Has anyone read this?

I'm getting it and i wonder what I'm getting into

This is good but you won't find a decent answer here because this is 2 patrish 4 lit

:( I am excited. H.D. is becoming one of my favorites

serious prose. content is good too but you might have to read it twice to get back to that.
HD's kind of scarily good writing

E L E N A

Herodotus was right.

About what?

>prose

It has prose and poetry in it

Herodotus claimed that Helen was never in Troy (at least while the war was taking place) but chilling comfortably in Egypt.

His sources come from HIGHLY reliable Egyptian priests. And, anyway, why the fuck wouldn't the Trojans just turn over Helen? Trojan war was a meme.

>why the fuck wouldn't the Trojans just turn over Helen

Even if they did that, which Paris would never allow, the Danaans would have still continued the siege. It wasn't just that Paris had Helen, it was that by taking Helen he broke the sacred xenia (guest-friendship).

>Trojan war was a meme.
Only for those who misunderstand it.

Also: I wanted to point out that you were also wrong about Herodotus being the origin of Helen being in Egypt. The lyric poet Stesichorus wrote a filthy poem about Helen in Troy, but after being blinded by the gods wrote that the Helen he was writing about was not the Spartan Queen, but an impostor, and that Helen was safe in Egypt in entire time. Stesichorus is at least a full century older than Herodotus.

HD is praised so erroneously here.

>HIGHLY reliable Egyptian priests

holy shit you really have no idea what you're talking about, huh? It has been consensus among classicists since the late fucking 1800's that Herodotus made up those "priests," or he only used hecataeus as a source, hecataeus who made up his "priests." Quit shitposting and read a fucking book.

And the variant myth that Helen was in Egypt was pretty widespread among ancient story tellers. Like the most famous account of Helen is Euripides' Helen, in which she never went to Troy.

This is the kind of shit that happens when you try to start with the Greeks but don't actually fucking read anything other than Wikipedia

yeah I'm mad
I can't believe I still come to lit to discuss books with people like this

How so?

>Trojan war was a meme

oh you're just trolling

I never said Herodotus was the origin. But Herodotus claims to have been told by Egyptian priests that she was indeed in Egypt.

> Even if they did that, which Paris would never allow

proofs?

> HE OLDE AND WRONG N SHIEEET

MUH.
CONSENSUS.

Herodotus is a better read than autistic Germans from the 1800s and that boring, repetitive trash peddled as The Iliad.

Like I'm supposed to care about a bunch of proto-autists fighting over something that isn't there? Oh, wait, it's supposed to be deep to read about some ALPHA male who spends 95% of the story throwing a hissy fit? No, thanks.

Virgil is better.

> advocates for starting with the Greeks
> actually advocating for starting with secondary sources from the 19th century

You don't have to read any secondary sources, you just have to read the primaries critically. if you think that Herodotus was telling what he thought was the truth at literally any point in time, you do not have the necessary mental faculties to read only primaries.

Or just read all the primaries and different versions of stories to know how idiotic it would be to take Herodotus at his word.

but that bar may be too high

Ive been wanting to read HD because of Ezra Pound, where should I start? Is there somewhere I should start or just read something of hers?

Her early 'imagist' poetry is where I started. She's good at shorter work, hopefully Helen in Egypt will be as good as I hope. Start with shorter stuff like Acon.

hilda best imagist
>being baited this easily