Glenn Hughes Develops his Theme

A Work in Progress
48

We see Glenn Hughes teaching a small class in Denny Hall in the 1930s.  Gone are multi-media effects, instead there are pieces of chalk and blackboards.  On one of the blackboards is a triangle with names associated with the three vertices.  Aldington, Theseus and Catullus' H.D. Ariadne and Lesbia; Ezra Pound, Dionysius/Bacchus, Caesar

“Myth adapts.  While the key motifs stay the same, new tales are continually being told, founded on series of events which are seen repeated again and again.  For example, Orpheus having to plead for the life of his beloved Eurydice; and, a man loving a woman and subsequently losing her.  Either the woman is unattainable due to some circumstance or, very often, it may seem as if the man has betrayed the woman.  He might disobey the gods like Orpheus and turn back to look at Eurydice as they are about to emerge from the underworld, or, having enjoyed her favors, as did Theseus with Ariadne, he could just decide to travel on, leaving her on the shore of a Greek island.   In the play I’ve written, the young Catullus wanting to try his hand at soldiery, leaves behind a Lesbia who felt as betrayed as did Eurydice and Ariadne before her.  Aldington had to leave H.D. to go into the British Army.  He volunteered when he was about to be conscripted.  He left his wife distraught from the loss of their still-born child.  By the time he came back from the war he had another love and she was pregnant by another man.”

Lesbia’s slaves are displaying another coverlet.  This has an embroidered scene showing Theseus fighting the Minotaur and escaping afterwards by spooling up Ariadne’s thread until he emerges into sunlight again.

Next Episode (Denny Hall)

We see Glenn Hughes lecturing again – this time to a larger audience in the 1050s.  He uses colored view foils. 

 “Catullus breaks off from writing the story of Jason and the Argonauts and the marriage of Peleus and takes us by way of an embroidered coverlet into the story of Theseus and Ariadne, in particular to Ariadne abandoned on the beach at Naxos by Theseus, not the outcome she was expecting.  She had helped Theseus slay the Minotaur.”   

hen we see H.D. abandoned on Dover Beach in the moonlight by a quiet sea listening to the dull roar of artillery across the English Channel and watching the far glow of war above the far dark horizon.  

Glenn Hughes again: 

“Now Ariadne was rescued by Dionysius, God of wine and song.  Aldington would be the first to tell you that Cecil Gray, the man who got H.D. pregnant, was a poor substitute for Dionysius, or Bacchus.  Cecil Gray wanted nothing to do with the child he had fathered.   What of Aldington’s honor?  He thought the child should be named for Gray not Aldington.  But this was not the only reason for their separation.  Aldington now had another lover who was not repelled by his pent-up ardor as H.D. had been.”  

Here we see Aldington and Arabella Yorke  

“You’ll find all of this in her poems and letters.  As it happens, Aldington and H.D. will be rescued by Artemis, personified by Winifred Ellerman, otherwise known as Bryher.   This was a modern deus ex machina, but nobody recognized it as such.   Like a God, Bryher swept in and took H.D. away from poverty, away from being Richard Aldington’s responsibility into the world of servants and children’s nurses.  Now here is Lesbia, another Ariadne abandoned by her lover, an archetype perhaps Catullus does not recognize, but Virgil will confirm some fifty years later, when he will have Aeneas abandon Dido in Carthage.”

The movie shows Catullus on a ship departing across a lake, Theseus (same actor) on a ship departing from Naxos, Aldington (same actor) once more leaving H.D. in the French hotel room to go party with Nancy Cunard.  

 

Then we see Lesbia on the lake shore watching Catullus/Theseus departures and hear H.D.’s incantation from the poem Calypso: 

“O you clouds

here is my song

man is clumsy and evil

a devil

O you sand

this is my command

drown all men in breathless suffocation

then they may understand

O you winds

beat his sails flat

shift a wave side-ways

that he suffocate

O you waves

run counter to his oars…” 

“Then, another deus ex machina, Lesbia is approached by a Dionysian-like figure, one of the illustrious Metelli family, accompanied by musicians and attendants carrying food and wine.  We soon see Lesbia and Metellus having a sensuous feast on the lake shore.  Metellus will marry Lesbia and give her the status of Roman Consul’s wife.  Aldington will write a poem about her linking her to Caesar”.

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                       2025