Hilda Doolittle (Novel Date 1981)

SOURCE: Doolittle, Hilda. "Chapter One." In HERmione, pp. 3-8. New York: New Directions Publishing, 1981.

In the following excerpt from HERmione, a posthumously published novel, Doolittle opens the autobiographical work with a detailed inner portrait describing the mindset and torturous feelings experienced by protagonist Her (Hermione) Gart.

I

One

Her Gart went round in circles. "I am Her," she said to herself; she repeated, "Her, Her, Her," Her Gart tried to hold on to something; drowning she gasped, she caught at a smooth surface, her fingers slipped, she cried in her dementia. "I am Her, Her, Her," Her Gart had no word for her dementia, it was predictable by star, by star-sign, by year.

But Her Gart was then no prophet. She could not predict later common usage of uncommon syllogisms; "failure complex," "compensation reflex," and that conniving phrase "arrested development" had opened...