Robert Spoo

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

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

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 It was a known but unpublished text for some 30 years, a ghost text cited by writers and scholars both for its style and its insight into the literary world of its in London, until it was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

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

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

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

2024
https://www.librarything.com/topic/360386#8544967… (altro)

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

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

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

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

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

A history of modernism’s various encounters with law: the prohibition of homosexuality and obscenity, defamation law, privacy/right of publicity law, blackmail law, and copyright law. Spoo reads the danger of Dorian Grey as residing in his unauthorized replication of his own portrait, figuring the dangers of mechanical reproduction on morals writ large. As he says, both copyright and obscenity law developed “in response to printing technologies and fears of an ungovernable mass of readers.” Both laws are designed to produce artificial scarcity, though in different ways (but as he points out, obscenity law in Britain particularly always accepted the idea that some circulation was okay; the question was whether the material was circulating too widely, among those not fit to receive it like servants or wives). At the same time, the bodies of law could be at loggerheads—Byron and Shelley, as well as others, found themselves unable to suppress pirate editions because immoral works couldn’t have valid copyrights, and in the US likewise the inability to find a domestic publisher (required for protection under then-current US law) because of fears of obscenity prosecutions left works like Joyce’s Ulysses unprotected by copyright. Spoo also discusses how libel law was supposed to supplant private violence in an honor culture, and how a number of well-known authors nonetheless fought duels, or got very close, sometimes over (accurate) imputations of homosexuality, even through the early 20th century. Also, modernist authors sometimes deployed publicity rights to substitute for unavailable copyright in America, as when Wilde toured to promote the authorized version of Gilbert & Sullivan’s opera and Joyce sued for misappropriation of his name when he couldn’t sue for copyright infringement. And in discussing Pound’s fascism/treason in the context of his use of copyright law, Spoo draws connections to Wilde’s earlier quixotic attempts to use libel law—both artists thought that art had inherent superiority to law, and both were ultimately forced to comply with the state’s monopoly on violence.… (altro)

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

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