Herself Defined by Barbara Guest

A biography of the American poet, Hilda Doolittle (1886-1961), written by the poet Barbara Guest, who gives an intimate portrait of H. D. and the circle of novelists, artists and poets who were her friends. Barbara Guest writes in the preface, that “next to her daughter, the person of most consequence in the life of H. D. was her friend and companion, the writer Bryher.. . I assumed in my precarious innocence that I would be writing a biography of H. D. After I had reached the first encounter of Bryher and H. D., in 1918, I realized that within the chambers of the life I was examining lay another nautilus, Bryher. It was impossible to proceed with my labors without considering on each step of the way a presiding “elf”.?? It seems that Barbara Guest does not approve of H. D.?s relationships with women. She writes further that “H. D.?s life was directed, assisted, shared by men who recognized the conflicting elements that tormented women whom they regarded as “stars”. She suffered and was fragmented by her dependencies. Nothing supports this statement so much as the photographs of H. D. in her early beauty and then the ravaged image revealed in her late pictures. Yet. . . she was cherished and even adulated by the women of her circle, her lovers and her friends. A lonely women, H. D. was surrounded by a court, if at times provincial and limited.” Barbara Guest’s biography is very detailed and fascinating, but like many other biographies of lesbians, tends to give more weight to relationships with men. She even concludes that “No matter that she [H. D.] declared herself thankful she had not married Ezra [Pound], because “he would have destroyed me and the center they call “Air and Crystal” of my poetry”. An afterthought. Despite her moth wings, the young Hilda would have married Pound.”