‘“Beware, beware words, / subtle and so far—": Artemis against Aphrodite in H.D.’s ‘Hippolytus Temporizes’

ABSTRACT: In ‘Hippolytos’, Euripides draws attention to a fault line in the conflict between social mores and feelings as symbolized by the conflicting demands of different deities on mortal behaviour.  Hippolytos, pure in heart and body, a devotee of Artemis, is destroyed because of his contemptuous dismissal of Aphrodite.
In this paper, I will explore how H.D.’s adaptation of Euripides’ play, ‘Hippolytus Temporizes’ [1927], seeks to resolve the conflict and contradiction between these two goddesses and what they symbolize. H.D. achieves this resolution chiefly through the stratagem of prayer and the power of song, or lyrical poetry. Thus, words achieve a performative force, both in the theatrical sense and in terms of speech act theory. Furthermore, this operation is overtly thematized in the play in a metatheatrical gesture that can be seen to propose a renewal of the curative potential of poetry and song as performance.

Evy Varsamopoulou is Associate Professor in Anglophone and Comparative Literature at the University of Cyprus. Her research includes articles and book chapters on Romanticism, ecocriticism, film, ethics and aesthetics. She has published a monograph, The Poetics of the Künstlerinroman and the Aesthetics of the Sublime (Ashgate 2002; Routledge, 2017), edited special issues on the artist novel and the future university, and, more recently a volume of essays, Romanticism and the Future: Legacy, Prophecy, Temporality (Routledge, 2024).