Helen in Egypt

By Hilda Doolittle (H. D)

Book Overview

The fabulous beauty of Helen of Troy is legendary. But some say that Helen was never in Troy, that she had been conveyed by Zeus to Egypt, and that Greeks and Trojans alike fought for an illusion. A fifty-line fragment by the poet Stesichorus of Sicily (c. 640-555 B.C.), what survives of his Pallinode, tells us almost all we know of this other Helen, and from it H. D. wove her book-length poem. Yet Helen in Egypt is not a simple retelling of the Egyptian legend but a recreation of the many myths surrounding Helen, Paris, Achilles, Theseus, and other figures of Greek tradition, fused with the mysteries of Egyptian hermeticism.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0811205436
• ISBN13: 9780811205436
• Release Date: January 1961
• Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.8" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

How to Describe...?

How to describe this book? Doolittle's dexterity with our language, her soft langurous voice, the layers upon layers of depth underlying each of the stanzas? It is impossible. Having read the Greek lyrics and tragedians, and that other beacon, Shakespeare, I am still at a loss to do justice to Doolittle's "Helen in Egypt." I can only tell you one thing: read it. But if you do, do it slowly, with care and attention to each of the lines, with long pauses to allow them to sink in, and let yourself be seduced by Helen, Helena, the phantom that, real or not, launched a thousand ships, and languishes between a triumvirate of men, gods, and heroes: Zeus and Amen, Achilles and Paris and Theseus, Castor and Pollux and Clytemnestra...