Psyche Reborn: The Emergence of H. D.

By Susan Stanford Friedman. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981. 332 pp.

H. D.: THE LIFE AND WORK OF AN AMERICAN POET. By Janice S. Robinson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1982. 490 pp.

The literary world has appreciatively anthologized the poetry of H. D. (Hilda Doolittle, 1886-1961) as the supreme example of the

Imagist movement, which (from 1913) flourished for only a brief moment in literary history but nevertheless had a lasting influence on the direction of modern poetry. The scope of H. D.'s contribution to other literary forms has been less well known. Her reputation, too closely linked to "the perfect Imagist poem," has been limited by the often expressed view that her art was too fragile for the harsh modern world (Friedman, p. ix).

Now with the publication of these two studies, both of which make use of previously unavailable letters, memoirs, and manuscripts, H. D. emerges in a new dimension as a woman and as an artist. Her life and her art were an intricately intertwined quest. Self-discoveries infused her art, which evolved through a profound exploration of a woman's experience in a male-dominated world. Culminating in her most mature work, Helen in Egypt, which was first published just before her death at age seventy-five, the personal quest was wedded to the mythic quest to achieve a timeless and universal feminine perspective to stand alongside the traditional patriarchal foundations of Western culture.

H. D. and these two books hold special interest for psychoanalyst-readers on several counts: (1) H. D.'s psychoanalysis with Freud, and her later Tribute to Freud; (2) H. D.'s contribution to the understanding of female psychology; (3) the unusually close parallel between H. D.'s life experiences and her artistic creations, which sharpens the critical debate over the validity of deriving authorial biography from the fiction; and (4) general questions about the practice of psychobiography raised by these two books.

Both Friedman and