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“Different Yet the Same as Before”: The Redemptive Revisioning of Biblical and
Classical Women in H.D.’s Trilogy (1944 – 1946)
by
Andrea Westerlund
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the
Master of Arts
Major in English
School of Graduate Studies
St. Bonaventure University
November 13, 2012
Abstract
Though many critics choose to focus on the earlier work of the poet H.D., work
that fulfills the criteria of the Imagist movement of which the poet was considered to be a
part, less attention is devoted to her later work. H.D.’s later poems differ drastically from
her early Imagist poems and are what makes H.D. unquestionably a modernist. However,
within her modernist tendencies are techniques and paradigms that align the poet closely
to the feminist movement, especially the French feminists who would become prominent
after H.D.’s death. H.D.’s epic war poem Trilogy features the poet’s carefully devised
revision of traditionally androcentric Judeo-Christian and mythological systems. She
carefully revises figures such as Mary Magdalene, the Virgin Mary, and multiple Greek,
Roman, and Egyptian goddesses. In doing so, the genesis of an alternate, more egalitarian
future is formed, a future in which the source of salvation is no longer male but female.
Epigraph
“Re-vision – the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text
from a new critical direction – is for women more than a chapter in cultural history: it is
an act of survival. Until we can understand the assumptions in which we are drenched we
cannot know ourselves. And this drive to self-knowledge, for women is more than a
search for identity: it is part of our refusal of the self-destructiveness of male-dominated
society…. We need to know the writing of the past, and know it differently that we have
ever known it; not to pass on a tradition but to break its hold over us.”
Adrienne Rich, “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision”
Table of Contents
Chapter
Page
Introduction……………………………………………………………………………..i-vi
I
H.D.’s Feminist Revisioning of the Universe in The Walls Do Not Fall as a
Rejection of the Masculinity of World War II…………………………………….1
II
H.D.’s Figure of the Lady and Revision of the Seven Archangels in Tribute to the
Angels as a Direct Challenge to the Androcentric Environment Created by Male
Influences in the Poet’s Life……………………………………………………..20
III
H.D’s Re-Visioning of Mary Magdalene in The Flowering of the Rod as
Redemption for Womankind……………………………………………………..39
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………….63
Westerlund i
Introduction
Early in H.D.’s career she was a dropout from Bryn Mawr College, a struggling
and unknown poet, and, briefly, fiancée to Ezra Pound. But with the publication of her
first volumes and her work as an editor of The Egoist, a Modernist journal, she became
well known as an Imagist and a Modernist. “How did this transformation take place,”
wonders poet Barbara Guest in her biography of H.D., “wherein the girlish ‘dryad’ of
Ezra Pound’s fantasy became the poet known not as Hilda Doolittle – daughter of a
respected astronomer at the University of Pennsylvania, and a kindly, discreet mother
from the seclusive Moravians of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania – but as H.D., ‘pagan mystic’
of Imagism?” (xi). The answer, in Guest’s estimation, is simple: Ezra Pound. In 1914,
after reading Hilda’s newest poems, he scrawled across the page in red pencil the words
“H.D. Imagiste” (Guest 40). And so it happened that Pound had not only recruited
another poet to the Imagist movement but he had also created a new identity for Hilda
Doolittle. From that point on her poems would be signed “H.D.” and she would be,
sometimes inaccurately, associated with Imagism for the remainder of her career, a
“restrictive label…which she adamantly rejected” (Barnstone, Introduction VII).
Pound, in a letter to Harriet Monroe at Poetry magazine, demanded that poetry
should exist only in its purest form: “Nothing in excess!” (Guest 42). He dictated that one
should avoid the “rhetorical bustuous rumpus” of conventional poetry and purge one’s
lines of “platitudes, circumlocutions, and rolling, ornamental din” (Morris 413); poems
should contain no language that one could not actually speak in a real life circumstance.
Additionally, Pound demanded “direct treatment of the ‘thing’”; no use of a “word that
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does not contribute to the presentation” of the thing; and that rhythm should be composed
“in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome” (Pound 929).
Much of H.D.’s early poetry fits within Pound’s definition of pure poetry, and
specifically his definition of Imagism. However, as Susan Stanford Friedman points out,
the label “Imagist” doesn’t apply to all of H.D.’s work: “As Hugh Kenner wrote in his
review of Hermetic Definition1, to identify H.D. as an imagist poet is ‘as though five of
the shortest pieces in ‘Harmonium’ were to stand for the life’s work of Wallace Stevens’”
(“Who Buried H.D.?” 802).
In actuality, H.D.’s later poems became less demonstrative of Imagism than her
early poetry. In speaking of Trilogy, a work of the 1940s and the subject of this thesis,
H.D. explains “[t]his is not the ‘crystalline’ poetry that my early critics would insist on. It
is no pillar of salt nor yet of hewn rock-crystal. It is the pillar of fire by night, the pillar of
cloud by day” (Barnstone, Introduction VII). Trilogy is syncretic and at times hard to
follow but it is, as H.D. suggests, an important message for society regarding religion,
history, and the future of humanity. She intended it to point the way just as the pillars
sent by God led the Israelites out of Egypt and towards the Promised Land. Within this
text, H.D. revises multiple biblical stories and figures while also incorporating figures
from Greek, Roman, and Egyptian mythology.
Many factors contributed to H.D.’s feeling led to deliver a hopeful and
redemptive message to humanity, the first of course being World War II. Written in
London between 1942 and 1944, Trilogy responds directly to the destruction caused by
World War II, which H.D. depicts as unquestionably masculine and in opposition to the
1
A volume of poetry published in 1972 containing three epic poems by H.D. (Friedman, “Who Buried
H.D.?” 801).
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feminine ideas of peace and love. In its polarized and even essentialist attitudes towards
maleness and femaleness, masculinity and femininity, Trilogy strongly previews ideas
that would become prominent in French feminism in the late 1960s and 1970s in terms of
écriture feminine, or feminine writing (Leitch 1938). This idea of feminine writing is
often associated with the French feminist theorist Hélène Cixous, whose 1975 work “The
Laugh of the Medusa,” though written over 30 years after Trilogy, outlines well H.D.’s
process of viewing men and women as essential opposites and of revising maledominated history and theology. Cixous writes: “When I say ‘woman,’ I’m speaking of
woman in her inevitable struggle against conventional man; and of a universal woman
subject who must bring women to their senses and to their meaning in history” (1943). In
a similar way, H.D. writes woman into history and into religion, where previously she
was regarded as less important than man and the material gain.
Trilogy is comprised of three books: The Walls Do Not Fall, A Tribute to the
Angels, and The Flowering of the Rod. Each volume is steeped in mythological and
biblical imagery and in its layering of time and imagery adheres to the style of a
palimpsest, of which H.D. was fond. Although H.D. has been associated with both the
Imagist and Modernist movements among others, the style of and topics within Trilogy
are less a result of H.D.’s literary affiliation and more a reaction against those affiliations.
H.D. is charting a different path altogether.
Within Trilogy three distinct motivators for H.D.’s revision or invention of
biblical and mythological female figures can be identified. First, and most apparent in
The Walls Do Not Fall, is H.D.’s rejection of the masculine institution of war. She offers
instead the feminine ideals of peace and love as a foil for the destruction and devastation
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caused by war. By juxtaposing images of WWII-era London and Egyptian ruins, as well
as intermingling traditional Judeo-Christian figures and images with ones from classical
and Middle-Eastern mythology, H.D. begins a process of devaluing the Judeo-Christian
male God that she will continue throughout the entirety of Trilogy, culminating in The
Flowering of the Rod. Chapter 1 of this thesis will discuss these ideas as they appear in
the first volume of Trilogy, The Walls Do Not Fall.
H.D.’s second motivator within Trilogy is her rejection of the masculine
influences within her own life and career. Barbara Guest explains that “Ezra Pound was
only the first of an interesting list of what H.D. called her ‘initiators,’ literary men, a
psychoanalyst, journalist, husband, composer, academic. These ‘initiators,’ as she listed
them, were all men” (Guest xi). H.D.’s identity was created in part by Ezra Pound and
she was deeply influenced, and sometimes controlled, by the presence of other men in her
life. Within Tribute to the Angels, one can see H.D.’s attempt to distance herself from
these figures. Additionally, throughout her life, H.D. longed for a fulfilling relationship
with her mother; this desire was never realized. Both of these issues are addressed with
H.D.’s implementation of the figure of the Lady in Tribute to the Angels. The Lady is a
revision of the Virgin Mary who serves to establish a strong sense of femininity within
Trilogy as well as allowing H.D. to forge a relationship with a maternal figure and
subsequently offer that maternal figure to all of humanity.
In addition to revising the traditional figure of the Virgin Mary, in Tribute to the
Angels H.D. also revises the seven archangels of the Bible. Instead of presenting seven
male angels, she depicts six male angels and one female angel, who is an adaptation of
the Roman goddess Venus, or Annael. The seventh, female angel is elevated to a position
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that is equal, if not superior, to the leader of the archangels, Uriel. It is with this revision,
in addition to the revision of the Virgin, that H.D. continues her process of revising the
Judeo-Christian male God. First, she offers mythological additions or alternatives to the
traditional Judeo-Christian male God in The Walls Do Not Fall. Once these alternatives
have been introduced, she then begins to enhance the roles of exclusively female figures
in Tribute to the Angels, a strategy that serves as a precursor to her final move in The
Flowering of the Rod. Chapter 2 of this thesis traces these ideas in Tribute to the Angels.
The third volume of Trilogy can be seen as H.D.’s ultimate negation of the effects
of her own personal male “initiators” like Pound as well as the misogynistic effects that
traditional Western religion has had on the image of women. H.D.’s most extreme
revision of a female biblical character occurs in The Flowering of the Rod with the
revision of Mary Magdalene to include characteristics of the traditional versions of Mary
Magdalene, Mary of Bethany, and the unnamed Sinful Woman of the Gospel of John
who is often, but incorrectly, associated with Mary Magdalene. This amalgamation of
several female figures into one female figure not only facilitates H.D.’s assertion of the
interconnectedness of all womankind but also makes her process of redeeming all of
womankind more palpable. Through this all-inclusive Mary Magdalene figure, H.D.
absolves woman of Eve’s original sin. Chapter 3 of this thesis examines this fulfillment,
in The Flowering of the Rod, of H.D.’s intentions for Trilogy.
Attempts to define H.D. and her work within the confines of any one movement
usually do not take into account the powerful impact which external masculine sources
had on the poet. If they do acknowledge this influence, it is in a limiting way that
positions H.D. as the malleable object of male “initiators.” In reality, her forcefulness and
Westerlund vi
power as a poet can be seen in her direct response against these influences and her
attempt to create an alternative future for womankind free of such restricting masculine
control. Through her epic poem Trilogy, H.D. not only emphasizes the value of divine
female figures while devaluing the oppressive male figures of traditional Western
religion, but she also revises several Bible stories and figures with the goal of absolving
women of Eve’s original sin, allowing woman to progress into the future with a clean
slate free of misogynist accusation.
Westerlund 1
Chapter 1: H.D.’s Feminist Revisioning of the Universe in The Walls Do Not Fall as a
Rejection of the Masculinity of World War II
During the Second World War, much of the world’s attention was devoted to the
chaos and devastation the war, especially the Blitz, through which H.D. lived in London.
Because of this the poet felt that she needed to defend her own and others’ poetic
endeavors, as evidenced by her epic poem Trilogy. H.D. defiantly defends the poet and
turns to female figures in pursuit of peace and love, placing the feminine notion of peace
in direct opposition to the masculine institution of war. Her myriad of images, visions,
and biblical and historical references emphasizes not only the interconnectedness of war
and poetry, but also establishes the poet, and ultimately the woman, as an invaluable
resource for humanity regardless of the state of political affairs. The Walls Do Not Fall,
the first volume of Trilogy, can be seen as a direct feminist response to the masculine
environment created by WWII, providing the reader with an alternate version of the
universe more conducive to feminine expression.
The First World War had proved to be much more harrowing for H.D. than did
the Second World War. For H.D., “the first war was death, and the second was rebirth”
(DuPlessis, “Romantic Thralldom 188). A series of traumatic events occurred in quick
succession between 1915 and 1920, deeply affecting the poet. In 1915, as a result of
H.D.’s learning of the sinking of the Lusitania, her first child, with Richard Aldington,
was stillborn. Shortly thereafter, in 1918, her brother was killed in action in France and
her father died from a stroke brought on by the shock of the news. The following year the
poet contracted pneumonia, which by medical standards of the time should have killed
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both her and her second unborn child with Cecil Gray; “[b]ut there were reasons for us
both living,” explains H.D. “so we did live” (H.D., Tribute to Freud 40). Finally, in 1919,
she and Richard Aldington separated, though they would not divorce until 1938
(DuPlessis, “Romantic Thralldom” 178).
WWII, though viewed as an intensely negative experience by H.D., did provide
her with an acceptable excuse to retreat from society and focus on writing. Norman
Holmes Pearson explains that “H.D.’s war years brought an astonishing revitalization.
Silent in a sense for years, suddenly she wrote her war trilogy, several novels and short
stories…and Tribute to Freud” (Pearson vii – viii). This war was not H.D.’s war. Her war,
the First World War, had already been fought and won. As Barbara Guest explains, “It
was no longer her youth that was being consumed; it was the youth of others. So, in a
sense, she was morally free” (253). This does not mean that the poet was not affected by
the events of WWII. She lived with Bryher in London throughout WWII and experienced
firsthand the mercilessness of the Blitz. Beginning on September 7, 1940, German
bombers continuously and strategically bombed London en masse. Though the
inhabitants of London were “valiant and courageous in the midst of the Battle of Britain,”
much of the city was left in ruin, including many of the commercial docks and thousands
of Londoners dead in just the first week of onslaught (Robinson 305). In the British
newspapers, these bombings were with typical British understatement referred to as
incidents, as referenced in the first line of The Walls Do Not Fall: “An incident here and
there” (H.D., Trilogy 3).
The Walls Do Not Fall is the only book of Trilogy that deals with WWII in a
direct and chiefly literal manner, although all three books are deeply intertwined with and
Westerlund 3
responsive to the conflict that H.D. lived through in London. Though the horrors of the
war were intense enough to merit a poetic response, for H.D. the events of WWII also
positively result in what Aliki Barnstone calls “a book of hope, a book of life, and a
scripture for a new religion” (Introduction viii). With a jarring simultaneity, H.D.
presents bombed-out London buildings superimposed upon ancient Egyptian tombs in
similar states of disrepair, as well as intermingles Judeo-Christian religious figures and
classic mythological gods and goddesses. “One of the distinguishing features of H.D.’s
poetry,” explains Jeannine Johnson, “is the way in which it deliberately abuses
conventional ideas of chronology” (58). H.D.’s style of syncretism draws numerous
parallels, both positive and negative, between her modern experience of London, the
world as a whole, and ancient cultures.
Much of Walls pits the poetic, almost always linked with the feminine, against the
wider, war-obsessed public. H.D., again in her syncretic fashion, brings into conflict
historical ruins and war-torn London, the pen and the sword, the soldier and the scribe.
She questions the effectiveness of the version of Christianity that the world was then
practicing, wondering openly if a simpler, more basic variety might suit the needs of
culture in general. She looks for answers to these questions in mythology, summoning
gods and goddesses, which she intermingles with biblical figures, in an attempt to offer
up to the world a more satisfactory solution than war for its problems. “In fact,” Elizabeth
Willis explains, “much of H.D.’s opus is based in this overlapping and ‘pleated,’ nonlinear temporality, devoted to reincarnated, relived, or rewritten versions of the literary
and historical past” (86).
Westerlund 4
There are few critics of Trilogy who do not address this overlaying of present
upon past, contemporary upon classical, masculine upon feminine. Janice S. Robinson
openly acknowledges this palimpsest quality of Trilogy:
The walls that do not fall are the walls of London, the structure of the
western world which stands up to the threat of Hitler and fascism. But The
Walls Do Not Fall has a palimpsest quality; one metaphor is superimposed
upon another. And the walls that do not fall are also those of the poet’s
individual being, the psychic structure which has its foundation in the new
strength H.D. found through her work with Freud. (305)
Not only in her writing, but in her very mindset as well, the idea of palimpsest is ever
present for H.D. The psychoanalytic sessions that H.D. participated in with Freud to
address her increasing paranoia regarding the impending war took on the multilayered,
interwoven, polychronic format that Trilogy would later exhibit. In her sessions with him,
she explained, “Fragmentary ideas, apparently unrelated, were often found to be part of a
special layer or stratum of thought and memory, therefore to belong together; these were
sometimes skillfully pieced together” (H.D., Tribute to Freud 14). As Freud helped her
piece together fragments of memory, vision, and dream with the end goal of her own
peace of mind, so too in Trilogy would the poet piece together seemingly unrelated
portions of history and myth but with the goal of peace for her contemporary society. For
H.D. there often is no difference between past and present, life and death, for she
explains, “The dead were living in so far as they lived in memory or were recalled in a
dream” (Tribute to Freud 14).
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Again, like H.D. resisting a division of topic or time, Robinson draws a parallel
between the poet’s own mental and creative development and the catastrophic events of
London during WWII:
At this time H.D. was going through the change of life, and her own
particular cycle (her ‘worm cycle’ as she calls it in The Walls Do Not Fall)
has a psychic parallel in the destruction of London. The girl who had
written the poems in the library of the British Museum was dead; the
library itself was burned and gutted – destroyed. (307)
The H.D. of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, was drastically different from the H.D. of WWI
and even WWII. The wars had changed her, but even so had simple life circumstances.
She had become separated from Pound, both geographically and politically, Pound
turning to fascism while H.D. valued pacifism. Additionally, her romantic relationship
with Richard Aldington had ended and she had turned instead to her female companion
Bryher. Her mother had died by the time of WWII, leaving any potential connection
between mother and daughter lost within the confines of Freud’s psychoanalysis. During
the air raid of May 9 and 10, 1941, H.D. experienced a vision of an American girl
standing in a hall. Robinson states that this girl is supposed to be the poet herself and the
vision represents the death of H.D.’s pre-war girlhood.
Though many episodes influenced by classical mythology and early Christianity
take place throughout Walls, the image of WWII’s devastation, perhaps because of the
strong impression made upon the reader at the beginning of the book, is never entirely
absent from any portion of the work. To counteract the uncertainty of war, H.D. turns to
the predictability and certainty of events and figures in the past. Elaborating on this fact,
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Jeannine Johnson states that “Trilogy suggests that we require an aesthetic lens (poetry,
metaphor) through which to understand and to personalize what is so palpably close and
yet so difficult to contain in words” (67). H.D. chooses to express and grapple with the
disorder of WWII by turning to mythological systems, figures, and events that she often
viewed as offering effective alternative strategies for managing history, religion, and
dispute.
The onset of war created an environment within which H.D. perceived a
diminishment of the importance of the poet while more so-called practical contributions
to the war effort were emphasized. In fact, Johnson sees Trilogy as “[responding] quite
explicitly to the charge that poetry has no practical function with the rejoinder that
practicality is not the greatest measure of value” (56). H.D. presents herself as a stand-in,
a figurehead, in order to give voice to all of the poets struggling to be heard during a
period when she felt that poetry had suddenly become irrelevant. She directly addresses
the role of the poet in her contemporary world as well as invokes mythology and history
to reemphasize the importance of memory, especially in the poetic form. Johnson
elucidates the connection between mythology and the relevance of the poetic endeavor in
H.D.’s work as follows: “In both poems [Trilogy and Helen in Egypt2] H.D. invokes
ancient literary and spiritual traditions in order to elevate, by association, the status of her
own activities” (57). Though the public in a nation at war may question the importance of
such seemingly unproductive activities as poetry, few would likely question the
importance and relevance of centuries-old and thoroughly established myths (like those
within Christianity and Greco-Roman culture).
2
Published in 1961, Helen of Egypt presents what Johnson identifies as a “twentieth-century feminist
revision of the defamed Helen of Troy” (60).
Westerlund 7
However, as H.D. would argue in Walls Poem 11, without the scribe, there can be
no sword, as the former facilitates the latter significantly: “Without thought, invention /
you would not have been, O Sword, / without idea and the Word’s meditation, / you
would have remained / unmanifest in the dim dimension” (H.D., Trilogy 18). To the poet,
the suggestion that the efforts of the war take precedence over poetic endeavors is
ludicrous, as language, and indeed poetry, impels all endeavors. Additionally, not only
does language predate war, but it is also the primary means for military endeavors and
political contention to be recorded and subsequently conveyed to later generations. In
Walls Poem 15, H.D. describes poets as “the keepers of the secret, / the carriers, the
spinners / of the rare intangible thread / that binds all humanity” (Trilogy 24). Poets are
the keepers of history in H.D.’s view and without historical account, present wars become
inconsequential outside of the context of the memories of the present generation.
True to its palimpsest nature, Walls is full to overflowing with multi-layered
references, puns, and H.D.’s signature word games. Several passages feature a tight
juxtaposition of war and poetry, further underscoring the idea that the two cannot be
separated or arranged hierarchically in favor of the former. Poem 9 of Walls is one such
passage that stresses this idea of the inseparability of war and poetry. It contains a wealth
of images that beg deeper consideration than just a single reading may provide:
Thoth, Hermes3, the stylus,
the palette, the pen, the quill endure,
though our books are a floor
3
Thoth is the Egyptian creator god as well as scribe and the patron god of the arts. Hermes is the Greek
messenger god.
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of smouldering ash under our feet;
though the burning of the books
remains the most perverse gesture
and the meanest
of man’s mean nature,
yet give us, they still cry,
give us books,
folio, manuscript, old parchment
will do for cartridge cases;
irony is a bitter truth
wrapped up in a little joke,
and Hatshepsut’s name is still circled
with what they call the cartouche. (16)
Evoking mythological figures Thoth and Hermes, both connected with communication
and writing, as well as listing tools used for writing, H.D. sets up the theme of this poem.
Burned books are strewn across the floor yet the public still cries for more books to rip up
to use as cartridge cases. Acknowledging the irony of the state of events, she points out
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that “Hatshepsut’s name is still circled / with what they call a cartouche” (16). H.D.
laments the treatment of the books, burned and tossed to the floor, a desecration which
she considers to be “the meanest of man’s mean nature,” for to destroy the created art of
another is not only a vile and violent act, it is also the act of destroying one’s own history.
Important to note is the fact that even if the soldiers use book pages only as cartridge
cases, the page around the bullet, literature still encircles violence. War is still facilitated
by poetry.
The last three couplets of Poem 9 are steeped in metaphor and are the location of
Walls’ most intense juxtaposition of war and poetry. H.D. minimizes the act of war while
simultaneously elevating the status of poetry. While men are fighting with guns and soon
with bombs, the poet decides that words are just as powerful a weapon and are, in fact,
the weapon she prefers. However, she does not entirely remove war from the equation in
this section; rather, she encompasses war within language. She does not take the guns out
of the hands of the soldiers and replace them with pens. In fact, she takes the cartridges
out of their cases and wraps them instead in folios, manuscripts, and old parchment (16).
She again stresses the inseparability of war and poetry. Though, as a pacifist, she does not
support war in general, she reminds the public that their wars will be historically
irrelevant with no scribes, no poets, no writers to chronicle them.
Finally, in the last couplet H.D. invokes Hatshepsut, a queen of ancient Egypt,
who overshadowed her husband’s rule and continued to reign after his death (Barnstone,
Readers’ Notes 177). There is an undeniable air of female empowerment here; however,
the figure of Hatshepsut serves a dual purpose. Traditionally, the name of the Egyptian
queen is depicted as enclosed in a hieroglyphic oval called a cartouche. Barnstone’s
Westerlund 10
readers’ notes provide this definition of the word but unfortunately ignore the additional
meaning of the word, “a cartridge case made of heavy paper” (“Cartouche”). So
seamlessly, so intriguingly, H.D. combines a powerful female figure while also
interweaving the subjects of war and poetry. The very cartridges that she earlier removed
from about the bullets and replaces with old parchment are recalled here. It is important
to note that the poet is pointing out to her reader that gun cartridges are already encased
in paper and, therefore, in the most literal way, encircled by writing and, by extension,
poetry. Though H.D. may see the poet as undermined during wartimes, even the soldiers’
bullets are dependent upon paper and books, just as the war effort is dependent upon
poetry for transmission to later generations.
In contrast to the phallic image of the sword and masculine nature of war, H.D.
presents the Word and the poet as decidedly feminine. Barnstone explains, “She asks the
reader to venerate both her voice and the figure of woman as poet, mystical seer, and god”
(Introduction viii). Throughout Walls, H.D. presents a multitude of female figures who
have either been vilified for their feminine speech or who, H.D. reminds her audience,
have been venerated for their feminine speech. The first of these figures to appear in
Walls, and of whom there are echoes throughout many of H.D.’s works, is the Pythian in
Walls Poem 1:
trembling at a known street-corner,
we know not nor are known;
the Pythian pronounces…(3-4)
In Greek mythology, the Pythia, whom H.D. calls the Pythian, was the priestess located
at the temple of Apollo at Delphi (Mercante 541). The Pythia would prophesy in frenzied
Westerlund 11
utterances, which would then be translated by a priest (Barnstone, Readers’ Notes 173).
The words uttered by the Pythia were sought by many but were still subject to the
translation of a male figure. An important fact to note about the Pythia is that she was the
priestess located at the temple of Apollo, the Greek god of prophecy, his name also
meaning “destroyer” (Mercante 68). Mention of the Pythia simultaneously conjures up
images of femininity, spoken word, and destruction.
Further emphasizing the feminine nature of poetry, H.D. describes her 1920
vision at Corfu, which included a vision of the Pythian, a feminine symbol of poetry.
During the vision, H.D. saw several images, including that of a tripod; the Pythia is
described as being seated on a golden tripod (Barnstone, Readers’ Notes 173). She gives
an in-depth account of her vision, both in nature and content, in Tribute to Freud: “I saw
a dim shape forming on the wall between the foot of the bed and the wash-stand…. I
thought, at first, it was sunlight flickering from the shadows cast from or across the
orange trees…. The pictures on the wall were like colorless transfers or ’calcomanias4, as
we pretentiously called them as children” (45). Assuring the reader, and herself, that
these images were not simply a result of the playing of light and shadow, or perhaps an
optical illusion created by the eye, she stresses that these images were displayed as
though actually printed on the wall. After seeing both a human figure, which H.D.
associates with that of a soldier – “dead brother?” – as well as the figure of a cup, she
sees the tripod (H.D., Tribute to Freud 45). H.D. notes that the image is an “exact replica”
4
A decal or transfer, Spanish.
Westerlund 12
of the stand that holds H.D.’s spirit-lamp on her washstand (H.D., Tribute to Freud 45).
She does, however, explicitly associate this image with the Pythia of Delphi5:
For the three-legged lamp-stand in the miscellaneous clutter on the washstand is none other than our old friend, the tripod of classic Delphi. So the
tripod, this venerated object of the cult of the sun god, symbol of poetry
and prophesy, is linked by association with this most ordinary little metal
frame…. (H.D., Tribute to Freud 45)
The image of the tripod within H.D.’s vision at Corfu is followed by three more images,
one of which had to be related by Bryher as H.D. herself was too exhausted to continue
the vision. The penultimate image, the last the poet herself views, is that of Niké, the
Greek goddess of Victory. As mentioned earlier, this image, within the context of the
vision, contributed to H.D.’s insistence that another war was on its way. The image of the
tripod (a “symbol of poetry”) and the image of Niké so closely juxtaposed again stress
the interwoven nature of war and poetry. Importantly, both the image of victory in the
coming war (Niké) and the personification of poetry (the tripod and the Pythian) are
feminine. H.D. points to feminine images as both the solutions to the problems caused by
war and as victory within the war itself. Almost twenty years before the beginning of
WWII, the poet could sense the coming disaster but more importantly, she saw victory
personified in the form of a goddess.
Poem 2 of Walls establishes the poet and woman as one entity. H.D. first suggests
the initiation of old highways in order to recover “the true-rune, the right-spell” and “old
5
“…the Priestess or Pythoness of Delphi sat on the tripod while she pronounced her verse couplets, the
famous Delphic utterances which it was said could be read two ways” (H.D., Freud 51).
Westerlund 13
values” (H.D., Trilogy 5). Afterwards, placing styluses in the hands of several goddesses,
H.D. bids them not to listen to the harsh words of the naysayers:
nor listen if they shout out,
your beauty, Isis, Aset or Astarte6,
is a harlot; you are retrogressive,
zealot, hankering after old flesh-pots;
your heart, moreover,
is a dead canker,
they continue, and
your rhythm is the devil’s hymn,
your stylus is dipped in corrosive sublimate,
how can you scratch out
indelible ink of the palimpsest
of past misadventure? (5-6).
H.D. gives voice to the mob, those who would call the goddesses “harlot” and
“retrogressive,” using “you” to refer to the goddesses, but perhaps womankind in general
as well. However, the poet bids the goddesses not to listen, though society accuses them
of dipping their styluses in “corrosive sublimate.” The disembodied voice of society then
6
Egyptian mother goddess; Phoenician goddess of fertility.
Westerlund 14
asks how they, and H.D. herself, intend to “scratch out / the indelible ink of the
palimpsest / of past misadventure?” She does not view the goddesses’ “past
misadventure,” their sexuality and femininity, in the same negative way as the naysayers.
Rather she presents them in connection with the idea of rebirth and rebuilding, invoking
both nature imagery (“the lily-head / or the lily-bud” of Walls Poem 3) and images of
procreative animals (“the Luxor bee, chick and hare” of Walls Poem 1).
Although H.D. emphasizes the impossibility and irrelevance of war without
poetry, she was a pacifist and this mindset dominates in her poetry. In Walls her
opposition to war comes through in a strongly feminine and feminist manner. She does
not simply state her distaste for the institution of war but, instead, creates a dichotomy
where masculine war is presented as the antithesis of feminine love. War is dependent
upon poetry in order to convey history to subsequent generations but poetry does not
need war to function. She venerates love in a way another might hold religion to be the
answer to all problems presented by a troubled human existence. In fact, often she seems
to present love as a substitute for religion, using the two quite interchangeably. Barnstone
elaborates: “Love, which brings difference together in harmony, is the answer: ‘only love
is holy7.’ Jesus Christ is the divine embodiment of love; so too and with equal importance
is the woman god: Isis, Astarte, Aphrodite, Venus, Mary, the Lady8” (Barnstone,
Introduction ix). Although H.D. acknowledges the divinity of Christ, she presents her
vision of love entirely through female goddesses and biblical figures.
H.D. directly states her disapproval of the institution of war in Walls Poem 33:
Let us not measure defeat
7
The Flowering of the Rod, Poem 6.
Egyptian mother goddess; Phoenician goddess of fertility; Greek goddess of love; Roman goddess of
love; Mary Magdalene; H.D.’s version of the Virgin Mary, respectively.
8
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in terms of bread and meat,
and continents
in relative extent of wheat
fields; let us not teach
what we have learned badly
and not profited by;
let us not concoct
healing potions for the dead,
nor invent
new colours
for blind eyes. (46).
The first two couplets comment on the unimportance of material gain for which war is so
often waged. She always treats war as distinctly physical while simultaneously
suggesting that humanity should instead be focused on more transcendent goals. The
middle couplets, expressing H.D.’s view that poets transmit current events to subsequent
generations in the form of history, exhort her readers not to teach and thus perpetuate
practices, such as war, that have had no benefit to humanity. Finally, she comments on
the illogic of repeated cycles of war. Having lived through both World Wars, and seeing
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no profit gained from either, H.D. wonders openly why those in power perform the same
action repeatedly, expecting different results. There is no magical potion to right the
wrongs of war; the dead will remain dead and buildings will remain destroyed. The only
solution H.D. sees for the negative effects of war is, in fact, not to engage in the practice
to begin with, and this is the subject of the next poem in Walls.
The thirty-fourth poem in Walls offers H.D.’s alternative to the destructive
institution of war described in the previous poem. She first comments on how the logical
men and women of peaceful times can be turned into “wolves [and] jackals” with the
onset of war (H.D., Trilogy 47). “[L]et us, therefore (though we do not forget / Love, the
Creator, / her chariot and white doves), / entreat Hest, / Aset, Isis9, the great enchantress, /
in her attribute of Serqet, / the original great-mother” (H.D., Trilogy 47). H.D. encourages
the war-torn citizens of London and beyond to turn to love for healing, yes, but also she
invokes, as before, female goddesses from ancient mythology as potential providers of
the solution to the devastation that war creates. She holds up the empowered goddess
Hest as an example of how the people now “wolves [and] jackals” should instead be
acting. As before, the solution lies in love, but that healing love can be found primarily in
female entities. Alicia Ostriker points out that the “trajectory [of H.D.’s vision] moves
from war and doubt within civilizations and souls, to birth and revelation for both”
(Feminist Revision 72). H.D. acknowledges the ill effect that war can have on the most
docile citizens but quickly points to love as the most effective antidote.
H.D., despite her extensive implementation of connotative imagery, nevertheless
states definitely that love should indeed be the ruling precept of humanity. She recounts
9
Hest is most likely Hestia, the Greek goddess of the hearth; Aset is the Phoenician
goddess of fertility; Isis is the Egyptian mother goddess.
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in Walls Poem 5 that “When in the company of the gods, / I loved and was loved” and
that she had never experienced such joy than at discovering “a new Master” “over Love”
(H.D., Trilogy 10). Early in Walls the gender of the God figure is still quite fluid, with
goddesses often interchanged with the male God; however, as the poem continues the
idea of love appears through only, and many, feminine manifestations. As early as the
first two stanzas of Walls, she points out that although the Blitz rages on throughout
London and many of the railings have been removed from the city to be melted into
gunmetal, “the Luxor bee, chick and hare / pursue unalterable purpose” (H.D., Trilogy 3).
Despite the chaos and uncertainty of the conflict in London, these animals, all
traditionally viewed as procreative, pursue their reproductive purposes without
intermission. She stresses that despite the death-dealing unpredictability of war, birth, one
of the most basic functions of life, carried out by females, still continues, constantly
forwarding the flow of life and love.
H.D. continues invoking feminine themes through the use of flower imagery and
frequent references to mothers. Walls sets up the scaffolding for the dismantling of the
male God that takes place both in Tribute to the Angels and The Flowering of the Rod; at
this point in Trilogy, the subversion of power remains quite metaphorical, of which Walls
Poem 3 presents a prime example. She urges, “Let us, however, recover the Sceptre, / the
rod of power” (H.D., Trilogy 7). The source of power in this couplet is undeniably
phallic; however, she quickly alters the gender of this power by adding that scepter “is
crowned with the lily-head / or the lily-bud” and that “it bears healing…it brings life to
the living” (H.D., Trilogy 7). She simultaneously feminizes the previously phallic scepter,
and invokes multiple images of virginity, purity, and life-giving motherhood that gives
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life. She continues, in Walls Poem 13, by identifying poets as “nameless initiates” and
also “born of one mother” (H.D., Trilogy 21). With this single line, she unites all poets,
and perhaps all of humanity, under the parentage of not one father, but one mother, again
establishing the groundwork necessary to dethrone the male God in the later books of
Trilogy. Finally, and in connection with the previous instance, H.D. allows the
mythological figure of Amen-Ra10 to speak. Though the spelling of Amen-Ra varies,
H.D.’s decision to use this spelling is significant. By using the word “Amen,” which
means “truth” in Hebrew and is an exclamation usually found within Judeo-Christian
religious systems, H.D. at once elevates mythological Amon to the status of God and
blurs the lines between myth and western religion. It is in this way that H.D. begins the
process of undermining the traditional Judeo-Christian system entirely so that it can be
replaced with a more feminine system.
Again preparing the reader for the implementation of a female divinity, H.D.
again undermines the authority of the Judeo-Christian God in Walls Poem 37. She
reiterates the first commandment and adds yet more depth: “Thou shalt have none other
gods but me11 / not on the sea…not on the land…not in the sky…not in the higher air”
(H.D., Trilogy 50). This poem closes, however, with her suspenseful question of “or shall
we?” (H.D., Trilogy 50). The definitive answer to this question, presented in the
subsequent books of Trilogy, is affirmative. H.D. will not only have other gods before the
Judeo-Christian God, but she will indeed replace him with an amalgamation of historical,
biblical, mythological – but all female – characters.
10
11
Amen-Ra refers to the Egyptian deity Amon who became fused with the Egyptian sun god, Ra.
H.D. identifies quotations from the Bible with italics throughout the whole of Trilogy.
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Writing in a war-torn London, H.D. rejects the idea that war renders a poet
irrelevant by not only defending the poet but also manifesting the poet as female, thus
fortifying the female sex as well. Invoking goddesses and other mythological figures
throughout Walls, she stresses the inseparability of war and poetry, for the latter serves
the function of recording the adventures of the former and passing on this history, and
perhaps a cautionary tale, to subsequent generations. Although war, in terms of
propagation of history, depends on poetry, H.D. nevertheless asserts the pointlessness and
inefficiency of the institution of war itself. As an alternative, she points to love, which
she locates primarily in female sources. In referencing goddesses and images of
motherhood, the poet not only establishes feminine love as the antidote to masculine war
but also begins to establish a framework for her eventual removal of the male JudeoChristian God and his being replaced with the aforementioned female divine entity.
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Chapter 2: H.D.’s Figure of the Lady and Revision of the Seven Archangels in Tribute to
the Angels as a Direct Challenge to the Androcentric Environment Created by Male
Influences in the Poet’s Life
Similar to the ways that Walls can be seen as responding to the masculine nature
of war in general, and WWII in particular, Tribute to the Angels, the second section of
Trilogy, can be read as a response to the more personal male-oriented environment within
which H.D. lived her life. The Judeo-Christian religious system presented in Walls is
further dismantled in Tribute to the Angels with the introduction of the Lady, H.D.’s
version of the Virgin Mary, as well as the re-visioning of the traditional seven archangels.
Though previously the poet had invoked male gods such as Amen-Ra in addition to the
myriad of female goddesses, the second book of Trilogy sees an even more meaningful
invocation of female figures and a rewriting of biblical stories. Having been physically
created by her father, poetically created by Ezra Pound, and defined throughout her life
by men such as D. H. Lawrence and Richard Aldington, H.D. sought the feminine
influence and approval that she never received from her mother. As a result of the
overwhelming influence of these masculine figures, as well as her constant search for a
maternal figure, Tribute to the Angels can be seen as H.D.’s feminist response to the
androcentric environment created by these external forces.
H.D.’s early life and career were largely dictated by men. In 1912, Pound sent
several of her poems to Poetry magazine under the name of “H.D. Imagiste” (Guest 40).
The poet Hilda Doolittle ceased to exist and was instead redefined as a version that
Pound deemed appropriate to his goals within the Imagist movement. “H.D.’s life was
Westerlund 21
directed, assisted, shared by men who recognized the conflicting elements that tormented
women whom they regarded as ‘stars,’” explains Guest (xi). H.D. struggled within this
dynamic of the female muse throughout her early career. She was surrounded by men
who sought to display her on a pedestal for their inspiration. H.D.’s father “claimed that
his ‘one girl was worth all her brothers’” and Pound had called her “dryad” (Guest 14, 3).
To be placed in these roles of spectacle, object, and muse made it difficult for H.D. to
assert herself as a poet. If a woman must serve as muse for the male poet, how then is she
supposed to create her own art and who is she to use as a muse? “The muse for H.D.
often emerges as a maternal figure,” explains Mary K. DeShazer, “indeed, the poet’s
quest for a strong creative identity parallels the daughter’s search for reunion with the
mother, primal source of nourishment, inspiration, and love” (159). DeShazer argues that
H.D. enrolls the prominent male figures – Pound, Aldington, D.H. Lawrence, Freud – in
her life as muse-figures as well (DeShazer 158). However, I would argue that her
invocation of female figures in Trilogy is in direct rebellion against the influence of the
male figures. For example, having her literary identity created for her by Pound may have
set in motion her need to undermine other male-created images, like that of the traditional
Virgin Mary. Instead of accepting institutions created by men, like war, and figures
dictated by men, like the Virgin, H.D. seeks out purely feminine figures. She searches for
mothers, partly her own, as well as a more authentic and approachable version of Mary.
“Clearly,” Deborah Kelly Kloepfer explains, “H.D. sense[d] a need to re-invent the men
in her life and the male mythical and historical figures who appear throughout her work”
(193).
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“The Professor had said in the very beginning that I had come to Vienna hoping
to find my mother,” H.D. says of Sigmund Freud in her Tribute to Freud (17). Though a
favorite of her father, the poetess had always yearned for the affection of her mother,
which had been bestowed more on her brother than on herself. Retelling in Tribute to
Freud an episode of her childhood, she states openly of her mother: “And besides that,
she likes my brother better. If I stay with my brother…perhaps I can get nearer to her”
(33). Albert Gelpi points out that though scientists (her astronomer father and Freud) had
a great influence on her life, “it was her mother who as a Moravian, musician, and artist
was the daughter’s covert link with the world of mystery” (177). Before meeting Pound,
“[H.D.] knew nothing of literature or art, except fairy tales, music, Moravian legends”
(Guest 4). Perhaps to make up for the gaps in her literary education, H.D. sought
fulfillment from many sources, ultimately locating it in mythological and biblical tales, as
well as her own poetic revisions of both.
Given H.D.’s strong desire for a female connection to the realm of the sublime
and maternal relationship, one need not wonder why she felt led to seek out for herself,
and subsequently to offer the world, a universal mother figure in the form of the Lady.
The undermining and questioning of the traditional male God that H.D. begins in Walls is
advanced in Tribute to the Angels with H.D.’s portrayal of Mary and her importance to
humankind. The Lady of H.D.’s creation is not an entirely original construction. H.D.
establishes early in Tribute to the Angels the classical depiction of the Virgin before she
begins her revision of her. She does not generate a new figure but instead revises a malecreated figure that she views as outdated. She does not build a new system but instead
makes revisions within a preexisting one. As Alicia Ostriker points out while discussing
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several female poets and their act of revisionist mythmaking in her article “The Thieves
of Language: Women Poets and Revisionist Mythmaking,” H.D. does not create a new,
explicitly feminine language within her writing, but rather she takes androcentric
language and repurposes it for her own goals. She utilizes the language of war and
masculine mythology, then regularly redefines and undermines it.
Melody M. Zajdel reads Trilogy as a feminist rebellion against the movement of
modernism as a whole and its inherent masculinity. She sees the entire work as “both a
repudiation of the patriarchal tradition we know and a re-vision of the world, the powers
and qualities we have forgotten” (7). This view can clearly be seen in the transition from
Walls to Tribute to the Angels. H.D. sets up the necessary groundwork in presenting the
masculine Judeo-Christian religious system and then begins the process of dismantling it
later in the work. Undeniably a response to war, Trilogy establishes multiple masculine
paradigms which she later endeavors to dismantle, undermine, or replace entirely. War is
replaced with love; God with goddess; and man with woman.
Rachel Blau DuPlessis attributes this need to reinvent the male figures in her life
to H.D.’s discontent with the dynamic of heterosexual “romantic thralldom.” She points
out the disconnect between the sexual and cultural systems, the former allowing power to
flow from male to female and back again, while the latter establishes the female as
subordinate. “To write,” she explains, “the woman must struggle against the weight of
both systems [sexual and cultural], and the center of the struggle is her need to take
control of her story. She must de-story the old story…” (DuPlessis, “Family, Sexes,
Psyche” 74). In seeking to subvert these systems, H.D. establishes new systems that are
“less damaging than, but equally as satisfying as those she and other women had
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experienced” (DuPlessis, “Romantic Thralldom” 178). These new systems are first
created alongside the old systems, as presented in Walls, but by the beginning of Tribute
to the Angels, these new systems have begun to take the place of the old ones with the
Lady at the core of it the new structure.
H.D. clearly identifies the Lady as “the new Eve” in Poem 36 of Tribute to the
Angels: a feminine entity has come “to return, to retrieve / what [Eve] lost the race” (H.D.,
Trilogy 101). The Lady is presented as a redemptive figure who will elevate women from
their status as enactors of original sin; she makes up for the earlier sins of Eve. Jaroslav
Pelikan traces the genealogy of this idea of the “new Eve” in his book Mary Through the
Centuries: Her Place in History and Culture. As early as the second and third centuries
A.D., intense theological attention was devoted to the parallel connection between Eve
and Mary (Pelikan 39). In scripture Christ is described as “The first man…of the earth,
made of dust” and the parallel between Adam and Jesus, the latter being a “new Adam,”
is presented explicitly with Jesus being described as “the second Man…from heaven”
(Holy Bible: New King James Version, 1 Cor. 15:47).
Analogous to the position of Christ as a second Adam is the parallel of the Virgin
as a second Eve. Irenaeus of Lyons, one of the first writers to suggest this parallel but
likely drawing on philosophy of the time and even information from the apostles
themselves, presents this connection as a solution to the debate over Christ’s humanity.
Pelikan offers the following passage from Irenaeus’s Proof of the Apostolic Preaching as
“the most innovative and most breathtaking of the parallels” between Eve and Mary:
And just as it was thought a virgin who disobeyed [namely, Eve] that
mankind was stricken and fell and died, so too it was through the Virgin
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[Mary], who obeyed the word of God, that mankind, resuscitated by life,
received life…. And Eve [had necessarily to be restored] in Mary, that a
virgin, by becoming the advocate of a virgin, should undo and destroy the
virginal disobedience by virginal obedience. (qtd. in Pelikan 42 – 43,
emphasis Pelikan’s)
Resolving the question of Christ’s humanity and indeed confirming Mary’s active
involvement in the birth, Irenaeus presents Mary’s obedience to God as a corrective act
for Eve’s disobedience of God. Pelikan stresses, however, that to maintain the “integrity
of the two narratives” both Mary and Eve’s acts of obedience and disobedience,
respectively, must be seen as acts of free will (43).
Many of H.D.’s feminist revisionist inclinations can be traced back to her
Moravian heritage, which is rooted in Protestantism (Sawyer 4). “[Tribute] combines
Gnosticism with H.D’s Moravian background in order to redeem Eve for her sinless
knowledge and independence – to redeem women since they are blamed for Eve’s ‘sin,’”
explains Aliki Barnstone. Additionally, the Moravian tradition “exalted the feminine” and
the founder of the Moravian church was deemed a heretic for his belief that every human
soul was female (Barnstone, Introduction xv). Even in her vision at Corfu, described in
Tribute to Freud, many of the items that H.D. sees on the wall are decidedly Moravian,
such as the reversed S, which can be compared to the serpent that the Moravians
acknowledged as signifying “Sanctus Spiritus, the Holy Spirit” (Tribute to Freud, H.D.
44-56; Barnstone, Introduction xv-xvi).
It is not until Tribute to the Angels Poem 25 that H.D. presents the multifaceted
figure of the Lady. While the speaker is “talking casually / with friends in the other room,”
Westerlund 26
a light begins to glow from the hallway and where the door had been the Lady appears.
The speaker is quick to remind the reader that “this was a dream of course,” perhaps not
to arouse suspicion about her sanity, as Freud had already referred to her vision at Corfu
as “dangerous” (H.D., Tribute to Freud 41). The friends wonder at their power in
bringing the Lady into their presence but find the event “all natural enough”. H.D. does
not take responsibility for Mary’s visit to the world. Rather she admits to having called
upon Gabriel (“I had been thinking of Gabriel”) but having been graced with a vision of
the Lady as an alternative. Her initial inclination to reach out to Gabriel is not because
H.D. thought Mary to be subordinate to Gabriel; the Lady seemed, to the poet anyway,
beyond her reach. “[H]ow could I imagine / the Lady herself would come instead?” H.D.
asks herself in Poem 28 (Trilogy 92). She acknowledges her own insignificance here,
marveling that she received an audience with the Lady herself instead of one of her
archangel representatives. However, the evaporation of the door as the Lady appears can
also be seen as an erasure of barriers between the Lady and the poet, an approachability
that will be addressed later in this chapter.
In Poem 36 of Tribute to the Angels, H.D., while describing her vision of the
Lady, explicitly states, “this is the new Eve who comes / clearly to return, to retrieve /
what she lost the race” (H.D., Trilogy 101). The poet makes this association openly,
likely well-studied in the history and implications of the idea. Though H.D.’s Lady is
definitely “the new Eve,” a redeemer of womankind, she differs from the “restored” Eve
set forth by Irenaeus of Lyons, as discussed earlier. This Mary, though serving as
reparation for the sin committed by Eve, is not depicted as strictly obedient to God, as
stressed by Pelikan. Rather the Lady serves as a complement to, if not replacement for,
Westerlund 27
God himself. In H.D.’s reality the male God is no longer the sole path to religion and
salvation. She offers up this alternate Mary as the savior of humanity, and a redemptive
figure for womankind specifically.
Perhaps for those unaware of the long history of Marian iconography, H.D. offers
an overview of previous artistic and devotional depictions of the Lady, or the Virgin
Mary:
we have seen her snood
drawn over her hair,
of her face set in profile
with the blue hood and stars;
we have seen her head bowed down
with the weight of a domed crown,
or we have seen her, a wisp of a girl
trapped in a golden halo;
…………………………………….
we have seen her sleeve
of every imaginable shade
of damask and figured brocade;
it is true (93 – 94)
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The Mary of previous generations, the Lady outside of H.D.’s dream, has been depicted
in a demure, artificial manner. She is pure, befitting a virgin, and above all, she is
innocent. However, H.D. sees things in this conventional depiction of Mary that perhaps
others may overlook. The poet notices her covered hair, her bowed head, always bent
downward under the weight of her “golden halo.” This classical Mary is not bowing her
head in reverence to God. Instead she is trapped within her halo. H.D.’s Mary is trapped,
too, within the parameters of this innocent and virginal image that artists have bestowed
upon her.
The Lady of H.D.’s vision differs from this trapped and demure Mary of artistic
depiction. She points out that though “the painters did very well by her; / it is true, they
missed never a line…none of these, none of these / suggest her as I saw her,” (H.D.,
Trilogy 96). The former portrayals, H.D. points out, “approach possibly / something of
her cool beneficence” and historical icons have correctly represented the whiteness of her
appearance; however, a significant difference soon becomes apparent: “she bore / none of
her usual attributes; / the Child was not with her” (H.D., Trilogy 97). Described as
lacking “gold,” “gleam,” and “girdle,” this new Virgin lacks the artificiality, the
perfection of her historical counterpart and she has been removed, at least somewhat,
from her singular role as mother. Instead, the Lady becomes at once approachable: “She
is not impalpable like a ghost, / she was not awe-inspiring like a Spirit, / she was not even
over-whelming / like an Angel” (H.D., Trilogy 106). Nor is she “imprisoned in leaden
bars / in a coloured window;” she is freed from her role as Virgin and as mother of God
(H.D., Trilogy 103). Though H.D. does not explicitly remove these labels from the Lady,
she does remove the limitations of these roles previously imposed by representations of
Westerlund 29
the Virgin. Appearing without the Child Jesus, the Lady is allowed new associations
outside of the restrictions of her virginity and motherhood.
The Lady, as opposed to the Virgin of old, is free from many of the constraints
that previously limited her. She is “different yet the same as before” (H.D., Trilogy 105).
She is still the Virgin, still the mother of God, but she is physically freed from the Child
by not bringing him with her. She is now presented to us and “her attention is undivided,”
allowing for us to become “her bridegroom and lamb” (H.D., Trilogy 104). This Lady is
not artificial but approachable and relatable. What’s more, she is “pleased with us”: the
absence of the Child, who limits the Lady to only the roles of virgin and mother, allows
the Lady to confer this pleasure on us (H.D., Trilogy 100).
The fact that the Lady is pleased is important; she is given an opinion, a voice,
something she lacks when trapped “in leaden bars / in a coloured window” (H.D., Trilogy
103). It is important, also, to note that “she is not shut up in a cave / like a Sibyl…she is
Psyche, the butterfly, / out of the cocoon” (H.D., Trilogy 103). Unlike the prophetic Sibyl,
cursed with immortality and wishing for death, the Lady is instead “the Psyche”
(Barnstone, Readers’ Notes 192; H.D., Trilogy 103). Likely drawing on Freud’s theories
regarding the psyche, H.D. not only gives the Lady consciousness, but she manifests the
Lady as consciousness. Additionally, if one considers the Greek “psyche,” meaning soul,
H.D. can be seen as gendering the soul as female much as the Moravians do. The Lady
has been freed of “the cocoon” of her responsibilities as Mother and Virgin. She is not
trapped or tied down by the Child. Instead she is given a chance to express her opinions
and create a new identity for herself.
Westerlund 30
As a pacifist, and having been especially affected by World War I, H.D. also
presents the Lady as a solution to the problem of war; the Lady is anti-war. She is
described as “the counter coin-side / of primitive terror; / she is not-fear, she is not-war”
(H.D., Trilogy 104). However, as mentioned before, this version of the Lady is the same
woman that can be found in stained-glass windows and biblical tales. Though she is pure
and innocent, “she is no symbolic figure / of peace, charity, chastity, goodness, / faith,
hope, reward; / she is not Justice with eyes / blindfolded like Love’s” (H.D., Trilogy 104).
She is not a “vas spiritual, / not rosa mystica1 even” (H.D., Trilogy 109, emphasis
H.D.’s). Her role is no longer limited and artificial; she is no longer simply a vessel for
Christ. She remains immaculate but the child is not with her. Jesus does not appear in
Tribute directly. Mary is removed from the context of being mother only and instead we,
the readers, become “her bridegroom and lamb” (H.D., Trilogy 104).
It is worth mentioning, too, that this Lady is depicted as a patron of the poet: “She
must have been pleased with us…with the straggling company of the brush and quill”
(H.D., Trilogy 100). She herself has brought with her a book, which H.D. identifies as
“the Book of Life obviously” (H.D., Trilogy 101). This book, however, “is not / the tome
of ancient wisdom” and its pages are empty; it is “the unwritten volume of the new”
(H.D., Trilogy 103). The Lady has brought the book with her, H.D. believes, “either to
imply / she was one of us, with us, / or to suggest she was satisfied / with our purpose, a
tribute to the Angels” (H.D., Trilogy 107). Albert Gelpi, in discussing the idea of
parthenogenesis, draws a parallel between the book that the Lady carries with her and
Trilogy: “the Virgin-scribe writes the book of the Virgin-mother…. The poet-mother
cradles the bundled flowers and leaves of Trilogy” (188). Whereas the Child, Jesus, has
1
Spiritual vessel; mystic rose (Barnstone, Readers’ Notes 193).
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previously been seen as the Word or Book and vice versa, now the Book that the Lady
carries is a new creation yet to be filled. The Virgin becomes dissociated with her role as
mother but instead becomes a purveyor of poetry and the written word. Appropriately, in
H.D.’s mind, the image of the Lady is never far removed from the image of H.D. herself.
Within the dialogue in Tribute to Freud, Freud himself recognizes the parallel between
the poet and the Virgin: “‘You were born in Bethlehem [Pennsylvania]…Bethlehem is
the town of Mary” (H.D., Tribute to Freud 123). The Virgin has come to redeem
womankind and H.D. has come to redeem the poet as well as deliver the redemption of
the Lady to mankind.
It is possible that, feeling she lacked the attention and affection from her mother,
that H.D. sought out the Lady as a surrogate mother figure. Having admitted to Freud that
“she [H.D.’s mother] likes my brother better” and having expressed a desire to “get
nearer to her,” it seems likely that the poet might imagine a relationship wherein she
could guarantee that she would receive the validation she desired (H.D., Tribute to Freud
33, emphasis H.D.’s). The Lady “ must have been pleased with us / for she looked so
kindly at us” (H.D., Trilogy 100). Poem 8 of Tribute to the Angels offers one of the most
overt examples of the parallel between H.D.’s own mother and the revised female role
model found in the Lady:
Now polish the crucible
and in the bowl distill
a word most bitter, marah2,
a word bitterer still, mar3,
2
Bitter, Hebrew (Barnstone, Readers’ Notes 187).
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sea, brine, breaker, seducer,
giver of life, giver of tears;
Now polish the crucible
and set the jet of the flame
under, till marah-mar
are melted, fuse and join
and change and alter,
mer, mere, mère, mater, Maia, Mary4,
Star of the Sea,
Mother. (71)
Referencing alchemy, H.D. sets up the tools she will need in order to transmogrify the
Virgin Mary as well as the poet’s own mother. With the crucible and bowl ready, she
seeks to “distill” previously bitter entities into an ultimate mother figure. Barnstone’s
Readers’ Notes identify “marah” as the Hebrew for bitter and “mar” as the Spanish for
sea; however, Barnstone does not account for the additional connotation of “mar” as to
deface or blemish, an especially bitter meaning (187).
Though the Virgin is overtly prevalent in Poem 8, H.D.’s mother can also be
traced throughout; however, she is ultimately transformed into and realized through Mary.
3
Sea, Spanish (Barnstone, Readers’ Notes 187).
Sea, French; lake or pond, British; mother, French; mother, Latin; Hermes’ mother in Greek mythology;
the Virgin Mary and, in Flowering of the Rood, Mary Magdalene (Barnstone, Readers’ Notes 187).
4
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The negative identifiers such as “bitter” and “breaker” can be read in connection with the
less-than-ideal relationship that H.D. had with her mother (H.D., Trilogy 71).
Additionally, her mother would quite literally be for H.D. the “giver of life, giver of tears”
(H.D., Trilogy 71). The final line of Poem 8, a single word, “Mother,” simultaneously
identifies both the poet’s mother and Mary the Mother of God (H.D., Trilogy 71). Mary is
mentioned by name in the second line of the penultimate couplet along with other
expressions of mother and images of the sea. Like the sea, the identities of these figures
are fluid and no longer fixed. Any bitter associations with Mary or Helen Doolittle
(H.D.’s mother) “are melted” and the two are “fuse[d] and join[ed] / and change[d] and
alter[ed]” (H.D., Trilogy 71). The sea (mer) leads to the lowercase mother (mater) which
then leads to Mary and ultimately Mother. This single expression of “Mother,” with a
capital ‘M,’ allows the reader to read both H.D.’s mother and the ultimate Christian
mother, the Virgin Mary, into the text.
Perhaps the clearest demonstration of H.D.’s distaste with the male-created
systems within which she found herself is her revisioning of the seven archangels from
six males to six males and one female. This revision serves as yet another subversion
technique that sets the stage for the eventual dethroning of the male Judeo-Christian God.
Throughout Tribute to the Angels, H.D. introduces six male angels, drawing on the Bible,
the Koran, and The Book of Enoch. Azrael5, Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel are introduced in
Poem 5 (H.D., Trilogy 67); Michael and Zadkiel can be found in Poems 41 and 42 (H.D.,
Trilogy 107-8). H.D. points out that “Old Zadkiel is really our old Amen again—now
5
“In the Koran, Azrael is the angel who parts the body from the soul at death…. The name and concept
were borrowed from Judaism…H.D. wrote: ‘“The Angel names are more or less traditional O[ld]
T[estament], though I used the Mohammedan name for planet Saturn, ruler of time and death, Azrael’”
(Barnstone, Readers’ Notes 186, emphasis Barnstone’s).
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having an angel-name; there is a traditional Zadkiel but [I] do not know if [it is]
mentioned in Writ—but there is Uriel, I believe, and some are named in the Aprocryphal
[sic] Book of Enoch which I can never place’” (Barnstone, Readers’ Notes 192). The poet
has relegated the once-powerful Amen – the Christian exclamation usually used in
relation to God as well as the mythological sun god Amen-Ra – to the subordinate
position of archangel, leaving space for the future devaluation of the male God.
To these six male archangels H.D. has added a seventh, the female figure of
Annael, beginning in Poem 15. The poet identifies Annael as the figure of Venus6,
although she has taken liberty with the spelling and explains that, “I distinctly link the
L[ady] up with Venus-Annael, with the Moon, with the pre-Christian Roman Bona Dea7,
with the Byzantine Greek church Santa Sophia and the SS of the Sanctus Spiritus”
(Barnstone, Readers’ Notes 188; qtd. in Barnstone, Readers’ Notes 190). As in Walls the
theme of love is readily apparent, highlighted by goddesses of love such as Aphrodite8
and Astarte9 in Tribute to the Angels Poem 10. Also similar to Walls Poem 10, Tribute to
the Angels Poem 11 finds H.D. defending the goddesses from naysayers who would
associate their embodiment of love with impure sexuality and promiscuity:
O swiftly, re-light the flame
before the substance cool,
for suddenly we saw your name
desecrated; knaves and fools
6
Roman goddess of love
“An ancient fertility goddess worshiped only by women. No man could be present at her festival…. Bona
Dea means ‘good goddess’ (Lat.)” (Barnstone, Readers’ Notes 191).
8
Greek goddess of love
9
Phoenician goddess of love
7
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have done you impious wrong,
Venus, for venery stands for impurity
and Venus as desire
is venereous, lascivious,
while the very root of the word shrieks
like a mandrake when foul witches pull
its stem at midnight,
and rare mandragora itself
is full, they say, of poison,
food for the witches’ den. (74)
Again, making reference to alchemy, and foreshadowing the transformation of the Virgin
that this chapter has already discussed, H.D. expresses an urgent need to return to her
revisionary tasks, for the reputations of the goddesses are again being threatened.
However, taking a more aggressive stance against the naysayers than is seen in Walls, the
poet calls these individuals “knaves and fools” (H.D., Trilogy 74).
Throughout Poem 11 and Poem 12, H.D. looks at the various derivations from the
name Venus, the first being venery. She remarks at the foolishness of assigning a
negative connotation to Venus’ association with love, sexuality, and indeed sexual love,
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as these “knaves and fools have done.” H.D. likens this unfavorable view of Venus’
sexuality to the scream of a mandrake, a plant whose shriek renders insane or kills
anyone who hears it (Barnstone, Readers’ Notes 188). According to the poet, this
vilification of sexuality is not only a ludicrous notion but also capable of deteriorating the
sanity of the society that perpetuates the stereotype. In quite an effective reetymologizing, H.D. points out in Poem 12 that the name Venus has honorable
derivations: “Venus whose name is kin / to venerate, / venerator” (H.D., Trilogy 75). This
observation serves multiple functions in H.D.’s mission to redeem womankind and
establish a gynocentric religious system. First, it reminds the reader, and ultimately the
aforementioned naysayers, that a narrow definition of sexuality is not only foolish but
also inaccurate. Two such different words as “venereous” and “venerate” can be derived
from the same stem as Venus, the female embodiment of love. To focus only on the
negative associations of this entity is limiting. Additionally, this passage suggests that we
should not vilify sexuality but in fact venerate it. Throughout Trilogy, H.D. repeatedly
invokes images of sexuality, motherhood, fertility, and femininity in positive and healing
ways. She seeks to overturn negative stereotypes inflicted by androcentric social and
religious systems that limit women regarding their role and sexuality. H.D.’s lesbian
relationship with Bryher in later years can be seen as a direct parallel to this sentiment.
A final step that H.D. takes in dismantling the male-centered Judeo-Christian
system is a subtle one. Tribute to the Angels Poem 7 subtly undermines Uriel, whom H.D.
depicts throughout as the leader of the male archangels. She points out that “To Uriel
[there is] no shrine, no temple…no image by the city-gate” (H.D., Trilogy 70). However,
throughout history many temples have been devoted to Venus. Not only does H.D. thus
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emphasize on mythology over Western religion, she also reveres the feminine over the
masculine. However, H.D. does point out that:
this is the flowering of the rood10,
this is the flowering of the reed,
where, Uriel, we pause to give
thanks that we rise again from death and live. (Trilogy 70)
This would seem irrelevant or even contradictory to H.D.’s overall message of female
powers supplanting male if it were not for the final two couplets of Tribute to the Angels
Poem 23:
this is the flowering of the rood,
this is the flowering of the wood,
where Annael, we pause to give
thanks that we rise again from death and live. (87)
Not only does H.D. divest Uriel of society’s gratitude, she reattributes this honor to the
feminine Annael, or Venus. Additionally, the mention of the “flowering of the wood” in
reference to the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus in relation to Annael injects a new
femininity into the image of the Cross and the Passion. This further foreshadows the
element of salvation through feminine sources and love that is present throughout The
Flowering of the Rod which will be explored further in chapter 3.
10
References “the Caduseus of Hermes, Thoth, Mercury” as well as the “flowering of Aaron’s rod in the
Old Testament” and “the resurrection of Jesus” (Barnstone, Readers’ Notes 193). Also a reference to the
third book of Trilogy with the same name.
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In seeking to rebel against the male-dominated relationships and situations in
which H.D. found herself throughout her life, she has created a text which undermines,
revises, and negates many masculine ideals throughout the Judeo-Christian tradition.
Through H.D.’s vision of the Lady, the poet not only rewrites the traditional figure of the
Virgin Mary, giving the Virgin agency as well as freeing her from the limiting, exclusive
identity as Mother of God, but also revises the relationship that the poet had with her own
mother. Diminishing the importance of influences such as her father and Pound, H.D.
provides the reader with a new influence, a new model in the figure of the Lady.
Additionally, she further deconstructs the androcentric Judeo-Christian system by adding
the feminine Venus/Annael to the ranks of the formerly all-male group of archangels. In
doing so, she not only makes room for the female God she will suggest in The Flowering
of the Rod, but she also breaks the male archangels’ monopoly of power by elevating
female mythological figures to an equal, if not higher, status.
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Chapter 3: H.D’s Re-Visioning of Mary Magdalene in The Flowering of the Rod as
Redemption for Womankind
The Flowering of the Rod, the third and final volume of Trilogy, serves as the
location of H.D.’s most intense and groundbreaking revision of traditional masculine
systems within mythology and western religion. Among its numerous meanings, the title
itself sums up the goal of this volume perfectly: the phallic (rod) is becoming feminine
(by flowering). Walls and Tribute to the Angels already establish war as masculine and
offer female figures as sources of relief from the negative effects of war. The Flowering
of the Rod continues these paradigms as well as progressing beyond them. In this volume,
H.D. takes the final step toward entirely undermining the male Judeo-Christian God and
offering the world a redeemed womankind and ultimately a feminine divine figure. These
strategic moves, and The Flowering of the Rod as a whole, can be seen both as H.D.’s
personal process of self-revision, attempting to reverse what she saw as negative effects
of the male influences in her life discussed in the previous chapter, and as the processes
of creation and divestiture of a redeemed woman to and for society. Traditional
Christianity places woman in the role of sinner; through Flowering of the Rod, H.D.
seeks to redeem womankind in hopes of catalyzing an alternate and more accepting
future.
Whereas Walls establishes a basis for the whole of Trilogy, The Flowering of the
Rod extends directly from and features many of the same figures as Tribute to the Angels.
Janice S. Robinson observes the connection not only between Tribute to the Angels and
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The Flowering of the Rod but also between the female figures presented within both of
the volumes and H.D. herself:
[The Flowering of the Rod’s] central motif is the identification of Mary
Magdalene with the Virgin Mary. This identification held a special
meaning for H.D.; it was given to her by Freud…. H.D. had loved out of
wedlock, as had Mary Magdalene, and she had borne a child out of
wedlock, as had the Virgin Mary. She had never responded to the Bible as
history; her whole religious upbringing had focused her mind on the
symbolic and eternal realities contained in the biblical stories. (326)
H.D.’s belief that the Bible functioned more as a symbolic representation than as a
historical account, stemming from the Moravian teachings she was exposed to in her
youth, can be seen as a strong influence on the way that the poet bends seemingly
concrete and traditional biblical stories in order to accomplish her poetic goals. The close
association that she, as well as Freud, recognized between H.D. and Mary Magdalene
also lends itself to a discussion of Flowering of the Rod as a revisionary exercise
regarding the poet’s own identity. H.D.’s personal connection with Mary Magdalene, a
woman portrayed in a harsh and negative light in later misogynistic interpretations of the
Gospels, explains the poet’s need not only to redeem herself but also explains her need to
assume the responsibility of redeeming womankind in general. If H.D. sees the
Magdalene and herself as related, it is understandable that H.D. would feel that it was her
own responsibility to correct the errors of judgment against the defamed woman.
The connection between Mary Magdalene and the Virgin Mary is significant as
well. Although their affinity is somewhat apparent in Tribute to the Angels, any
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separation or differentiation between female figures completely disappears in The
Flowering of the Rod. Although H.D. does portray the Virgin and Mary Magdalene as
distinct figures, by the end of this final volume, not only are the Virgin and the
Magdalene absorbed into one overarching figure of feminine power, the poet herself as
well as other biblical figures like Eve and Lilith are embraced and welcomed into this allencompassing expression of female redemption. All of these women are simultaneously
subsumed into a single divine female entity.
Though all of these female figures do appear in The Flowering of the Rod, a
substantial amount of the poem focuses on Mary Magdalene. Alicia Suskin Ostriker
describes the volume as “retelling the story of the woman of Bethany who anoints Christ
with precious ointment. Not coincidentally, [H.D.] has chosen a tale which varies slightly
in each Gospel” (Feminist Revision 76). Perhaps to point out the foolishness of regarding
the Bible as historical and dependable fact, H.D. points to a tale in which the events are
questionable and unfixed. The malleability provided by this instance provides the poet
with a prime opportunity for revision. With the exact details of the original event
portrayed in such a variable way, it is much easier for H.D. to suggest that perhaps there
are more things in this story, and in the Bible as a whole, that aren’t as they seem. She is
able then to inject new meaning and even new characters into this old tale, techniques
that serve as the backbone of her entire revisionary process. This ultimately leads to the
incorporation of many female figures into one. As Ostriker points out, “‘Flowering’
implies an ultimate fusion of the virgin-whore with the Christ and with poetry itself”
(Feminist Revision 78). Flowering of the Rod brings H.D.’s entire process full circle,
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incorporating the Virgin, Mary Magdalene, Mary of Bethany, the newly feminized God,
and poetry into one ultimate divine being.
The struggle of women within male-centered systems to which H.D. is responding
is not a new one, nor is it a struggle that seems to show signs of dissipating. In discussing
her own struggles with finding a place within the male-dominated world of literary
criticism, Susan Stanford Friedman explains her reason for focusing her research on
H.D.: “The literary canon was male, my teachers were male, and the scholarly tradition to
which I had applied for admission was masculine. I didn’t even know I resented it. But I
chose H.D.” (Friedman, “Emergences and Convergences” 44). Friedman emphasizes the
importance of re-vision of male-centered systems and male-created frames of mind.
Affected profoundly by Adrienne Rich’s definition of “re-vision,” Friedman turns to the
fellow female critic for guidance:
Re-vision – the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering
an old text from a new critical direction – is for women more than a
chapter in cultural history: it is an act of survival. Until we can understand
the assumptions in which we are drenched we cannot know ourselves. And
this drive to self-knowledge, for women is more than a search for identity:
it is part of our refusal of the self-destructiveness of male-dominated
society…. (Rich, qtd. in Friedman, “Emergences and Convergences” 48).
Friedman’s inclusion of this quote performs more than she likely intended, for although
Rich is addressing the state of male-dominated academia and the literary canon, I would
argue that H.D.’s system of revision functions in much the same way. H.D. “look[ed]
back…with fresh eyes” and “enter[ed] an old text from a new critical direction.” H.D.
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took as subject the old and traditionalized text of the Bible and deliberately began to
inject new meaning into its archaic accounts. She looked for idiosyncrasies and
weaknesses to serve as points of entry, as an opportunity to write her own alternate,
feminized future into the already established text of the Bible. Although her critical focus
is on the plight of women, Friedman was not surprised at H.D.’s rebellion against maledominated systems, as she states, “As an oppressed, repressed, suppressed group (take
your theoretical pick), women have always found ways to subvert, transform, appropriate,
negotiate, erupt and disrupt” (Friedman, “Emergences and Convergences” 49). In Trilogy,
H.D. has been able to successfully “subvert, transform, appropriate, negotiate, erupt and
disrupt” the text of the Bible.
The Flowering of the Rod depicts the story of Mary Magdalene and elaborates on
events that led to the alabaster jar of myrrh used to anoint Jesus’ feet coming into Mary’s
possession. This volume details several interactions between Mary Magdalene and
Kaspar, one of the three Wise Men, as well as Kaspar’s vision in which he sees all
women absolved of the sin of Eve. The inequality of men and women, the subversion of
women, and the vilification of all women as a result of the original sin are all questioned
throughout the volume. The end of the poem presents all women redeemed and united
within Kaspar’s vision and the reader is left with a undeniable sense of hope.
This final volume of Trilogy addresses openly the journey from single-minded,
male-dominated culture to H.D.’s egalitarian, or even female-dominated, “Golden Age”
(H.D., Trilogy 8). The Flowering of the Rod Poem 8 addresses H.D.’s own process of
writing Trilogy and redeeming womankind:
I am the first or the last to renounce
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iron, steel, metal;
I have gone forward,
I have gone backward,
I have gone onward from bronze and iron,
into the Golden Age. (124)
H.D. demonstrates here that it does not matter who took the first steps towards the
Paradise that Kaspar envisions; rather, what is most important is that someone is taking a
step at all. It seems that it may not even matter who takes these steps but that they are
being taken at all. H.D. is indeed taking these steps within Trilogy. The poet has
renounced the masculine materials of “iron, steel, [and] metal,” so easily related to the
war effort. She has “gone backward” in looking at the significance of mythology and she
has “gone forward” in writing a new and brighter future for the world through her
suggestion in regards to war. She has moved through the subjects of war and femininity;
however, she has devalued the former and now, in Flowering of the Rod, focuses
primarily on how society might arrive at the “Golden Age.” This golden Paradise is
described later in The Flowering of the Rod and is attributed with a decidedly feminine
characteristic.
Where earlier H.D. urged the reader not to ignore the vilified female goddesses, in
Flowering Poem 9 she demands that the reader not ignore her either. Shifting to the first
person, H.D. clarifies that her assertions are
No poetic fantasy
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but a biological reality,
a fact: I am an entity
like bird, insect, plant
or sea-plant cell;
I live; I am alive;
take care do not know me,
deny me, do not recognize me,
shun me; for this reality
is infectious – ecstasy. (125)
She assures her audience that her statements are not a poetic mechanism meant to deceive
but a “biological reality, / a fact.” Her sex is a truth and, more importantly, it does not
relegate her to a secondary status; rather, she is “an entity” much like all of the living
entities found within nature. She is living, she is human, and she is valuable. At the end
of Poem 9, though it may seem that she contradicts herself, H.D. adopts an air of sarcasm.
She tells the naysayers that, in fact, it is all right if they ignore her, shun her, for
nevertheless “this reality” that she hopes to spread through Trilogy “is infectious.”
H.D. briefly revisits the topic of war in Flowering Poem 10. Referring to the
earlier volumes of Trilogy, she says that “It is no madness to say / you will fall, you great
cities, / (now the cities lie broken)” (H.D., Trilogy 126). Though earlier in the decade it
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may have seemed “madness” to predict the fall of the cities, now that they have fallen, it
is clear that those who predicted the fall were correct. Now that these predictions have
become reality “it is not tragedy, prophecy / from a frozen Priestess, / a lonely
Pythoness…it is simple reckoning” (H.D, Trilogy 126). Referencing the Pythian from
The Walls Do Not Fall, H.D. rebukes those who may not have valued the predictions of a
female or a priestess. Similarly, though many sensed the oncoming conflict of WWII,
some may not have valued H.D.’s predictions. Now, those predictions, regardless of their
source, are proven correct by the actual ruin caused by the war. However, the poet is not
without hope. She assures her readers that within the destruction, there is rebirth; more
importantly, destruction is gendered male and rebirth is gendered female:
yet it is, if you like, a lily
folded like a pyramid,
a flower-cone,
not a heap of skulls;
it is a lily, if you will,
each petal, a kingdom, an aeon,
and it is the seed of a lily
that having flowered,
will flower again…. (127)
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Hidden within destruction is hope but also, hidden within male constructs, is a
revitalizing femininity. A delicate lily, demonstrating “purity, innocence,
resurrection…the Virgin Mary,” has been folded and transformed into the shape of a
pyramid, a strong, masculine structure (Barnstone, Readers’ Notes 175, 195). Similarly,
“a flower-cone” that has been mistaken for “a heap of skulls” reveals its true feminine
nature, its revitalizing and reproductive capabilities. Next, she inverts, or perhaps adds
another layer to her metaphors, by pointing out that “each petal” of the lily is “a kingdom.”
Now, not only is the feminine hidden within the masculine, rebirth within destruction, but
also the feminine encompasses the masculine. Though it may seem that the masculine
houses the feminine, in H.D.’s reality the feminine transcends all masculine constructs,
rendering once-massive kingdoms as single petals on a single lily. And lastly, the poet
reminds us, encourages us, “that having flowered, / [the lily] will flower again.” The
cycle of death and rebirth is constant. When one thing is destroyed, another will be
rebuilt in its place.
Flowering of the Rod Poem 11 points out that Jesus was the first to “[journey]
back and forth / between the poles of heaven and earth forever” but Poem 12 quickly
turns to the topic of Mary Magdalene. H.D discusses Mary Magdalene at length; however,
H.D. incorporates several characteristics and biblical episodes that refer to Mary of
Bethany, combining the two into one collective figure. Poem 11 reminds the reader that
Jesus said “not to the chosen few,” but to all faithful humans, “to an outcast and
vagabond, / to-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise22” (H.D., Trilogy 128, emphasis
H.D.’s). Among the first to join Jesus in Paradise, in H.D.’s view, is Mary Magdalene:
So the first – it is written,
22
Again, H.D. uses italics to indicate direct quotations from the Bible.
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will be the twisted or the tormented individuals,
out of line, out of step with world so-called
progress;
the first to receive the promise was a thief;
the first actually to witness His life-after-death,
was an unbalanced, neurotic woman,
who was naturally reviled for having left home
and not caring for house-work…or was that
Mary of Bethany?
in any case – as to this other Mary
and what she did, everyone knows,
but it is not on record
exactly where and how she found the alabaster jar;
some say she took the house-money
or the poor-box money,
some say she had nothing with her,
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neither purse nor script
no gold-piece or silver
stamped with image of Caesar. (129, emphasis H.D.’s)
As H.D. interprets the Bible, it will be the “twisted” and “tormented” individuals
admitted to Heaven, those individuals seen to be “out of step with world so-called
progress.” The use of “so-called” is important here because it abounds with H.D.’s
trademark but strategic sarcasm. These individuals do not keep up with what the world
might call progress, but H.D. likely does not share these views on what progress is. In the
poet’s view, no one is more “out of step with world so-called progress” than women,
those who have been vilified and marginalized on account of their sex. An interesting
contrast can be seen between the “good” thief, a man who actively committed crimes and
was crucified next to Jesus, who was the first to be promised a place in Heaven and the
woman, whose only “crime” was her gender, who is seen as “unbalanced” and “neurotic.”
H.D.’s Mary figure is portrayed as “unbalanced” and “neurotic,” simply for the
fact that (in H.D.’s portrayal), she did not care for housework. Though this may be an
oversimplification of both Mary Magdalene’s and Mary of Bethany’s dilemmas, it is safe
to say that each was looked down upon due to her failure to adhere to traditional female
roles. Although Mary Magdalene is often portrayed as “sinful woman,” Mary R.
Thompson, S.S.M.N., points out that this is not accurate: “Probably the most important
working principle…is to reject the tradition that characterizes her [Mary of Magdala] as
the sinful woman. There is no place in the canonical gospels where that association is
made” (13). H.D. either embraced this fact or, like Thompson, sought to dispel the myth
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of Mary Magdalene as being a sinful woman. Additionally, H.D. says that “it is not on
record / exactly where and how she found the alabaster jar” of myrrh that she uses to
anoint Jesus’ feet; however, the poet intends to elaborate on that story for us. Though
“some say,” according to H.D., that Mary Magdalene may have stolen the money either
from “the house-money or the poor-box money,” others say she had no money with her.
Whether she purchased the alabaster jar of myrrh does not seem as important in H.D.’s
version of events but, rather, whom she obtained the jar from.
The Flowering of the Rod Poem 13 introduces the merchant Kaspar, one of the
Wise Men, as the individual who sells Mary Magdalene the myrrh that she uses to anoint
Jesus’s feet; however, in the Gospel of John it is Mary of Bethany who anoints Jesus. In
Poem 13, Kaspar is depicted as a nameless merchant, “an Arab,” who Mary Magdalene
visits (H.D., Trilogy 130). Mary Magdalene attempts to purchase myrrh from Kaspar but
“what he had, was not for sale; he was on his way / to a coronation and a funeral – a
double affair” (H.D., Trilogy 130). Initially it is unclear why Kaspar is not willing to sell
his myrrh to Mary Magdalene but he does make it clear that his myrrh is very rare indeed,
“unobtainable-elsewhere” (H.D., Trilogy 130). It is also evident that Kaspar does not
have time to deal with Mary Magdalene because he has somewhere more important to be.
Chronology is compacted and warped here because Mary Magdalene likely wants the
myrrh so she can anoint Jesus’ feet, which occurs before his crucifixion, but Kaspar
brings the myrrh to the Virgin Mary as a gift for the newborn Jesus during the nativity.
Not only does H.D. conflate Mary Magdalene and Mary of Bethany in this scene but she
also rearranges biblical chronology in a significant way, placing the anointing of the adult
Jesus’ feet within the same time period as the nativity featuring the newborn Jesus.
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Kaspar is going to “the double ceremony,” likely the birth of Jesus, which can be seen as
both a coronation of Jesus as king but also a funeral because he is fated to die on the
cross.
Also in Poem 13, Kaspar “drew aside his robe in a noble manner,” gesturing for
Mary Magdalene to leave, “but the un-maidenly woman did not take the hint” (H.D.,
Trilogy 130). Descriptors of Mary Magdalene seem to come from the point of view of
Kaspar; H.D. does not use ‘I’ or ‘we’ here, but speaks indirectly from Kaspar’s point of
view. Although Kaspar seems to think that Mary Magdalene doesn’t “take the hint” when
he gestures for her to leave, H.D. shifts briefly to Mary Magdalene’s point of view and it
is clear to the reader that her refusal to leave is intentional and defiant:
she had seen nobility herself at first hand;
nothing impressed her, it was easy to see;
she simply didn’t care whether he acclaimed
or snubbed her – or worse; what are insults?
she knew how to detach herself,
another unforgiveable sin,
and when stones were hurled,
she simply wasn’t there;
………………………………
what struck the Arab [Kaspar] was that she was unpredictable;
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this had never happened before – a woman –
well yes – if anyone did, he knew the world – a lady
had not taken the hint, had not sidled gracefully
at a gesture of implied dismissal…(H.D., Trilogy 130-31)
This woman does not care whether Kaspar “snub[s] her – or worse,” for she has dealt
with rejection and abjection in the past and has trained her mind “to detach” and become
absent when insults – or stones – were hurled at her. The last part of the poem reverts
indirectly back to Kaspar’s point of view. He attributes her insubordination to her sex,
stating that “a woman – well yes – if anyone did [refuse to ‘take the hint’].” He is
shocked at her refusal to leave, her impropriety, but he knows that if anyone would act in
such an obstinate manner, it would be a woman.
As Flowering of the Rod continues, Kaspar is continuously shocked and appalled
by Mary Magdalene’s “inappropriate” behavior. In Poem 15, after Kaspar has again
gestured at the door – “she understood; this was his second rebuff” – Mary Magdalene
defiantly stands “with her back against [the door]” and “her scarf slip[s] to the floor”
(H.D., Trilogy 134). Kaspar is horrified, exclaiming that “[i]t was hardly decent of her to
stand there, / unveiled, in the house of a stranger” (H.D., Trilogy 134). Mary Magdalene
makes no attempt to cover her hair or retrieve her scarf and finally, in Poem 16, she
speaks:
I am Mary, she said, of Magdala,
I am Mary, a great tower;
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through my will and my power,
Mary shall be myrrh;
I am Mary – O, there are Marys a-plenty,
(though I am Mara, bitter) I shall be Mary-myrrh… (135)
Here, H.D., through the voice of Mary Magdalene, begins directly to redeem womankind.
Though Mary Magdalene has come to be associated with “the sinful woman” and
prostitutes, though her name has “bitter” connotations, she will become sweet and
precious like myrrh. Mary Magdalene is not only redeeming herself, but perhaps the
many other Marys she references as well. The poem closes with Mary Magdalene saying
again “I am Mary” and exclaiming that she “will weep bitterly, / bittlerly…bitterly”
(H.D., Trilogy 135). She may be weeping for the women who are considered “mara,
bitter,” or for herself; perhaps her tears are Mary Magdalene’s way expelling any
remaining bitterness from her person so that she can start afresh in Poem 17.
For the first time in The Flowering of the Rod, Poem 17 depicts Kaspar being
surprised by Mary Magdalene in a positive way. Though she tells Kaspar she will “weep
bitterly” at the beginning of Poem 17, “her voice was steady and her eyes were dry”
(H.D., Trilogy 136). The room is now described as very small, like “an alcove or a wide
cupboard / with a closed door, a shaded window,” with no external source of light;
however, somehow there is still light present in the room:
there was hardly any light from the window
but there seemed to be light somewhere,
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as of moon-light on a lost river
or a sunken stream, seen in a dream
by a parched, dying man, lost in the desert…
or a mirage…it was her hair. (H.D., Trilogy 136, ellipses H.D.’s)
Mary Magdalene’s uncovered hair shines as the only source of light in the room; her
defiance shines as the only source of hope within an arguably dark male-created world.
The light coming from her hair, from her rebellion, is not just like “moon-light on a lost
river,” but H.D., or perhaps Kaspar, compares the light to a river found by a “dying man,
lost in the desert.” This deviation from established standards of propriety is something
desirable, something that a thirsty world in need of change requires. This moment of
realization remains but a moment as Kaspar, in Poem 18, retrieves Mary Magdalene’s
scarf from the floor and hands it to her. He thinks “it was unseemly that a woman /
appear disordered, disheveled; it was unseemly that a woman / appear at all” (H.D.,
Trilogy 137, emphasis added). Though for a brief moment Mary Magdalene is seen as a
shining entity in a dark room, Kaspar’s masculine sense of propriety soon takes over and
he returns to being embarrassed at the woman’s boldness in “appear[ing] at all.”
H.D. herself is unsure of how exactly Mary Magdalene got the alabaster jar from
Kaspar, but it is unquestionable that she did in fact receive it. In Poem 20 she outlines
several theories on the matter: perhaps she took it and ran, perhaps he followed her and
gave it to her, perhaps he sent the jar with a messenger, or perhaps “he himself was a
Magician” (H.D., Trilogy 139). More importantly, “some say it never happened, / some
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say it happens over and over…some say he was Abraham, / some say he was God” (H.D.,
Trilogy 139-40). Though the exchange between Kaspar and Mary Magdalene may never
have happened, it does not matter, for countless interactions similar in nature likely occur
again and again throughout history. However, for H.D.’s purposes, the fact that it is one
of the Wise Men is important, as is the fact that it is Mary Magdalene behaving
“inappropriately.” In order to redeem woman, H.D. must devalue the Judeo-Christian
system that vilified her in the first place. Those who “say it happens over and over” may
argue that “it,” the transference of a precious and powerful object (myrrh) into the hands
of woman, is happening presently within the text of Trilogy. H.D. is undermining many
traditionally powerful male figures – God, Jesus, Kaspar, etc. – and imparting power
instead to female figures such as the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, Mary of Bethany,
the goddesses, among others.
H.D. continues to give power to Mary Magdalene, though not without also
depicting the skeptics she will have to persuade or disregard. Again implementing a fairly
warped chronology, beginning in Flowering Poem 21 H.D. portrays a scene from John
12:1-9 where Mary of Bethany anoints Jesus’ feet with myrrh using her hair. In Poem 21,
Judas Iscariot remarks disdainfully on the waste of the expensive myrrh when the money
used to purchase it, although it is unclear whether any money was exchanged or who
supplied the money, could have been given to the poor (H.D., Trilogy 141). Seated on the
floor, Mary begins to unbraid her hair in order to anoint Jesus’ feet (H.D., Trilogy 141).
In Poem 22, Simon, the host of the party where the anointing takes place, becomes
frustrated with the cultural inappropriateness of Mary’s actions:
But Simon the host thought,
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we must draw the line somewhere;
he had seen something like this
in a heathen picture
or a carved stone-portal entrance
to a forbidden sea-temple;
they called the creature,
depicted like this,
seated on the sea-shore
or on a rock, a Siren
…………………….
some said, this mermaid sang
and that a Siren-song was fatal
…………………………….
she was not invited,
he bent to whisper
into the ear of his Guest [Jesus],
I do not know her. (142)
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Though presumably, until this point, a compassionate host, Simon thinks that “we must
draw the line somewhere,” that this overt display of affection, slightly eroticized in
H.D.’s narrative, is too much. This suggestion of female sexuality is not acceptable in
Simon’s eyes. He compares Mary’s display of reverence for Jesus to the fatal song of a
Siren, a female being who uses her sexuality in order to destroy men. Simon appeals to
his “Guest,” the capital ‘G’ indicating that it is Jesus, hoping that He will disavow the
woman. “[T]hings had gone excellently till now,” laments Simon in Poem 23. “[B]ut this
was embarrassing; / she was actually kissing His feet…but Simon questioned: / this man
if he were a prophet, would have known / who and what manner of woman this is” (H.D.,
Trilogy 143, emphasis H.D.’s). “[I]f he were a prophet,” thinks Simon, then Jesus
certainly should have known that Mary was not the right “type” of woman, that she was
an inappropriate guest at such a party.
However, in Poem 25 H.D. points out that yes, Simon “could say [that] she
looked like a heathen” because he “might have heard [that] this woman from the city, /
was devil-ridden or had been” (145). But she also points out that Kaspar is an Arab, “a
heathen,” and “he might whisper tenderly, those names / without fear of eternal
damnation, / Isis, Astarte, Cyprus” (H.D., Trilogy 145). To Simon, Kaspar’s goddesses
might be considered devils, but as H.D. has already proven in earlier volumes of Trilogy
these figures hold value, especially in her contemporary war-torn world. And H.D. also
points out in Poem 26 that “this Simon is Simon, the leper…we presume [he] was healed
of his plague, / healed in body, while the other, / the un-maidenly mermaid, Mary of
Magdala / was healed of soul” (146). Though Simon has become whole physically, Mary
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Magdalene is whole spiritually and she is unafraid to show her devotion through physical
acts even though Simon reviles her for it.
Finally, Kaspar, now identified as the merchant, realizes who Mary Magdalene is,
in the context of this poem. In Poem 27, H.D. explains that when Mary’s scarf slipped
from her head and Kaspar “saw the light on her hair…Kaspar / remembered” (148). It is
in Poem 28 that Kaspar begins to have a vision of redeemed womankind: he sees three
women, “another head uncovered and two crowned, / one with a plain circlet, one with a
circlet of gems” and hears like “an echo of an echo in a shell, / in her were forgiven / the
sins of the seven / daemons cast out of her” (149, emphasis H.D.’s). Kaspar is joyous at
his vision and in Poem 29, it is explained that not only the beauty within the vision
overjoyed him, but also “it was discovery, discovery that exalted him / for he knew the
old traditions, the old, old legend…was true” (151). In Poems 30 and 31, Kaspar
acknowledges what he saw when he stooped to pick up Mary Magdalene’s scarf for her:
he saw the fleck of light
like a flaw in the third jewel
to his right, in the second circlet [of the woman in his vision],
a grain, a flaw, or a speck of light,
and in that point or shadow,
was the whole secret of the mystery;
literally, as his hand just did-not touch her hand,
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and as she drew the scarf toward her,
the speck, fleck, grain or seed
opened like a flower. (152)
…………………………….
but before he was lost,
out-of-time completely
he saw the islands of the blest,
the promised lands, lost;
he, in that half-second, saw
the whole scope and plan
of our and his civilization on this,
his and our earth, before Adam. (153-54)
In a brief moment of expressed female sexuality, which he had previously regarded as
inappropriate, Kaspar sees a vision of Paradise before Eve’s sin. Many elements
contribute to the message H.D. is trying to convey. First, it is important that Kaspar sees
this vision within “a flaw” within the jewel on the circlet of one of the women. Like
woman, this jewel is flawed, but also like woman, according to H.D., this flawed jewel
holds the potential for divine truth. Second, just before Mary Magdalene covers her head
with her scarf, “the speck…opened like a flower.” H.D. is again using a feminine image
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to point toward divine truth. And finally, it is important that the civilization and earth that
Kaspar sees are both “his and ours” because the poet relates this vision, these ancient
biblical stories to her present WWII-era civilization. Poem 32 clarifies that this
civilization that Kaspar saw, this Paradise that he witnessed, was “Paradise / before
Eve…” (155, ellipsis H.D.’s).
Through Kaspar’s vision, the world is potentially returned to a “Paradise before
Eve,” before sin was attributed to woman, or perhaps before woman sinned. During this
vision, as captured in Poem 33,
Kaspar understood and his brain translated:
Lilith born before Eve
and one born before Lilith,
and Eve; we three are forgiven,
we are three of the seven
daemons cast out of her. (157)
For a moment, but unfortunately for just a moment, Kaspar saw all women redeemed.
The demons that had plagued Mary Magdalene, the legacy of Woman as Sinner, in
Kaspar’s vision had been expelled. Mary Magdalene, and indeed womankind, was freed
of the negative inherited label of “the sinful woman.” But by Poem 34, Kaspar has
remembered propriety, and consequently forgotten the truth that he had just learned, and
Mary Magdalene has left with the myrrh. But H.D. reminds us in Poem 37, as “snow falls
on the desert; / it had happened before, / it would happen again” (161, emphasis H.D.’s).
Though this vision of Paradise, this redemption of woman, and by a man no less, is a rare
occurrence, the poet assures us that it will happen again.
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In Poem 41, Kaspar has joined the Wise Men in bringing gifts to the baby Jesus
but Kaspar wonders why he brought this jar of myrrh instead of “the other” one:
but Kaspar thought, there were always two jars,
the two were always together,
why didn’t I bring both?
or should I have chosen the other?
……………………………………
…it was always maintained
that one jar was better than the other…(168).
However, a reader must remember that the other alabaster jar is the one that Mary
Magdalene took with her. One jar is in the hands of the male Kaspar, while the other jar
is in the hands of the woman Mary Magdalene. Because of the language that Kaspar uses
in describing them, these two jars can be seen as parallel to man and woman. Kaspar’s
wondering why he didn’t bring the other and speculating on the fact that one “was better
than the other” may be H.D.’s way of addressing the inequality of the sexes. He describes
the jars as “always together,” like man and woman, but he also notes that “it was always
maintained / that one jar was better than the other.” However, as Kaspar did bring the
masculine jar of myrrh, H.D. translates the jar into the baby Jesus in Poem 43: “[Kaspar]
did not know whether [the Virgin] knew / the fragrance came from the bundle of myrrh /
she held in her arms [Jesus]” (172). Though seeking to create an alternate future, H.D.
does acknowledge the “reality” of the past, the fact that in the Bible it is the male Jesus
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who redeems and not woman. The reader must wonder, however, how the history of
womankind would be changed if Kaspar had “chosen the other” jar and humankind had
been redeemed through woman instead of man. Poem 42 of The Flowering of the Rod
depicts the Wise Men arriving at the scene of the Nativity. Continuing Kaspar’s thought
regarding the other alabaster jar, Poem 42 opens: “It was only a thought, / someday I will
bring the other” (H.D., Trilogy 169, emphasis H.D.’s). Trilogy concludes with the Wise
Men presenting their gifts to the Virgin and the baby Jesus but Kaspar’s concerns about
the pair of alabaster jars resonate. The Wise Man acknowledges that in the future he may
deliver the second jar, and thus man and woman may be rendered equal. Perhaps at the
time of H.D.’s writing Trilogy she believed that the second jar had already been delivered
or maybe she viewed Trilogy as her own personal act of delivering the second jar to
humanity.
Through H.D.’s revision of a traditional but contested biblical tale, the poet has
not only depicted woman as absolved from the sins of Eve but also has laid the
foundation for a future that regards women in a new light. By delivering her vision of
feminine redemption through the male Kaspar, she anchors her feminist message within
the masculine world in hopes that it might resonate with both men and women. Also, by
attributing the vision to a Wise Man, she lends additional validity to her message. H.D.
does not dethrone the male Messiah in favor of a female God but instead elevates
traditional female figures to a divine status. She also poses the potent question of “what if”
to her readers, allowing them to wonder to themselves what alternate history may have
unfolded had humanity been saved through the heroic sacrifice of woman instead of the
male Jesus.
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Conclusion
“We travel far in thought, in imagination or in the realm of memory. Events
happened as they happened, not all of them, of course, but here and there a memory or a
fragment of a dream-picture is actual, is real, is like a work of art or is a work of art,”
H.D. said of her sessions with Freud (Tribute to Freud 35). However, her statements
could easily apply to many of her own works, especially Trilogy. The poet strings
together factual representations of bombed-out London and mythological ruins,
connecting the two with embellished or exaggerated feminist additions. H.D. revises
established locations and accepted depictions of biblical and mythological figures in
order to create a more gynocentric version of the universe. In direct response to
masculine influences within her own life – from men she encountered to the masculine
institution of war – H.D. rewrites biblical history with the aim of redeeming the poet in
general, herself in particular, and womankind as a whole.
In The Walls Do Not Fall, H.D. genders the poet as a female entity and defends
the value of poetic endeavor during wartime. While the poet is female, war is depicted
conversely in decidedly masculine terms and H.D. openly expresses her view that war
causes major problems, for which she offers solutions through Trilogy. She reminds her
readers that “[w]ithout thought, invention, / you would not have been, O Sword” (H.D.,
Trilogy 18). She places poetry in an unquestionably superior position to war, claiming
also that without the written word, the waste and futility of war could not be recorded and
remembered for future generations. In addition to poetry, she portrays the feminized ideal
of love as a counter to the masculine destruction of war. She points to love as the solution
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to the problems created by war, as the precursor to peace. She specifically invokes
goddesses of love from Greek, Roman, and Egyptian mythology and defends them
directly. H.D. condemns those who may view these goddesses negatively because of their
association with female sexuality and encourages the goddesses to ignore these naysayers.
Early in Walls, the figure of the Pythian (Sibyl) is mentioned, a figure who
appears throughout the three volumes of Trilogy as well as in H.D.’s memoir Tribute to
Freud. The Pythian is discussed in terms of her role as the prophetess of Delphi, uttering
predictions that then had to be interpreted by a male priest. However, H.D. also notes that
the Pythian delivered her predictions while seated on a tripod, an image that H.D.
associates with poetry and an image that appeared in her vision at Corfu in 1920. Also
included in her vision at Corfu was the Niké, the Greek goddess of victory, which H.D.
interprets as a victory for Britain in the impending struggle of WWII. She defends several
female goddesses from masculine derision and also locates the solution to the problems
of war within female sources.
Tribute to the Angels builds on the ideas that are established in Walls but in this
second volume H.D. begins to focus on more personal implications. Throughout the early
years of the poet’s life, she was often directed and controlled by the desires and whims of
men such as her father, Ezra Pound, Richard Aldington, and D. H. Lawrence. H.D. was
also engaged in a constant search for a connection with her mother and after the death of
her mother, the poet sought that connection elsewhere. Freud had said that H.D. “had
come to Vienna hoping to find [her] mother” (H.D., Tribute to Freud 17). In an attempt
both to devalue these masculine influences within her own life and to forge a relationship
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with a maternal figure, in Tribute to the Angels H.D. revises the traditional figure of the
Virgin Mary whom she calls the Lady.
H.D.’s Lady is similar to the Virgin Mary in some ways; however, she has been
freed from the confining and limited identity of her traditional depictions. Although the
Lady is still the mother of Jesus, “she bore / none of her usual attributes; / the Child was
not with her” (H.D., Trilogy 97). The Lady becomes much more than the mother of Jesus;
she is no longer only mother but becomes a multifaceted entity. She is given a voice and
an opinion; H.D. states that she is “pleased with us” (H.D., Trilogy 100). The Lady is
portrayed in a more approachable and less artificial way than the Virgin traditionally is.
She is not “imprisoned in leaden bars / in a coloured window,” a stained glass window,
but instead she is set free; she is given the opportunity by H.D. to have a fresh identity.
Another important facet of Tribute to the Angels is H.D.’s augmentation of the
seven archangels of the Bible. The poet adds the feminine Annael, Venus, to the
traditionally all-male group. She not only adds Annael but also promotes her to a position
equal, if not superior, to the male leader of the archangels, Uriel. The poet points out that
there are no temples for Uriel but countless temples devoted to Venus. As she began to
do in Walls, H.D. continues to undermine traditional androcentric Christianity so that she
is able to create a new version that is more accepting of and beneficial for women.
This process of undermining masculine Christianity is completed in The
Flowering of the Rod. Possibly to further distance herself from the masculine influences
in her life, but also to offer an alternate future in which femininity is venerated, H.D.
revises the biblical figure of Mary Magdalene. Playing on the erroneous associations that
centuries of misogynistic Christian tradition has made with this figure, H.D. combines
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Mary Magdalene, Mary of Bethany, and the nameless Sinful Woman into one figure. By
doing so, she is better able to absolve this amalgamated Mary and, by extension, all
womankind of the sin of Eve. This fusion also eliminates any perceived division between
women, emphasizing the fact that perhaps it does not matter which Mary performed
which actions in the Gospels, as H.D. seeks to redeem all women.
Most of The Flowering of the Rod depicts an exchange between Mary Magdalene
and the Wise Man Kaspar, who sells her an alabaster jar of myrrh that she uses to anoint
Jesus’ feet. In two of the Gospels, the woman who anoints Jesus’ feet is Mary of Bethany,
but in the other Gospels she is not named. H.D. uses this lack of clarity within the
Gospels as a point of entry to begin her revisions. She seems to purposely choose biblical
stories that could benefit from clarification in order to rewrite them and provide her own
feminized clarification. For instance, the Gospels do not address where Mary gets the
alabaster jar of myrrh and so H.D. provides her own answer.
In H.D.’s depiction, Kaspar refuses to sell the myrrh to Mary and is appalled
throughout their exchange at her un-maidenly behavior. Although Kaspar gestures
several times for Mary to leave, “the un-maidenly woman did not take the hint” (H.D.,
Trilogy 130). She also lets her scarf fall from her hair and makes no effort to cover her
head. Kaspar is disturbed that the woman will not leave and that she would expose herself
in such a way in front of a man; however, he is not surprised because “if anyone would”
behave with such impropriety, he believes, it would be a woman (H.D., Trilogy 131).
Mary Magdalene does receive the jar, however, and H.D. acknowledges that no one
seems to know how she came to be in possession of it.
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Most significantly, while speaking to Mary Magdalene, Kaspar has a vision. For a
brief moment, in the light omitted from Mary’s shining hair, Kaspar sees not one but
three women. He seems to think that these women are Eve, Lilith, and either Mary
Magdalene or the Virgin Mary. With her conflation of Marys throughout this section of
Trilogy, it is likely that H.D. would argue that the identities of these women are
irrelevant: she would urge readers to focus instead on the fact that they are women. In
this brief vision, Kaspar sees an image of Paradise before Eve’s original sin, a Paradise
where women are not vilified. In this brief moment he sees all women forgiven for Eve’s
sin. However, as quickly as the vision comes, Kaspar remembers his disdain for Mary
Magdalene’s immodest behavior and thus loses his newly gained knowledge of Paradise.
The end of The Flowering of the Rod depicts a new version of the Nativity,
keeping with H.D.’s signature syncretic chronology. Kaspar is experiencing at the same
time events that should be happening 33 years apart. After having met with Mary
Magdalene about the alabaster jar of myrrh, Kaspar accompanies the other Wise Men to
bring gifts to the baby Jesus. While he is waiting to present his alabaster jar of myrrh, he
wonders why he did not bring the other jar instead, the jar that Mary used to anoint Jesus’
feet. He comments “the two were always together” but “one jar was better than the other”
(H.D., Trilogy 168). In this moment H.D. seems to be addressing the issue of inequality
between men and women. The language that Kaspar uses to describe the jars parallels the
idea of gender inequality strongly. Finally, Kaspar thinks to himself that perhaps
someday he will bring the other jar leaving the reader with the hope that men and women
will someday be treated equally.
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Aliki Barnstone’s introduction to Trilogy opens with a quote from Tribute to
Freud: “Do I wish myself, in the deepest unconscious or subconscious layers of my being,
to be the founder of a new religion?” H.D. asks herself (VII). Barnstone states “Trilogy is
H.D.’s complex answer to this question” (Introduction VII). H.D.’s response to the overly
masculinized culture she experienced during her lifetime, especially during WWII, came
in the form of the religious revision and message of hope in Trilogy. By dismantling the
masculine systems within Judeo-Christian tradition and revising previously vilified or
limited female figures, H.D. seeks to offer womankind a vision of a more egalitarian
future, or perhaps a future where women have claimed a position of power within society.
She did not found a new religion through Trilogy but instead corrected the faults that she
perceived within already existing systems. Her poetic process is not one of creation but
one of reaction and revision, which results in significant developments regarding the role
of women in religion and society.
Westerlund 69
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