Staging Modernist Lives: H.D., Mina Loy, Nancy Cunard, Three Plays and Criticism

394 Pages·2017·1.36 MB·English

STAGING MODERNIST LIVES
SASHA COLBY
McGill-Queen’s University Press
Montreal & Kingston • London • Chicago
© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2017
ISBN 978-0-7735-4893-0 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-7735-4894-7 (paper) ISBN 978-0-7735-4895-4 (ePDF) ISBN
978-0-7735-4896-1 (ePUB) Legal deposit first quarter 2017
Bibliothèque nationale du Québec
Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled),
processed chlorine free This publication has been made possible by a grant from the Simon Fraser
University Publications Fund.
McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our
publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through
the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Colby, Sasha, 1978–, author
Staging modernist lives : H.D., Mina Loy, Nancy Cunard, three plays and criticism / Sasha Colby.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-0-7735-4893-0 (cloth).
ISBN 978-0-7735-4894-7 (paper).
ISBN 978-0-7735-4895-4 (ePDF).
ISBN 978-0-7735-4896-1 (ePUB) 1. H. D. (Hilda Doolittle), 1886–1961 – Criticism and interpretation. 2.
Loy, Mina – Criticism and interpretation. 3. Cunard, Nancy, 1896–1965 – Criticism and interpretation.
4. English drama – 20th century – History and criticism. 5. American drama – 20th century – History
and criticism. 6. Modernism (Literature) – English-speaking countries. I. Title.
PR736.C64 2017 822’.91409 C2016-906004-7
C2016-906005-5
Contents
Acknowledgments
Staging Modernist Lives: Theory and Practice
H.D.’s Autobiographical Theatre
The Tree
Performance, Performativity, and the Search for Mina Loy
The Mina Loy Interviews
Nancy Cunard and the Heterotopic Stage
These Were the Hours
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
The first of these plays, a version of the drama about H.D., debuted ten years ago
at the Vancouver Fringe Festival. Since then, I have incurred many debts that
have led to the completed book manuscript. Financially, this project has been
supported by a multi-year Standard Research Grant from the Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council of Canada, and a series of grants from Simon
Fraser University: a University Publications Fund Grant, a World Literature
Research Grant, and a Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Chairs’ and
Directors’ Grant. Intellectually, the work has been supported by a number of
people. In terms of project development, I owe a great deal to the participants of
the faculty writing workshop at the 2011 session of the Mellon School of
Theater and Performance Research at Harvard, particularly seminar leader
Martin Puchner, who asked the crucial question that opened up the theory behind
this work. I would like to thank Akitoshi Nagahata at Nagoya University for
inviting me to Japan and for organizing the performances in Nagoya and
Shizuoka (2010) as well as for his early support of a dramatized method. Suzette
Henke has also been a champion of this project and created space for the work at
the Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900 (2010). Sophia
Forster (Cal Poly, 2014), Alfred Bendixen (American Literature Association
Poetry Symposium, 2007), Luke Carson, Sheila Rabillard, Allana Lindgren,
Stephen Ross, and their team of student stage technicians (Modernist Studies
Association Conference in Victoria, 2010) all facilitated performances that
provided opportunities for experimentation, discussion, and exchange. I also
benefited from warm receptions and critical questioning at the Center for
Biographical Research at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa (2011), the Ezra
Pound conferences in Rome and Venice (2007 and 2009), the Durrell School of
Corfu (2007), the University of Toronto’s Festival of Original Theatre (2012),
and the SFU President’s Faculty Lecture (2015). Peter Nicholls’s influence is
present in any modernist work that I pursue. Shawk Alani and Lauren Fournier
were very fine research assistants and I thank them both for their work on the
text, as I do Laura Anderson for her handling of the digital performance
materials used in creating and refining the scripts. Librarians and staff at the
Beinecke Library at Yale, the Harry Ransom Research Center and the University
of Texas at Austin (with special thanks to Pat Fox), and the British Library in
London were unfailingly knowledgeable and helpful.
At Simon Fraser University, the encouragement and incisive advice of Bev
Neufeld has been essential to the project’s successes. Friends and colleagues,
many of whom are also working on research-creation projects or support this
kind of work, helped move the manuscript forward with their kindness and
contributions. They include Paul Budra, Lara Campbell, Richard Cavell, David
Chariandy, Peter Dickinson, Stephen Duguid, Holly Hendrigan, Asli Igsiz,
Helen Leung, Sophie McCall, Sean Markey, Roxanne Panchasi, Diana Solomon,
and Jerry Zaslove. Peter Dickinson and David Chariandy also read sections of
the manuscript and provided sensitive and thoughtful comments. The Graduate
Liberal Studies program at SFU Vancouver gave this project a place to be – as it
did me – at a time when the English Department also extended its generosity and
support. Gina Stockdale, Julian Giordano, Audrey Himmer Jude, Heather
Blakemore, Eddy van Wyk, Carmine Santavenere, Kayte Summers (Catherine
Caines), Ian Graham, James Eadie, Sally Clark, Mary Ann Caws, Margaret
Hollingsworth, Rob Kitsos, the SFU School for Contemporary Arts, and the Port
Theatre variously provided starting points, encouragement, collaborative insight,
and practical help. Theatre projects on Gabriola Island – and the ways in which
the community kept faith with those projects over many years – were sustaining
forces. Graduate and undergraduate students in my playwriting and performance
courses at SFU encouraged me with their talent and enthusiasm. The Faculty of
Arts and Social Sciences Dean’s Office and the SFU President’s Office have both
been supportive of experimental approaches in research and teaching, which
speaks of a notable institutional open-mindedness. At McGill-Queen’s
University Press, Jonathan Crago shepherded the manuscript to publication and
also worked with me to figure out what a research-creation book of this type
might look like. The two anonymous peer-reviewers contributed substantially to
the book as it appears here and I thank them for their feedback and diligence.
Kathleen Fraser provided fine editorial advice and the MQUP publication team, as
a whole, was helpful, intelligent, and thoughtful in its approach. I would also
like to thank Carolyn Burke, Anne Chisholm, Lois Gordon, Barbara Guest,
Susan Stanford-Friedman, and Caroline Zilboorg (among many others) for the
foundational work they have done in creating biographical pathways for
understanding Loy, Cunard, and H.D.
For enduring endless rehearsals and script-readings, often in the kitchen or
dining room, I am grateful to my family – Brian Colby, Lucy Colby, John
Mallory, and Irina Nikifortchuk. They believed in me and the work I was doing
even when it meant divided time and attention. Thanks, too, to Tatianna, who
thought character work was a great game and so obligingly fell asleep to the
clatter of the keyboard – and to those who entertained and cared for her when
she did not.
Finally, in the case of the plays, where a great deal of copyrighted material has
been employed to show the range and breadth of work by H.D., Loy, and
Cunard, the consent of the copyright holders to reprint has been key. I would
therefore like to thank the publishers and estates that have provided permission:
Robert Bell for materials from the Nancy Cunard Collection at the University of
Texas at Austin; Carcanet Press for Collected Poems of H.D. 1912–1944; Roger
Conover for published and unpublished writing by Mina Loy; Hugh Ford for
Nancy Cunard’s These Were the Hours: Memories of My Hours Press, Réanville
and Paris, 1928–1931; John Lucas for Poems of Nancy Cunard from the
Bodleian Library; Manchester University Press for Caroline Zilboorg’s Richard
Aldington & H.D.: Their Lives in Letters; Columbia University Press for Lois
Gordon’s translation of Louis Aragon’s “Poème à crier dans les ruines”; the
estate of Pablo Neruda (with thanks to Peggy Gough at the University of Texas
Press) for Neruda’s “Sonnet XVII.” New Directions also generously provided
permission to reprint the following material:
• “Oread,” “Sheltered Garden,” “Hermes of the Ways,” “Amaranth,” “Fragment
Forty,” “Fragment Forty-One,” and “Orchard,” by H.D. (Hilda Doolittle),
from Collected Poems, 1912–1944, copyright ©1982 by the estate of Hilda
Doolittle. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
• “Selections from Paint it Today,” by H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), from Paint It
Today, copyright ©1992 by Perdita Schaffner. Reprinted by permission of
New Directions Publishing Corp.
• “Canto XXVI,” by Ezra Pound, from The Cantos of Ezra Pound, copyright
©1934 by Ezra Pound. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing
Corp.
• “Canto LXXXIII,” by Ezra Pound, from The Cantos of Ezra Pound, copyright
©1948 by Ezra Pound. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing
Corp.
• “Sestina: Altaforte,” by Ezra Pound, from Personae, copyright ©1926 by Ezra
Pound. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
• “Histrion,” by Ezra Pound, from Collected Early Poems, copyright ©1976 by
the Ezra Pound Literary Property Trust. Reprinted by permission of New
Directions Publishing Corp.
• “Letter to Harriet Monroe,” by Ezra Pound, from Selected Letters 1907–1941
of Ezra Pound, copyright ©1950 by Ezra Pound. Reprinted by permission of
New Directions Publishing Corp.
• “Letter to Nancy Cunard,” by Ezra Pound, copyright ©2016 by Mary de
Rachewiltz and the estate of Omar S. Pound. Reprinted by permission of New
Directions Publishing Corp.
David R. Godine also granted permission to reprint:
• “From Tribute to Freud by Hilda Doolittle.” Reprinted by permission of
David R. Godine, Publisher, Inc. Copyright ©1956 by Hilda Doolittle.
I would also like to thank the many publishers who felt material quoted in this
book fell under “fair use.” Finally, thanks to Peggy Fox, formerly of New
Directions, who was the first to suggest there might be a willingness on the part
of publishers to see these plays in print.
STAGING MODERNIST LIVES