From “Pallinode” to “Leuke”

When she transitions from “Pallinode” to the second book of the text, “Leuke,” Doolittle explores the intersection of the several possible and complimentary readings of the hieroglyph motif that she has established in the first section of the book-length poem. Throughout the second book of Helen in Egypt, Doolittle conflates the symbols of Helen’s life with the hieroglyph motif that appeared throughout the first section of the text, creating a paradoxical relationship between actuality and artistic representation. In “Leuke,” the two become one and the same, suggesting that artistic renderings often become a point of entry to understanding one’s own life.

…Doolittle suggests that just as one extricates multiple and often conflicting interpretations of such artistically generated symbols as hieroglyphs, the symbols of one’s life, as well as the place they hold within one’s memory, can be interpreted in a similar fashion.

Within the text of Helen in Egypt, the treatment of the hieroglyph motif in the book of “Leuke” embodies this intersection of possible interpretations and paradoxes, namely as Doolittle presents the island itself as the penultimate hieroglyph to be deciphered. In doing so, she continues to portray Helen as appreciating such indecipherable symbols as ends in and of themselves, particularly as engagement with the objective serves as a point of entry to subjective ideas and emotions. For Helen, the island of Leuke similarly remains a doorway to the myths, symbols, and memories that inhabit her past, just as her engagement with friezes on temple walls allowed the heroine to access insights about both her life in Greece and her sojourn in Egypt. Doolittle establishes this interpretation of the island in the final poem of “Pallinode,” which introduces the section. She writes in the introductory prose passage of the eighth poem of the seventh book of “Pallinode,” “But the timeless, hieratic symbols can be paralleled with symbols in-time… There are other hieroglyphs, Thetis had reminded her, a grasshopper, a flying fish, an octopus…” In this passage, Doolittle suggests that just as one extricates multiple and often conflicting interpretations of such artistically generated symbols as hieroglyphs, the symbols of one’s life, as well as the place they hold within one’s memory, can be interpreted in a similar fashion.

While drawing a parallel between the symbols of one’s life and artistic, “timeless” symbols like ancient Egyptian friezes, Doolittle presents Helen’s engagement with the two as being fundamentally different, namely as the symbols of one’s life remain constantly in flux, unlike a static work of art. In conveying this distinction, she presents the island of Leuke as being comprised of a host of constantly fluctuating smaller symbols, rendering it her most complex engagement with objective images thus far. As she transitions to verse, the style of Doolittle’s poem often complicates this discussion of interpreting living symbols, which, unlike fixed hieroglyphs of earlier strophes, constantly acquire new subjective connotations as one strives to decipher them. She accomplishes this illustrative quality through her use of syntax and anaphora, as well as poetic imagery:

In this particular poem, H.D. compares the “reading” of the island of Leuke to the constantly changing shores in a rainstorm, and, in doing so, she mirrors the shifting of the ocean landscape through her use of syntax and anaphora in the poem. By creating a series of lines with parallel syntactical constructions, such as “and the foam-flecked sand” and “and the wind and hail,” the rhythm of her poem mirrors both the tumultuous tides and the constantly shifting nature of the symbols she must interpret on the island of Leuke. Similarly, by incorporating a caesura between “conceals and reveals” and repeating the word “and” throughout the piece, the poem mirrors the swaying of the island’s shores while conveying the difficulty of interpreting its literally erratic symbols. In doing so, the author problematizes the application of literary methods of interpretation to the symbols of one’s life, which continue to acquire new subjective connotations as one attempts to decipher them. Although differentiating between fixed and living symbols, Doolittle portrays Helen as constructing her own relationship to the secondary language of analysis, which at times appears as critical as it is celebratory.