H.D.'s "Helen"

One of my favorite poems that we studied this past week was “Helen.” I know we talked about it pretty in depth in class, but after reading the link that Dr. Johnson had up on Angel, I became really interested in the comparison between H.D.’s Helen and Edgar Allen Poe’s Helen. By looking at the two poems, we can really see the distinct difference between H.D.’s version of Helen and Helen as an object of the male gaze.

Poe’s “To Helen”

Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore,
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary, wayworn wanderer bore
to his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have broght me home
To glory that was Greece,
And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo! in yon brilliant window niche
How statuelike I see thee stand,
The agate lamp within thy hand!
Ah, Psyche, from the regions which
Are Holy Land!

Though both poems draw on the beauty of Helen, Poe seems to be commenting entirely on her physical appearance, almost romanticizing Helen’s role in history whereas H.D. is commenting on Helen as an object of hatred for “All Greece.” She is showing the reality of how Helen functioned. I feel like Poe’s picture of Helen relies solely on her physical appearance and H.D. is asking us to look closer. She is asking us to see more of Helen than just an object of lust, but as “God’s daughter” (12) and as a women who endured immense hatred against her.

Another thing that I find really interesting is the parallel between a type of statue imagery in both Poe’s poem and H.D.’s. Poe talks about “How statuelike I see thee stand” and in H.D.’s poem she talks about how “Greece reviles/the wan face when she smiles/hating it deeper sill/when it grow wan and white” (6-9). When I first read H.D.’s poem I didn’t see this as a reference to a state but after reading Poe, I can see a parallel. Both are referring to Helen as a statue but that statue functions in different ways.