Natalie’s Blog

from p. 118:

There was no use remembering the treasures, the cold, sweet uplifted arm of some marble Hermes, the tiny exquisite foot and bird-like ankle of some Aphrodite. Those things were being buried and all they could do was to watch, to stand in little groups and knots and after all with the volcano belching its filth over them, they were all one, must be all one, fear, terror, the obstinate courage that refused its terror made them one, facing bright hawks in an odd grey poisonous noon that swooped and swooped and we all said, “it can’t be them, it’s us, it must be, flying so low,” but it was them, insinuating themselves, what courage, what dastardly beauty of destruction. “Baby-killers.” Gods, men, flying high, flying low, “ours” were as brave of course, better, braver, better altogether, but not so tight, not so hard, not so devastating in their cruel cynicism. Baby-killers. Little Willie, big Willie, newspapers making all life on one level, but how could we help it? How could we help it? O thank God, I’m here, didn’t go back to America. How could we help it. “Delia.”

Well I just committed the English major cardinal sin by quoting more than I have time to close-read (and it wasn’t easy to trim the quote to just this much), so I’m hoping other people will step in after I post this. For me, this was the ultimate war passage in the novel. Notes on Thought and Vision makes me quiver imagining the possibilities of fulfillment when you connect intellectually, spiritually, and otherwise with other humans. In that text, and I think at times in Asphodel, H.D. seems to advocate the unmatched elation one can receive from human company and love. On p. 118, the pendulum sways drastically to the other side and war emerges as this massive thing that connects and affects us all but in horrifying ways. It’s the kind of torture that’s so damning, you lose touch from your very basic foundation, like a geographical (and I suppose communal, cultural) sense of where you are. London is almost unrecognizable in this scene, and the narration conveys people’s inability to take control of that. Notes on Thought and Vision is a fairly optimistic text, I think, because it, counterintuitively at times, explains step-by-step how to achieve (literally) mind-blowing connections and fruitions. But in the midst of the evil that is war, people’s power is limited– “all they could do was to watch.”

Maybe I should leave it at that. But I have to wonder, is H.D., while certainly establishing the crushing and irrevocable effects of war, also rewriting it as something fascinating and seductive? Before my quote, about six lines from the top of the page, H.D. uses volcano imagery, and after ED, I can’t help but think of volcanoes as massively destructive but also gloriously fertile. Also, having read Wilfred Owen, I’m drawn to read the us-them conflict on the battlefield as one that moves toward being ineffectual because all the soldiers are fighting for more than themselves, for a higher loyalty that to some extent they’re forced into and don’t have a lot of say about. They’re all risking their lives for something that reigns over them, whether they will it or not. And that’s terrifying, but also like (pardon the awful reductive cliche) a car accident, something you’re fixated on because it’s so destructive. So I wonder if in Asphodel H.D. viewed war in a similar vein– something that devastates and wipes out the essential components of a culture/city/tradition, and leaves behind ruins with which to reframe geographical and cultural identity. Now I’m bleeding into the comment I just made on Nathan’s post, “H.D. and Stateless,” but really, when talking about H.D., I’m finding it futile to try and separate concepts. She’s just too fluid and inclusive.