"Re-Worked Freely": H.D. and the Greek Anthology Item Type text; Electronic Dissertation Authors Benacquista, Jane Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction, presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 02/10/2021 05:17:17 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/631903 1 “RE-WORKED FREELY”: H.D. AND THE GREEK ANTHOLOGY by Jane Benacquista ____________________________ Copyright © Jane Benacquista 2019 A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 2019 2 THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE As members of the Dissertation Committee, we certifythat we have read the dissertation prepared by Jane Benacquista, titled H.D. and the Greek Anthology, and recommend that it be accepted as fulfillingthe dissertation requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Date: December 7, 2018 Tho,-j. s Willard-"-") £)(� -----��------ ½ . -....-,,=.--------Date: December 7, 2018 Jerold le � -� +-----,..,t,1A'+-,,rlf--+-----,,___--��--------Date: December 7, 2018 Su�t'f' Final approval and acceptance of this dissertation is contingent upon the candidate's submission of the finalcopies of the dissertation to the Graduate College. I hereby certifythat I have read this dissertation prepared under my direction and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement. Date: December 7, 2018 'homas Willard 3 STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission, provided that an accurate acknowledgement of the source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the copyright holder. SIGNED: Jane Benacquista 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to the many people who supported me during the dissertation process. For years of moral and intellectual support without which I would never have been able to complete this process, thank you to Tom Willard, Jerry Hogle, Susan Briante, Micki Long, Matt Kundert, Mark Benacquista, Stella Benacquista, Carie Schneider, Aran Donovan, and Kimberly Wine. For invaluable help translating epigrams, I am grateful to Lynn Kozak, Bella Vivante, and Laura Camp. 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Tables………………………………………………………………………6 List of Figures……………………………………………………………………...6 Abbreviations, Translations, and Transliterations of Greek……………………….7 Abstract…………………………………………………………………………….8 Introduction………………………………………………………………………...9 Chapter One: Garland/Garden…………………………………………………….19 Chapter Two: A Voyage…………………………………………………………..54 Chapter Three: Translations of Meleager in Heliodora………………………......86 Conclusion: The Anthology of Helen…………………………………………… 113 Works Cited………………………………………………………………………147 6 LIST OF TABLES Table 1.1……………………………………………………………………….….31 Table 1.2………………………………………………………………………….39 Table 1.3………………………………………………………………………….44 Table 1.4………………………………………………………………………….45 Table 1.5………………………………………………………………………….49 Table 2.1………………………………………………………………………….70 Table 2.2………………………………………………………………………….72 Table 2.3………………………………………………………………………….73 Table 2.4………………………………………………………………………….80 Table 3.1………………………………………………………………………….97 Table 3.2…………………………………………………………………………103 Table 3.3…………………………………………………………………………105 Table 3.4…………………………………………………………………………108 Table 4.1…………………………………………………………………………138 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1……………………………………………………………………………119 Figure 2……………………………………………………………………………131 7 ABBREVIATIONS, TRANSLATIONS, AND TRANSLITERATIONS OF GREEK The most complete edition of the Greek Anthology is a five-volume set from Loeb Library edited and translated by W. R. Paton. The Anthology is divided into sixteen books, and each poem is numbered. Unless otherwise specified, citations are from the Paton translation and are given with the volume number followed by the epigram number (e.g., 3.123 refers to epigram 123 in volume 3). When I discuss Greek texts, I include the italicized transliteration. I use the American Library Association-Library of Congress (ALA-LC) Romanization standards. 8 ABSTRACT H.D.’s treatment of the classics offers alternatives to dominant reception traditions, which have used classics to fortify a fascist aesthetics. Her anthological syncretism puts classical elements into new juxtapositions, emphasizing the poet’s role as arranger and creating a poetics of relations rather than of essences. My dissertation shows how H.D.’s engagement with the Greek Anthology informed the development of her radical classical reception. Ancient Greek epigram is an instrument of repurposing. Through careful arrangement of relationships, it engineers a moment of metamorphosis, be it the transformation of an object into a symbol through dedication or the transformation of a concept through deviant variation. The Greek Anthology holds hundreds of these little instruments together in contingent assemblage: it is really an anthology of ratios, of relationships. There are the core relationships defined within each epigram, but also the relationships between the epigrams, which are arranged in various substructures and taxonomies. The anthology’s relational poetics is revived by H.D., and I show how she usurps its strategies of repetition, variation, and transformative juxtaposition to challenge our understanding of what is beautiful in the classics. My project culminates in a new reading of H.D.’s reception of Helen of Troy in Helen in Egypt, one that allows us to recognize it as a malleable anthology that binds various genres and traditions. 9 INTRODUCTION The Glitter of Epigram Small talk is a game with counters that are small, well-crafted utterances, variations of familiar comments by players who have played the game before. In H.D.’s story “Ear-ring,” set in the crowded dining room of a cosmopolitan hotel in 1920 Athens, narrator Madelon Thorpe sits amidst small talk, alternately repulsed by its affectation and predictability and intrigued by its movement and energy: Talk ran high; no matter how decorous the undertone, one felt there was some high voltage, some high-explosive power, about the simplest utterance. One almost saw glitter of epigram, running like a magnesium flare from table to table; large table-circles and smaller circles, seemed to repeat collective messages in different languages. (“Ear-ring” 9-10) Madelon emphasizes the behavior and circulation of language: speakers and their subjects seem pretext for the development of higher order patterns of meaning. On the “decorous” level, the language is presented in aural terms (“undertone,” “utterance”), but on another level it is patterned energy to be experienced visually: something to be read. Madelon’s association of this experience with epigram, a genre intensely interested in the relationship between orality and writing, is not accidental: like small talk, epigram is a game in which the pieces are small, carefully-crafted word structures, variations on old formulae put forth by players familiar with the game’s parameters. For both, brevity and strict formal features encourage experiments with repetition, variation, and citation, and with the seeking of large-scale patterns created from a discourse composed of such experiments. 10 H.D. is able to detail epigrammatic phenomena in “Ear-ring” because of her work with Hellenistic epigram and the Greek Anthology, in which she taps into a poetic tradition of re- working, re-scaling, and re-arranging poetic structures. Madelon’s transformative recognition of small talk’s “glitter” parallels the poetic transformation that, in this tradition, makes new poems possible through rereading and rewriting old poems’ patterns, as well as through attention to larger-scale patterns in which existing poems can be arranged. Epigram’s presence is explicit in H.D.’s early work: her first publication, in Poetry, January 1913, consisted of three poems under the heading “Verses, Translations, and Reflections from the [Greek] Anthology.” These poems were signed “H.D. Imagiste,” and famously launched the Imagist movement, which like epigram championed precision, economy, and clarity. Epigram’s influence is clear in 1916’s Sea Garden and persists throughout her career, playing a crucial role in her third book of poems, Heliodora (1924). Study of epigram’s influence in these earlier works helps reveal an epigrammatic poetics in her later works, too, especially Helen in Egypt (1961). The recognition of epigrammatic characteristics helps us draw new connections between her earlier and later periods, and between her lyrical and non-lyrical strategies. Archaic Epigram Ancient Greek epigram is usually divided into three historical phases: archaic, classical, and Hellenistic. Archaic epigrams (before 500 BCE) were dedicatory or memorial inscriptions that supplemented tombs or dedicated objects. These epigrams were not received as literary and names of authors were not recorded. Speakers were the dead, mourners, dedicators, or the inscribed objects themselves. Inscribed