Helen of Troy
The poetry of H.D. is inextricably linked to Helen of Troy. Perhaps no coincidentally, her mother was also named Helen. Her longest and most ambitious work in verse is titled Helen in Egypt and in this collection Helen of Troy pops up as a character in one of her most anthologized poems. What is unique about “Helen” (including in the section Heliodora) is that in this case the subject of the poem is not actually Helen of Troy herself, but the statue of Helen and it relates to the concept of Greek identity.
Circe
Figures from ancient myth also dominate much of H.D.'s verse. The section titled Hymen features a poem in which Circe is the titular figure. H.D. presents Circe from the unique perspective of what she might be like after Ulysses manages to do what other couldn’t and escape her enchanting spell.
Leda
Another tie to Helen occurs in “Leda” also found in the Hymen section which views the infamous story of the rape of the mother of Helen of Troy by Zeus while taking the form of a swan from the feminine perspective.
Eurydice
Another famous figure from Greek mythology shows up in the section The God. This poem also casts the familiar story in a different light by shifting perspective. In this case, Eurydice is telling her story from the point at which she has been condemned back to the Underworld; a fate which she places squarely upon the merciless hubris of Orpheus.
Sigmund Freud
Unique among the characters that pop up in the work of H.D. is the subject of her long poem included in later editions of the Collected Poems titled “The Master.” The titular master is none other than Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis. Making this even more unique is that H.D. does not write this poem from the perspective of distance, but based on intimate knowledge: she was actually a patient of Freud’s during the 1930’s.
