This poem was written in 1916,
during the "painful disintegration of H.D.'s marriage to Richard Aldington."
I submit that it can be read on the most obvious biographical level as
H.D.'s personal cry of rage and despair against an unfaithful husband (also
a poet and once a mentor) who had drawn her, like Orpheus had Eurydice,
toward happiness, only to turn and reject her. We can also read this work
as a willful expression of this "imagist" poet's reaction to her relationship
to D.H. Lawrence, with whom she had been in close contact for years as
artists, and with whom, it has been widely suggested, that an affair of
the heart as well as the pen from 1914-17 led her to despair of him as
well (Sword, Helen, "Orpheus and Eurydice in the Twentieth Century: Lawrence,
H.D. and the Poetics of the Turn," Twentieth Century Literature,
1989, Winter, 35:4, 407-28)
I <Eurydice does not
speak in the the usual mythic accounts. Here we hear her own voice!
<Shortly after her
wedding to Orpheus, the mythic bride Eurydice walked in a meadow and was
stung and killed by a viper.
<In Eurydice's mind's
eye, the "live souls" live on the earth, at least at this point.
<Having been relegated
to the underworld, she has slept, and HAD, as we will see, ALMOST come
to accept her lot.
< So live souls are
equated in the heroine's mind with flowers, the vehicle for such a consciousness
that life on earth might afford her.
<Here she speaks her
mind. No longer silent, as she has been in most mythic accounts, she has
become a willfull heroine. She accuses Orpheus of "arrogance" and "ruthlessness."
This is contrasted with the mythic account, where at the very worst Orpheus
is portrayed as admirable and ambitious in his motivations to save her.
(Sword 408).
<We see that perhaps
he might have been "arrogant" to try to save her, for she begins to suggest
that she was becoming accustomed to her place in Hades, that she did not
desire to be pulled back out. But "ruthless" is an accusation one makes
in extreme anger.
<That she is "swept"
rather than "pulled back into" by the Hadean forces, or "pushed" or "sent"
suggests the insidious ease with which "arrogance" and "ruthlessness" can
perform the devastation she describes.
<Lichens: plants that
consist of a symbiotic association of algae (usually green) and fungi (OED).
If algae, which is green and formed partly by light, then is there light
present where she is? Why are they dead?
<Notice that "dead"
is used a lot in this and other sections to describe not the agony of her
existence, but the repose of impending acceptance.
<Orpheus had enticed
her, as the story goes, with the prospect of regaining life "above the
earth" once more; but whatever hope there had been for that future has
been expunged. We begin to see the "ruthlessness" she talks about.
<For her, living "unconscious"
in the Underworld is better than living with the vain hope of getting out.
<She's almost in a
state of acceptance that she could endure eternity without hope of seeing
the "upper earth" again
<Here begins her diatribe
of what might have been had Orpheus' "arrogance" that he should save her
and the "ruthlessness" of his fatal regard had never taken place.
<She was building
on acceptance of her plight, up to the time Orpheus decided that he would
attempt to outwit death and get her back.
<In death there is
a solemn contentment, a lack of turmoil-- turmoil which Orpheus has again
raised in his futile attempt to save her, a transgression against her will.
<"had forgot"=would
have forgotten (Orpheus); We might surmise that Orpheus would never have
forgotten Eurydice, but that she could forget him; A bit of a blow to his
ego, to be sure.
II <"Black" symbolizes
in the traditional myth, and in the case of Eurydice herself, an attribute
of a negative role, a woman as death, as "dark continent," which Freud
"found so threatening and so irresistable" (Sword 408). In this way, by
reducing Eurydice to a core of unattainable darkness, Orpheus' transformation
into a great poet thus occurs only over her "dead body," so to speak.
<a foreshadowing contrast
to the colors she mentions about life in the section dealing with flowers.
There are no significant colors in Hades, she laments.
<The first of many
"why's." When one asks why, she is essentially in denial of the fact that
it exists. (Why did he do that? Well, he did it--what are you going to
do?) She is struggling here for acceptance of her plight. In the meantime
she must work it out by speaking.
<woman as death =
woman as nothingness
<Hesitation is a gesture
of doubt. What did Orpheus doubt? Perhaps that he could not have become
a great poet without Eurydice, whose death in the myth is the catalyst
of his own inspiration.
<. First of many references
to the face, hers and his.
<His face (above)
bends to hers (below)--a gesture of condescension, of "arrogance"
<"crossed" is used
interestingly here. It may mean the light of Orpheus' pretentions that
he could outwit death and save her; or the false light which "trangresses"
against the freedom he has dangled in front of her spirit, and then, in
the "turn," removes.
<This seems sarcastic,
for she is a being in darkness. Were he to see the light of his face in
hers would mean that she is in the light, that there is a connection between
the two of them, a yearning for him as a submissive bride, which there
is no longer.
<She has connected
fire ('flame") with the Underworld; now she has connected it with him.
He is losing the true light in her own eyes, and is actually growing closer
in reality to her perception of that which she is trying to escape (the
darkness).
<Note that when she
uses this word, we could easily substitute the word "pretense," which gives
a wonderful cutting irony against the backdrop of what seems like true
passion for Eurydice by Orpheus, which it is not.
<a reaction, which
produces something--in this case, flowers.
<Here she begins to
equate flowers with the upper-world, Orpheus world, LIFE, for which she
has longed. In place of this existence, Eurydice yearns for earthly beauty.
For her, flowers symbolize the epitome of earthly existence.
<She is stuck here,
though.
< a symbol of the
earthly sky. Crocuses are also among the very first flowers of springtime.
<flowers of the sun,
celestial faces and spirits above the earth
< So we have sky,
sun wind, all of which are beyond her intrinsic grasp now.
<She is the vision
of woman as inertia (motionlessness) whereas Orpheus is the symbol of movement,
dancing about and singing with his harp.
<the sum of all colors
III< She links this substance to the
fatal motion Orpheus has made.
<"Saffron is the product
of several species of crocus, especially of the blue-flowered saffron crocus...native
to Greece and Asia Minor. The commercial product consists of the stigma
and upper portion of the style, which are collected as or shortly after
the flower opens" (Moldenke, Harold N., Plants of the Bible, New
York, 1958, p. 87).
The stigma and style are components of
the flower's reproductive mechanism. That Eurydice should compare Orpheus
to saffron suggests that he is, like commercially produced saffron, pulverized
and used thus. To be sure, her comparison is a part of the heroine's own
Orphic "turn," where her own conception and experience with flowers so
emasculates him who first turned on her. Notice this line in his letter
as nothing less than an affirmation of H.D.'s closing to the poem. I do
not know whether H.D. knew of this letter to Gray going into her poem,
but the parallel in thought is indeed startling. It underscores the point
that, on a sort of telepathic, empathic, emotional and perhaps literary
level, that they --she and Lawrence- could have been proximally compatible
catalysts for each other's work.
That Eurydice is able to differentiate
between parts of the crocus and its products as a component of a conceptual
working order to her floral paradigm of "living" shows that she indeed
has more power for her own redemption than the classical myth would ever
have afforded her. That is, she may have been ripped from the earth, but
Orpheus has been ripped from his own integral self, from the flower itself
which to her is the symbol of life on the earth. The delicacy of the flowers
juxtaposed with the subtextual allusion to Orpheus' own violent spiritual
upheaval create in these elements a powerful method of underscoring her
point that she is really better off than Orpheus.
<Like Orpheus' face,
the saffron bends its face towards Hades. Her sarcasm here is clear: Orpheus
is jaundiced with the cowardice to be his own man. He has relied on her
demise as the vehicle for his own art.
<As a result of his
fatal regard, all life has left her.Flowers are a symbol of life for her.
< There is no way
to return to the earth. The flowers are out of reach, and so life is colorless,
a bunch of "dead cinders upon a moss of ash."
<The Freudian notion
of the female persona is known as the "dark continent." In contrast with
the colors of the flowers which salvifically afford life meaning for her,
she now lives in colorless nothingness.
<Had Orpheus forgotten
her, as she now wishes he would have, she thinks she would have been able
to accept the eternal "nothingness" which would have been her eternal peace.
IV <The now elusive sky isembodied
by the blue crocuses which, ironically, produce the best saffron.
<Note how this idea
of loss is emphasized by separating it into its own poignant line.
<Big "if" here, signifying
what might have been. As usual, her embodiment of the sky (and everything
else "above the earth") lies in the notion of flowers.
< Orpheus has aroused
in her a thirst for life, which has made her existence now all the more
unbearable.
<A list of what might
have been follows.
<That she desires
the "whole" that life has to afford, and that she repeats herself, demonstrates
that for her, a half-measure of anything will avail her nothing.
<The golden crocuses
represent the early, celestial light which accompanies springtime.
<The red crocuses
breathed into her the very heart of the earth in the infancy of vernal
rebirth.
< She might have been
reborn into the love of Orpheus, as saffron is born up from the earth.
<She could have withstood
being sent here again anyway. A moment of life, of flowers, of breathing
the fragrance of life again, of being among the "live souls" would have
sufficed even in the face of the possibility that she would again return
to Hades.
V <She repeats herself. He has repeated
and failed, showing that perhaps he needs these points driven home. She
knows to whom she is talking.
<Now she's being as
condescending as can be--by appealing to the classical stereotype of the
male reason, she sums up everything thus far, as a good textbook would
do.
<You do not need me,
do you? Or do you?
<Arrogant, self-centered
Orpheus has his own agenda for a presence.
<Some critics believe
she is also referring to her relationship with D. H. Lawrence here.
H.D.'s interest in D.H. Lawrence probably
had as much to do with his forceful personality and what she evidently
recognized as his symbolic Orpheus-like role...than with his accomplishments
as a novelist or poet (Sword 411). What, though, is the evidence that such
interest would evoke the need or desire to pen "Eurydice?" In a 1916 letter
that almost certainly refers to Lawrence she admits the Lawrence played
a most potent role in her life. In the letter she confides to her friend
John Cournos that "There is a power in this person to kill me" (Sword 414):
...I mean literally. For the spiritual vision, his thoughts, his distant
passion has given me, I thank God--because vision is God! I thank God!
But...there is another side--if he comes too near, I am afraid for myself!
I do not mean physically--...I mean in a more subtle way." ( from a Letter
to John Cournos, 31 Oct., 1916. Printed in "Art and Ardor in World War
One: Selected Letters from H.D to John Cournos," Iowa Review, 16,
No. 3 (Fall 1986), 139-40).
It may be that the arrogant power of Lawrence's
personality, his character, drove H.D. to write, to speak with the voice
of defiance that the Eurydice of her work hereafter assumes: ("I tell you
this:").
<Here is the turning
point from her despair.
< She begins to execute
an Orphic "turn" of her own, a "Eurydicean" turn away from patriarchal
convention.
<Her determination
to reign in Hades if she cannot write poetry on earth is not the most satisfying
solution to her dilemma. But she does show courage.
VI <Rather than accepting her fate
in silence, she cries out defiantly against her oppressor, where the negative
space of marginalization has become a source of power.
<By internalizing
her love for life, she recreates the flowers she longs for in herself.
< She could withstand
even more than this, for she now has her integrity and dignity, regardless
of what Orpheus does.
VII <the world of myself, of imagination,
and integrity
<This fervour requires
no extranous force or "live soul" for its validation.
< This refers to the
light from within, rather than from without, from earth or from Orpheus.
<Her spirit is not
dead; it has a consciousness which cannot be extinguished by any god or
mortal.
<"Small" is
infinitely larger than "nothingness."
<This is a most apocalyptic
final verse with its imagery of hell as a red rose, showing that she has
conquered the misery of hell by her mere thoughts and attitudes. She is
saying that her internal flowers are powerful indeed.
The last lines suggest that perhaps Lawrence
looked to H.D. less for poetic influence...than for some "more subtle"
form of inspiration and initiation (Sword 415). When Cecil Gray, "Cyril
Vane" of Bid Me to Live, wrote a letter to Lawrence in 1917 accusing
Lawrence of "allowing himself to become the object of a kind of esoteric
female cult," Lawrence replied in defense:
"As for me and my "women," I know what
they are and aren't...Your hatred of me...is your cleavage to a world of
knowledge and being which you ought to forsake, or die. And my "women,"
Esther Andrews, Hilda Aldington [H.D.] etc., represent, in an impure and
unproud, subservient, cringing, bad fashion, I admit--but represent one
the less the threshold of a new world, or underworld, of knowledge and
being...The old world must burst, the underworld must be open and whole,
new world..."(Sword 417).