Asphodel - H. D.

[Gail]

I finished reading both HERmione and Asphodel by H.D. (Hilda Doolittle). Only Asphodel is listed as one of the 1001 books but as it was a follow up to HERmione I felt that I had to read them both. Both books are autobiographical with H.D using the Roman à Clef literary convention so that all the real people have fictionalized names. The chronology goes from HERmione about H.D.'s early womanhood in Pennsylvania and then Asphodel which takes place later in life when she had moved to Europe. In Europe she had become part of a literary and intellectual circle and was struggling against the expectations placed on women at that time. Interestingly, although HERmione took place earlier the notes for it were written after the notes for Asphodel. HERmione was largely written in 1949 and published in 1981 while Asphodel was written in 1921-22 and not published until after her death in 1992. H.D. was largely known as a imagist poet and that is reflected in her prose writing which is rhythmic, sparse and not constrained by conventional sentence structures or the need to share who is speaking or whether the words are stream of consciousness or articulated.
I found Hermione to be a wonderful prose poem of a lost soul. The writing is not so much stream of consciousness as a grasping for consciousness through a haze of despair as it takes place at a time when H.D. had had to leave Bryn Mawr as a failure and she was also starting and ending a relationship with George Lowndes (Ezra Pound). H.D. was struggling with her desire to be a writer rather than a wife, and also was realizing that she was attracted to a female acquaintance. The language selection and the writing is an amazing fog in which we are treated to vague and forgetful self recognition through her relationship with trees, flowers, greek poets and goddesses and George's kisses.

In Asphodel, on the other hand, we see a surer hand as H.D. now knows that she is a writer. In the first part of the book she is traveling in Europe with her woman friend, who she is in love with, and her friend's mother. By the second half of the book Europe has gone to war, her intellectual circles are shattered by the war's aftermath and she is struggling with much greater practical issues including having a child by a man who was not her husband. The writing style continues to be an amazing braid of concise and precise word and phrase selection describing vague emotions and blurry impressions. As one of the first books to combine a women in love with another woman, a complete refutation of the then expectations of a women's place in the world and an extreme modernist writing style while reflecting the horrors of war, it really does belong on the 1001 books list. I very much enjoyed the unique prose but found I was only able to read about 10 pages at a sitting. I also had to stop and start a great deal due to multiple references to flowers, goddesses, nymphs, greek poets, and contemporary to her events that I had to look up. Therefore it was not an easy read at all.

[Liz M]

Why it is included in the 1001 list: "Asphodel is a remarkably complex, innovative, and hugely underrated work of Modernist fiction.... Themes of marriage, infidelity, and illegitimacy all connect the novel with the Jamesian literary tradition. More radically, however, the novel also explores one failed and and one hopeful lesbian relationship."

Asphodel is an autobiographical novel written in the 1920s but not published until after the author's death. It details the experience of a young female expat in France and London, first traveling with a woman friend, with whom the narrator is in love, and the friend's mother, and then striking out on her own amidst literary and intellectual circles. The style is difficult to follow -- mostly stream-of-conscious, only obliquely referencing reality (so maybe it shouldn't have been my end of day with a glass of wine book). The writing is beautiful but I never had a grasp on the events alluded to or felt any emotion. I had no idea there was a hopeful lesbian relationship until after reading the introduction and summary.

[Diane]

The story of an American expat and her experiences in the literary circles of Paris and London. Much of the book is based upon the authors own life and contains some topics that were considered taboo at the time, such as lesbianism, feminism, abortion, and having a child out of wedlock.