Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)

I bought a used copy of this book a couple of years ago when the 1920s author kept popping up in book related discussion. H.D. was an American author, mainly of poetry, who is often spoken of with Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, and Dorthoy Richardson. H.D. also wrote a couple novels, [Asphodel] being one of them. It is a stream of consciousness work that I was a bit apprehensive of reading because I thought it might be hard to read and comprehend. Actually, though, I really loved this book show more and I'm glad I made time for it.

In [Asphodel], H.D. writes a flowing, colorful, autobiographical novel about her experience before, during, and just after WWI. Her love life is central to the book and frames the action. Pre-WWI, her love is her female friend Fayne Rabb; during the war it's Jerrol Darrington, who she has a stillborn baby with; and then Cyril Vane, who is less a love and more a diversion, but who she does have a child with.

The book doesn't necessarily have much forward motion, it sort of swirls around the plot, but I liked that. I was happy to dwell in the descriptions of the main character's experiences, feelings, and observations. You can tell that H.D. wrote a lot of poetry when you read this novel. She has a beautiful way of using color in her writing.

I highly recommend this for readers interested in the 1920s era of British and American writing. I think this book deserves to be more widely read!

A note also that the edition I could get my hands on, edited by Robert Spoo, has an incredibly helpful appendix that gives background info on the real people that the fictional characters are based on. It really helped me understand what was going on. show less

32. Asphodel by H.D.
publication: written 1921-22, modified 1926-1929, 1st published 1992 (Edited by Robert Spoo)
format: 230-page paperback
acquired: April 2023 read: May 3-23 time reading: 13:48, 3.6 mpp
rating: 4½
genre/style: Classic autofiction theme: TBR
locations: Paris and England 1912-1919
about the author: H.D. is Hilda Doolittle (1886 –1961), an American modernist poet, novelist, and memoirist. She was born in Bethlehem, PA, attended Bryn Mawr college in Philadelphia for a year, show more dating Ezra Pound, and moved to England permanently about 1912.

A gem, but one that requires some reader commitment. japaul22's 2022 review got me interested. (Thanks!)

H.D. was an American poet from Pennsylvania who moved permanently to England where she made her name as a writer associated with Ezra Pound. This 1920's novel is from a single manuscript marked "Destroy" by H.D. and found after her death in 1961. It was a known but unpublished text for some 30 years, a ghost text cited by writers and scholars both for its style and its insight into the literary world of its in London, until it was published here in 1992.

It's all stream of consciousness, with a lot of repetition with individual "paragraphs", seeming to emphasize the writer's constant own bewilderment. It's a roman à clef or, a kind of autobiography but with fictional names, of her years around and during WWI, when she first arrived in Europe and went through several relationships, a marriage, and had a child from an extramarital affair. A lot happened to this poet and literary-world presence. She was engaged and then not to a young Ezra Pound, who she met in Philadelphia at age 15. She came to Europe with a women lover, the author Frances Josepha Gregg, and Gregg's mom, settling in London. Then Gregg got married. Then H.D. got married and then WWI happened. Her husband enlisted and openly had affairs, saying he wanted to keep multiple relationships. While her husband was in France, she moved in with her own lover, and got pregnant. Then broke off this relationship. Her husband came home and there was some confusion before her daughter was born and she and her husband eventually separated. A young admirer of her poetry, the author Annie Winifred "Bryher" Ellerman, became her next lesbian lover and helped her with her pregnancy and baby. (After the book, this relationship got rocky too).

This is an interesting work. Wonderfully playful here, deeply pained there. In the broken stream of conscious, it seems Hermione Gart, fictional H.D., is always searching and never settling. Tormented by bedbugs, swept away by the Louve (I can kind of imagine), deeply attracted to her men (it's strange seeing Ezra Pound described in such sexually attractive lights). She is deeply selfish without ever meaning to be, blind to obvious, but captures her own pains of the moment. The reader must latch on or put the book away. You have to engage in the text emotionally, go into your reader trance and be there with her, sometimes in a rush. Otherwise it's torture. The book becomes an experience, demands it of your brain.

I enjoyed this weird thing, this relic, this messy meaningful word soup by this poet whose poetry I haven't read. I can't recommend it, as you won't like it unless you already want to read it. But it rewards some commitment.

2024
https://www.librarything.com/topic/360386#8544967 show less

Reading this book felt like walking through a dream. The style is stream-of-consciousness, which honestly usually annoys me to no end. Here, though... it's compelling and beautiful and readable and it drew me in. Flowers and Greek mythology abound in this book. And the colors- so many colors!

This is an autobiographical story by HD of her time living in Europe before, during and after WWI. She was contemporaries with artists and writers of the time and some of them feature in her story. I was show more very conscious of reading a true story, because, despite the dream-like feeling of the writing, it feels very real. The substance of the story may fade with time, but feeling of it will stick with me. show less

Re-reading this book was magical, and one can see H. D.'s growth as a female writer among mostly male counterparts—her characterization of George Lowndes (Ezra Pound) is particularly scathing in a lovingly oppressive way only H. D. can mange to convey; one can also see her emerging into a voice entirely her own, one more grounded in nature and indebted to Greek sources.

The real treasure in reading HERmione is that those who try to nicely pigeonhole H. D. into the category of "Imagist show more poet" will find this overturned, not only because her prose is so beautiful and bewitching, but because she is one of the most overlooked writers in literary modernism when it comes to prose.

Sadly, her prose is often overlooked in favor of her fine poetry, but HERmione is one of the best modernist novels of the mid-1920s and rightfully deserves to be on lists of major novels from this period alongside other giants like Woolf and Joyce. show less