Mysticism and Time Travel
A Curious Peril August 15, 2017 Lara Vetter
A structural break in the middle of H.D.'s novel The Sword Went Out to Sea fragments both the narrator and the narrative voice. This break arises from the merging of two genres—mysticism and time travel—that coexist but destabilize each other. Although H.D. had been interested in mysticism decades earlier, World War II compels her to revise her thinking about it. In the novel, a traumatized character named Delia experiences an apocalyptic vision that thrusts her into a liminal space, at once in time and out of time, launching her as a time traveler into the historical vignettes that form the second half of the book.