Modernist Hellenism
Pound, Eliot, H.D., and the Translation of Greece

Examines how the legacy of Greece was taken up and transformed by the initiators of poetic modernism in English.

Katerina Stergiopoulou (Author)

9781009371483, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 28 November 2024

504 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 3.3 cm, 0.86 kg

Modernist Hellenism argues that engagement with Greek was central to the evolution of modernist poetics throughout the first half of the twentieth century. It shows that Eliot, Pound, and H.D. all turn to Greek literature, and increasingly Greek tragedy, as they attempt to grapple not only with their own evolving poetics but also with changing sociocultural circumstances at large. Revisiting major modernist works from the perspective of each poet's translations and adaptations from Greek, and drawing on archival materials, the book distinguishes Pound and H.D.'s work from Eliot's and argues for the existence of a specifically modernist hellenism (rather than, say, classicizing or idealizing, decadent or heretical), which is personal, politicized, and unconstrained by institutional standards, but also profoundly textual, language-based, and engaged with classical scholarship. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

Introduction: Towards a Modernist Hellenism
Part I. Hellenists and Modernists: From Image to Drama: 1. 'The some more vital equation': writing the image between Hellenism and Modernism
2. 'The glory that was this and the grandeur that was the othe': Pound, Eliot, and Greek drama
Part II. 'I Don't Want to Write It': Measuring Greece between the Wars: 3. 'What is Greece if you draw back?': Translating Hellenism into Modernism
4. 'Who fished the murex up': The Distillation of Ion
Part III. Tragedy and Translation in Late Modernism: 5. From Agamemnon to Herakles: Eliot's plays and the Four Quartets
6. 'Now time to go back to an effort of 1912': Elektrifying English at St. Elizabeths
7. 'From the dawn blaze to sunset': the languages of the image
Part IV. The Long Imagist Poem: 8. Pallinodes and Eidola: 'catching up to the past' in H.D.'s Helen in Egypt.

Subject Areas: Classical history / classical civilisation [HBLA1]