The Astral H.D.: Occult and Religious Sources and Contexts for H.D.'s Poetry and Prose

by Matte Robinson

Overview

Modernist poet H.D. had many visionary and paranormal experiences throughout her life. Although Sigmund Freud worried that they might be 'symptoms,' she rebelled, educating herself in the alternative world of the occult and spiritualism in order to transform the raw material into a mythical autobiography woven throughout her poetry, prose, and life-writing. The Astral H.D. narrates the fascinating story of how she used the occult to transform herself, and provides surprising revelations about her friendships and conflicts with famous figures-such as Sigmund Freud and the Battle of Britain War Hero Hugh Dowding-along the way.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781628924183
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	02/11/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	208
File size:	326 KB

About the Author

Matte Robinson is Assistant Professor of English at St. Thomas University, Fredericton, Canada.

Table of Contents

Introduction: H.D.'s occult education
Chapter 1: “Blasted into consciousness”: Majic Ring, Trilogy, Amen, and the Air Marshall
Chapter 2: Dans L'ombre Des Cathedrales: Other bodies, other initiations
Chapter 3: Adam Dieu Rouge, Vale Ave, and the Luciferian Method
Chapter 4: La Kabbale Pratique and the Great Operation
Chapter 5: Synthesis and Conclusions
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

The Astral H.D. will inspire new critical assessments of H.D.'s great war epic, Trilogy, as well as some of her lesser known poetry, such as Vale Ave and the poems of Hermetic Definition. Robinson's grasp on the occult literature H.D. was reading in her later years is impressive, and he illuminates beautifully some of the more esoteric source material of her extensive library.
Lara Vetter, Associate Professor of English, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA

An excellent guide to H.D.'s occultism: her reading, her associative processing of that reading, and her appropriation and adaptation of it in her later poetry ... This book is extraordinarily well-researched, meticulous, and thorough. It is a challenge to read, purely because of the breadth and scope of H.D.'s reading in the occult, but Robinson has full control of this mass of material.
Literature & Theology

An important and useful addition to the scholarship on H.D.'s involvement in spiritualism and the occult.
Donna K. Hollenberg, Professor Emerita of English, University of Connecticut, USA

In The Astral H.D., Robinson undertakes a fascinating investigation into the myriad complexities of H.D.'s engagement with the occult. Robinson's thorough and erudite scholarship marshals a wealth of archival research and provides deft readings of H.D.'s most challenging texts. An invaluable resource for H.D. scholars, this volume will also be essential reading for all those interested in how an accomplished writer might appropriate, adapt and deploy a complex constellation of hermetic images and ideas.
Elizabeth Anderson, Impact Research Fellow, University of Stirling, UK, and author of H.D. and Modernist Religious Imagination

Positioned as a supplement to Susan Stanford Friedman's Psyche Reborn (1981), this book focuses on H.D.'s late long poems, particularly the spiritual and esoteric texts that influenced her in her last decade of writing. Tracing her marginalia in these books, Robinson asserts that occultism not only inspired her poetry but also offered her a framework to think about her life events, "allowing for an extensive project of weaving together her memories, dreams, visions, fantasies, and future.+? By locating the sources of H.D.'s gnosticism, hermeticism, and Rosicrucianism, this book provides detailed readings of Trilogy (1973), Helen in Egypt (1961), and Hermetic Definition (1971).
American Literature

From the Publisher

The Astral H.D. will inspire new critical assessments of H.D.'s great war epic, Trilogy, as well as some of her lesser known poetry, such as Vale Ave and the poems of Hermetic Definition. Robinson's grasp on the occult literature H.D. was reading in her later years is impressive, and he illuminates beautifully some of the more esoteric source material of her extensive library.

Lara Vetter

An important and useful addition to the scholarship on H.D.'s involvement in spiritualism and the occult.

Donna K. Hollenberg