H.D.'s The Gift

ELT 42 : 3 1999 Sheffield's study stands on a provocative and engaging thesis. The broad outlines of her argument supporting this view carry an air of conviction. At times the specifics that sustain these views may seem wanting to those not already disposed to Sheffield's perspective, but this can only serve to provoke responses that will sharpen the argument for both sides. Michael Patrick Gillespie _________________ Marquette University H.D.'s The Gift H.D. The Gift: The Complete Text. Jane Augustine, ed. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998. xvi + 318 pp. $49.95 H.D.'S THE GIFT, written in London between 1941 and 1943, exploded into her consciousness during nightly bomb raids that sounded apocalyptic destruction and fire from the sky. This prose work of revelation , which she termed "autobiographical fantasy," vibrates with energy that will generate and sustain her breakthrough long poem of endurance and regeneration, Trilogy, written immediately after. The Gift, an arresting work in itself for its style and musicality, proves to be the realization of H.D.'s most profound vision of the significance of her art. More than fifty years since its creation, readers have been gifted indeed by publication of the definitive text, superbly annotated and edited with scholarly excellence by Jane Augustine. Publication of this volume rectifies a skewed impression of the work given by the 1982 New Directions edition which had been severely—and silently—truncated. Nearly a third of H.D.'s 1944 final typescript was cut, from entire chapters to intermittent lines and paragraphs, as well as the entire section of H.D.'s "Notes" (94 pages) comprised of historical material she considered integral, to be included upon publication. The misleading effect of such arbitrary literary surgery was noted by Rachel Blau DuPlessis at the time the abridged version appeared (Sulfur 1984). Chapters of the missing text have been made available in journals: "The Dream" (Contemporary Literature); "The Fortune Teller" (Iowa Review); and "Dark Room" with related "Notes" (Montemora). The New Directions edition aimed for simple storytelling as a memoir of H.D.'s childhood in Pennsylvania recollected in World War II London, thereby neglecting primary material concerning the mystical religion and history of her Moravian heritage. Truncation also lost the stylistic resonance of H.D.'s deliberate echoing of images and names. 344 BOOK REVIEWS The present edition obeys H.D.'s final decisions on textual order, punctuation and syntax. In its completeness, the volume demonstrates that The Giß is central to full appreciation of H.D.'s unique status as a visionary artist of the twentieth century. She saw herself as a receptor of mystical truths, her writing as inscription of spiritual energy towards universal love and peace. In 1886, Hilda Doolittle was born into a family extended not only by siblings, grandparents and cousins, but also by the community of her mother's Moravian Church. Details of the history and naming of the settlement of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, are painstakingly reported by H.D. in her "Notes" following the seven chapters of impressionistic memoir . H.D. quotes from various sources she has assiduously sought out; the "Notes" parallel italicized phrases in the text and explore earliest references to the Unitas Fratrum, founded in Bohemia in 1457. Jane Augustine's "Editor's Notes" verify, with painstaking references, H.D.'s historical readings. An insightful essay by Adalaide Morris, "H.D. and the Spirit of the Gift" (Contemporary Literature, 1986), correlates H.D.'s ways with finances, authorial signatures, and motherhood, with upbringing in a cultural "gift economy." By tracing European dispersions of names, H.D.'s "Notes" incarnate personalities linked to Brethren and Sisters who brought their beliefs to America in the early eighteenth century . These are the child Hilda's spiritual as well as blood ancestors. The main body of the text is told through that child's consciousness. The canon of H.D.'s prose works has only gradually been revealed through posthumous publication. Her early autobiographical romans à clef HERmione, Paint It Today, and Asphodel enact in syntax the knots and spasms of the author's adolescent consciousness, the discoveries of first loves and poetic vocation. Sentences feel subject to the author's...