Classical myth and myth-making in Hilda Doolittle’s prose and poetry

Abstract

The name of Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961), one of the key figures of modernist literature, is little known in the Russian-speaking world. It is connected with the fact that her texts simply did not reach the Soviet reader, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union most of her poetry and prose was never translated into Russian. At the same time, for Western literary studies Doolittle is a poet of the first row, a recognized master of the word, whose high status is confirmed not only by the assessments of her contemporaries (among whom, we note, were Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, D.G. Lawrence, Richard Aldington), but also by a number of literary prizes. In Russian Anglistics, however, the degree of study of Doolittle’s role in the historical and literary context of the twentieth century is insufficient for the reasons mentioned above. The paper attempts to consider one of the main features of Doolittle’s individual poetics – the mythologism that emerges in her texts both on a superficial (thematic) level and on a deeper level, bordering on myth-making and the creation of autobiographical myth.