Book Review: HERmione by H.D.

HERmione. Hilda Doolitle. New Directions. 1981. 238 pages.

Hermione is a difficult book. It's written by a modernist imagist poet as a stream-of-consciousness autobiography. If that's not enough to convince you that it's a tough book, I don't know what will. Hilda Doolittle wrote it about a period of time when she was depressed, and her writing reflects that. Near the end of the book, she is committed to a mental institution, and all I can say is, it finally made sense. Once she was in that situation, the narrative rang true.

I obviously read this for school and not for pleasure...and I struggled my way through it, honestly. The rest of the class struggled to, and the words "irritating" and "obnoxious" made frequent appearances in our class discussions, and I agreed often. However, many of my classmates felt the text as a whole was meaningless, and I have to disagree. Obtuse? Yes. Ambiguous? Most definitely. But meaningless? Not close.

The meaning I dervied from this book was less of a meaning than a theme, I suppose: H.D. explored the idea of self in this book. And unfortunately, she isn't able to come to a conclusion. But guess what? No one can determine what a self actually is. Philosophers bang their heads trying to do so. Ever heard of Martin Heidegger? Yeah, the self was a big deal to him. And he sure tries to nail it down, but doesn't actually do it. However, not reaching a conclusion is not a problem, I think. Discussing the idea of self encourages discussion and thought. For an experimental text, I think that's the point. She questions what we think we know about the autobiography genre to begin with, and it makes sense that she would also question what we think we know about the subject of the autobiography, the self.

By the end of the book, I have to admit that I liked it. Would I recommend it? Not the average reader: it's not exactly a beach read. But I think it's a fascinating book and I thoroughly enjoyed discussing it.