Comparative Study Of Relationships Between Hilda Doolittle’s Poetry And Hellenism

Hilda Doolittle, the modern American poetess, has a lifelong engagement with Hellenism including Greek mythology, arts, and literature. Hellenism, therefore, plays a significant role in her poetry creation where there is full of Greek mythological images and other modernistic elements at the same time. Accordingly what matters to better comprehend the formation of the poetess’ s poetic style is to clarify the relationship between her poetry and Hellenism.In this regard, two keywords, “acceptance” and “transcendence”, can best explain the relationship between Doolittle’s poetry and Hellenism. On one hand,Doolittle’s poetry partakes of the influence of Greek Culture. Through the internalizing of Greek mythology, Greek writers and Hellenism, Doolittle forms her unique poetic style. Specifically, Hellenism has set the tone for Doolittle’s poetry with vibrant life consciousness, aesthetic orientation of “harmony” and “sublime” as well as the coordination between “divinity” and “rationality”. Greek mythology has also provided great inspiration and nutrition for the poetess’ s poetry creation with the Greek imagery she follows, the Greek genres she reconstructs and the intertextuality of Greek myth. Besides, Greek writers, such as Euripides, Sappho and Theocritus etc.,have exerted great influence on Doolittle’s poetry creation with their own stylistic uniqueness to promote the development and perfection of the poetess’ s poetry. On the other hand, on the basis of acceptance, Doolittle transcends the traditional factors of Greek culture and pays more attention to the modern reality in her creation, which eventually achieves the maturity of her poetic style. With modern consciousness and self-expression embodied in her works, Doolittle further tries to integrate her life experience as a modern poetess into her poetry creation, which in turn presents her unique attention on modern society and feminism.Doolittle’s “Hellenism”, in a word, is an obvious feature of her poetry.Throughout her poetry creation, Hellenism has exerted a far-reaching impact on the poetess’ s poetic style. Yet with the advent of its maturity, the unidirectional acceptance of Hellenism has turned into a kind of transcendence after critically combining with Hellenism, which is exactly the nucleus of Doolittle’s poetic style.