Welcome to the Iliad!

While I was leafing through the Norton on some of my breaks today, I found a poem that hopefully will help engage us in the reading of the Iliad!

Helen
By: H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)

All Greece hates
the still eyes in the white face,
the luster as of olives
where she stands,
And the white hands.

All Greece reviles
the wan face when she smiles,
hating it deeper still
when it grows wan and white,
remembering past enchantments
and past ills.

Greece sees unmoved,
God's daughter, born of love,
the beauty of cool feet
and slenderest knees,
could love indeed the maid,
only is she were laid,
white ash amid funeral cypresses.

The note provided beside her name in the title states: The beautiful wife of the Greek leader Menelaus; given to the Trojan prince Paris by Aphrodite, se was blamed for the Trojan War, waged to regain her.

A second note is provided beside God’s daughter which states: Helen was said to be the daughter of Zeus, ruler of the gods and Leda, a mortal women.

So in essence Helen was a drop dead gorgeous woman who was stolen from her powerful and prideful husband for some young punk. Now that the background info out of the way let’s move on to breaking down the poem a little bit…

In the first stanza:

All Greece hates = they hate Helen because she is the cause of the long war
Still eyes = diverting attention from herself and trying to appear humble
White = purity and virtue
Olives = reference to Greece
Hands = perhaps a reference to her innocence in the matter. Relating back to the Bible with Pontius Pilot washing his hands of Christ and not wanting to be held responsible for the outcome.

In the second stanza:
Revile = despises
Wan = pale or sickly
Enchantments = how Greece was charmed by Helen’s beauty
Past ills = how Helen wronged Greece (ie. Going to live in Troy!)
~ Interestingly enough wan is used twice in the same stanza which is why I provided my two interpretations of the word’s meaning. The first ‘wan’ I think is meant to mean a pale face cause from bearing witness to all the fighting and dying of the War. The second ‘wan’ would be in a sickly sense from both all the death and the anger of the Greek people, which would wreck havoc on Helen’s health and emotions.

In the third stanza:
Unmoved = the Greeks don’t want to see any change in Helen, in terms of personality or beauty since she was taken.
God’s daughter = the child of an immortal who is supposed to be blessed with luck and the love of the other gods. Unfortunately the opposite seems to be true for Helen.
Cypresses = a tree who’s branches are often used to indicate mourning
~ The last three lines of the poem are indicating that Greece could only love Helen again if she were dead and they were mourning her.

Hopefully this will help others to understand Helen’s place in the epic…’cause she really is important to the darn thing!

sv