Asphodel - C

If we can ignore the fact that its author dashed the word ``Destroy'' across the sole manuscript of this work, the first publication of Asphodel should be greeted as a boon for scholars and readers alike. pk The novel is like a time capsule. Its style is the high modernism of Woolf, Pound and Joyce, and its content is the autobiographical story of Hermione Gart begun in the poet H.D.'s novel HERmionesic . The first part concerns Hermione's life in Paris and London before WW I and details her relationships with George Lowdnes (a character evidently inspired by Ezra Pound), Fayne Rabb, and Jerrold Darrington, whom she eventually marries. Marriage is the dominant theme, as if, beneath the flowing modernist surface, there lurks a traditional novel of manners. But with a difference: we see Fayne and Hermione subtly drawn into orthodox alliances and roles, which spell the end of their lesbian affair. Part II has a sharper edge, since it concerns WW I and the end of a civilization. Hermione's marriage also fails and she is left to find other loves, conventional and unconventional. Despite occasional turgid passages, this is a poet's prose, unashamedly lyrical--and now, 70 years hidden, suddenly fresh and experimental. (Oct.)