End to Torment by H. D.

First published: 1979

Type of work: Memoir

Time of work: 1901-1958

Locale: The United States and Europe

Principal Personages:

• H. D., an American poet living in Europe and convalescing at the Kusnacht clinic
• Ezra Pound, the American poet, H. D.’s first love, incarcerated in St. Elizabeths hospital
• Erich Heydt, H. D.’s doctor, who encourages her to write the memoir
• Richard Aldington, a poet and H. D.’s former husband
• Norman (Holmes) Pearson, a literary critic and longtime friend of H. D., who also encourages her to write the memoir
• Undine, (
• Sheri Martinelli, ), a painter and female admirer of Pound
• Bryher, a poet and H. D.’s female companion from 1918 until H. D.’s death
• Joan, (
• Joan Waluga, ), another patient at the Kusnacht clinic

Form and Content

In March, 1958, H. D. (Hilda Doolittle) was in Kusnacht, Switzerland, recovering from an injury that she had suffered as the result of a fall. Her doctor, Erich Heydt, a psychoanalyst, encouraged her to keep a journal in which she recorded and explored her feelings for Ezra Pound. She was seventy-two years old when she began the journal; she had first met Pound in 1901 in Philadelphia and later had fallen in love with him and had become engaged to him. Fifty-seven years later, on March 7, when she began the journal, Ezra Pound was in his twelfth year of confinement in St. Elizabeths hospital in Washington, D.C., having in 1946 been judged mentally incompetent to stand trial for treason. Though an American citizen, Pound had, during World War II, broadcast a series of cultural diatribes over Rome Radio. The broadcasts revealed many of Pound’s literary and intellectual obsessions, and they were often anti-Semitic and pro-Fascist. Given the war, these broadcasts so antagonized American authorities that, at the end of the war, they imprisoned him in Pisa (Italy) and had him brought to the United States for trial.

In this memoir, H. D. recalls her first meetings with Pound, the romance they shared, the crossing of their paths in London (1908-1919) and, later, in Paris, and the metaphorical and artistic links between them. At the time that H. D. was writing, Pound was still hardly a popular figure, but the postwar vindictiveness against him had faded, and there was a growing movement—initiated by Archibald MacLeish, supported by Ernest Hemingway, and featuring Robert Frost as its spokesman—to free Pound from the mental asylum and from trial for treason. H. D. is sympathetic to her old friend and former romantic fixation, and in her journal she follows the various published comments and analyses that were part of the process of Pound’s achieving freedom. The journal ends (July 13, 1958) with Pound’s freedom, as H. D. received a letter from Norman Pearson informing her that Pound had left for Italy on the cruise ship Cristoforo Colombo.

Presumably this release was the end of Pound’s torment, and of H. D.’s, in sympathy for and reminiscence of him. She sent the manuscript of her journal to his retreat at Brunnenburg, Italy; though he liked the title End to Torment, he commented that it was “optimistic.” H.D. died two years later; Norman Pearson died in 1975, while working on her manuscript. The editing task was finally completed by Michael King, and the manuscript was published in 1979.

The memoir’s form is that of a journal. Each section is preceded by a date, sometimes including the day of the week (or, at Eastertime, noting “Good Friday,” “Easter Saturday,” “Easter Monday”). This journal is the book’s center and raison d’etre, yet it consists of only fifty-nine pages. The journal is preceded by a six-page foreword by Michael King, explaining the circumstances of the journal as well as some of the background of the relationship between H. D. and Pound. Following the text, four pages of notes by the editors elucidate a number of the journal’s obscure references. The notes are followed by “Hilda’s Book,” eighteen pages of Pound’s early poems (some published elsewhere in other forms), which he had hand-bound and sewn in vellum, presented to her early in their romance as a gift.

Aside from the accompanying photos of H. D. and Pound on the cover, the text contains a single photo-reproduction, a copy of an early Pound poem with his “gadfly” signature. Based on a novel of the 1890’s which H. D. and Pound had discussed, this “gadfly” persona represented Pound’s antisocial, ironic, revolutionary pose. H. D. remarks on the “gadfly” image presumably because the figure from the novel is seen as mentally unbalanced and is eventually captured, tried, and executed.

End to Torment moves back and forth between past and present, weaving a palimpsest (itself a title of one of H. D.’s earlier works) of times, images, persons and ideas. H. D. often begins in her present of 1958, with a comment by Dr. Heydt or by one of her friends who may be visiting, and then retreats to some memory of her early romantic days with Pound or to her own poetic career. Often H. D.’s journal entry for the day is a response to a critical article, such as one written by David Rattray, “Weekend with Ezra Pound” (The Nation, November 16, 1957), on Pound’s “Ezuversity,” the slightly self-mocking title Pound gave to the dialogues he held with a variety of visitors in an alcove of St. Elizabeths. Thinking about Pound in his current “fallen” state often returns H. D. to earlier images of romance, as well as to critical responses to Pound’s poems, particularly the Pisan Cantos (published in 1948).

Though the journal proceeds in chronological order from March to July, its treatment of the Pound-H. D. romance is episodic and achronological. H. D. returns repeatedly to a critical incident, such as Pound’s arrival at the birth of her child (not his) or the conflict between her father and Pound.

Her father’s opposition was clearly instrumental in breaking the engagement. Pound left, first for Wabash College in Indiana, later for Italy. Pound’s departure from Wabash was abrupt and occasioned by a minor scandal involving his offering his bed to a homeless female entertainer. Pound emerged blameless in the version he offered H. D.—but also as rebellious, sexually adventurous, and a figure of public scorn. H. D. found a substitute relationship with Frances Gregg, but Pound helped to quash that as well. Eventually H. D. herself moved to Europe and was married to another American poet, Richard Aldington; when she was giving birth to her only child (Perdita Aldington Schaffner) in 1919, Pound stormed into the hospital room, commenting, “. . . my only real criticism is that this is not my child.”

H. D.’s and Pound’s lives began to diverge after the birth of her child. Abandoned by men, H. D. formed a lifelong relationship with Bryher, a female friend; H. D. was analyzed by Sigmund Freud in the 1930’s and spent World War II in London while Pound was in Italy.

While H. D. was composing the journal that became End to Torment, Undine (Sheri Martinelli), an artist and female admirer of Pound, began visiting him at the hospital and corresponding with H. D. Like H. D., Undine had to abandon Pound; later she went to Mexico. H. D. felt great sympathy for Undine and saw her as another version of herself, separated from the great man and potential love.

To some extent, much of the format of End to Torment is a psycho-poetic approach to this autobiographical material. H. D. and her doctor (Heydt) continue to search for images, kernels, traumas—each of which will explain a lifetime, perhaps all of human experience. There is the constant refrain, “What are you hiding?” and a consequent search for what may be hidden.

When Pound is freed from St. Elizabeths and leaves for Italy, the torment seems over. After all the suffering Pound has endured (and alluding to the Dantesque structure and theme of Pound’s main work, the Cantos), H. D. sends him a rose; the rose is “for the Paradiso” (his paradise).

Critical Context

As the titles of so many biographical studies of H. D. suggest, her life was one long attempt at self-definition. This attempt at self-definition is serious, imaginative, and multiform. One of H. D.’s principal strategies of self-definition is to attempt to “read” or interpret others as versions of, analogues to, or comments on herself. That is also the primary technique of End to Torment, in which Pound’s torment and hers become one.

The reader can see this autobiographical technique employed in many of her novels as well as her longer poems, where figures from her life emerge as characters. For example, in the autobiographical novel Her (1981, written 1927), Pound emerges as the character George Lowndes; or her friend and analyst Dr. Heydt emerges as the figure of Paris in her poetic trilogy Helen in Egypt (1961, written 1952-1956). Thus the memoir End to Torment continually seeks palimpsestual analogues, where Pound becomes Aldington or Frances Gregg or Dr. Heydt. This technique is clearly related to and derives from her earlier memoir, Tribute to Freud (1956). Pound and Freud are both autobiographical father figures who aid H. D. in generating metaphors to interpret her own life.

End to Torment is also significant in that it sheds light on this early romance of Pound. It is thus crucial to biographers of both poets: It not only reveals specific details of their lives—particularly how Hilda Doolittle’s father reacted to their courtship—but also suggests how each artist may have viewed these details.

Bibliography

DuPlessis, Rachel Blau. H.D.: The Career of That Struggle, 1986.

Friedman, Susan Stanford. Psyche Reborn: The Emergence of H. D., 1981.

Guest, Barbara. Herself Defined: The Poet H. D. and Her World, 1984.

Kerblat-Houghton, Jeanne. “‘But Am I Wrong?’ A Study of Interrogation in End to Torment,” in H. D.: Woman and Poet, 1986. Edited by Michael King.

Robinson, Janice S. H. D.: The Life and Work of an American Poet, 1982.