Flowers For Socrates

reposted in honor of Women’s History Month

by NONA BLYTH CLOUD

If you look up “complex” in the dictionary, you may find a picture of H.D. (1886-1961). Since most Americans and many people in the rest of the world have not had “the benefit of a Classical education,” a lot of the references in her poems need footnotes.

She, Ezra Pound and Richard Aldington are the self-proclaimed “three original Imagists.”  In the summer of 1912, they set out the principles of Imagist poetry:

1. Direct treatment of the ‘thing’ whether subjective or objective.
2. To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation.
3. As regarding rhythm: to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of a metronome

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H.D. (1886-1961), born Hilda Dolittle, sometimes carried these principles to extreme, and ultimately grew well past them. This poem is one of her three poems which Ezra Pound submitted for publication, under the pseudonym H.D. Imagiste, to Harriet Moore for her new magazine, Poetry, which was beginning publication in the fall of 1912:

. . .Epigram

. . . The golden one is gone from the banquets;
. . . She, beloved of Atimetus,
. . . The swallow, the bright Homonoea:
. . . Gone the dear chatterer;
. . . Death succeeds Atimetus.

If you look up Atimetus and Homonoea, things become a little clearer. Claudia Homonoea, a Roman woman, had a four-sided monument over her grave with an inscription, which seems to alternate between words of her husband and the “voice” of Homonoea.

The “dialogue” between Homonoea and her husband translates:

“Atimetus, freedman of Pamphilus who is the freedman of Tiberius Caesar, Anterotianus for himself and for Claudia Homonoea fellow freedwoman and companion.

Far sweeter-voiced than the sirens, who at Bacchus’ side and at banquets was more golden than Aphrodite herself, I, the talkative and beaming swallow Homonoea, lay here, leaving tears for Atimetus, to whom I was wont to be welcomed gladly since I was little, but an unforeseen divine power dispersed this great love.

By permission of the patron, the front should be 5 feet long and the side 4 feet. You who make your way with a worried mind, halt briefly, I beg, and read a few words.

I was that woman who was preferred over the famous girls, I Homonoea am buried in this little tomb, to whom the Paphian one presented a good appearance, to whom the Charities granted beauty, whom Athena instructed in all arts. My youth had not yet seen twenty years when grudging destiny laid hold of me. I am not complaining about this on my account: that grief of my husband Atimetus is bitterer to me than death itself.

“May the earth lie light on you, woman most worthy in life, you who once enjoyed your possessions.’ If cruel destiny permitted exchange of life and survival could be purchased by another’s death, I should gladly have exchanged for you, dear Homonoea, whatever trifling seasons are due to my life. But now I shall shun the light of day and the gods, which is all I can do, so that I can follow you over the Styx in speedy death.”

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