Hippolytus Temporizes & Ion: Adaptations from Euripides

by H.D.

Brilliant reworkings of Euripides' classic dramas by the great modernist poet H.D., now available in one volume. H.D.'s 1927 adaptation of Euripides's Hippolytus Temporizes and her 1937 translation of Ion appeared midpoint in her career. These two verse dramas can both be considered as "freely adapted" from plays by Euripides; they constitute a commentary in action, and in this regard resemble the Oedipus plays of W. B. Yeats and Ezra Pound's Women of Trachis . In the first play, the young man Hippolytus is obsessed with the virgin goddess Artemis and discovers the depth of his passion with the sensual Phaedra, his disguised this experience brings self-knowledge and death. The heroine Kreousa in Ion attempts to poison Ion when she fails to recognize him as her son by Apollo and sees instead an outsider and possible usurper of her throne. H.D.'s translations of the Greek were greatly admired by T. S. Eliot. In her reworkings, she creates modern versions of classic plays, enabling her to explore her favorite poetic themes. Sigmund Freud (with whom H.D. was undergoing analysis just before she embarked on Ion) commended her translations; and after writing them, H.D. was able to go on to write Helen in Egypt , "a sweeping epic of healing and integration." These marvelous versions attest to H.D.'s claim that "the lines of this Greek poet (and all Greek poets if we have but the clue) are today as vivid and as fresh as they ever were."

Genres: Poetry, Drama, Plays

288 pages, Paperback

First published December 29, 2003

About the author

An innovative modernist American writer, Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961) wrote under her initials in a career that stretched from 1909 to 1961. H.D., most well known for her lyric and epic poetry, also wrote novels, memoirs, short stories, essays, reviews, a children’s book, and translations. An American woman who lived her adult life abroad, H.D. was engaged in the formalist experimentation that preoccupied much of her generation. A range of thematic concerns resonates through her writing: the role of the poet, the civilian representation of war, material and mythologized ancient cultures, the role of national and colonial identity, lesbian and queer sexuality, and religion and spirituality.

Reviews

[Phillip · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read Hippolytus Temporizes for my dissertation. This is definitely a High Modernist version of the play, with distinct Freudian overtones. The plot here is not exactly the same plot as Euripides', Seneca's, or Racine's version, because H.D. spends much more time on Hippolytus and his conflict. He is initially an extremist devoted to purity, but then after being tricked by Phaedra into sleeping with her (he thought she was Artemis) his whole world-frame comes apart. Really this version is the story of the destructive power of extremism, and how devastating the consequences are when that extreme is undermined.

One thing I found really interesting, but I don't fully know what to make of it yet, is Hippolytus' identity confusion. Especially in the first act, Hippolytus identifies himself with Artemis, and with his mother Hippolyta, but then he also accuses Artemis of letting his mother die. This is a complex knot. But I think the idea here is ultimately a Freudian indictment of the mother/lover, who destroys the superego existence that Hippolytus had been living in his ascetic puritanism. The id of Phaedra, who is also the mother/lover, destroys Hippolytus' attempt to hold himself distant from the mother/lover figure of Hippolyta/Artemis, and therefore the sexual communion with Phaedra/Artemis destroys Hippolytus/Hippolyta (because the son accuses the goddess of allowing Hippolyta to die, foreshadowing his own death, which Artemis does not prevent).