What Words Conceal: H.D.’s Occult Word-Alchemy in the 1950s

Abstract

H.D.’s mature work of the 1950s represents a distinct phase in her poetry, marked in part by the influence of her deep reading in the French occult tradition. This chapter examines the way word-play, a notable technique in H.D.’s poetry, changes in character between Trilogy and later long poems Hermetic Definition and Vale Ave as the result of these readings. While language play is imagined as alchemy in the earlier text, in the later writing, it becomes instead associated with practical Kabbalah and its signature word-permutation techniques, which are meditative means of liberating the imagination from dualistic thinking. Alchemy, meanwhile, is repurposed as an illustration of the Hermetic process by which an inner transformation is made, freeing up language as the primary medium for the Hermetic theurgical act and thus opening the possibility for a theurgical poetics.