Robert Graves
(1895-1985)
English poet, classical scholar, novelist, and critic.
English Literature
Cecilia H. C. Liu
Robert Graves
• Born in Wimbledon, south
London
• Not graduated from Oxford
University but joined in 1914
the British Army.
• During World War I Graves
served alongside Siegfried
Sassoon in the Royal Welch
Fusiliers. The regiment was
involved in some of the
heaviest fighting on the
Western Front. Graves was
severely wounded on the
Somme and being listed by
mistake in military casualties
troubled him a decade.
Robert Graves
• The controversial
autobiography Goodbye to All
That (1929), a chronicle of the
disillusioned postwar
generation, became a huge
bestseller but alienated
several of Graves‘ friends,
notably Sassoon and Edmund
Blunden.
• In 1926 Graves moved to
Egypt to work as a professor
at the University of Cairo.
(Source)
Robert Graves
• Perhaps best known for the historical novel I,
Claudius (1934), with its sequel Claudius the
God (1943), autobiographical war memoirs and
controversial study The White Goddess (1948),
in which Graves rejects the patriarchal gods as
sources of inspiration in favor of matriarchal
powers of love and destructiveness. The Muse,
or Moon-goddess, inspires poetry of a magical
quality, in contrast to rational, classical verse.
Robert Graves
• Graves considered himself primarily a poet, but
he could not live by poetry. His early lyrics were
written in gloomy, late-Romantic style. His later
works dealt mainly with love and marriage, birth
and death, often set within a mythological
framework. Classical literature and mythology
became Graves a constant source of inspiration.
His views on intuition and poetry Graves
summarized in his essay 'The Case for
Xanthippe' (1960).
Robert Graves
• According to Graves, women and poets are
natural allies. Abstract reasoning is a
predominantly male field of thought, and rational
schooling discourages intuitive thought.
"Abstract reason, formerly the servant of practical
human reasons, has everywhere become its
master, and denies poetry any excuse for
existence."
• Reason fails to prompt the writing of original
poems, and shows no spark of humor or religious
feeling. Philosophy, under the name of abstract
reasoning, is antipoetic.
Robert Graves
• In the 1940s Graves became interested
in myths and history. Studies of goddess
lore led him also reinterpret the
genealogy of Jesus, and rewrite the
Gospels. In the historical novel King
Jesus (1946) he presented Jesus as a
sage and poet, and rejected the mystical
Virgin Birth doctrine.
• From 1961 to 1966 Graves was
Professor of Poetry at the University of
Oxford - he was 66 when he delivered
his first lecture in this office.
Robert Graves
• With Laura Riding Graves collaborated on
a number of literary projects, but their
personal relationship was undermined by
infidelities.
• A SURVEY OF MODERNIST POETRY
(1927), published by Seizin Press,
contained close analysis by Riding which
influenced the New Criticism. By the end
of the 1930s their paths separated. Riding
married in 1941 Schuyler B. Jackson (d.
1968). Graves fell in love with Beryl
Hodge, the wife of his friend, with whom
he returned to Mallorca in 1946 and
married her in 1950.
Laura Riding
1901-1991
Robert Graves
• "Since the age of fifteen poetry
has been my ruling passion
and I have never intentionally
undertaken any task or formed
any relationship that seemed
inconsistent with poetic
principles; which has
sometimes won me the
reputation of an eccentric." ~
Robert Graves (source)
Image: Robert Graves
Majorca
© Leo Fuchs 1962
Idolization/ worship of women
• Graves had two wives, but
idolized and loved various
other women. In his thirties
and early forties, he was
involved with Laura Riding, a
fellow poet and critic; in his
fifties and sixties, his "muses"
were beautiful, talented,
twenty-ish women.
• Graves liked Frost, John
Crowe Ransom, and E.
E. Cummings (his
American discoveries);
found some redeeming
qualities in Eliot and
Dylan Thomas; found
no redeeming qualities
in Yeats, Pound, or
Auden.
The White Goddess
• The White Goddess is one of the names given
to the Earth Mother; the Moon goddess, to
Venus, Astarte, Lilith, Belili, the Muses, the
Three Graces and to innumerable other female
deities. She is found in the myths and legends
of all cultures.
• This was a nature-based religion which involved
close observation and celebration of the
seasons and of the moon and the planets. Its
bible was written in the stars for all to see, and
its hymns were the songs of birds and the
sighings of the breeze. The worship of the
White Goddess reached its highest level in the
time of the Minoans (say 1600 BC).
The White Goddess
• In that period, the sea-trading Minoans carried
their religion from their ports in the
Mediterranean as far as Ireland in the west; and
to tropical Asia in the east. Of the goddesstemples founded, the highest may have been
that of Sappho on the island of Lesbos. The
goddess-temples are of great importance to
scholars, for they are the source of the alphabet
we use; the musical scales we use, of the
concept of poetry, of the calendar, of astronomy
and history, and of formal mathematics and the
sciences.
The White Goddess
• This culture fell in a cataclysm in approximately
1600 BC, but was resumed by Achaeans (protoGreeks), and by other civilizations honoring the
nature goddess. The temple's role at the pinnacle
of human culture and achievement lasted until the
second century anno domine, when the high
priestess of the temple of Isis was murdered. The
fall of the temple on the Nile marked the end of
goddess-worship as a manifest or established
religion, and the beginning of the Goddess' long
career in hidden religion, that is, in the occult .
Reference
• The Fallen Temple: A Search for the White
Goddess. 20 Feb. 2006
<http://www.big.com.au/fallen/>.
• Robert Graves. Biography. 20 Feb. 2006
<http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/rgraves.htm>.
• The Robert Graves Archive. 20 Feb. 2006
<http://homes.ukoln.ac.uk/~lispjh/graves/>.