Robert Graves

[nnyhav]

Poet, novelist, essayist, critic, translator ... so opens the bookjacket backblurb on my copy of Collected Poems (Doubleday '58, '61). I won't rehash here the bioverviews provided at the Trust Society, kirjasto or wiki.

I've been prompted to open this thread upon completing The White Goddess, Graves' historical grammar of poetic myth, of which I'll have more to say downthread. For now, I'll leave it at finding the first half ingenious, the second half a slog ... with all due respect to serendipity: I read this in part to better get at the poetry, and the aforementioned volume opened of its own accord to the poem entitled "The White Goddess" (and no, there was no defect in the binding that caused it).

I also read Good-bye to All That a couple years ago, my reaction at the time: "Remarkable in its time, so successful in setting the standard that it seems less remarkable now. I preferred Cummings' The Enormous Room." (cf subsequent comments on WWI lit)

But Graves is best remembered for I, Claudius (& then Claudius the God), which engendered a BBC series probably even better remembered; in any case, it's been too long for me to remember much. (But I do recall his rendering of Apuleius' The Golden Ass ...)

[titania7]

Nnyhav,
I'm delighted to see this new thread. Although I haven't yet read any of Robert Graves' major works, I recently purchased I, Claudius. I've been reading a significant amount of poetry over the course of the past couple of months, and I've been pleased to come across several of Graves' poems in various anthologies. I haven't specifically sought his poetry out, but, now that you have started this thread, perhaps I will!

Here is a very engaging poem that Graves wrote. I happen to like the title of it, although it brings to mind the inevitable question: why are wedding
cakes oft-times so lacking in flavor and texture? As a baker of many fine cakes over the course of my life (that would be 26 years--but who's counting?), I have never been able to understand this. But, anyway. . .(sorry for that digression, simply couldn't help meself)

A Slice of Wedding Cake

Why have such scores of lovely, gifted girls
Married impossible men?
Simple self-sacrifice may be ruled out,
And missionary endeavour, nine times out of ten.

Repeat 'impossible men': not merely rustic,
foul-tempered or depraved
(Dramatic foils chosen to show the world
How well women behave, and always have behaved).

Impossible men: idle, illiterate,
Self-pitying, dirty, sly,
For whose appearance even in City parks
Excuses must be made to casual passers-by

Has God's supply of tolerable husbands
Fallen, in fact, so low?
Or do I always over-value woman
at the expense of men?

Do I?
It might be so.

~Robert Graves

Nnyhav, once again I want you to know how pleased I am to see this thread. You know I always follow everything you do at the forum with great interest. And I continue to be impressed by the concise yet scholarly remarks you contribute on both authors and books.


All the best,

Titania

[SilverSeason]

Robert Graves is a writer I visit off and on, and each time I find a different writer. So far,

The White Goddess - contentious, interesting, not altogether convincing

Goodbye to All That - moving, anti-war

His novel about John Milton (can't remember title) - imaginative picture of Milton and his first wife

I, Claudius - next on my list

[nnyhav]

I had thought that The White Goddess would illuminate the poems, but perhaps it's better to approach the other way round. The poem that best encapsulates the argument is not "The White Goddess" mentioned above, but "To Juan at the Winter Solstice", addressed to his son:

There is one story and one story only
That will prove worth your telling,
Whether are learned bard or gifted child;
To it all lines or lesser gauds belong
That startle with their shining
Such common stories as they stray into.

Is it of trees you tell, their months and virtues,
Or strange beasts that beset you,
Of birds that croak at you the Triple will?
Or of the Zodiac and how slow it turns
Below the Boreal Crown,
Prison of all true kings that ever reigned?

Water to water, ark again to ark,
From woman back to woman:
So each new victim treads unfalteringly
The never altered circuit of his fate,
Bringing twelve peers as witness
Both to his starry rise and starry fall.

Or is it of the Virgin's silver beauty,
All fish below the thighs?
She in her left hand bears a leafy quince;
When, with her right she crooks a finger smiling,
How may the King hold back?
Royally then he barters life for love.

Or of the undying snake from chaos hatched,
Whose coils contain the ocean,
Into whose chops with naked sword he springs,
Then in black water, tangled by the reeds,
Battles three days and nights,
To be spewed up beside her scalloped shore?

Much snow is falling, winds roar hollowly,
The owl hoots from the elder,
Fear in your heart cries to the loving-cup:
Sorrow to sorrow as the sparks fly upward.
The log groans and confesses
There is one story and one story only.

Dwell on her graciousness, dwell on her smiling,
Do not forget what flowers
The great boar trampled down in ivy time.
Her brow was creamy as the crested wave,
Her sea-blue eyes were wild
But nothing promised that is not performed.
___________

While this is contempory with his writing the core of the book, the conception apparently dates back much further, according to Frank Kersnowski on the first invocation of the White Goddess:

Reading Graves's early poems, closely and seriously, as I wrote my study of them, The Early Poetry of Robert Graves, I had the uneasy feeling I was missing the keystone, an admission supporting the pillars of his praise of woman as other (beyond simplistic answers) and his dependence on woman as more powerful than he. When I asked Beryl Graves, his widow, when Robert first acknowledged the Goddess, she sent me "A History":

Graves published this poem in 1924. It was not reprinted in his lifetime, appearing only in his posthumously published collected works. For Graves “the death-white Fay,” his first recorded experience of the Goddess, destroyed the paradox of fear and awe. She was inescapable and desired reality, turning rhetoric into fact.

[johnr60]

"destroyed the paradox of fear and awe"

I think maybe he changed his mind on that after Laura jumped out the window

The first chapter of Joseph and his Brothers is called Ishtar and views young Joseph trancing under the moon. The garment might be a symbol for "priestly".

I like the poem but I'll bet he is speaking in purely metaphorical terms in 1924. I dont think so later.

"She was inescapable and desired reality, turning rhetoric into fact."

She desires consciousness, as Jung's Yaweh does in Answer to Job.
Graves writes 600 pages to give it to her while all the time denying the artistry in the intellectual process that makes it(consciousness) happen.

[cuchulain]

His Greek Myths, 1 and 2, are excellent as well. Very important for me in my quest to get to the roots of mythology. Some of his conclusions have since come under negative critique . . . but I find them fascinating nonetheless.

Seems also to have led a incredible, varied, passionate and intriguing life. I'm guessing the part spent with Laura Riding was especially provocative.

[nnyhav]

Poet, novelist, essayist, critic, translator ... to which must be appended scholar, as that underlies all the other modes, perhaps congenitally (not just dad but mum's great-uncle). But traditional dryadsdust deadbelowthewaist modes of scholarship were not for him, even with such projects as The Nazarene Gospel Restored , described at the Robert Graves Archive:

... The book deals with much of the same New Testament material, but it was written significantly later than [the novel] King Jesus (which was published in 1946 by Cassell), and with the assistance of his co-author, Joshua Podro, a skilled Hebraicist and Biblical scholar. King Jesus by contrast leans heavily in the direction of the researches which produced The White Goddess: there is a good deal in the novel about Graves' ideas of the sacred king, and also the tree alphabet, for example, which does not reappear in The Nazarene Gospel Restored, though Graves had made the aquaintance of Joshua Podro by the time he came to write King Jesus.
Jesus in Rome is [...] also co-authored with Joshua Podro (published by Cassell in 1957). It might be regarded as an extended addendum to the earlier study of the Gospels.
One of the most interesting of the speakers at the August 1995 Centenary Conference in Oxford was Hyam Maccoby. He was there principally to acknowledge his indebtedness to Graves' work in the area of New Testament studies. Maccoby contributed a paper to the first issue of Gravesiana (June 1996) which was based on what he had to say at the 1995 conference, titled: 'Robert Graves and the Nazarene Gospel Restored'. Maccoby explains that:

Maccoby also throws light on the poor reception accorded to The Nazarene Gospel Restored, pointing out that

The Tuebingen theory was strongly opposed at the time. Maccoby argues that 'part of the opposition to The Nazarene Gospel Restored arose from the indignant conviction that Graves and Podro do were reverting to dangerous theories that had been safely scotched.' Maccoby also indicates that more recent scholars have brought new evidence to bear, showing that the split between Paul and Peter has a real basis, and mentions in particular S.G.F. Brandon.
The implication of the Tuebingen argument is that important political aspects of the life of Jesus and the activities of the various religious groups mentioned in the gospels have been downplayed, distorted, or even removed from the texts. Graves view was that 'many of the incidents in the Gospels have to be "despiritualised" in order to arrive at their historical meaning'. Paul made Jesus acceptable to Rome by depoliticising his life, and avoiding 'all awareness of Jesus as a claimant to the Jewish throne'.
The book is also short on the kind of scholarly apparatus one might expect in a work of New Testament exegesis. This has led some readers of the book to doubt that Graves worked from a base of thorough knowledge of his sources. Maccoby argues that the contrary is true, a fact which was shown by the libel action taken out against the Times Literary Supplement, which had published a hostile anonymous review. This review 'was followed by a correspondence in which the reviewer accused Graves of deliberately falsifying the Greek of a New Testament text. Graves was able to show that his textual scholarship was far superior to that of the reviewer, who had failed to take into account some important textual variations. The TLS eventually published an apololgy and the libel action was never taken to court'. Original sources are cited fully, but Graves was reluctant to become involved in dull exchanges with the views of other scholars: the consequence is that it has been too easy for scholars to dismiss the importance of the book.

Graves was an imaginative scholar who defined himself first and foremost as a poet. (I am neither: I merely stumble upon stray facts, Graves herds them; I have made poems but they have not made me a poet.) One of his concerns in The White Goddess is how the true poet is defined, and he does so mythopoetically, requiring an encyclopaedic knowledge of form and unstinting focus on the proper subject. In my view, this is too restrictive: the true poet establishes a grammar, or tests the limits of one already established. And that was Graves' approach to scholarship.

(None of the above is on my TBR list, but thx johnr for reminding me of the Mann, especially now that John E. Woods has translated.)

[johnr60]

I was not aware of the Nazarene Gospel, but it looks hard to find.

King Jesus is worth the read just for the cultural picture it presents in opposition to our familiar bible stories--especially the importance of the counterplayers.
My memory does not see Jesus in competition with the goddess but it's been awhile. The final scene is a tableau reminiscent of "The Judgement of Paris".

The Paul--Peter--John division of Christians was pointed out long before and in great detail by Spengler. Nobody liked him either--now that idea is commonplace.

I am curious about your reaction to the numerous events and characters in the WG that appear in Nabokov:

shave, buskin, Elphin, erlking, moon goddess, nightMare...

[nnyhav]

Originally Posted by johnr60

King Jesus is worth the read just for the cultural picture it presents in opposition to our familiar bible stories--especially the importance of the counterplayers.
My memory does not see Jesus in competition with the goddess but it's been awhile. The final scene is a tableau reminiscent of "The Judgement of Paris".
The Paul--Peter--John division of Christians was pointed out long before and in great detail by Spengler. Nobody liked him either--now that idea is commonplace.

Graves may well have broken new ground in KJ, but I've been over much of it in Brelich, Borges, & Saramago (tho not the Kazantzakis). In TWG Paris cannot presume to choose since all are but aspects of the triple goddess.

I am curious about your reaction to the numerous events and characters in the WG that appear in Nabokov:
shave, buskin, Elphin, erlking, moon goddess, nightMare...

In and of themselves these affinities indicate only similar sourcing, as with Housman's little shaver I mean shiver. I certainly read TWG with this in (back of) mind, but I'm finding more resonance between Graves' poems and Pale Fire (of which perhaps more anon). To read the latter in terms of TWG, one would posit identifications such as Charles=King, John Shade=bard, Maud/Sybil/Hazel=3goddess, and work down to particulars (which is the way TWG itself is put together, on which again, more anon, patience), and these aren't particularly compelling: for example, Gradus is not (the enigma of) a rival, the ornithology doesn't match up (tho I'll grant the crow between crown and cow). In my view, Shakespeare & Goethe account well enough for how the mythic elements you cite became embedded in the literature. (btw, John Shade=Robert Graves is another potential projection, with less to recommend it ... add: but after Eliot who was one step behind Frost?) But I'm keeping the question open in my own mind.

[johnr60]

Paris: see WG 256-7

[nnyhav]

Originally Posted by johnr60

Paris: see WG 256-7

already seen it, what, I should have used passive voice (be presumed to choose)?

[johnr60]

It's hard to keep the frame of reference separated. The original image (2 women, youth and apple), Graves says probably represents intiation of the youth into the goddess cult. Homer describes a similar scene (who knows from where but we like to think from folk culture) and calls it Paris's judgment--poets, artists and classicists follow that tradition incorrectly in Graves' eyes. There is only one goddess in the original. The same tableau appearing to close KJ with Jesus as the initiate, seems to disagree with the speaker quoted above.

[nnyhav]

Graves is not one for fixing any outside frame of reference, is he? There's also pp142-3 the notion the Copts had of the 3 Maries (at the crucifixion), which is what the mention of Paris in KJ had first brought to mind ...

[johnr60]

Never mind.

KJ p 417

"Near the summit three women stood side by side on a knoll: Mary the mother of Jesus, Mary his queen and a very tall women whose face was veiled. These three beckoned to him as if with a single hand, and he went towards them smiling. But before he reached them, a sudden mist enveloped the mountain and, when it cleared, Jesus and the three women were gone."

[cuchulain]

Nymph, Maiden and Crone. Works in many cases across the board. Graves did have some archaeological backing for that. Recent discoveries of triple goddess figurines in Europe dating back further than at first thought. Further than he had once guessed.

His model can be plugged into all kinds of myths and legends. The patterns can be seen. But I think sometimes he stretched the model to fit scenes on pottery, etc. etc. Overmuch. I found much of his work convincing. But not always. I did, however, find it almost always poetic and passionate. His notes are amazing. The confidence he voices in his conjectures.

Don't have his books handy, or I'd join you folks in the close readings you're doing. Nicely done, btw.

[nnyhav]

It takes some time to assimilate what TWG contains, forgive my slowness in putting this all together, but as a teaser, when, many years ago I first expressed an interest, a friend basically said that the book was more about Graves than poetry or myth. It's not, but Graves' relation to the subject does inform on it as well as on him. The best gloss of this I've found online is a preliminary Masters dissertation by Roger James Bourke [pdf], which disabuses Jarrell's notion of a Jungian connection but uses the parallels, though Graves did the disabuse himself (which I'll lift from another forum, where it appeared today, thx Pointsman):

. . . the theory that Chimaera, Sphinx, Gorgon, Centaurs, Satyrs and the like are blind uprushes of the Jungian collective unconscious, to which no precise meaning had ever, or could ever, have been attached, is demonstrably unsound.
A true science of myth should begin with a study of archaeology, history, and comparative religion, not in the psycho-therapist's consulting-room. Though the Jungians hold that 'myths are original revelations of the pre-conscious psyche, involuntary statements about unconscious psychic happenings', Greek mythology was no more mysterious in content than are modern election cartoons, and for the most part formulated in territories which maintained close political relations with Minoan Crete - a country sophisticated enough to have written archives, four-storey buildings with hygienic plumbing, doors with modern-looking locks, registered trademarks, chess, a central system of weights and measures, and a calendar based on patient astronomic observation.
Robert Graves, The Greek Myths

Bourke's conclusion is worth extracting in extenso:

This study began from a conviction that psychological and biographical interpretations of The White Goddess, which dominate published commentary on the book, are inadequate. Both approaches tend to be ‘diagnostic’ in their aims and ultimately tell us little other than that Robert Graves was an unusual man (which he was) who led an extraordinary life (which he did). The psychological approach, particularly, seems to be fettered by its own circular logic. In reading The White Goddess perhaps we need to look less towards Graves’s own life, the Freudian personal subconscious, or the Jungian collective unconscious (what Jorge Luis Borges calls ‘our own woeful mythology’), and more towards those texts Graves actually deals with in his book and to the others, sometimes unacknowledged, that inform or have a bearing upon his argument. Once we do so, some unexpected aspects of The White Goddess begin to emerge.
The first is that Graves is an unreliable guide to his own subject: the invocation of the lunar Muse by fellow-English poets. This is not, however, because he exaggerates the case for a connection between ‘primitive moon worship’ and English poetry, but because he understates it. ...
The second point to emerge is that The White Goddess is suprisingly orthodox in its anthropology. ... Graves is a ‘ritualist’ who looks to the practices of ‘primitive religion’ for the origins of a particular type of poetry, in much the same way that Nietzsche and the Cambridge Ritualists do in their search for the origins of Greek tragedy. From this perspective, we can see that while The White Goddess is indeed an odd book, it is not quite as strange as it may seem.
My final point is a really a question to which there is no verifiable answer. Is the impulse behind The White Goddess essentially religious? ... Critical opinion as to whether Graves actually believed in the literal existence of the White Goddess is fairly unanimous: ‘No,’ most commentators conclude, ‘the White Goddess is a poetic metaphor or shorthand for an element of the poetic personality.’ I disagree. While we can never know for certain, since nowhere is Graves explicit on this point, I think there is sufficient cumulative, implicit evidence to show that he did.

An added bit of serendipity: I've long listed my occupation (here and elsewhere) as itinerant kibitzer (in chess, an annoying onlooker giving unsolicited and often misleading advice). Being annoyed by another writer's spelling (with a double-b, acceptable but obscuring separate etymologies with kibbutz), off to the OED I went, to find that the word derives from Yiddish (which I knew) from German (as I would have guessed) kiebitzen, to flutter over card-players, in turn from kiebitz, lapwing. The lapwing being one of the three iconic animals discussed early on in TWG, with regard to keeping the secret: the dog (guard the secret), the roebuck (hide the secret) and the lapwing (disguise the secret). There, I'm glad that's out in the open ... (more serendipity, the very next word in OED is kiblah, the site one faces to address the Deity, the first nonMohammedean cite being in Stonehenge ...)

[johnr60]

I agree with Bourke's notion that Graves believed in more than a metaphorical goddess if we may leave aside the question of whether metaphor is real. Neidther of them seem to agree with my notion of Jung. The calendar beasts are certainly the result of conscious processesit's the earlier, stand alone pieces (hoof, serpent, horns) that produce a Jungian effect.

I reread KJ to test my faulty memory and found it mostly faulty.

Jesus seems opposed to the goddess in that the goddess is an earthly realm --Mother Nature, Mother Earth, Mare Nostrum, and as such, an unconscious response which restricts our advance to the heavenly realm of the spirit. Thus he constantly is quoted as doing battle with the Female. He refuses intercourse with his wife and ignores his mother's feelings when necessary.

The pivotal scene is a he-said she-said with Mary M
questioning the interpretation of a couple dozen pictographs
a la Paris above, the earlier always in agreement with the Female.

The final scene, as above, shows a Jesus who has cheated death, following the Female. This follows the crucifixion scene titled the Power of the Dog (from psalm 22).

The triple headed dog is an Edomite sceptre (home of Jubal Cain, blacksmith-musician of the Lost Steps, Set(h)-Typhon, Esau and the goddess). See the dogs also in the medieval print of the muses called Music of the Spheres (Gafurius?).

Go figure.

ps: the dog is sacred to Cuchulain

[johnr60]

Graves (and Patai) Hebrew Myths c.1962 and written in the same form as the Greek Myths reveals a politician/geographer rather than a poet. Little do we see of the goddess and Jacob has become the common place "supplanter". The intuitive leaps of WG are limited and it's a boring read even after allowing for its reference format.

[cuchulain]

Originally Posted by johnr60

ps: the dog is sacred to Cuchulain

Yes, his given name was Setanta. Cuchulain is a combinatory name, the hound of Cullen. Basically. After Setanta's wrestling the massive watchdog of Cullen to death. Hence, also, the nickname, the Hound of Ulster.

One of the driving forces for me to read even more Graves and Campbell, waaay back in the day, was to learn more about Irish myth. Greek myth was the doorway. Irish myth was the song that came out when I passed through it.

[hdw]

I wonder how Setanta got to be the name of a cable-TV network? A few years ago the Scottish Football Association (SFA) sold their soul to Setanta, and now if you want to watch a Scotland international football match you have to go out to a pub and watch it on their big-screen TV. There's an unholy alliance between the Setanta TV people and the publicans, scratching each other's backs. But there is a move afoot to try and get big football matches back on terrestrial TV.

Sorry to have lowered the intellectual tone of this forum!

Harry