem to owe nothing to common speech. It is the loneliness of a poet who will accept nothing that has not come to her direct, that has not sprung immediately out of her own contemplation; and in this determination, coupled with her ceaseless scrutiny of word and phrase, lurks her greatest danger.

For in the creation of beauty and the constant simultaneous criticism of what is created, you can cut too far and produce angularity, or too curiously and produce enigma, which was the fate of Mallarmé. In all art, it seems to me, there must be generosity and some pity for the spectator; and you may fall short of generosity by withholding in order that the gift may be finer.

The riddle the artist has always to answer is, “How much shall he give?” And the quality of his pity for the spectator will decide this. An artist cannot be inhuman and be understood. I say this because I think I have detected in one or two of H.D.’s later poems a tendency to pare and cut too far, with a consequent slight feeling, in the result, of bareness and jejuneness. But it is only slight; and there is more danger of her becoming inhuman, in the sense I have indicated.

I have said nothing of the form of these poems (which, by the way, have only, so far, appeared in anthologies and periodicals). I have nothing to say, least of all in this place. The form of her poems seems to me to be so inevitable that those who cannot accept it had better pass on. Perhaps I may, instead, quote one more short poem:

ㅤㅤㅤㅤPINES

ㅤㅤㅤㅤWhirl up, sea—
ㅤㅤㅤㅤWhirl your pointed pines,
ㅤㅤㅤㅤSplash your great pines
ㅤㅤㅤㅤOn our rocks,
ㅤㅤㅤㅤHurl your green over us,
ㅤㅤㅤㅤCover us with your pools of fir.

Is it not evident that here is a woman who is creating a body of poetry that is original in form, spirit, and imagery? It is a poetry whose beauty can be pondered on, nor can it be made trite by frequentation.

Need more be said?