“You will be better off than me:” Reshaping Tradition in “Daphne with her thighs in bark” written by Eavan Boland CLAUDIA EXCARET SANTOS CAMPUSANO College

The poem “Daphne with her thighs in bark,” written by Eavan Boland in Night Feed, takes its title from the first line of the poem “XII” from Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, by Ezra Pound. In Pound’s poem, this first line is a translation from Le Château du Souvenir (Espey 31), by Gautier. By doing this, Pound is not only showing his ability to translate, but also how, through intertextuality, it is possible to get more layers of meaning. According to John Espey: “Pound has characteristically taken the two lines and put them to his own use. […] The lines are an example […] of his knack for fitting a quotation to his own purpose” (Espey 31); in this sense, Pound is particularly known for the amount of references that are present in his work, and in order to best grasp the meaning of his texts, it is important to understand the references.

In poem “XII,” this intertextuality makes Daphne both “a figure in the salon’s décor” (Espey 31) and “the laurel with which the poet is crowning himself” (Espey 31). The name of Daphne itself is a reference to the Roman myth of Apollo and Daphne by Ovid, or to an earlier version by Parthenius. In “Daphne with her thighs in bark,” by giving the female figure of Daphne a voice while choosing to use the...