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Written more than seventy years ago, but only now published, Pilate's
Wife certainly includes--as one would expect--the Crucifixion, but the
novel is also truer to its title than many readers might wish. The
center of the book is unquestionably the inner and outer lives of the
woman H.D. calls Veronica--rather than, as legend has it, Claudia
Procula. Jesus plays his part here--and it is an important one--but
the reader never loses sight of Veronica, both "seeker," to use a more
contemporary term, and epicurean (note the small "e").
 A handful of significant characters orbit Veronica, and H.D. details
them almost exclusively in their relationship to her: Pontius Pilate, to
be sure, although his role is vastly smaller than his wife's; Fabius
Nobilior, a Roman army officer and Veronica's lover; Memnonius, an
Egyptian teacher and Veronica's former lover; Mnevis, a Cretan seeress;
and Jesus, who appears directly on only a few pages. Memnonius has been
functioning as Veronica's conduit to the "larger" world--the mystic or
occult life which eludes the materialism and majesty of Rome--and so
leads her to Mnevis, an apparently authentic source of mystical
information and insight. Fabius at first seems entirely rooted in Roman
practicality and hardheadedness, eager to share lovemaking and physical
enjoyment with Veronica but not particularly attracted to her (we might
say) New Age searches. Pilate is, most importantly, Veronica's key to
status and privilege, though memories of their earlier, more affectionate
relationship surface from time to time, and--near the novel's end--he
comes more sharply into focus. Jesus does not appear until midway into
the book, as a new concern and subject of devotion by Mnevis and, later,
Veronica.
The novel, much less a reinvestigation of Christian origins than a
character study, moves as Veronica herself moves, languidly, with
dignity, detachment, and an ironic suspicion of the ineffable.
Veronica--like H.D., like so many Modernists--seeks but is also afraid
that finding might entail a surrender into something that could make one
appear silly. She is, to speak stereotypically, the archetypal Westerner
drawn to, and still leery of, the East.
But H.D., whose later writings would meld Greek, Egyptian and Christian
iconography and mythology, refuses to allow Veronica to hold back--after
all, the Crucifixion comes to Pilate; he does not go in search of it.
Mnevis, after becoming a disciple of Jesus, turns to authority--
represented by Veronica via Pilate--for help when Jesus falls into
trouble with authority. Veronica brushes the seer off, but is drawn in
even so as Jesus is brought to the governor's palace for trial and a
beating (both of which occur off-stage.) Thus Veronica herself becomes a
disciple, not of the sort one normally imagines but rather in a manner
consistent with the temperament H.D. has spent the first two-thirds of
the novel developing. For Veronica, Jesus is a "love-god," a poet,
unique only in his inclusion of women. He is, as she sees it, very like
Mithra, the sun-god and son of god whose followers Fabius has been
investigating for Pilate. A further parallel between the two comes with
Fabius's contention that Mithra poses no political threat to Rome (indeed
before too many decades passed Mithra was essentially the god of the
Roman soldier), even as Pilate, not long after, will insist that there is
no harm or danger in Jesus.
H.D.'s take on Jesus thus links Pilate's Wife to D.H. Lawrence's "The
Man Who Died" and to more recent Biblical research into the Gnostic Jesus
and (possibly) the Essene Jesus. Seen via Veronica's polytheistic
heritage, devotion to Jesus requires no rejection of other gods, not
simply because exclusionism is contrary to her world-view but also
because polytheistic metaphorism enables and encourages devotees to align
and discover the manners in which each god is "merely" a variation of
another. And one might, yes, label Veronica's Jesus a feminist, but not
if feminism includes any denigration of the male. In fact, Fabius--a
discrete follower of Mithra--accepts Veronica's insistence that he aid
her in the rescue of Jesus from the punishment Pilate must inflict
because of the political situation.
Pilate's Wife includes, indeed, one of the most well-rounded and
believably fleshed-out depictions of Pilate offered to modern readers.
(Another can be found in Lang's 25-year-old "The Word and the Sword.")
H.D.'s Pilate is not a Roman flunky, "exiled" to Palestine because of
previous failure or disfavor. He is well-educated, urbane, humane, and
keenly aware of the delicate balance he must keep between representing
Rome's interests and those of the Jews whose nominal leader he is: he is
no pawn and has no desire to see Jesus executed, even though Jesus has
shown no interest in defending himself or accepting the proffers Pilate
makes. Therefore Veronica, with her husband's blessing, acts: securing a
potion from Memnonius, she arranges for Jesus to be drugged without his
knowledge. Once crucified, Jesus quickly sinks into coma and seems to
die; thus Veronica and Fabius are able to enact their deception. The
comatose Jesus is tended and watched over in the tomb--connected to the
Mithran initiatory caverns--and is whisked away, by sea, to enjoy a
future life with Mnevis.
To many readers this reconstruction of the story will be both heretical
and central to H.D.'s story, but it is not: this is a novel not of
Jesus, but of Veronica and Fabius and his effect upon them. In this
context Jesus serves not as the one light or the source of a singular
conversion, but instead as an apex of experience, a prophet whose
teachings--presented chiefly as a kind of nature poetry--build upon the
teachings of his predecessors and bring a final focus to the religious
progress of millenia. Jesus does not save one from sin; he brings
enlightenment. In the final pages of the book Fabius thinks, "(W)hat an
inheritance; to have all the past to draw on, all those fantastic shapes
and images of which Veronica spoke, bee and chick, from those
temple-walls in Egypt, blending with an actual re-created present.
"This Jesus had given new shape to the vine, the vine in blossom, in
fruit; he was a second Homer. Maligned by his people, he had spoken of
love and the outcast woman in words, more exquisite than Ovid or
Propertius. He had recognized the secret life, growing in the
flower-petal, the bird-wing, the fish, moving lazy fin under clear
water."
"If," Fabius says, just moments later, "we could combine this Jesus with
these others--" And Veronica responds, "--so I was thinking." The
novel ends with Veronica's inner experience: Memnonius has called her a
bud, "a flower infolded." Now she realizes both that Memnonius was
correct and that the moment of her blossoming has come--light has opened
the bud. Her verbal response is, while apparently simple, actually a
reappropriation of the entire novel--"I am Veronica," she says. She is
what she is; she is enlightened; she has moved not beyond, but into
herself.
Pilate's Wife ought, ideally, to be read and appreciated because it is
a well-written and fully realized novel, as well as an interesting
narrative construction, deserving study in its own right. It will not be
justly served if readers come to it only for insight into H.D.'s poetry
or her philosophical and psychological inclinations (although the issue
of anti-Semitism, so common when dealing with the Modernists, rears its
head here as well. Do the thoughts of Fabius, quoted above, or H.D.'s
depiction of Pilate in relation to the Crucifixion constitute an implied
attack? Readers more astute than I will have to tackle that question.)
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