September 10th, Tuesday | The Barefoot Gold Medalist

The date is September 10th, Tuesday, and today I’m coming to you from Tejakula, Bali. Today is also our 100th episode!

On this day in 1960, Abebe Bikila became the first sub-Saharan African to win an Olympic gold medal, and the first Ethiopian gold medalist. 

 

It was the Summer Olympics in Rome and Abebe Bikila had just bought a new pair of shoes a week earlier for the marathon. The shoes, to his disappointment gave him awful blisters and so Bikila decided he would just run without shoes. 

 

That’s right, Abebe Bikila won a Gold Medal running barefoot. Luckily for Bikila the race started in the late-afternoon and finished after dark so the course was cooling down while he ran. 

 

Bikila was neck-and-neck with another competitor until the last 500 meters (nearly a third of a mile) when he took off in a sprint. Italian soldiers holding torches lit the rest of the way as Bikila zoomed past them. 

 

He finished in 2 hours, 15 minutes, 16.2 seconds, breaking the world record by eight tenths. As soon as he crossed the finish line, he began a calisthenics routine, touching his toes, jogging in place, and reported feeling quite well, later stating he felt he could have run another 10 to 15 km further. 

 

And today is the birthday of Hilda "H.D." Doolittle, American writer. 

 

Doolittle was born in 1886, the only girl in a family of 6 children. Education was important in the family: Doolittle’s father was an astronomy professor and her brothers were expected to get a proper education. 

 

At 15, Doolittle met 16-year-old Ezra Pound, a student at nearby University of Pennsylvania. They began a teenage romance that continued into their early twenties. Pound composed at least 25 poems inspired by Doolittle. 

 

When it came time for continued education Doolittle attended Bryn Mawr College, a short distance from her home and UPenn. Pound encouraged Doolittle in her writing and dubbed her “H.D.” the pen name which she would use all her life. The two were engaged, but Doolittle’s father rejected the match and their relationship cooled. 

 

In 1911, she boarded a ship to Europe for a vacation with her female lover Frances Gregg. However, upon arriving in London, Doolittle, a beauty with a sharp, creative mind, was eagerly welcomed by the intellectual community. She stayed in London, working at a literary magazine. In 1913 around age 26, H.D. married poet Richard Adlington. 

 

Her poetry took advantage of classic Greek mythology and modern psychoanalysis. H.D. was openly bisexual after her marriage failed in 1938 and worked with Sigmund Freud for a while as she explored her own sexuality. 

 

In addition to her multitude of poems, H.D. Also penned several novels, some of which were published posthumously. Of her poetry collections, her first Sea Gardens published in 1916 remains an important work in the Imagist movement in which H.D. played a key role. 

 

H.D. was not making any particularly big waves during her lifetime. It was really the feminist and pride movements of the 1970s that saw a revival of her work, reviewing H.D.’s dissection of gender roles and sexuality. 

 

 

Baia 

H.D.

 

I should have thought

in a dream you would have brought

some lovely, perilous thing,

orchids piled in a great sheath,

as who would say (in a dream),

"I send you this,

who left the blue veins

of your throat unkissed."

 

Why was it that your hands

(that never took mine),

your hands that I could see

drift over the orchid-heads

so carefully,

your hands, so fragile, sure to lift

so gently, the fragile flower-stuff--

ah, ah, how was it

 

You never sent (in a dream)

the very form, the very scent,

no