In this particular work, Doolittle divides the piece into an analysis of plot and character in the introductory prose passage and a verse section with less clearly delineated implications for the text. The verse section itself mirrors the process that Helen undergoes with Theseus, particularly as the introductory passage attempts to explain and interpret it, whereas its images and recurring symbols lack a single definitive interpretation within the book. Again, as Joseph Riddel writes in The Turning Word, Doolittle’s poems frequently implement the type of double meanings one would encounter in a session of psychoanalysis, ultimately problematizing Helen’s recurring attempts to definitively “translate” and “decipher” the events of the past:

Doolittle often idealizes the possibilities inherent primary language of images and symbols, suggesting that a empirical approach to psychoanalysis remains at once infeasible and inferior to a more pluralistic attitude. Likewise, she uses the mythical framework of the book to extend this claim beyond the science of psychoanalysis to include other types of authoritative approaches to interpreting personal and cultural symbols. By presenting her autobiographical experience within a broader literary and cultural context through myth, she situates the scientific rhetoric of psychoanalysis within a trajectory of such authoritative interpretations within American and European history. In this respect, she posits authoritative interpretations of symbols as existing long before the psychoanalysis, which, in Doolittle’s presentation, could conceivably perpetuate oppressive power structures within society.

“Eidolon” and the Dangers of Interpreting Symbols

Throughout the final book of Helen in Egypt, entitled “Eidolon,” or “the image,” H.D. continues to caution readers against attempting to interpret any symbol in a definitive or authoritative manner, ultimately applying Helen’s narrative to larger social questions of the time. H.D. expands her definition of “symbol” and “interpretation” from primarily artistic and often personal images to encompass shared, historical symbols. In doing so, she suggests that Helen herself became a symbol to be deduced during the Trojan War, an event in which a false (and presumably authoritative) interpretation led to unnecessary violence and destruction. And, for the Helen that H.D. has created, the dangers of ideology remain most apparent in the notion of a single, definitive interpretation that it often calls for. As H.D. “gesture[s] towards the deepest… levels of the psyche,” as described by critic Liz Yorke, she frequently emphasizes its multiplicity. Deviating from the contemporary perception of psychoanalysis as an empirical science, Doolittle offers an alternative model, in which value is placed on the process of interpretation and reinterpretation, as opposed to the verifiable final product.

…Doolittle frequently refers to not only the possibility of false interpretation of shared historical symbols, but the tendency of such authority to define and interpret to fall into the hands of socially dominant groups. Her depictions of Helen as a collective symbol for the Greeks embody this concern.

In her presentation of Helen’s role in the Trojan War, Doolittle frequently refers to not only the possibility of false interpretation of shared historical symbols, but the tendency of such authority to define and interpret to fall into the hands of socially dominant groups. Her depictions of Helen as a collective symbol for the Greeks embody this concern. Likewise, in the fifth poem of the second book of “Eidolon,” she presents the reader with an explanatory prose section, in which she compares the events of the poems to “a play, a drama” in which “the players have no choice in an already-written… script.” In doing so, she suggests that as in any work of art, the characters of Helen in Egypt have come to represent larger historical conflicts and questions, their roles being an honor that fate has conferred upon them. She posits the poem as an attempt to interpret these symbols, spoken in the voice of a chorus drawn from the classical dramatic tradition she invokes in the prose passage. This chorus invokes and attempts to decipher symbols of the Trojan War that have appeared throughout the book — the kiss, the lyre, the battering ram — only to find that their interpretations problematize and contradict previous answers, as well as generating new symbols to be interpreted. Doolittle conveys this rejection of attempts to definitively decipher symbols through her use of poetic imagery, which relies on images to illuminate and interpret other images, ultimately conveying the impossibility of the chorus’s task of interpreting without generating new and unfamiliar questions.

Particularly apparent in the opening of the poem, which contrasts the minutia that initiated the war with its devastating effects, Doolittle’s effort to illuminate an image with other images unravels into a labyrinthine series of questions and symbols that prove even more complex than the first. The chorus asks, at the start of the piece, “Was Troy lost for a kiss, / or a run of notes on a lyre?” Conveying subjective ideas about the causes of war through concrete images, such as the kiss and the lyre, she introduces a host of additional questions by doing so, which are also encapsulated in concrete objects. By using these images to contrast the loss of Troy with both the romance that initiated the war and the works of art that were produced as a result of its tragedies, she raises another question that recurs throughout the text, that is, whether or not poems like Helen in Egypt justify the suffering that made them possible. Posing the question — “was the lyre-frame stronger // than the bowman’s arc, / the chord tauter?” — H.D. similarly uses images to embody subjective connotations, the lyre being associated with artistic pursuits and the bowman’s arc with martial ones.