H. D. between Image and Epic: The Mysteries of Her Poetics by Gary Burnett (review)

Book Reviews89 GARY BURNETT. H D. between Image and Epic: The Mysteries of Her Poetics. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990. 198 p. Gary Burnett's purpose in this work is twofold: to provide a study ofH. D.'s poetry after the publication of Sea Garden in 1916 and preceding Trilogy in 1944, and to decode the "mysteries" of her poetics. The arrangement of the book is chronological with chapters on the poems themselves alternating with chapters on H. D.'s other works from the same time frame. Burnett uses H. D.'s prose, both fiction and nonfiction, to provide an intellectual and theoretical framework for understanding her poetry. The volumes ofpoetry analyzed by Burnett include Hymen, 1921; Heliodora, 1924; Collected Poems, 1925; Red Roses for Bronze, 1931; and the unpublished collection, "A Dead Priestess Speaks," reflecting her work from the early 1940s. He interlaces these chapters with discussions ofprose works such as HERmione, unpublished until 1981, and the unpublished novel Pilate's Wife begun in 1924; Palimpsest from 1926 and "Pontikonisi" published in 1930; Kora and Ka published in a limited edition in 1934, and Nights similarly published in 1935. Burnett concludes from his study that H. D.'s works of this middle period are important because her career is an undertaking of process and discovery in which the "late additions are inconceivable without the earlier. ... It is a palimpsest, a collection of writings set one on top of another. The late work does not so much obscure the earlier or consign it to oblivion as it rewrites and revises—it takes its discoveries, its framework and makes them over into a new pattern based upon the old" (176). Burnett's work is a valuable one for several reasons. First, H. D.'s oeuvre between 1916 and 1944 has been ignored critically and is little known to readers. Thus, Burnett rescues this crucial period in H. D.'s artistic development from obscurity. Second, his exploration of the poems and H. D.'s poetic principles sheds light on the work of this difficult writer—light which should enhance our understanding of her better known works such as Helen in Egypt as well as the lesser known works covered in this volume. Third, Burnett places H. D.'s work within the context of the development of modernism—especially the work of Eliot and Lawrence—an accomplishment which should make the work valuable to scholars of modernism as well as specialized H. D. scholars. Perhaps Burnett's most useful accomplishment is to provide a critical vocabulary—gleaned in part from H. D.'s own works—which offers keys for unlocking the "mysteries" ofher poetics as well as ofher poetry. The two most important terms are palimpsest and constastation. The term palimpsest—a parchment from which one layer of writing has been scraped to make room for another—is the name H. D. chose for her 1927 novel, and Burnett uses it in a number of ways in the course of his study. He suggests that H. D. uses the concept when she places a reading of her own times over other times as in her Hellenistic work, when she overlays her own writing over the work of other writers in her critical essays, and when she develops poetically by overlaying the poems of one time over the base of the poems of her earlier career. The later imposition does not replace or displace the earlier layer but builds upon it. 90Rocky Mountain Review A second key term for Burnett is constastation—a declaration of faith or inspiration. H. D. uses this term to describe the conclusion of the Eleusian mysteries, and Burnett adopts it to describe H. D.'s poetic rebirth after the silence of the 1930s. Burnett argues that H. D.'s ideal of the artist is that of the prophet stating truth through inspiration (27). As H. D. explores her own psyche during the 1930s, she gradually is able to move from private vision to public constastation—from silence to poetry (173). Burnett finds the seeds of H. D.'s Trifogy and Helen in Egypt in the emerging voice of the poet in the unpublished "A Dead Priestess Speaks...