H.D. and Bryher : an untold love story of modernism /
H.D & Bryher: An Untold Love Story of Modernism explores the lives of two queer women, one a poet and the other a historical novelist, living from the late 19th century through the 20th century. Seeking invisibility to shield their deviance, they quested ancient cultures and gnostic wisdom to fi...
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| Format: | eBook |
| Language: | English |
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New York, NY :
Oxford University Press,
[2021]
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| Online Access: | Connect to the full text of this electronic book |
| Summary: | H.D & Bryher: An Untold Love Story of Modernism explores the lives of two queer women, one a poet and the other a historical novelist, living from the late 19th century through the 20th century. Seeking invisibility to shield their deviance, they quested ancient cultures and gnostic wisdom to find a more egalitarian creative process like electricity to anchor their lives together. As innovators of the power of two, their writing knit their psyches together. "This dual biography takes on the daring task of examining how two women, who didn't feel like women, survived as a couple, raising an illegitimate child during a period when such arrangements were frowned upon, if even recognized. When they met in 1918, H.D. (born Hilda Doolittle in 1886), had already achieved recognition as an Imagist poet, engaged in a lesbian affair, was married to a shell-shocked adulterous poet, and was pregnant by another. She fell in love with Bryher (born Annie Winifred Ellerman in 1894), trapped both in a female body and in the shadow of her father, Sir John Ellerman, a wealthy shipping magnate. They felt a telepathic and electric connection, bonding over Greek poetry, geography, ancient history, and a shared bodily dysphoria. Bryher introduced H.D. to cinema, psychoanalysis, and politics, herself rescuing refugees from Nazis throughout the 1930s. Bryher engaged in legal strategies to protect H.D., marrying Kenneth Macpherson, who adopted H.D.'s child and collaborated with the couple in filmmaking, discovering his queerness. Both H.D. and Bryher were on vision quests, and their cerebral eroticism led them to otherworldly experiences. During World War II, they held séances in London. After "V-J Day" was announced, H.D. had a severe nervous breakdown, which Bryher, taking great pains, ensured she survived. As a love story born out of war and modernism, the book speaks to their struggles to escape binary gender, homophobic and white supremacist agendas, while celebrating their creative triumphs and courageous aspirations"-- |
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| Physical Description: | 1 online resource (xviii, 400 pages) : illustrations |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9780190621230 0190621230 9780190621254 0190621257 |