Robert Graves: Peace-Weaver [Reprint 2017 ed.] 9783110814903, 9789027931948

Citation preview

STUDIES IN ENGLISH

LITERATURE

Volume LXUl

ROBERT GRAVES: PEACE-WEAVER

by

J A M E S S. M E H O K E

1975 MOUTON THE HAGUE · PARIS

© Copyright 1975 Mouton & Co. Β.V., Publishers, The Hague. No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publishers.

ISBN

90 279 31941

Printed in The Netherlands by Mouton & Co., The Hague

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A personal word of thanks to Dr. James Hall at the University of Washington, Seattle, for his help with my dissertation on Graves and Dr. Fowler from whom I have borrowed the term 'peace-weaver' in my title. To my colleagues and friends in Wisconsin and Manitoba whose views have helped me I express my thanks. A special word of appreciation to Mr. Greves at the Jim Dan Hill Library at Wisconsin State University-Superior for his assistance and to my typist, Judy, for her competence. Thanks are always due to one's wife and family for bearing with it and for helping by being patient.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

5

Preface

9

I. The Goddess and Her Critics II. The Prose Works 1. The Autobiography 2. The Novels

13 36 39 49

III. The Expository Prose 1. The Greek Myths 2. Hercules, My Shipmate 3. The White Goddess

58 62 66 69

IV. The Mythic Prose 1. The Golden Ass 2. King Jesus 3. The Anger of Achilles

81 83 87 93

V. The Myth and The Poetry 1. The Satires 2. The Love Poetry 3. The Mythic Lyrics

99 102 123 144

Selected Bibliography

163

PREFACE

Most of the best critical work done on Graves has come out quite recently, mostly in the last ten years. It might be a question to those alert to Graves criticism whether another book could be useful, coming so soon on the heels of the latest one by Michael Kirkham, The Poetry of Robert Graves (1969), a study which deals with the complete body of Graves's poetry and criticism. To satisfy questions on this score, my first chapter attempts to summarize attitudes relative to Graves's Goddess and Myth and to underline the nature of the debate which has been, and is, going on in this regard. The debate raises questions in many areas: the nature of the Myth, the nature of the Myth's content, the origins of the Myth, the scholarship and the problem of validity, and the relations or lack of relations of the Myth to our time. This study takes up the Myth itself as a subject worthy of attention and attempts to answer some of the questions raised with relation to it. The general view is that Graves's Myth is best understood in terms of religion as regards his life and his work. The significance attributed to Laura Riding's influence on Graves's work is allowed less importance than the earlier trauma of the war in which Graves lost his Christianity. By tracing his concern with war as a cultural phenomenon on the one side and as a source of his neurosis with special characteristics on the other, a relation between his loss of religion and his spiritual rebirth and new religious outlook in the Myth is reached. That religion implies ultimate justice in the Cosmos, that the war experience had robbed Graves of this religious assurance, and that his new sense of

10

PREFACE

confidence emanates from a Myth which restores his lost sense of justice are interrelated assumptions of this study. In this connection, it is suggested that Graves embraces both the ethical implications of reincarnation and the possibility of immortality which are interwoven into the seasonal Myth in a rebirth pattern of infinite suggestiveness and varied application. Again, the war experience is focused upon for its usefulness in explaining the unique manner in which Graves comprehends the mythic Osiris. The bond-of-blood among comrades in the trenches by degrees of association becomes one with the volunteer sacrifice of Osiris that Darien may be born, an act considered to be of great nobility, though misunderstood by an unspiritual world. Rather than honor Osiris-Dionysius-Hercules figures and the selflessness they represent, the world would rather honor Set and his vainglory, power, and destructiveness. Graves's old worship of Christ is subsumed by the Myth and transmuted into a veneration of Christ as Osiris - once again implying religious continuity of concern along with the concern for war in the Set figure. The Goddess, the cynosure of the Mythic structure, is given relation to the scholarship, to archetype, and to a Jungian view of myth-reading. The attempt here is to establish the psychology of the unconscious and the element of the irrational in the archetype as discussed by Neumann so that his discussion of both pre-historic religion and history might support Graves; too, Neumann's discussion leads directly into areas fruitful to the questions of interpretation by way of Jung. Myth, according to Jung, is infinitely suggestive and endlessly elusive - it refuses final or wholly rational conclusions. Thus, Neumann comments, the Mother archetype is not quite acceptable to the modern consciousness which prefers the finality of mathematics to the paradoxes of art - and, by implication, to life. That Graves champions the female over the male is tantamount to championing spirit over muscle, and the resources he discovers in the unconscious for spiritual energy and joy places him in contradistinction to his age, for which the unconscious is the terrible Id, repository of suppressed evil, and the dangers of violent passion. The male, as exemplar of logic, keeps order; the female as exemplar of pas-

PREFACE

11

sion, keeps vitality both for good and for bad. The relations of these two, order and passion, mind and spirit, reason and love, man and fate - as Jung says it is infinite - make up surrounding situations or potential interpretations of the mythic triad. In this way, Graves is a great deal more than a love poet, though love taken as the expression of what is essentially spiritual in human nature lies at the center of the wheel as hub to the circling spokes of the years. There is nothing worth having or worth doing without it; those who exist without it are not wholly alive, vital, or truly human. To bring the social norms of decent behavior into closer relation with the Myth's values of love, patience, and selflessness is, in the last analysis, what Graves's Myth purports to do. Similarly, the poetry persuades us to love the Goddess truth, compassion, and integrity - and to identify with Osiris, her lover. To love with one's heart as a matter of vital faith, without reason if necessary, is to tap resources of courage and powers of vitality and vision unknown to mind in the modern sense of thinking mechanism. It is possible to say that all thought is secondary to, and contingent upon, those vitalities which make us live or want to live. Plato said the mind rides the body, and indeed it does; Graves might have said the horse bears the rider, supports it, allows it to be. So love supports mind and allows it to be when it is anything creative, vital, or joyful. At its keenest, as in some of Graves's lyrics, the animated and joyous spirit can create burningly, hauntingly, and memorably. He says he is a Muse poet. To return, then, this study is centered upon that Myth and the Muse that can inspire a poet to write what may well be our time's best lyric poetry. Religion figures in Graves's work in one final way. His offer of his Myth to the world as a vehicle for a return to religion without civil war might be too optimistic, but the offer seems also to be genuine and generous when one considers the immense effort to which he has gone. From the war-poetry to autobiography to the tract at the close of The White Goddess, as well as in the novels, adaptations, translations, satiric poetry, essays, and studies, a constant concern is registered for war and religion - as in the vow, taken on the rectory steps in the autobiography, to

12

PREFACE

avoid wars in the future. A suggestion that Graves's Myth is, in part, intended to be in keeping with that vow grows too powerful to overlook, just as the audacity of the conception is too bold almost to countenance. Since the Myth is neither doctrinal, national, racial (especially since the emphasis on the Black Goddess), geographically bounded, or historically compromised, Graves considers it a practical and suitable solution to a religious rebirth in the West. That Graves is a poet without causes or contemporary relevance, a view forwarded by a number of critics from Spender to Kirkham, is an inaccurate view of Graves's work and seems to be one of the attitudes with which critics reject Graves's for not being a partisan in their own cause or faith. Neither capitalist nor communist, Christian nor humanist, nationalist nor partisan, Graves is a true citizen of the world and is deeply committed to its welfare. In recognition of Graves's vision of the West hands-joined in worship of Mother and Son and in veneration of her Lover and his volunteer sacrifice, I have entitled this book Robert Graves: Peaceweaver.

I THE GODDESS AND HER CRITICS

In 1948 Robert Graves published a work begun four years earlier which he named The White Goddess: a Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth.1 Interrupting work in progress on Hercules My Shipmate and in a state of high excitement and creativity, Graves quickly dashed off a first manuscript of The White Goddess and continued to amplify and revise it until publication. The title indicates what lies at the center of the book's interest for Graves as does the dedicatory poem: a Goddess. The poem "In Dedication" to her reads thus: All saints revile her, and all sober men Ruled by the God Apollo's golden mean — In scorn of which I sailed to find her In distant regions likeliest to hold her Whom I desired above all things to know Sister of the mirage and echo. It was a virtue not to stay, T o go my headstrong and heroic way Seeking her out at the volcano's head, Among pack ice, or where the track had faded Beyond the cavern of the seven sleepers: Whose broad high brow was white as any leper's, Whose eyes were blue, with rowan-berry lips, With hair curled honey-coloured to white hips. The sap of Spring in the young wood a-stir Will celebrate with green the Mother, And every song-bird shout awhile for her; 1

Robert Graves, The White Goddess (New York: Vintage Books, Inc.,

1958).

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THE GODDESS AND HER CRITICS

But I am gifted, even in November Rawest of seasons, with so huge a sense Of her nakedly worn magnificence I forget cruelty and past betrayal, Careless of where the next bright bolt may fall. Graves admires her "nakedly worn magnificence", song-birds will "shout" for her awhile, and saints and sober men will "revile" her - from the first, it seems, the Goddess is the center of argument. It is the nature of the argument or debate surrounding this Goddess figure of Graves which I wish to discuss first, for the debate is almost always interesting and provocative and will, further, allow me both grounds and perspective by which I might proceed. Anticipating a little, I think we will find that the very controversial nature of Graves's theories of history and pre-history has caused his critics to be wary of him. They are often a bit angry or diffident with him. Because Graves has trampled on so much sacred ground with theories of a doubtful kind, criticism has matured slowly and is, I believe, still somewhat speculative in character. Perhaps the question most critics want to have answered is this one: is Graves serious? The answer lies contained in one particular work written over twenty years ago in 1948, The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth. Some argue it is a Swiftian jest or a Burton-like piece of idiosyncracy, but I feel Graves is quite serious. At least everything points that way in all the later prose and criticism. If I am to present Graves in a helpful way, it will be advantageous to know both how he has been understood and misunderstood by critics, and so let us turn to the criticism at a point in time just before the publication of the manifesto in 1948. Considering that Graves's reputation began as a war poet in Marsh's Georgian Poetry: 1916-17, one will find this reputation, just after World War II, has given way to that of the purist: "Nothing happens", Mr. Spender writes in 1946, "nothing is said in Mr. Graves's poems but the poetry."2 Geoffry Bullough gives Graves two pages in The Trend of Modern Poetry of 1949 and 2

Stephen Spender, "Poetry for Poetry's Sake and Beyond Poetry", Horizon, LXXVI (April, 1946), 25.

THE GODDESS AND HER CRITICS

15

astutely sees Graves before 1939 as consumed by psycholi /gical problems - relatively of knowledge, problems of identity, discontinuity of experience - but finds the poetry after this date as "mind schooling emotion".3 This dualism of mind and body is certainly in Graves, and many of his critics note it. Graves's Myth, however, is opposed in spirit to "philosophical dualism with all the tragic-comic woes attendant on spiritual dichotomy".4 But if these words by Graves seem sober enough, Horace Gregory's article in 1953 is wary. He salutes the wit, irony, paradox, and the "deliberately reflective, roughened texture" of "On Portents" of Poems and Satires (1951 ), but finds I, Claudius "military" in style and unconcerned with "moral truth", and The White Goddess an "Anglo-Irish flight into irony and passion".5 Nor does Richard Hayman find any use for the Goddess or the Myth in 1955 in his discussion of "In Broken Images" as poem-qua-poem; he concludes: "Certainly there is no moral or social or political message."6 There is the echo of Spender here. Perhaps Randall Jarrell, later that year, first turns directly to confront Graves's Goddess in his two-part article in the Yale Review: Part I reviews Collected Poems of 1959 and Part II essays the Goddess.7 Jarrell's wit and charm make the article as interesting as the Jungian approach makes it persuasive to an age of psychology. Referring to Jung's writings (Collected Works, Vol. 7, last part of essay "The Relations Between the Ego and the Unconscious"),8 Jarrell applies the familiar terms with considerable dexterity. In this view, Graves (persona) finds a projection of himself (anima) in the Goddess; thus Graves and his Goddess stand in relation as do ego and unconscious. "It is no light matter to stand between a day-world of exploded values and discredited 3

Geoffrey Bullough, "The Georgian Tradition", The Trend of Modern Poetry (London: Oliver and Boyd, 1949), pp. 46-77. 4 Graves, The White Goddess, op. cit., p. 515. 5 Horace Gregory, "Robert Graves: A Parable for Writers", Partisan Review, X X (Jan., Feb., 1953), p. 49, p. 54. 6 Richard Hayman, "Robert Graves", Essays in Criticism, V (Jan., 1955), p. 42. 7 Randall Jarrell, "Graves and the White Goddess", Yale Review, XLV (Winter, Spring, 1956), pp. 302-314 (Pt. I) and pp. 467-480 (Pt. II). 8 Op. cit., p. 474.

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THE GODDESS AND HER CRITICS

values, and a night-world of apparently senseless fantasy", writes Jarrell, and Graves is seen as "reaching back to the Mother who shielded his childhood from the terrors of the night".9 Why the Muse herself becomes a terror is left unclear, although Mothersecurity, Laura Rinding-love, Nancy-mistake is the offered connection between the Muse's moods and the women in Graves's life. The Goddess is shown to relate to Graves's psychic life, but not to the poetry. In Part I, Jarrell divides Graves's poem into seven categories, one of which contains his "mythical and archaic poems of the White Goddess".10 Thus, though Jarrell gives the Goddess a psychological basis, as of yet she is left unconnected with the Myth. As a poet, Graves is "Baby, Lover, Victim howling, in dreadful longing, for the Mother who bears, possesses, and destroys"; as man Graves is a von Ranke - "cold, puzzle solving, stamp collecting, logic chopping regimental explainer".11 Jarrell's antipathy to Graves's theories is clear. Nonetheless, from this point on the Goddess will have relation to Graves's life and writings. A real interest in Graves's work can now begin, and Mr. Jarrell's article helps give impetus, as does the publication of The Greek Myths, to Graves's arrival as a mythographer. Of course, poets had read Graves's Survey of Modernist Poetry and acclaimed it, but if Graves the poet and Graves the critic are getting on Graves the man is still misunderstood.12 Martin Seymour-Smith wrote his survey of Graves in 1956 for the British Book News,13 and it has been influential. From this is, he forms conclusions from the thesis and autobiography only. 9

Op. cit., p. 472. Op. cit., p. 304 11 Op. cit., p. 302. 12 Graves's two-part article "These Be Thy Gods, O Israel", New Republic C X X X I V (Feb. 27 and Mar. 5, 1956) declaims poetic cliques and fashionability and raises in opposition to these the standard of truth-telling. Schwartz claims in his answering article "Graves on the D o c k - the Case for Modern Poetry", New Republic, C X X X I V (Mar. 19, 1956), pp. 20-21, that Graves had joined the Philistines in attacking poetry. Graves, of course, was not attacking modern poetry as Schwartz suggested he was doing; Graves was admonishing poets, not poetry, for worshipping the idol of fashion. 13 Martin Seymour-Smith, Robert Graves (Writers and Their Works 78), Bonamy Dobree ed. (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1956). 10

THE GODDESS AND HER CRITICS

17

number in the British Book News forward, Graves is no longer viewed as the poet's post working the metaphysical vein as purist, craftsman, and satirist. Clear cognizance is taken of the relation between the prose and poetry, and the requisite readings in the prose are sound choices: Poetic Unreason (Graves's Oxford thesis, 1925); Goodbye To All That (the autobiography of 1929); and The White Goddess (the grammar of poetic myth, 1948). The prose is to be preparatory for the poetry, and his organizational procedure would have borne fruit of an unexpected kind had Seymour-Smith followed it through - but he does not do so. That His interpretation of the poetry follows hard upon two assumptions: 1) the war stripped Graves of all stable values save courage, and 2) a passionate yet squeamish attitude toward sex caused Graves to have difficult relations with women. Hence the Goddess is the result of a wounded psyche manifesting two kinds of conflict which hold between them the "immediately recognizable texture of Graves's poems".14 The gain in this is the recourse to the prose as preparatory reading and even as requisite to understanding the poetry. Seymour-Smith's attempt to interpret the Goddess as the result of neurosis and conflict may seem convincing as psychology but fails the literature. The Goddess as image is left unrelated to her other uses as image and is discussed, somewhat as with Jarrell, in terms of psychological projection. Seymour-Smith's ambivalence of attitude toward Graves's work can be seen in the admiring broad-based approach on the one side and in a wary jesting away of the Goddess as something Sir James Fraser sired upon Jane Harrison, on the other. Seymour-Smith and Jarrell make it difficult, or more difficult, however, to ignore The White Goddess, and critics grow sharply divided on the issue hereafter. The critics who react negatively have a common theme: Graves is an unscholarly charlatan. The language is often downright abusive and probably went a long way toward making Graves's reputation by getting him defenders. In 1959 alone Hazard Adams »

Op. cit., 6.

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suggested that Graves was "a beserk of violents";15 Dahlberg and Read, working in tandem, found him "choleric, vain, and covetous . . . a gigantic dwarf", as well as a "coney catcher, as you say, exiled to a rocky island"16; and Hoffman defends the ballads from amateur-intruders in a dialogue between poet and professor which conceals lightly veiled anger with a rather heavy-handed humor.17 The following year in 1960, Steiner defended the Classics. He has good words for the fiction and criticism but sees an "amateur" working "roughshod" in The Greek Myths, "fairy people" in The White Goddess and "Irish wit" in The Nazarene Gospel Restored,18 The doubtful scholarship is also D. J. Enright's source of outrage in 1961: The White Goddess is a "slagpile of makebelieve" and the Goddess a "cross between a shrewish wife and a military dictator". 19 However, Enright admires the poet Graves who can be "a free individual, free from party, free from theory, free to try to find himself, by trial and error and success - and constant effort". 20 Like Enright, Colin Wilson suspects a "gigantic legpull" in The White Goddess and lumps it with Yeats's A Vision, both being "weird agglomerates of remote and archaic learning, jumbled up to make a kind of 'system' that bears some resemblance to that of William Blake".21 Wilson's sense of Graves's relation to Yeats and Blake seem to me to be moving in a fruitful direction despite his wariness. To think of Blake, rather than 15 Hazard Adams, "Criticism: Whence and Whither?", The American Scholar, XXVIII (Spring, 1959), p. 234. 16 Edward Dahlberg and Herbert Read, "Robert Graves and T. S. Eliot", Twentieth Century, CLXVI (August, 1959), p. 58. 17 Daniel Hoffman, "The Unquiet Graves", Sewanee Review, XXII (1959), pp. 305-316. 18 George Steiner, "The Genius of Robert Graves", Kenyon Review, XXII (Winter, 1960), pp. 340-365. George Stade's review, pp. 674-77, is clear on Steiner's strategy of seeming flattery. Herbert Weisinger's chapter on Graves in The Agony and the Triumph is entitled "A very curious and painstaking person - Robert Graves as mythographer". 19 D. J. Enright, "Robert Graves and the Decline of Modernism", Essays in Criticism, XI (April, 1961), p. 314. 20 D. J. Enright, "The Example of Robert Graves", Shenandoah, XIII, No. 2 (Winter, 1962), 15. 21 Colin Wilson, "Some Notes on Graves's Prose", Shenandoah, XIII, (Winter, 1962), 58.

THE GODDESS AND HER CRITICS

19

Burton, affords a perspective which discovers Yeats and Graves as more alike than different from the point of view of the poetwithout-tradition. But Cohen does not follow this kind of lead in his book Robert Graves of 1961.22 With scant help from the critics, he works the vein Seymour-Smith had provided in which Graves is placed with an Anglo-Irish temperament between Classical and Romantic tendencies so that his "phases" oscillate first this way and then that. "Romanticism" equates with vagueness, "private statement" and "undisciplined writing"; "classicism" equates with vividness of detail and concreteness of treatment.23 Using the same prose references as did Seymour-Smith, Cohen does well with the early and metaphysical Graves of the Riding period (1926-1938), giving close analyses and readings to a difficult range of poetry. The Goddess and the Myth, however, get accounted for as a "doleful return to Romanticism".24 The imagery of the mythic poetry seems too "private" and "undisciplined" for Cohen's taste. So, once more like Seymour-Smith, Cohen disregards what he thinks he must in order to appreciate what he can: an exquisite body of poetry by a life-long devotee of the art. That Cohen thinks Graves's "somewhat fanciful Goddess" 25 is a hoax, probably accounts for the reason that he can find no relation of the poetry after 1939 to the " 'grammar of poetic myth' to which it is apparently related". 26 Hence, "To Juan at the Winter Solstice" is seen as part of a private myth and for this reason "cannot count as one of Graves's finest poems".27 It seems that Graves's poetry is closely related to his 'grammar of poetic myth' and that Gohen's judgment on this score is wide of the mark - very wide. A look at the criticism which develops into a favorable one towards Graves will show that the broader based approach to him - one that follows through on Seymour-Smith's requisite readings-has been most rewarding. This group of critics

22 23 24 25 28

"

J. M. Cohen, Robert Op. cit., p. 24. Op. cit., p. 27. Op. cit., p. 375. Op. cit., p. 24. Op. cit., p. 108.

Graves

(New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1961).

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makes fruitful reading, and the best of these are Fraser, Day, Hoffman and Kirkham. Vickery's article of 1958 strikes a note close to the main purpose of this book: to flesh out relations between myth and poetry and close the gap between theory and performance. He writes poets are interested in myths for the same reason other people are: curiosity over ancient tales, fascination about incongruities of subject and idea, and puzzlement over human and divine motives. He wishes to show "how a poem's theme, genre, rhetorical devices, and symbolic action reveal even as they are shaped by the poet's intellectual beliefs about and emotional attitude towards the myth" 28 - "Leda and the Swan", in this instance. Graves's purpose is a kind of induced self-discovery in the reader, the psychological element, or sadistic enjoyment of crude power and enforced lust. This is enough for Vickery - the myth has served its function. Yet there are historical, philosophical, and religious implications of tremendous importance to Western civilization attached to this mythic 'rape' in Graves's thinking which Vickery does not explore. Creely is one of the first to see the Goddess as a Source and a denial of life or as "generation" with poetry as an emblematic celebration of man's wry position as subject.29 In this he is close to the spirit of The White Goddess which the article reviews with Five Pens in Hand, The Golden Ass, and The Twelve Ceasars. Carrying this idea along, Davie perceptively discusses Graves's tone as always directed to the Goddess, not the reader or society (the function of tone being to establish rapport or relation with the reader in some social context); hence, Graves reads his poetry in a toneless voice so as not to seem to cajole or woo the listener. That she can be thought of as a 'Being' or 'Principle' addressed in the spirit of love or thought of as 'Spirit of the Universe' or 'God' or 'the Tradition of good Poetry' or merely 'professional 28

John B. Vickery, "Three Modes and a Myth", Western Humanities Review, XII (1958), pp. 371-78. 29 Robert Creeley, "Her Service is Perfect Freedom", Poetry, XCIII (Oct.Mar., 1958-59), pp. 398.

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21

self-respect' helps explain why Graves's reputation as a love-poet "limits his significance much less than it seems to; and it weakens considerably the objection that 'he has no message for the age' ".30 The point that Graves addresses his Goddess as a spiritual reality, not the reader as social reality, need not mean that the social, historical, and religious implications do not exist. On the other hand, Davie's notion that Graves's spareness at times makes for a poetry only some degree more extended than epigram, a poetry he describes as "emblematic",31 depends on the choice of poem or poems. Seeing the Goddess as many see 'God' and the poems in a Myth dealing with her, helps a poem of Graves after 1938 to escape an emblematic reading, but Davie is tending rightly in seeing the Goddess as a spiritual entity and Creely in seeing her as "generation". Because I agree with Davie that the Goddess must be accepted as the 'Principle' or 'Being' whom Graves addresses in the spirit of spiritual subjection or celebration, I must take umbrage with the estimate both Day and Kirkham give of G. S. Fraser. This influential critic let an article first written in 1947 stand as then written in his book of 1959. The chapter32 on Graves tends to set the tone and spirit of both Day's and Kirkham's work, and both admit their indebtedness to Fraser as perhaps the best critic prior to themselves interested in Graves.33 He writes "I think The White Goddess is likely to distract one from what the poems actually do and say."34 In an article three years later he writes, Graves's ". . . own formula, in The White Goddess, that he is a Muse poet, inspired solely by love and fear of the Muse, seems to me like a 30

Donald Davie, "The Toneless Voice of Robert Graves", The Listener (July 2, 1959), pp. 11-13. 31 Donald Davie, "Impersonal and Emblematic", Listen, III (Spring, 1960), reprinted in Shenandoah, XIII, pp. 38-44. 32 G. S. Fraser, "The Poetry of Robert Graves", Vision and Rhetoric (London: Faber and Faber, 1959), pp. 134-48. 83 Douglas Day, Swifter Than Reason (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1963), p. 13 n. Michael Kirkham, The Poetry of Robert Graves (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), pp. 1 and 10. 34 Fraser, Vision and Rhetoric, pp. 136-37.

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Rationalisation, though a brilliant one."35 To understand Graves, Fraser says, we must turn to his life, to which one can readily assent; but Fraser's sense of the Goddess keeps him from making closer relations between Graves's "life" and the thought and feeling as regards Graves's "rationalisation". What Fraser does most admirably is relate with penetration and cogency the spirit of Graves's Goddess as 'truth' - not abstract truth, but truth of human feeling without pose or deceit as it is experienced by a man (who may be a poet). The article must be read en toto to be appreciated on this score36 - but the poetry itself is carefully separated from the Myth and the Goddess and the 'single theme'. The "favorite theme of the poetry for Fraser is the conflict between love and sexuality, more generally mind and body, and more generally still between the mind and nature". 37 Hence, "the Castle" represents mind's wish to escape the body.38 The issue at hand with this sense of the poetry lies not in its being incorrect so much as in its separation from the Myth and related themes. But the critic does well to attend to the hints Fraser drops concerning prose-myth relations and Graves's relations with Laura Riding.39 One is left with the impression that Fraser, like Seymour-Smith in a way, knows more than he is saying. It is difficult to know if one should be thankful or exasperated by his anecdotes,40 but there need be no doubt that he is a valuable critic whom students of Graves might well read. The Symposium issue of Shenandoah in which Fraser's article appears in 1962 includes articles by Auden, Enright, Gunn, Davie, Stillitoe, and Wilson. Auden's essay, entitled "Poet of Honor", 85

G. S. Fraser, "The Reputation of Robert Graves", Shenandoah, XIII (Winter, 1962), 26. 36 Op. cit., section III on Graves's life with Nancy. 37 Fraser, Vision and Rhetoric, pp. 136-37. 38 Op. cit., pp. 136-37. 39 That Belisarius, for example, is a soldier with modern implication. Also the hint that Graves's second marriage is in part the cause of his good health and revived sense of life after 1938 seems to make good sense so far as it goes. 40 Fraser, "Reputation of Robert Graves", op. cit., p. 27. Obviously, the first years and not the latter years must be stressed.

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sets the tone - honorific and nostalgic. Gaskell's discussion of "With Her Lips Only" in 196141 is insightful as is Nemerov's discussion of "To Juan at the Winter Solstice",42 but reading them alone would give the impression that the debate had died. In fact, it is very much alive. In Canada, if A. J. M. Smith says that Graves is the best poet of our century, Louis Dudek believes there is a deep "confusion in the minds of critics" who can so honor an "imitation of poetry". 43 In England the election of Graves to the Chair of Poetry, over Leavis and Gardner at Oxford, was an affair of altered loyalties with yet substantial and surprising support among the graduates for Graves. In the United States, as we have seen, opinions on the poetry and the poet varied in a markedly divergent manner, from satiric to honorific. What was needed was a more broadly based approach such as Seymour-Smith pointed to in his influential pamphlet done for the British Book News. This kind of approach was needed and Douglas Day's book of 1963, Swifter Than Reason,44 comes in answer to the need. Although Day gives only twenty pages to the mythic poetry, Chapter Eleven - "The Goddess in the Poems", 43 he offers a basis for his examination of the mythic poems by first examining the Myth and attempting to come to grips with The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth. The results of this approach prove fascinating as well as fruitful. In brief, Day discusses the nature of the Goddess along with important related matters: her appearance to Apulieus in Graves's translation of the Golden Ass, her discovery while Graves was working on the Argonaut book Hercules My Shipmate in which matriarchal and patriarchal religions clash in the late Bronze Age, her place in 41

R o n a l d Gaskell, "Poetry of Robert Graves", Critical Quarterly, III (Autumn, 1961), 213-22. 42 H o w a r d N e m e r o v , "Poetry of Robert Graves", Poetry and Fiction Essays ( N e w Brunswick, N e w Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1963), p. 117. 43 Louis Dudek, "The Case of Robert Graves", Canadian Forum, XL (Dec., 1960), 199-201. 44 Op. cit. 45 Op. cit., pp. 168-88.

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the historical thesis of The White Goddess the argument of which Day summarizes, and her relation to mythic iconography and the 'single theme'. Perhaps for the first time these materials are given relation: matriarchy, Mythic Goddess, historical thesis, iconography, and poetry. Though none of it is new per se to the criticism after Seymour-Smith, unless the summary of the argument and the historical thesis in The White Goddess is new, what is important is the sense of relationship of all these matters one to the other. Ultimately, of course, the new sense of relationship swings toward Graves's own sense of the thing. Nonetheless, Day has moved far toward a better understanding of the vision of Graves, and his explication of the poetry shows a gain in knowledgeability not present in previous critics. All critics after Day stand indebted to him, unless they managed to discover Graves on their own - a chronic occurrence among Graves critics including this one (I "discovered" Graves in 1964 in my dissertation). Because this study will go back over much of the same material for different purposes and emphases than the one's in Day's study, no space will be given to his own quotations from Graves's work; however, Day's attitude toward Graves's Goddess and historical thesis is significant because it influences what use will be made of the fresh sense of relation between the 'grammar' and the poetry. Day finds the historical thesis doubtful and pinpoints some objections to it on p. 160 - on the whole the objections direct our attention to insufficient evidence (although in many ways the nature of evidence depends upon a point of view). Objections made, Day quotes Steiner's words which make Graves "a dangerous amateur, possibly even a charlatan, who imposes upon reality a world of private fantasies". 46 Having allowed Steiner his cut, Day places the concept of Graves's thesis as a "supremely imaginative attempt to define the precise nature of poetic inspiration . . .", 47 finds Jarrell's thesis to be partially correct,48 and 46

"

49

Op. cit., p. 160. Ibid. Op. cit., p. 166.

THE GODDESS AND HER CRITICS

25

offers the literary environment of Graves's childhood to explain the rest: Pre-Raphaelite, Romantic, Elizabethan stereotypes of women make it "impossible to see her solely as the product of his personal experience". 49 If Graves is responding to the Goddess of a matriarchal age either in person or in his poetry, this kind of accounting denies it and with it any of the social, religious, or political themes that accompany his often stated dedication to his Goddess. Day is not unaware of the feministic theme or the antipatriarchal theme. He simply doesn't give the mythic poetry much room; in effect, he nullifies them by omission and by lack of emphasis. Like Seymour-Smith and Cohen, Day ignores what he must to appreciate what he can. Day's treatment of Graves's career is worth one final comment. Rather than follow Graves's own lead of five divisions (as many critics note and quote from the introduction of Collected Poems, 1938), Day divides the poetry into four phases after noting Graves's tendency to move poems out of their 'original' position and date of appearance - thus spoiling the growth-of-the-poet approach he wishes to follow. The phases Day works out are as follows: the war-shock period of 'anodynic' poetry (1916-1923); the detached and analytic period (1923-1926); the Laura Riding period (1926-1938); a hiatus, and the Goddess period of 1944 to present. This division tends to make Laura Riding's influence on Graves's poetry less than perhaps Kirkham allows. My main point in mentioning it is to indicate the biographical approach taken lends itself well to the final announcement of childhood influence - which is also Hoffman's approach. Hoffman's book Barbarous Knowledge50 is divided among three writers: Yeats, Graves, and Muir. The section given to Graves nonetheless contains the most insightful comments on Graves's scholarship and mythology available to the student. It is not easily summarized - nor do I pretend to do so - and, like Day, Hoff49

Ibid. Daniel Hoffman, Barbarous Press, 1967).

50

Knowledge

(New York: Oxford University

26

THE GODDESS AND HER CRITICS

man must be read for his many insights and qualified defense of the mythology. The approach is biographical-psychologicalliterary in kind with the early family relationships, public school, and war allowed the main influences upon Graves's development which coalesce in the Goddess mythology. Women, particularly Mrs. Graves, cause Graves to fear rejection in the father (one sees a triology and a Freudian handling of the problem reminiscent of Jarrell), and war also causes fear of self-sacrifice as opposed to duty - which cause a recrudescence of the earlier trauma of father-rejection. Hence war-fear is related to woman-fear (though man-fear is not admissible one supposes) and a Goddess figure at once loved and feared is made plausible. This approach is also neatly dove-tailed into W. H. R. Rivers' doctrines of a conscious battle with the unconscious, the witting and the unwitting, in which intuition provides a therapeutic outlet and solution of psychological conflicts of which poetry is born. Thus, the divided selves of Graves become the conflicting God of the Waxing Year and God of the Waning Year in the Myth, a battle between father and son, between man and death, with love and death the wages of the struggle. "Conditions of emotional stress, dream, paranoia, and delusion offer the materials of true poetry, if not the finality of poetic statement. Graves found his own poetic materials in such materials long before he recognized their universality in myths." 51 Thus, Hoffman does with Graves's Myth, albeit with a greater sense of grasp and cogency, what others had been doing right along - psychoanalyzing the biography for origins of the Myth. Ultimately, Hoffman feels the Myth is not necessary for a reading of the poetry if the reader is alert to primary meanings and capable of empathy. 52 Furthermore, the scholarship is idiosyncratic in The White Goddess and illustrates an extreme case of dissociation of sensibility and Romantic primitivism.53 Yet Hoffman sees that The White Goddess in its politicoreligious ideas is a structure which is also a structure of feelings one which replaced the vacuum " . . . in a world where reality had 51 52 53

Op. cit., p. 147. See also pp. 198-99. Op. cit., p. 217. Op. cit., p. 183. See also the Introduction.

THE GODDESS AND HER CRITICS

27

broken down and there was no power worthy of worship". 54 Picking u p this point later, Hoffman writes: "These patterns, which I have discussed in Graves thus far in terms of psychological origins within an individual's experience, are in fact true to the experience also of many contemporary men. Once such patterns comprised the basis of man's religious life, for the White Goddess, like Yeats's version of the Cuchulain legends, is a modern adaptation and interpretation of a set of rituals and their accompanying myths from Bronze Age times." 55 Hoffman grants Graves his wide learning and offers sources which have support in their fields - Frazer, Harrison, E. O. James, d'Alviella, Macalister and MacCulloch, etc. 56 - in order to offset Hodgart and Papastravou's review of The Greek Myths in Twentieth Century (May, 1955) a review that panned the immense labor Graves must have put into the book. But whatever "his shortcomings as a scholar - as the university considers scholarship - Graves discovered the identity of individual need with what was once the communal structure of myth and ritual devised to serve that need." 57 He goes on even more cogently as follows: H e maintains, with some justice (my italics), that over the centuries the religious structures based o n the propitiation of fertility were repressed and replaced with more abstract and intellectualized conceptions of the divine. Just as metaphysics is based upon physics, so theology is based upon the structure of society; and its main economic institutions — hunting, agriculture, or manufacture — are recognizable to anthropologists as the unmoved movers that determine the religious dispensations under which the society operates. Yet the human creature is biologically (and perhaps in important ways psychically) unchanged by the five thousand years of cultural development since the worship of Isis, Latona, Caridwen. Graves is grappling with latent dispositions of human character that have been overlain by a f e w dozen centuries of social life. Call his theory atavistic, yet none can deny that he restores to an indestructible and necessary part of human experience its original mystery, spiritual energy, guilt and wonder. 54 55 58 57

Op. cit., p. 186. Op. cit., p. 203. Op. cit., p. 212. Ibid.

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THE GODDESS AND HER CRITICS

Nonetheless, Graves's mind "ranges further than his sensibility, caught within the circularities of love".58 Graves's Myth seems restrictive to Hoffman and reduces the poetry to the repetitions of one pattern. If the Goddess is a religious kind of resolution of a psychical pattern, her attainment by Graves has been accomplished independently "of history, of society, of everything in life save life itself".59 It should be clear that Hoffman sees the Myth as almost wholly a psychological phenomenon despite his willingness to defend Graves from "scholars". In the last analysis, Hoffman suspects that for ". . . the entire mythopoeic system is the last wild and quirky flowering of the Pre-Raphaelite aestheticism in which Graves grew up, yoked by violence to the Romantic primitivism of a unifying, ancient myth.60 This is the note upon which Hoffman closes. The application of the Myth to the poetry is very nearly dismissed: the "boar" in "To Juan At the Winter Solstice" needs no explication to the 'alert' reader. Michael Kirkham's book The Poetry of Robert Graves (1969)"1 is easily the best book on Graves to date since it deals with the whole scope of the poetry, including the Mythic, at length and in detail. The poems are discussed as they first appeared and comment about later revision is valuable. Laura Riding is given more of Kirkham's attention as a literary influence than, for example, Day allowed. For Day, Riding is a negative influence on Graves although she bolstered his faith in himself and poetry by defying public claims to judge poetry.62 Noting that Graves's women are more masculine than the men in his novels, Day partially agrees with Jarrell that Riding has been transmogrified into the Goddess.63 A seeming point of reference here is Day's dislike of the puritanical, aggressive militant Riding and Jarrell's "monstrous Muse". Most critics, Day writes, give her the credit for Graves's 58 59

81 82 63

Ibid. Op. cit., p. 221. Op. cit., p. 222. Op. cit. Day, Swifter Than Reason, pp. 130-31 and Chapt. 8 Op. cit., p. 106 n., and p. 144 n.

passim.

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29

mature poetry; only three do not.64 Michael Kirkham gives credit to Laura Riding for Graves's world view (history is over and poetry is the sole determiner of values) and a sense of discipline as well being his model of the earthly independent-minded Muse. These ideas are expressed at length in the discussion of Graves's second phase, there being three phases in Kirkham's view: 19161926, 1926-1938, and 1938-1959. After 1959 another, but related, phase of the Black Goddess and Sufi wisdom is encountered, which makes four phases in all. The White and Black Goddess are closely related however. It is a matter of emphasis, perhaps, rather than direction. The Black Goddess offers satisfying love rather than fright and lust only - the constant emphasis in the criticism at least since Seymour-Smith and Jarrell - and Graves's poetry is seen in terms of a religious love poetry emphasizing the theme of man-woman relations. Kirkham has the best grasp on the Myth of any critic as the Myth describes, in Hoffman's phrase, "the circularities of love". The world-view and the standards previous to the White Goddess are, however, still present and operating, but now in the impersonalizing manner of Mythic statement. A word about Riding and her world-view are now necessary. The following summary relates to ideas expressed in Riding's Collected

Poems (1938)

preface and in Anarchism

Is

Not Enough published in 1928.65 Essentially Riding's notions are these: Historic Time has come to an end, and it is a Myth of the social group that life holds collective meaning for "the irregular succession and groupings of moments" in the individual. All that is left to us is the determination of values which the Mind best does by withdrawing from 61

Op. cit., pp. 117-18. Supporting the view are an anonymous reviewer in Times Literary Supplement (Fri., 5 June, 1959); Roy Fuller in "Some Vintages of Graves", The London Magazine, V, No. 2 (Feb., 1958), pp. 56-59; Geoffrey Bullough in The Trend of Modern Poetry, p. 77; Jarrell and Kirkham. The "three" who disagree are Horace Gregory in "Robert Graves: A Parable for Writers", Partisan Review, X X (Jan.-Feb., 1953), pp. 44-54; J. M. Cohen in Robert Graves, p. 51; and Nelson Algren in "Sentiment and Terror", Poetry, LV (1939), pp. 157-59. Fraser might be added to these last as well. 65 Kirkham, The Poetry of Robert Graves, pp. I l l ff.

30

THE GODDESS AND HER CRITICS

the Myth and becoming truly individual, by throwing off public duty and disentangling self from all that is not self, and by turning to a poetry and life of our best moments and thoughts. Poetry is to reflect the intellect's struggle in bare terms. "If everyone began systematically treating himself as mind, we should all quickly become separate individuals and know ourselves."66 One might note Miss Riding's use of the term Myth in relation to Graves's accustomed usage in The White Goddess as well as the anti-social overtones in her "message". Relating the ethic of good conduct to the aesthetic of good poetry, Riding, writes Kirkham, caused Graves to commit himself to remaking his "poetry and himself".67 Kirkham continues this line of thought along in his discussion of the Goddess Myth, quoting Graves as he goes: 68 The Mythology asserts always the female as against the male principle in human affairs. The Muse-poet protests 'the patriarchal system. in so far as it values the intellect at the expense of instinct; and force at the expense of persuasion; and written laws at the expense of custom.' He 'sees history as a dangerous deviation from the true course of human life - an attempt to deny women their age-old moral ascendancy. A poet's absolute love, his readiness to trust in woman's wisdom, whatever may ensue, represents a nostalgia for human truth.' In a lecture on 'The White Goddess' printed in Steps (1958) Graves writes that she symbolizes "the supreme power, glory, wisdom, and love of woman' (p. 102); in addition woman possesses a spontaneity and 'intuitive certitude' which is her gift to man. The Goddess is a deification, then, of these qualities. Towards men she has a benevolent and a corrective part to play; but the Myth largely concerns her activities in the latter part — as judge and disciplinarian of men. Her graciousness is chiefly a promise and a hope rather than an experienced fact.69

"" Op. cit., p. 113. Kirkham is quoting from Riding's Anarchism Is Not Enough, p. 108. Note Riding's use and sense of the word "mind" in the quotation. Graves's own sense of the "mind" seems remote from hers especially in relation to the Archetype of the Mother which the "mind" shares with other minds - joining rather than separating individuals. 67 Op. cit., p. 113.. 68 The unidentified quotation from Graves is to be found in Oxford Addresses on Poetry (London: Cassel, 1962), p. 63. 69 Op. cit., ->. 196.

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31

Love, then, is educative and men need the education. But Riding's use of Myth and her stress on intellect seem at odds with Graves's own sense of usage. Her writing to me seems rather schoolmarmish, scolding, and smugly self-righteous. Perhaps she did instruct Graves and perhaps he loved her and perhaps they collaborated but why do none of the critics mention the plain fact that it is after she parted from Graves and he is married to a young wife that his poetry begins to live, and live vibrantly. Certainly Kirkham's approach to Riding's 'influence' on Graves is more cautious and less speculative than Jarrell's notions which have influenced both Day and Hoffman. Also like these critics, Kirkham builds a case for the Myth's appearance from antecedent materials and themes ofthe poetry or the 'spiritual autobiography' of the poet's life. The themes are lovingly announced and their ultimate destinations in the Myth anticipated in a scholarly and convincing manner even though the texts and the choices of poems are, for the reader, matters of trusting the critic. All in all, it is an excellent work for matters of the criticism and poetry by Graves. The prose and the satire are largely left undiscussed by Kirkham; but the lyric poetry, while carefully discussed and related to the Myth, is nourished as an individual matter though done in an impersonal manner through myth. So it is that at the end of his book, Kirkham feels the necessity to defend Graves as a poet relevant to the modern world. Perhaps if he had dealt more with the prose and satire, he would have had less trouble on this score. To summarize, clearly Riding has had an influence on Graves where the critics are concerned and particularly as related to theories of psychological projection: Riding qua Goddess. Perhaps because of partial truth in this regard and certainly because of Graves's autobiography and dramatic leave-taking of England, the matter-of-Riding has become worked over by critics at the expense of Graves's own statements, quoted above by Kirkham, that the Goddess stands opposed to patriarchal culture. No doubt this has been said, has been stated, has been remarked and men-

32

THE GODDESS AND HER CRITICS

tioned - but dissatisfaction with the critical performances, however helpful they have been, lingers. And, perhaps, most unsatisfactory is the handling of the historical thesis as idiosyncratic and unscholarly - stemming chiefly from Jarrell's criticism. Jarrell opened the door only to slam it more surely than ever on Graves with his clinical-cynical modishness. But the diffidence and the wariness have been all but universal characteristics in Graves criticism. Poetry of the 'single theme' has been inadequately related to the serious view of history explicit and implicit in Graves's writings chiefly because his views have been so vulnerably open to misunderstanding. Day noted the content of the Myth; Hoffman noted its connection with Bronze-Age psychic needs; Kirkham noted that Graves was religious in his poems of patience and acceptance - some of which pre-date Riding. But all shy away from the historical thesis on scholarly grounds which leaves the critic the biographical components or poetic themes upon which to erect an explanation of the Goddess - usually in terms of 'projection' as a therapeutic solution of neurosis. In Freudian terms, as Hoffman and Jarrell have it, it makes sense; the question arises 'why go further?' The answer is that it doesn't make enough sense and sidesteps the historical thesis which should be the organizational center of Graves's work and his Weltanschauung. The difficulties critics have experienced with Graves owe chiefly to the narrowness of the literary discipline (scholars plus texts) which precludes an awareness of the cultural-anthropological methodology which he uses to conceptualize. To call this approach Romantic primitivism is to use the handy terms available - and to miss the point. The religious and psychological approach to him by way of Jungian archetypal study is, however, the most fruitful - not the Jarrell approach but the one demonstrated by Erich Neumann in his book The Great Mother.™ Using the method of 'amplification' - or comparative morphological psychology - " . . . which interprets analogous material 70

Erich Neumann, The Great Mother (New York: Bollingen Foundation, Inc., 1955), tr. by Ralph Manheim from the German. No. 47 in the Bollingen Series. All quotations come from Chapter One: "The Structure of the Archetype", pp. 3-17 passim.

THE GODDESS AND HER CRITICS

33

from the most varied spheres of religious history, archaeology, prehistoric studies, ethnology, and so on . . .", Neumann reaches for an ". . . understanding of the archetypes and individual symbols. . . " that are ". . . the symbolic self-representation of the archetype that has passed through the medium of man, and that speaks to us from images fashioned sometimes unconsciously and sometimes consciously". These "mythological motifs" appear among "all people at all times in identical or analogous manner and can arise just as spontaneously . . . from the unconscious of modern man". Modern man is more "conscious" than early man whose whole psychic being is involved in the figurative language of myth and symbol, and "no intellectual formulation comes anywhere near the richness and expressiveness of mythical imagery . . ." because it ". . . acts with greater or less force upon feeling, intuition, and sensation". Rather than abstracting 'out' elements for conceptualization and intellection, archetypes intimate, suggest, excite, or cross, blend, and weave elements together which are contradictory and from "the most diverse provinces of life". Thought is conception, but myth is apperception and may involve elements hostile to or unfathomable by the conscious. Only with great pains can an archetype be "apprehended" by the modern consciousness though the human spirit has risen from it as have "religion, rite and cult, art and customs". "And because the symbol-forming process of the unconscious is the source of the human spirit, language, whose history is almost identical with the genesis and development of human consciousness, always starts out as a symbolic language." Neumann refers to Jung for explication of his sense of difficulty in apperceiving mythic symbol: What an archetypal content is always expressing is first and foremost a figure of speech. If it speaks of the sun and identifies with it the lion, the king, the hoard of gold guarded by the dragon, or the force that makes for the life and health of man, it is neither the one thing nor the other, but the unknown third thing that finds more or less adequate expression in all these similes, yet - to the perpetual vexation of the intellect — remains unknown and not to be fitted into a formula. 7 1 71

Karl Jung and C. Herenyi, "The Psychology of the Child Archetype", Essays on a Science of Mythology, Vol. IX, Pt. 1, p. 105, in the Collected Works, 2nd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969).

34

THE GODDESS AND HER CRITICS

If in early man this archetypal expression and mythologizing was a "content" of the unconscious which "positively forms the consciousness", in modern man "it compensates for overemphasis of consciousness". And with these last words in mind, let us turn to what Neumann's approach might mean for Graves and his Goddess.72 Certainly he applies to the work of Anthony Parise. Neumann's approach to the great-mother archetype as belonging to the "mythological motifs" of all peoples of all time, his assumption that patriarchy has overlain matriarchy, his recognition that modern consciousness grasps myth with difficulty and that the archetype was a cultural and religious matter to pre-historic man, and that the diversity of experiences (some of them wholly unconscious ones) contained in it find "more or less adequate expression" in figures of speech or mythic language - all of these concepts discoverable in Neumann might aid in an understanding of Graves's Goddess as an 'immemorial obsession' in the West which ages of patriarchy have failed to completely erase or obscure. In the name of Europe, in the personification Mother Nature, in the Virgin of the Catholic Church as before in the Vestal Virgins of Rome her presence remains as it does in the number thirteen, the fear of witches, and the zodiac. Or so Graves's historical thesis would have us believe. As the critics have treated Graves's theories with doubt and serious reservation, interpretation both of the man and his work has been appreciative on a partial basis. It may be as Davie thinks that Graves must be 72

Anthony Parise, an unpublished dissertation The Private Myth in the Work of Robert Graves (University of Wisconsin, 1963). Parise is ahead of most writers in fully recognizing Graves's Goddess to be religious in order, but his terms tend to disregard his own insight as she becomes a "field theory" with "many subordinate hypotheses" attached - none of which seems religious particularly. She is a result of Graves's "romantic attraction for pain" and is a "mass of paradoxes". Neumann's thought that an archetype may be all but impossible for a modern consciousness to grasp seems applicable to Parise for w h o m logic and consistency mean everything. The paradoxes mean failure to him. For Graves they represent the double-sidedness of human nature, the struggle of conscious and unconscious, Apollo and Dionysius, reason and passion. Only in the pattern of the Myth is resolution seen.

THE GODDESS AND HER CRITICS

35

taken or rejected on his own ground.73 To find Graves's ground and to see what can be said for it and how it offers us any different insight or perspective is my purpose. That Graves's experience with war and his vow to help avoid them in the future are central to an understanding of his theories and their relevance to contemporary times would sum up my own organizational premise. To this end I will press prose and poetic satire for comment, and to this end I will conclude that the lyrics and love poetry are personal enough, but not only personal. In mythic terms, the personal and impersonal combine in a mythic vision.

73

Davie, "The Toneless Voice of Robert Graves", op. cit., p. 12. Davie is alert to Graves's request for acceptance on a real basis rather than on Richard's "pseudo-statement" basis in his poetry and in his Myth and Single Theme. The mythic poetry, though "toneless" in Davie's sense, is yet social in implication. It is so because all spiritual statements are ultimately social in repercussion. One identifies with Osiris; one rejects Set.

II THE PROSE WORKS: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND THE NOVELS

A great deal of Graves's mythic vision is encompassed in the closing lines of "To Juan At the Winter Solstice": 1 Dwell on her graciousness, dwell on her smiling, Do not forget what flowers The great boar trampled down in the ivy time. Her brow was creamy as the crested wave, Her sea-blue eyes were wild But nothing promised that is not performed. (p. 175) These lines can be construed in many ways, can tap various experiences, and can relate intimately to persons widely divergent in background. Holding the poem against Graves's background for a moment, it is possible to draw connections between the Autobiography and the Myth through Graves's war experience. The comrades-in-arms that Graves fought with died with great courage and honor for the good of their country and were, he feels, betrayed and sacrificed to political interests that hid beneath good form and conventional propriety. The "boar" is not only Ares' emblem, in the poem, but also a symbol for the Fall waning of powers, of disease, corruption, lust, and death. The "flowers" imply the untimely deaths of young men caught unseasonably in the "ivy time" - the Fall hunting season. And "ivy" is related to poets and wisdom, possibly to Owen and Sassoon. Life promised them much, but their sacrifice meant nothing. Graves, at least, does not forget. In a sense, his Myth justi1 Poems hereafter cited refer to Robert Graves, Collected York: Doubleday and Co., 1966).

Poems (New

THE PROSE WORKS

37

fies their deaths as a selfless nobility that it was immoral to misunderstand or to use. But how does this relate to the Myth? It is Fraser who asks "What is it that has been promised and must be performed", and quotes in partial answer the following from The White Goddess: No poet can hope to understand the nature of poetry unless he has had a vision of the Naked King crucified to the lopped oak, and watched the dancers, red-eyed from the acrid smoke of the sacrificial fires, stamping out the measure of the dance, their bodies bent uncouthly forward, with a monotonous chant of: 'Kill! Kill! Kill!' and 'Blood! Blood! Blood!'2

Critics have howled with delight over this, and Graves has undoubtedly enjoyed the spectacle of their fastidious dismay. Which is worse, he asked in his poem "Ogres and Pygmies": the bold orgiastic past or the prim, conventional present? The present did not understand the blood-sacrifice of war as Graves knew it; the deaths had been sentimentalized and thus dishonored. The ancient 'barbarians' of the quotation purged themselves of evil by investing all evil in a scapegoat man-god whose death left the people healthy and restored. For his public act of devotion, the scapegoat was honored and made divine, his honor and munificence acknowledged, his memory made secure. The rite was terrible and honorable - life for life. Death had function. Life had meaning. But to speak of the terrible deaths of the war affronted the English sense of propriety and good form - neither of which Graves has forgiven or forgotten wholly. But in the Myth the noble young are Osirises, beloved of Isis, and are reborn. Sir James Frazer, perhaps Graves's chief and best tutor, describes how such sacrifices functioned in, for example, the myth of Balder or in the ancient rituals of the Pope of Buddhism: Thus through the mist of ages unillumined by the lamp of the tragic figure of the Pope of Buddhism — God's vicar for Asia - looms dim and sad as the man-god who bore his sorrows, the Good Shepherd who laid down his life for his 2

history, on earth people's sheep.3

The White Goddess, p. 502. 3 Sir James Frazer, The Golden Bough (New York: Macmillan Co., 1927), p. 574 ff. Those interested in further reading might look into Chapters

38

THE PROSE WORKS

Graves's interpretation of Christ is deeply indebted to this concept, the man-god scapegoat, and is honored as such. The ultimate sacrifice, done in public, of life for the public good was the original act of expiation and purgation in Europe. But its harsh enactment was mittigated through time into imitative ritual as in Eleusinian rites in which Osiris is reborn as Horus. In Graves's view the war-dead were allowed true perspective if seen as Osirises, and perhaps they were reborn. Too, the ancient rituals of the Goddess in which only life buys life fascinated Graves, for the people, it seems, were un-warlike. Agnes C. Vaughn's book, placed on Crete of Minoan times and called The House of the Double Axe, deals with the culture of 'barbaric' Knossos. A review reads so: These wasp-waisted youths, somersaulting over bulls daredevil pana c h e , p e r f o r m i n g t h e i n t r i c a t e m o v e m e n t s of t h e C r a n e d a n c e , h u m o r o u s , inventive, l u x u r y - l o v i n g , s o p h i s t i c a t e d y e t d e e p l y religious, athletic y e t u n - w a r l i k e , a t o n c e u l t r a - m o d e r n a n d u n f a t h o m a b l y p r i m i t i v e - w h a t w a s o n e t o m a k e of t h e m ? 4

LVII on "Public Scapegoats", L X I on "The Myth of Balder", L X I I on "The Fire-festivals of Europe", and L X V on "Balder and the Mistletoe". On page 665 f. of LXV, f o r example, F r a z e r notes the ancient association of Oak, and other woods, as storehouses of the sun's energy - hence the sacredness of trees - as evidenced in fire. T h e burning of a h u m a n being in mid-summer Oak fires, however brutal it may seem to us, was an act of religious propitiation, expiation, and even of high exaltation to those who saw the man-god lay down his life f o r them, carry off their accumulated evils (enacted by chant and dance and thus fixed upon the scapegoat), and ensure a harvest. T h e consuming fire took the man-god directly to the sun - to G o d - a matter for celebration of the man-god's new well being. T o connect Graves's concern with this rite to his war experience (a kind of rite-of-passage in which h e 'died'), contrast with the above ritual and its total cultural involvement the seemingly unbridgeable division between soldiers and civilians of all kinds experienced by Graves whether in government, church, family, or the army itself. R e m o t e f r o m cultural and religious celebration, a soldier's death was the occasion f o r an entry in the Times. T h e sheer n u m b e r of deaths and related callousness of wartime humanity, the world run mad, is what allows Graves to see beauty and rich significance in the old rituals of sacrifice in which death by a man-god was volunteered and witnessed within a context of spiritual awe. 4 Times Literary Supplement (September 9, 1960), p. 574.

THE PROSE WORKS

Taking him at his own wishful word, Graves would have the model for all of Europe and America with the myth as the religious foundation - a way to turn to religion civil war. But let us turn to Graves's war now as he has Autobiography. 1.

39 them be standing without it in his

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY

With the proceeds gained from the Autobiography, Goodbye to All That, Graves paid for the divorce proceedings and moved to Mallorca vowing never to make England his home again. The parting was bitter and tinged with dark emotions. For of that occasion he writes, even at the distance of a quarter-century, as though it yet had great power to hurt him: I partly wrote, partly dictated, this book twenty-eight years ago during a complicated domestic crisis, and with very little time for revision. It was my bitter leave-taking of England where I had recently broken a good many conventions; quarrelled with, or been disowned by, most of my friends, been grilled by the police on a suspicion of attempted murder; and ceased to care what anyone thought of me.5 It is tempting to reconstruct this final climatic incident, but not necessary. 6 The Autobiography answers crucial questions in telling detail: it is a story of the loss of innocence and of a thoroughgoing disillusionment with a way of life. This is not an unusual story, perhaps, but it has starkly contrasting elements which give 5

Goodbye to All That ( N e w York: D o u b l e d a y A n c h o r Book, 1957), see the "Prologue". This work is referred to as the Autobiography in the text and hereafter will be cited as Goodbye. 6 G e o r g e Stade's Robert Graves ( N e w York: Columbia University Press, 1967), N o . 25 of the series Columbia Essays on Modern Writers, may offer s o m e help on pp. 26-27 to the inquisitive. In his summary of the Autobiography's sequel, But It Still Goes On, a play with a shuffled but biographical cast replay the scenes of sexual malaise to which Graves bid farewell with revulsion. T h e shuffled characters invite speculation but not conclusions as to w h o is who. T w o facts exist: Laura fell out of a fourthfloor w i n d o w in April 1929 and nearly died; N a n c y left Robert in May of 1929. If Graves shrugged off conventional proprieties, he also suffered unforeseen consequences. His self-exile to Mallorca must therefore be seen as something less than triumphant but more than vanquished, as witness the calm honesty of Goodbye.

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it poignance. The men, including Graves, who fought in France during the war were spirited and idealistic men who would willingly die for a just cause. "At least one in three of my generation at school died", Graves writes, "because they all took commissions as soon as they could, most of them in the infantry and Royal Flying Corps."7 The disillusion came inevitably with the recognition that no one at home clearly understood the nature of the terrible sacrifice going on across the channel, nor wished to be reminded of it; officials frankly lied about the enormous casualties in order to prolong the intolerable ordeal for the sake of a sterner peace. So that those who were at first willing to sacrifice themselves in a 'trade war' found themselves being sacrificed; their pride in voluntary status, which kept the mire and blood from becoming meaningless horror, was removed. At any rate, an open declaration upon war is made at the end of the book, just as an implicit one runs throughout, in the words which Graves speaks at a village church during a War Memorial Service. It is suggested that he reads war poems. The Church party, apart from a "Liberal-minded Rector", was scandalized when, instead of reading Rupert Brooke on the "glorious dead", Graves chose to read " . . . the more painful poems by Sassoon and Wilfred Owen about men dying from gas-poisoning, and about buttocks of corpses bulging from the mud". Graves went on to say something which I take to be a personal vow which he made at that time to himself, while generally recommending it to all war survivors: I also suggested that the men who had died, destroyed as it were by the fall of the Tower of Siloam, were not particularly virtuous or particularly wicked, but just average soldiers, and that the survivors should thank God they were alive, and do their best to avoid wars in the future. 8

My reason for speculating that this was for Graves a most sacred vow to himself is based upon a reading of his other writings in 7

Goodbye, p. 59. Op. cit., p. 318. In the poem "The Fallen Tower of Siloam", the 'fall' of the "tower" is attributed to decay of constitutent materials. 8

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which from this point forward he seldom lets up on the issue of war. Perhaps the observation is obvious for this book alone, but, if we may judge by the criticism, it is less obvious for the later writing. Yet it is present as an over-riding purpose here as later, it seems, and the issue will be struck in the historical novels, in the 'tract' which closes The White Goddess, in the satire present in The Anger of Achilles, in the 'scapegoat' theme given Jesus in King Jesus, in the poetry such as "The Destroyer" - one of Graves's most forcible satires on the great warriors of history. It is in Goodbye to All That, then, that Graves pleads for understanding for his generation's disillusionment, and his own. It must be said that the destruction of his values was quite complete. If he had never heard of anyone doubting the divinity of Christ until he was sixteen, 9 he would be an agnostic at the age of twenty with a soldier's fatalism that would never leave him. Though patriotic Graves joined the service the day after war was declared, his patriotism did not survive the war. A public-school boy at Charterhouse, the mature Graves did not send his own boys there; here again the war intervened with a negation: when Graves said "goodbye" he said farewell to all the 'good form' which denied him a hearing or made him twist what he felt was the truth. In Sassoon's trial, after that gentleman had shown the bad form to say that the war was being needlessly prolonged, Graves pleaded his heroic record and neurasthenia to keep him from the humiliation of disgrace. Graves writes: "The irony of having to argue to these mad old men that Sigfried was not sane! Though conscious of a betrayal of truth, I acted jesuitically. Being in nearly as bad a state of nerves as Sigfried myself, I burst into tears three times during my statement." 10 Graves was twenty-one years old at the time of the hearing, and his world was up-sidedown. Out of his experiences with the war, then, came disillusionment, neurosis and nightmare, and memories: the "gas-blood-lyddite-latrine" stink of trenches; the color of dead faces changing 9 10

Op. cit., p. 14. Op. cit., p. 263.

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from "white, to yellow-gray, to red, to purple, to green, to black, to slimy"; inmates of a lunatic asylum caught between two fires of trenches; a friend with his legs blown against his back; the dead animals, the suicides; the bungled attacks; the crudity of men in battle; the attitudes of stiffened corpses.11 All of this is on the negative side of the board. One could not forget the experiences of an eternity, and three years of this horror is at least one eternity. To balance against the disillusion the book offers little. But what there is, is important once again. There is the courage of men in battle. In discussing the differences between World War I and II, some forty years later Graves mentions that ten per-cent losses at Normandy hurt morale more than eighty per-cent losses in his day, ascribing the cause to volunteer status in defense of the Queen. However, he writes, "In World War I, a great gulf of heroism and uncommunicable horror separated the trench soldier from the civilian."12 In his war poems, Graves tries to communicate, but fails - there is indeed a gulf between experiences which words can not cross. The materials are there, often with the very ring of experience, but the profundity of that experience was too soul-altering for pocket verses. The subjects are touched upon, but the significances, which lodged at the back of Graves's soul, slip the verse. A few examples must suffice. Take for example "The Dead Fox Hunter" and the selfless courage of Captain A. L. Samson, 2nd Battalion Royal Welch Fusiliers, killed near Cuinchy, September 25th, 1915: T h e w e l l - k n o w n rosy colours of his f a c e Were almost grey, W e saw that, dying and in hopeless case, For other's sake that day H e ' d smothered rebellious groans: in death H i s fingers were tight c l e n c h e d between his teeth. F o r those w h o live uprightly and die true H e a v e n has n o bars or l o c k s . . . , 13 11

Op. cit., Chapters Five and Six, passim. Robert Graves, Food For Centaurs (New York: Doubleday and Co., and Inc., 1960), p. 255. 12

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Part of the "gulf" can be glimpsed in remembering the public's distaste of the raw detail (which nonetheless catches sharply the kind of courage which impressed Graves), preferring Rupert Brooke's poems of 'glorious' heroism. Good form must be preserved. A perversity in reversing the ending of the David and Goliath story seems to be an early attempt to strike angrily back at the notion that good form and war can be reconciled. The poem "Goliath and David" ends: "I'm hit! I'm hit!" young David cries, Throws blindly forward, chokes . . . and dies Steel-helmeted and grey and grim Goliath straddles over him.14

The horror of death had little to do with virtue, and nothing to do with goodness or badness, right or wrong; only courage and a bond of brotherhood seemed to alleviate the nightmare. The bond was one of death and blood, expected daily, blotting out all the public's language of patriotism or pietism. In "Two Fusiliers", comrades are elegized who are hanging together on barbed wire dead: Show me the two so closely bound As we, by the wet bond of blood, By friendship blossoming from mud, By Death: we faced him, and we found Beauty in Death, In dead men, breath.15

This scene is undoubtedly an ugly one, and that is the very point. Where the discomforted public saw a strange ugliness, bad taste, and bad form in such matters, Graves experienced the courageousness and selflessness - "the Beauty in Death". Divested of the naive belief that God would protect such innocents as David, death-sacrifice-beauty correspondences took on themselves ultimate forms of meaning, perhaps. Yet, though there was the "wet bond of blood", it did not lead to berserker contempt for death; 13

Robert Graves, "War 1915-19", Collected Poems: York: Doubleday, Doran, and Co., 1929), p. 49. 14 Op. cit., p. 52. 15 Op. cit., p. 62.

1914-1926

(New

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death was too horrible, as in a fragment appended to "Familiar Letter to Siegfried Sassoon" which is dismissed as crude and unpoetic by a consensus of critics: . . . to-day I found in Mametz wood A certain cure for lust of blood, Where propped against a shattered trunk In a great mess of things unclean Sat a dead Boche: he scowled and stunk With clothes and face a sodden green: Big-bellied, spectacled, crop-haired, Dribbling black blood from nose and beard.18 Scenes of horror fixed a "gulf" between Graves and the public: his 'truth' was unpoetic and 'bad form'. Then Graves was pressed into the heart of the horror of death - and released, as in "Escape": (August 6th, 1916.-Officer previously reported died of wounds, now reported wounded. Graves, Captain R., Royal Welch Fusiliers) . . . But I was dead, an hour or more. I woke when I'd already passed the door that Cerebrus guards, and half-way down the road To Lethe, as an old Greek signpost showed. Above me, on my stretcher swinging by, I saw new stars in the subterrene sky: A Cross, a Rose in bloom, a Cage with bars, And a barbed arrow feathered in fine stars. I felt the vapours of forgetfulness Float in my nostrils. Oh, my Heaven bless Dear Lady Proserpine, who saw me wake And, stooping over me, for Henna's sake Cleared my poor buzzing head and sent me back Breathless, with leaping heart along the track.17 In the words "Oh, may Heaven bless / Dear Lady Proserpine . . ." lie perhaps, the first, clear adumbration of the Mythic work to come out of Graves18 embodying as they do a volunteered death 16 17

18

Op. cit., pp. 56-57. Op. cit., p. 58. In Kirkham, The Poetry of Robert Graves, pp. 86-87, the 'seed' of the

Myth is located in the 1925 The Marmosite's Miscellany and specifically in "love's duality".

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in whose complex meaning existed elements of isolation, terror, misunderstanding, heroism, beauty and ugliness, and thankfulness to a Goddess for escape. The date of the experience has been given, and the poem appears as "War: 1915-19". My emphasis lies on the meanings clustered about death which Graves inherited from the war as being relevant to his Myth, whatever the 'first' words in that direction might have been. My point is that the words quoted above from "Escape", in context with the other poems, help focus these meanings as they were experienced during the war itself.19 These attitudes recur in the Autobiography, novels, expository prose-but always a vagueness with regard to connections between war and Myth leaves one dissatisfied. Could they not be tightened, one wonders? Tight connections are found in "Two Studies in Scientific Atheism" to be found in Food for Centaurs. In this essay Graves contends against Russell's Why I Am Not A Christian and Julian Huxley's Religion without Fear that religion can not be supplanted by science or philosophy because the effort of banishing "religious terrors" is no less than the loss of "that sense of illumina10

Op. cit., pp. 16-17. Kirkham discounts Graves's refusal to forget the war, noting Graves's Charterhouse debate position in opposition to "compulsory military conscription" and Sassoon's statement that Graves " . . . seemed to want the war to be even uglier than it really was". Using "A Dead Boche" as touchstone, Kirkham finds neither Sassoon's "generous anger" nor Owen's "humane self-involvement". Charles Williams in Poetry at Present (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930), pp. 194-206, sees the essence of the war poetry in such lines as "Shame for Beauty's Overthrow" and the defeat of beauty before raw violence. John H. Johnston in English Poetry of the First World War (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1964), pp. 76-78, sees "The Dead Boche" as an awkward but innovative attempt to dispel the myth of chivalric war and allows Sassoon to be most articulate in such attempts. This view is seconded by Bernard Bergonzi's Heroes' Twilight: A study of the Literature of the Great War (New York: Howard-McCann, 1966). Hoxie Neale Fairchild in Religious Trends in English Poetry (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962), Vol. V, pp. 347-391, sees the war poetry in terms of religious shock: God's willingness to allow evil to triumph as in "Goliath and David" of Fairies and Fusiliers weakens Graves's Christianity, and in "Big Words" the Christianity is seen as less important than brotherhood in sacrifice among soldiers - something seized like a good luck charm, thinks Fairchild. Taken together, these writers do not find an anti-authorian Graves so much as one suffering spiritual trauma.

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tion which from time to time lightens the heart". 20 The argument turns upon whether Huxley, as a philosopher defending the scientific spirit and its ". . . uncompromising hostility to all magical, semi-magical or superstitious elements in religion", may properly "include the emotionally moralistic antonyms 'good' and 'evil'. . ." in his argument: "that 'nothing can make religious human sacrifice anything but evil' ". An enforced sacrifice would be repugnant, Graves agrees, to the English moral tradition. On the other hand, the "royal okrafu priests of Ghana who, three or four centuries ago, periodically died for their queen or king, did so in loving free will". It was similarly a volunteer sacrifice in the Aztec tradition, in which the victim enjoyed "complete anesthesis" during "blissful hallucinatory visions". Such sacrifices, "Performed for the good of others, are humanly no less deserving of praise . . ." than a driver who hits a tree to avoid hitting children. Graves now seems too warm to his subject; the old clusters of war-time association seem to take over as an old pain, unassuaged over all the years, is felt again. He denies the relevance of science to such terms as 'evil' and thus denies the validity of Huxley's pronouncement upon such as the okrafu priest's volunteer sacrifice - whose influence confirmed ". . . the people in courage, industry, and loyalty". Next he makes the tight connection which confirms relations between the war and the Myth: Again, the mystique of the Crown, the greatest single steadying factor in British political life, has always been enhanced by the theory that soldiers who die fighting heroically, do so for their Queen - Sir Richard Grenville, commander of the Revenge under Elizabeth I, is a famous example - or for their King; and only as an afterthought for their Country. This theory (distasteful to pacifists) has, of course, been endangered by forcible conscription; so that British volunteers of the First World War (King George V's willing okrafu priests) suffered immensely heavier casualties without losing their fighting morale than did the conscripts of the Second. 21

One does not need the quotation to support what has already been amply implied by the poetry, Autobiography, and prose; but 20 21

Graves, Food For Centaurs, Op. cit., pp. 341-42.

p. 340.

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Graves's so-called "romantic attraction for pain" and his gory Goddess have been explained by recourse to Laura Riding, female stereotypes of Elizabethan and Romantic literature, temperament, rejection by the father (which in Freudian terms makes the mother a feared-desired figure), and as a "rationalisation" for bad experiences with women (Nancy and again Laura) - and always the war is given mention enough to make it appear satisfactorily accounted for. But perhaps entree to the Myth and Goddess is more sensibly made by relating the Osiris-Dionysius figure in the Myth to the men in the war-poems whose sacrifice was made primarily as "King George V's willing okrafu priests" and only secondarily as a private "bond of blood". The "gulf" between soldier and civilian was one of "incommunicable horror" and was aggravated by political, religious, and social attitudes appropriate for peace and polite behavior. How could the English at home, appreciative as they were of bravery and gallantry, absorb the soldier's sense of "Beauty in Death" when that beauty meant putrefying corpses on barbed wire, buried in mud, blown apart, lying in neat rows, or sitting propped up like the dead Boche "in a great mess of things unclean". The word "unclean" implies the civilian primness of vision which could not bear to see the terror or the "mess" and so missed the illumination of the Beauty. Whether or not this represents Graves's taste for gruesome detail and a fatal attraction for pain on the one hand, or a dogged determination to yield neither tittle nor jot to civilian nice-Nellyism on the other, remains to be answered by each person according to his own lights. With regard to Graves, however, one can speak confidently: correct form, taste, manners, and rhetoric would go by the board before the memory of death, however hideous or distasteful, would be dishonored or distorted by bland words. The war was not bland, rather it was a maelstrom of obscene hugenesses that darked out all previous lights by which men knew each other and lit a new one - courage - which flooded the whole mind of Graves with one insight, one knowledge, and one truth: men could, would, and did die for each other countless times in ugly ways, too terrible for civilians to understand that the ugliness was the soldier's measure of 'guts'. The uglier the death, the

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braver the man and the truer his word that he would 'do'. Herein lies Graves's defense of his okrafu priests, of his own 'death', of the Naked Kings sacrificed on the lopped Oak, and of Christ crucified for the common good in an ugly death that held great beauty. Despite all this admitted ugliness, Graves's truth lies in the illumination of human courage and selflessness that such terrors and deaths afford. Here, too, is the origin of his respect for the Dionysian associated with wild, reckless, generous courage and disrespect for Apollonian tepid self-interest. Graves's Goddess would have to be representative of this love of honor, this truth of courage, this generous wildness in human nature in order to evoke, appeal, and placate his memories of death and their association with courage and honor. Such associations are subservial in the Myth to become Osiris's struggle with Set and his courageous self-sacrifice to a Goddess of Truth and Love. In the discussion with Russell and Huxley, the terms become "religious terror" and "illumination" which are wed one to the other in an indissoluble bond, so much so that the loss of the "terror" can not be considered culturally progressive since it must be accompanied by a diminution of the "illumination". Inevitably, one sees, the latter depends upon the former for Graves, and the equally inevitable conclusion seems to be that the Myth is merely an extension, transmogrification, and justification of the war argument Graves and Sassoon had first with their senior officers and next, in Graves's instance, with society at large. But this would be wrong. The war experience was seminal and formative of a way of seeing which placed honor and bloody courage and ugly deaths together in a clump directly relatable to the Naked King hanged on the lopped oak. But Frazer, Harrison, Freud via Rivers, Plutarch and an endless reading in Latin and Greek, Nancy's anti-patriarchalism,22 Riding's sense of 'poetry as life', the researches and the 'discovery' - this word rather than 'projection' 22 Graves, Goodbye, p. 270. "God is a man so it must be all rot" is Nancy's definitive statement on Christianity. For other ways in which Robert and Nancy fortified their anti-patriarchalism, see pp. 296 and 28990. Nancy's universal condemnation of "men" ultimately included Robert. Laura was as militant as was Nancy if not more so. In his second wife, Graves probably found his first satisfying relations with a woman.

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- of the Goddess, all these transmute, amplify, and reorganize the lump of bitter and paranoic knowledge won on the battlefield into a Weltanschauung which is deeply pondered and formidably erudite as well as essentially religious in both impulse and final purpose. What does "religion" mean to Graves? We hear his voice in the pontifical mood refer to Lucretius's spelling of relligio, the II denoting elision and a lost m which means relligio derives from rem legere: 'to choose the very thing' - all of which is said to be an indication of Laura Riding's influence. But there is another less pontifical voice heard from Graves. "Dr. Arnold", he writes, "defined emotion as 'morality tinged with emotion'. 'Tinged', Forsooth! Religious morals, in a healthy society, are best enforced by drums, moonlight, fasting, dancing, masks, flowers, and divine possession." 23 This voice is Dionysian, and can not this Dionysian sense of religion be traced to the visceral experiences among the "drums" of war and "moonlight" of no-man's-land, amid the "fasting" and "dancing" and "masks" of battle, the "flowers" of furlough, and the "divine possession" of King George V's okrafu priests? In the carnage of this hell, Graves's boyhood religion shed itself as useless exuviae, and a new set of elements settled in him with its center of mystery being "Beauty in Death". Pacifists and civilians would not understand or like it; political and military leaders would use and debase its "illumination" of human selflessness; clergymen and philosophers and scientists would label it retrogressive. But Minoan religion and Goddess worship would confirm Graves in his battlefield faith with regard to the meaning of volunteer sacrifice, articulate this meaning in a Mythic calendar-story, and thus surround it with spiritual meaning. But first there would be the novels.

2.

THE NOVELS

The Autobiography, written just before the trip to Mallorca, was a general condemnation of war by survivor-Graves in the name of comrades who failed the test of luck. The newspaper language 23

Graves, Food For Centaurs,

p. 345.

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of the people at home, the comfortable illusion on the part of the Church that God favored England, the political selfprotectiveness of the older generation, the callous senior officers, and even the soldiers themselves and their crude jokes on death - all was one part and parcel to the Graves who left embittered and alone wrapped in iconoclasm. The historical novel, I. Claudius, published in 1934, features a figure who seems to dominate the entire work - Livia. She stands behind the Emperor Augustus as the true power in Rome, and although she is an admitted poisoner of a large number of persons, she is yet considered to be the organizing genius of the Empire, the only truly disinterested ruler, and a benefactress whose purpose is always the good of Rome. If one could overlook her murders to the ends of good government as understandable in a culture which was not squeamish about death, he might agree with Graves. But that this is Graves's own view is unmistakable. The novel is a reconstruction of the Silver Age of Rome and abounds in blood-thirsty soldiers, lecherous patricians, rhetorical lawyers, animal games, treachery, and banishings. Throughout, however, there is the never-ending spectacle of intrigue, dynastic murder, and the struggle for power. Under Caligula, it reaches an apogee of nightmare and horror, and his sudden and bold assassination is the event which allows the Guards to hoist the shy, stuttering, scholarly Claudius on their shoulders and present him forcibly as the new Emperor of Rome - and behind this politically astute move is Livia. Carefully presented to Augustus and others by Livia as an idiot, Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina, which portrays this rule. Through all of the vice and depravity of Roman politics, a scholar-king is maneuvered onto the throne and into power. The book opens with a Sibylline prophecy of the curse which Rome incurs for destroying Carthage after giving solemn assurances of protection; specifically, the Punic curse is to take its form in the Caesars who enslave Rome. The curse is found by Claudius, in a book given him by Livia which is full of supposedly spurious prophecies, yet strangely accurate: how Julius will die at the hand of his "son, no son", Brutus; how Augustus will fetter

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the state with "unseen chains"; how Tiberius shall be a man of "mud well mixed with blood"; how Caligula will give Rome "poisons and blasphemies"; how Claudius will enslave the state "against his will" and give Rome "water and winter bread"; and finally how Nero will give Rome "fiddlers and fear and fire" to end the sequence and the curse. The sybill's prophecy, then, sets the framework, the perspective, and the tone of the book: Rome is living out a curse for treachery; this curse is worked out through the reigns of the Caesars much in the same manner Tudor historians looked upon the reigns between Richard II and Henry VII; the tone is appropriately murky and full of the smell of blood. Again harking back to Tudor history, just as the figure of Henry V was presented as a good king in whose reign the fates suspended their judgment, so Claudius is a good emperor who, as the prophecy states, brings water and winter bread to Rome. Once again, behind it all, like Fate itself, sits Livia. The first two chapters of the book deal with Livia, for as Graves writes through the person of Claudius . . . I shall not be able t o avoid writing at s o m e length about m y grandmother Livia (the only one of m y four grandparents w h o was alive at m y birth) because unfortunately she is the chief character in the first part of m y story and unless I give a clear account of her early life her later actions will not be intelligible. 2 4

What we read in those first two chapters tells of a young lady who is reared amidst the civil wars, who quarrels with her husband about whether Rome needs a king (she takes the affirmative), and who arranges to marry Augustus by pretending to her husband that she is with child not his own. Augustus, however, feels the marriage to be impious and is in consequence impotent with Livia, a fact with which she derides him in order to heighten her power over him, for he never stops loving her. As Augustus becomes the ruler of the Roman Empire, he leans heavily upon Livia. A vast administration is built up, and all its powers lie in Augustus's hands - but when he dies, will the Empire collapse as it did with Alexander? To protect the succession and the 24

Robert Graves, I, Claudius (New York: Vintage Books, n.d.), p. 14. Reprinted from the Harrison Smith-Robert Haas edition of 1934.

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Empire from civil war, Livia becomes an adept with poison and intrigue, to which she attends unflinchingly. And to sum up things: "Augustus ruled the world, and Livia ruled Augustus."25 But she rules not merely as a shadow or as some indefinable power-behind-the-throne; she is a palpable force: It was justly said that, Fury though Livia was, but for her unwearying activity Augustus would never have been able to undertake the immense task he set himself of restoring Rome to peace and security after the long disasters of the Civil Wars - in which he himself had, of course, played a destructive part. Augustus's work filled fourteen hours a day, but Livia's, it was said, filled twenty-four.26

In Chapter Twenty-Five of the book it becomes clear what has kept Livia busy for the twenty-four hours. She knows that Caligula will be the next Emperor and that Claudius too will be an Emperor in time. She frankly discusses with Claudius the many murders she has committed in the name of the state: I have done many impious things — no great ruler can do otherwise. I have put the good of the Empire before all human considerations. To keep the Empire free from factions I have had to commit many crimes. Augustus did his best to wreck the Empire by his ridiculous favouritism: Marcellus against Agrippa, Gaius against Tiberius. Who saved Rome from renewed Civil War? I did. The unpleasant task of removing Marcellus and Gaius fell on me.27

But the fear of torture in the underworld is frightening even the imperturbable and stoic old lady who is fearless among men. She wishes to be made a Goddess by Caligula in order to escape punishment of the Judges of the Mortal Dead, for as an Immortal Goddess she would be exempt from all penalty. Her whole purpose with Claudius is to arrive at an understanding with him in case Caligula fails her. That Claudius should know his debt to her, she gives him the book with the prophecy in it; from it he knows he will be the fifth Caesar. Did Livia write the prophecy herself, and then make it prevail, or did she merely implement a genuine prophecy? Claudius swears the desired oath to her; she 25 2

»

27

Op. cit., p. 19. Op. cit., p. 28. Op. cit., p. 313.

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gives him the volume of prophecies. They part. Later "it all seemed like a drunken dream" to Claudius. But if so, it is one with a sequel - for Claudius becomes Emperor. The sequel, of course, is Graves's next novel Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina, which was published the next year, 1935, after I. Claudius. One of the most fundamental strains in the thinking of Claudius is republicanism on the one hand, and a hatred for tyranny on the other. As prophesied of him, Claudius brings water and winter bread to Rome: the first by a new aqueduct and the second by deepening the harbor of Ostia and by building protective moles and breakwaters to make the narrow entrance navigable during winter storms. Hence Claudius is one of Rome's benevolent Emperors: a builder rather than a destroyer. But his republicanism is never allowed him; it seems, as Livia is made to say earlier, that a village republic can never be restored to a world empire. In one sense, the second novel might be summed up as being concerned with an intelligent and educated man's struggle to remain liberal and republican amidst every alien force and hostile element. The Empire is a political reality; the old republic is a dream. An intelligent man, Claudius learns this. He never learns to like it, however; like Augustus, he waits in vain for the propitious moment to arrive for the restoration. In his playing idiot to forestall extinction, Claudius was not a frequenter of the games, and the first time that he did attend a fight he fainted at the sight of a blond German about to dispatch a Roman soldier. It should be added that the German smiles just as he is about to strike down - the point at which Claudius faints. Similarly, in the next bout between an elephant and a rhinoceros, the elephant seems to smile just before trampling on the head of its wounded adversary. The effect is one of linking man to animal in a delight of blood-lust and victory.28 Significantly, however, scholar-Claudius is not the predator, a fact which causes him some trouble in his conduct of the war in Britain. On the matter of Claudius's defeat of Caractactus, as Graves Robert Graves, Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina (New York: Harrison Smith and Robert Haas, Inc., 1935), pp. 134-35. 28

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notes in his prefatory "Author's Note", there is a "meagerness of contemporary reference".29 Perhaps it is possible, therefore, to hear Graves's voice at points in the speeches. Recalling the bitterness of both Graves and Sassoon over the prolongation of trench fighting in France and the attendant slaughter of friends and comrades, one feels that it is a peculiarly Gravesian Claudius who speaks to his generals in camp. The generals want a frontal attack: They argued with me in the superior way of old campaigners, trying to impress me with technical military terms, as though I were an entire ignoramus. I burst out angrily: "Gentlemen, as the God Augustus used to say, Ά radish may know no Greek, but I do.' I have been studying tactics for forty years and you can't teach me a thing: I know all the conventional and unconventional moves and openings in the game of human draughts. But you must understand that I am not free to play the game in the way you wish me to play it. As Father of my Country I now owe a duty to my sons; I refuse to throw away three or four thousand of their lives in an attack of this sort." 30 Claudius has his way, and wins the battle by a trick which depends, among other things, on the Celtic religious fear of cranes. In contrast to most Roman victories, it is nearly a bloodless one, an element which nearly loses Claudius his desired Triumphal March. Nor do the soldiers appreciate it. In the celebration of the Triumph, a note of discord is heard as the battle is rehashed by the troops. A captain speaks: Wonderfully clever man, the Emperor. One of these strategists. Gets it all out of books. That triprope, now, that was typical strategem. And that great bird, flapping its wings and making weird sounds. And getting the camels forward on the flank to scare the enemy's ponies with their stink. A first-class strategist. But strategy isn't what I call soldiering. Old Aulus Plautius was going straight at the stockade, and be damned to the consequences. Old Aulus is a soldier. He'd have given us a better bloody battle if it had been left to him. We officers of the Fourteenth like a good bloody battle better than a clever bit of strategy. It's what we live for, a bloody battle is, and if we lose heavily, why, that's a soldier's luck and it means promotion for the survivors. No promotion at all in the Fourteenth this time. A couple of Corporals killed, that's all. No, he made it too easy.31 28 30

Op. cit., p. 6. Op. cit., p. 333.

THE PROSE WORKS

The irony here is but an echo of that in Goodbye to All

55 That:

The first Battalion of the Royal Welch Fusiliers had won twentysix battle-honours on its own, the remaining three having fallen to the Second Battalion in its short and interrupted existence. They were all good bloody battle-honors, none of them like that into which, it was said, the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders had gone with nine hundred men and from which they emerged with nine hundred and one - no casualties, and a band-boy come of age and promoted to private.32 The same kind of mordant irony will be found in Count Belisarius, in the chapter named "The Unnecessary Battle". Simply, to be not thought a coward, Belisarius fights an unnecessary and bloody battle which he nearly loses even though he expresses himself to be opposed to wanton slaughter of any kind as a soldier and as a christian. 33 In Graves's novel, Count Belisarius, the Empire of Byzantium under Justinian in the sixth century is treated, and another female figure, Theodora, is made to dominate events. Like Livia, she is pragmatic and unillusioned; unlike Livia, she is of plebian origin. Graves's opposition to philosophic doctrine in religion is sharpened in this novel as a panorama is unfolded of the spread of Christianity under the arms of Belisarius, who, alone in the novel, is a man of honor and incorruptible faith. What he does, he does without questioning the commands of his Spiritual Superior Justinian. Thus Belisarius defeats King Geilimer at Carthage, Wittich the King of the Goths in a Rome strangely altered by time, Khosrou the King of Persia on the borders, and the Grand Cham of the Bulgarian Huns in Byzantium itself. Prior to this last battle, Theodora makes her famous speech to Justinian and persuades him to allow Belisarius to oppose the Huns rather than give the glory of the Hun's defeat to God and prayer. That Belisarius should succeed where prayer had failed, however, is unacceptable to Justinian; and as soon as Theodora dies, Justinian tries Beli31

Op. cit., p. 385. Graves, Goodbye, pp. 82-83. 33 Robert Graves, Count Belisarius 1938), pp. 174-80. 82

( N e w York: R a n d o m House, Inc.,

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sarius for treason: one of the charges of treason is his halt of the Huns and theft of God's own glory in the victory over the Grand Cham. Belisarius is blinded and beggared. Because Graves seems to champion Belisarius, a soldier, it may be important to note why he does so. Belisarius is a defender of the faith who, in a novel which is rife with faction and riot with regard to Christ's human or divine nature or natures,34 will have nothing to do with philosophic religion. In one place he argues: "Religion is faith, not philosophy. The Ionian Greeks invented philosophy to take the place of religion, and it made a cowardly deceitful race of them."35 He accepts the spiritual leadership of Justinian without reservation, yet these two differ over Christ's injunction to "turn the other cheek". Belisarius would fight, if he could, only necessary defensive wars. Justinian is indecisive and changes his mind on the point: he charges Belisarius with cowardice for failing one Easter Day to press on and slaughter the Persians in quiet retreat; he also tries him for treason for winning a battle at their door over invading Huns. It seems to be that Graves allows the possibility of war, but he seems finally to wish neither fanaticism nor pacifism. These seemed to be his views in the autobiography as well. The fanaticism at home was only as hateful as the pacifism, and both were, as with Justinian, offered in the name of religion. Is it "turn the other cheek", or "For God and King George"? The ambivalence in Justinian Graves found in his own England of World War One. Theodora's battle with the Church ascetics may be mentioned at this point,36 not only to indicate Graves's feminism once again, but to introduce a more fundamental aspect of Graves's thinking as it moves toward goddess-worship. For if, in Graves's view, 34

Op. cit., pp. 12-16. See also Chapter Nine, "The Victory Riots", in which a lengthy and murderous riot takes place between the blues and the greens (representing chariot colors as well as doctrinal positions regarding Christ's person or persons in the trinity). Here, as in King Jesus, Graves indicates why he tilts so hard against philosophic doctrine or "doctrine juggling" in religion - because it promotes a maximum of conflict and a minimum of faith, hope, and charity. 55 Op. cit., p. 234. M Op. cit., p. 188 ff.

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Christianity seemed to promote an attitude of fanaticism or pacifism with regard to war, it also seemed to promote asceticism or libertinism with regard to sexual behavior. The anger repressed by the pacifist might be related to the desire repressed by the ascetic, or the release of fury in the fanatic might be related to the kind of furious indulgence of a libertine. Graves seems to feel even as early as Count Belisarius that neither of these related extremes is consistent with ordinary good conduct. His turn toward Goddess-worship is, it seems to me, a product of research and belief that women ought to be allowed both spiritual and political leadership because in this way both the social and emotional natures of men are best satisfied. He puts this idea forward with great energy in the expository prose: The Greek Myths and The White Goddess.

III THE PROSE WORKS: THE EXPOSITORY PROSE

A great many critics have called Graves fraud or charlatan with regard to his scholarship; and because the following pages will deal with his theories and Myth in detail and because Graves himself is quite serious about them, the question of scholarship might well be considered. Neumann has been introduced as a serious student of pre-history to offer some support in a psychological context, but there are other questions which arise. To the accusation that Graves is idiosyncratic Hoffman offers this reply: But his methods and his main direction are not such idiosyncracies as might be supposed. The structure of the The White Goddess the labyrinthine trail through the mythologies of many countries followed to answer a religious question posed by pagan rites or texts — is closely modeled on that of Frazer's Golden Bough. In his use of iconography as a source of 'true readings' of myths (much of the evidence comes from bas-reliefs, coins, etc.), Graves follows Goblet d'Alviella's Migration of Symbols. The matriarchal origin of religion had been fully proposed and expounded before him by Robert Briffault's magisterial study, The Mothers', it has been lately corroborated by the contemporary doyen of religious historians, E. O. James, in Primitive Religions, a book that does not mention Graves. 1

Graves used Rhys, d'Arbois, P. W. Joyce, Macalister, and MacCullough for help with pre-Christian, Celtic culture and persons such as Lady Guest, Gwyn Jones, and Ifor Williams for Welsh research. Margaret Murray's God of the Witches is not an ordinary source, perhaps. Jane Harrison and her conception of myth (the probable source for Graves's analeptic method of 'thinking' 1

Barbarous Knowledge, pp. 211-12.

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as an ancient Druid, or Pelasgian, or Egyptian might think) assumes the validity of all cultures for its members. Attitudes and belief-structures of past cultures are recovered by studying artifacts. An anthropoligist may never use an actual text-book at any time outside of class activities. If Graves 'restores' beliefs as they might have been in pre-literate times, it is no wonder there is no text to substantiate his changes. Somewhat baffled by this approach, Hodgart and S. J. Papastavrou in their review of The Greek Myths for Twentieth Century (May, 1955) accused Graves of inventing icons and claimed that with the exception of a few screens found on Knossos there were no such icons. Neumann's The Great Mother will allow any one curious on the subject to see in its many and varied reproductions of vases, cups, wall and cave paintings, coins, murals, statuary, and stone and wood carvings the kinds of non-textual materials worked with by researchers in pre-history. Critics who fault Graves may be correct, but how many of them can say, as Graves can, that they are Fellows of the Royal Institute of Anthropology - an honor to which one is elected. 2 The whole question of pre-history in the Aegean area and the Minoan era has, of course, undergone real change in recent times. After Sir Arthur Evans's recovery of Minoan Knossus on Crete, archaeologists no longer discussed Minoan Crete as an outpost of Grecian civilization; rather the cultural flow ran from Crete to Greece, relating Rhea to Io in the Cretan colony of Argos. Behind Minoan civilizations in Crete, Troy, and Mycenean Greece lay the ancient cultures of Egypt and Persia; thus, Rhea of Crete is related to Isis. Day mentions that anthropologists do not agree that Isis was superior to Osiris 3 and these same would probably feel similarly about Zeus and Hera - yet Hera was always known as the lover, wife, and widow of Zeus. And Egypt knew and worshipped a Mother before it bowed to Pharo, who held right 2

In Graves's instance, as of 1954. Swifter Than Reason, p. 160. Day, as a layman, argues further that there is "little reason" to feel that the Tuatha de Danaan were other than fairy-tale people, that the Picts were from Thrace or that the Achaean's drove them out of Greece, or that Graves's "dark alleys of erudition" are suitable for serious discussion. 3

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to his title by incestuously marrying his youngest sister (the matriarchal heir apparent in contradistinction to the patriarchal rule of primogeniture). So, depending upon time and place, the unspecified anthropologists Day mentions could be right or wrong. Patriarchy succeeded matriarchy in the course of pre-history; and by the time 'history' in literate civilizations had begun, the process was more or less complete. In Greece, the final stage came, according to Graves, with the Iron-Age, Dorian conquest of BronzeAge Mycenae. The Gravesian interpretation of this event may be put thusly: Minoan faith and love and peace gave way to Greek speculation and lust and war. Since that time, as Laura Riding might have said, "History is dead". But the depth of feeling aroused by war is, as I have tried to show, almost bottomless with Graves - involving a sense of abandonment, betrayal, and "death" on his twenty-first birthday. It is Graves's subjective interpretation of the advent of the Dorians which makes him a "romantic" to his critics; his objective methodology used for surmizing 'what happened', on the other hand, forces his frequently hostile critics to search for other adjectives such as "cold rationalist" or "puzzlesolving von Ranke" to explain his strong appreciation for fact. For, in fact, events, objectively speaking, took place as he says they did with regard to the Dorian invasion and Minoan displacement. Let me quote Muir"s Atlas on the point: In Crete and the Aegean Sea a brilliant civilization, known as Minoan, was at its height at the date of this map (1400 B. C.). Its existence has only recently been disclosed in the twentieth century by archaeological research. The Minoans were not Greeks; but Greek civilization owed much to them. Cnossos, in Crete, was the centre of a sea-empire of which Greek legends and Egyptian monuments preserve traces. Mycenae in European Greece was a secondary centre of Minoan civilization, and Troy (2c), at the mouth of the Dardanelles, was another. The influence of the Minoans spread as far west as Sicily and South Italy, where their relics have been discovered. The second map (2b) illustrates the geography of Greece as it is described by Homer, for the period of the Trojan War (c. 1200 B. C.). The first wave of Greek conquest, that of the "Achaeans", had displaced the Minoan Kingdom, while still keeping its Greek centre,

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Mycenae, as its capital; and the Trojan War was an expedition of all its chiefs. The second wave of Greek conquest, that of the Dorians (c. 1000 B. C.) brought about a complete reconstruction of the political geography of Greece, which governed the great age of Greek history.4 Graves's claim in The White Goddess that Mycenaeans reached England and Ireland is not a continuance of the Anglo-celtic legend of Brut based upon the Mabinogian; it is a claim based upon archaeological evidence, as interpreted by authorities such as Christopher Hawkes, 5 found at New Grange in Ireland and Silbury Hill on the site of Avebury in England. Stonehedge, the most famous remainder of pre-historic Britain, comes later than those at New Grange or Avebury but like them functioned to accurately determine solstices - the sun dawns more to the right each day till mid-summer and to the left afterward till mid-winter. Graves's supposition that the first Pelasgian calendar was a twentyeight day, thirteen-month division of 364 days plus one New Year day seems possible if a leap year day were included, despite Hodgart and Papastavrou's dissent. Solstices known, seasons would be kept straight, although the lunar cycle of twenty-nine and onehalf days would make the monthly phases of the moon in such a calendar come out wrong. Could this be one of the calendar's desirable features for Graves's poetry, in which a fickle moonwoman and a constant sun-man are interminably juxtaposed? It is possible, but the comparative relations between this calendar and other matters discussed at length below of zodiac, tree-alphabet, dolmen, and seasonal associations all bear upon his choice and make up the heart of his "poetic grammar". 6 4

Muir's Atlas of Ancient and Classical History, eds. George Goodall and R. F. Traherne (2nd ed.: N e w York: Barnes and Noble, Inc., 1961), p. 4. 5 The White Goddess, pp. 99 ff. New Grange's shaft-burial and bee-hive tomb (corbelled roof) are Eastern Mediterranean of the late third raillenium B. C.; eight double-spirals at the entrance of the tomb have Mycenaean parallel. Graves 'suggests' that the Mycenaean Danaans made the carvings when they took possession of the site from former occupants. Graves writes: "Most Irish archaeologists are now, I find, agreed that New Grange was built by a matriarchal passage-grave-making people that first reached Ireland about the year 2100 B. C . . . . " 6 For further discussion see the section below on The White Goddess.

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Graves has followed the bent of his times in his methods, which my accounting of here and below is inadequate to make fully comprehensible because it is one of cross-disciplinary kind requiring immense erudition. Laymen must wonder at it, and experts must quarrel over its results. My attempt has been to present it as valid in kind. In 1932, Martin P. Nilsson advocated it for the study of epics and followed it in his study The Mycenaean Origin of Greek Mythology (New York: Norton and Co.); and on page 15 he writes the following words which seem applicable now as then: It can be understood why some scholars have done so [i.e., doubted the method], for they are of the opinion that all means are wanting for attacking a problem which goes so far back into an unknown age. That is not literally true; for there is a method which may be utilized. Since, however, it is neither strictly philological nor strictly historical but is comparative in a general sense, it is viewed with undue diffidence by those who know it only from the o u t s i d e . . . . It is obvious that a comparison ought to be instituted on the largest possible basis, and that everything which is accidental and not essential ought to be discarded. As Nilsson suggests, Graves eliminates everything "accidental and not essential" in myth to discover, not Achaean war-kings and monarchy as the original home of the myth of Heracles, but matriarchs whose love was honey and sting was death and burial in the honeybee tombs of Mycenae.

1.

THE GREEK MYTHS

In The Greek Myths,1 written thirteen years after The White Goddess,8 Graves presents his thesis in a controlled and organized manner which is in contrast to the more spontaneous and more confusing presentation in the earlier work. He begins by offering six creation myths, all but the final one of which postulate a 7

2 Vols. (Baltimore, Maryland: Penguin Books, 1955). Graves discusses this well known subject in The White page 375.

8

Goddess

on

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creatrix M o t h e r of A l l Things. Furthermore, t h e six are ordered as t o their p r e s u m e d p r e c e d e n c e i n time, beginning with the P e lasgian Creation M y t h and f o l l o w e d b y the M o m e r i c ,

Orpic,

O l y m p i a n , and t w o P h i l o s o p h i c a l myths. I n t h e last a m a l e G o d of All Things -

"whoever h e m a y h a v e b e e n , f o r s o m e call h i m

Nature" 9 G r a v e s interjects p e e v i s h l y - appears as creator. In t h e P e l a s g i a n Creation M y t h , said t o b e the prime creation m y t h of E u r o p e a n civilization and the object w h i c h h a s l e d G r a v e s a l o n g and merry chase, it is a Creatrix, not a Creator, w h o assumes authorship of the C o s m o s . L e t us s u m m a r i z e this C r e a t i o n M y t h briefly: In the beginning, Eurynome, the Goddess of All Things, rose naked from Chaos, but found nothing substantial for her feet to rest upon, and therefore divided the sea from the sky, dancing lonely upon its waves. She danced towards the south, and the wind set in motion behind her seemed something new and apart with which to begin a work of creation. Wheeling about, she caught hold of this north wind, rubbed it between her hands, and behold! the great serpent Ophion. 10 E u r y n o m e n o w , with the help of the fertile north wind, c o n c e i v e s the U n i v e r s a l E g g ( w h i c h in the Orphic M y t h is the M o o n ) out of w h i c h c o m e s "her children: sun, m o o n , planets, stars, the earth 9

The Greek Myths, I, p. 34. Op. cit., I, p. 27. The Creation Myth is, for Graves pure myth - by which he means it was unhistorical. On the other hand, the Myths which are normally considered fable or fancy, such has Zeus' castration of Cronus or his marriage to Hera, Graves considers historical in implication as an overthrow of matriarchal god or priestess by patriarchal forms. Such 'myth' is distinguished from philosophical allegory, parody, sentimental fable, embroidered history, minstrel romance, moral legend, humorous anecdote, theatrical melodrama, heroic saga, and realistic fiction. Thus, in The Greek Myths, the familiar myth is paraded as it has been in the past, a tale constructed from many written sources. Below, in the notes, Graves subjects the mythological narrative to a search for "names, tribal origin, and the fates of characters concerned". This kind of information referenced and cross-referenced allows inference as to religious custom, taboo, provenience, date, deity involved, and etc. Next, he would "restore [a myth] to the form of dramatic ritual, whereupon its incidental elements will sometimes suggest an analogy with another myth which has been given a wholly different twist, and shed light on both" - see p. 11. Thus, the Greek myths, while fanciful, contain elements that are historical, or pre-historical, by which means Graves reaches back to the first pure myth. 10

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with its mountains and rivers, its trees, herbs, and living creatures". On Olympus, when Ophion claims to be author of the Universe, Eurynome banishes him to dark caves below the earth and continues her creation of planetary powers of Titans and Titanesses. But Pelasgus is the first man (the eponymous ancestor of the Pelasgians), and he sprang from "the soil of Arcadia, followed by certain others, whom he taught to make huts and feed upon acorns, and sew pig skin tunics such as poor folk still wear in Euboea and Phocis".11 This is the creation Myth; it served as a model upon which primitive pre-Hellenic Pelasgians, later called Danaans, formed a culture whose main concern was primitive magic-making "that promoted the fertility or stability of a sacred queendom, or kingdom" - queendoms having, it seems, preceded kingdoms throughout the Greek-speaking area - and amendments to these as circumstances required.12 The rituals of this early society, which were to promote "fertility and stability of a sacred queendom" seemed ideal to Graves (although he does not feel that human sacrifice need be resumed), and a look at their society is in order. Eurynome, after dismissing Ophion, was thought to have taken the sun for her consort. The waxing sun was her lover first, and she exchanged a waxing for a waning sun at midsummer when the sun's character and strength began to wane. At mid-winter, she once again exchanged the waning for a resurrected waxing sun. Thus, the moon, waxing and waning within a twenty-eight day month that primitive minds linked to the female menstrual cycle, was thought to control the sun's two periods of wax and wane. The moon, then, was Eurynome's visible symbol. This indication in the heavens that the female controlled all creativity was mirrored by a matriarchal society, whose matriarch changed lovers in imitation of the moon. She sacrificed her demi-gods, or sun-kings, to assure a harvest and good season of rain and sun. The Pelasgians, who were at first pastoral and later agricultural, were concerned above all else with the fertility of the fields by " 12

Ibid. Op. cit., I, p. 10.

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which they lived, and it was the matriarch's duty to propitiate the Earth's Spirit in whose emblem, the moon, they saw themselves. The moon's three phases of new, full, and old recalled the matriarch's three phases of maiden, nymph (nubile woman), and crone. Then, since the sun's annual course similarly recalled the rise and decline of her physical powers - spring a maiden, summer a nymph, and winter a crone - the goddess became identified with seasonal changes in animal and plant life; and thus with Mother Earth who, at the beginning of the vegetative year, produces only leaves and buds, then flowers and fruits, and at least ceases to bear.13

The White Goddess, then, is essentially an Earth Goddess oí fertility and growth. Her character is that of the seasons: growth, maturity, and loss of powers. The year itself had three seasons that reflected the moon's phases: spring, summer and fall. The year was accordingly divided into lunar periods of twenty-eight days, which allowed thirteen months and one extra day intercalated at New Year, when Osiris was resurrected in Horus and the Matriarch chose a new king. Attached to this calendar of thirteen months were thirteen trees whose names became the letters of an alphabet (the argument in The White Goddess is that this same alphabet appears in an Irish tree-alphabet called the Beth-LuisNion). The alphabet also had five vowels which contained the Goddess's name, and the five trees representing the vowels indicated the stations of birth, initiation, consummation, repose, and death. These vowels were dedicated to New Year day, the intercalated day upon which the new King was chosen, and were a recapitulation of the whole year. Finally, a zodiac sign attached to the tree-calendar gave it an additional set of reference symbols such as the Lion and Bull, or Virgin and Twins. The complete arrangement of these is given in a table below.14 Taken together, the Goddess and Son myth, with its attached symbol and reference of tree, letter, month, station, and zodiac, make up a central 13

14

The White Goddess,

p. 12.

See p. 79 below for tree, month, and consonant relations of "Amergin's Charm"; see p. 87 for vowels; see p. 83 for zodiac and dolmen mythic relations to tree-alphabet. This material taken from The White Goddess, pp. 270 (dolmen zodiac) and 420-23, 321 ff., 304, 316 (zodiac discussion).

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part of what Graves calls in this thesis sentence the "language of true poetry" which was connected with popular "religious ceremonies" dedicated to the Moon Goddess. The best picture of that goddess-worshipping society is given in Hercules, My Shipmate.

2.

HERCULES, MY SHIPMATE

Hercules, My Shipmate is the story of Jason and Medea, the hugely enjoyable tale of the boisterous heroes who searched for the folden fleece across the Black Sea, and one of the most interesting of all of Graves's works. The fleece itself figures, in Graves's view of the period, as an object of holy worship to the newly arrived Zeus-worshipping Achaeans who have displaced, or are displacing, Goddess worship in the vicinity of Iolcos. The Goddess's shrine on Mt. Pelion is desecrated by the institution of a holy Ram fleece of rain-making Zeus. This fleece, threaded with gold, is stolen by the King Athamas's son and daughter and taken to Colchis at the far eastern end of the Black Sea. Goddess worship yet obtained in Colchis, and it is to Colchis that Jason and his argonauts voyage in order to restore the fleece to Pelion. This, in barest outline, is the kind of framework Graves places upon the old story. In Graves's hands it becomes the struggle between Pelasgian culture and Achaean culture, between Zeus and the Goddess, between patriarchal and matriarchal points of view. Thus, Graves gives color and zest to a thesis of the overthrow of a matriarchal Pelasgian culture by that of a patriarchal Achaean culture in the second millenium B. C. The dry facts of successive invasions of Achaean Ionians and Aeolians, who swept down from Thessaly into Attica and the Peloponnese and who in stages submitted to, struggled with, and overcame Pelasgian culture, are here enlivened with the gusto of narrative and sounds of adventure. And all the while Graves is documenting his thesis of "invaders" who changed the original myths to "justify social change". The historic sack of Cnossus, Crete, and downfall of Troy, are chapters in the downfall of Minoan and Mycenaean culture according to anthropologist Graves, the final chapter being

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the late second-millenium invasion of "burning, sacking" Dorians who extinguished the sparks of a living matriarchal culture the Achaeans had allowed to glow. Thus, mythically, a thunderbolt wielding Zeus forced the Goddess, Hera, to marry him. Thus, also, Graves reads the many rapes in Greek Mythology as the Achaean or Dorian desecration of sacred groves and altars, or as the mythic recognition of historic forced marriages between patriarchal kings and matriarchal priestesses. Details of research can be discovered in a visitation by the goddess to the children of Athamas, whom she persuades to steal the fleece. Part of her speech runs as follows: I am offended by the intrusion of my son Zeus into my ancient sanctuary on Mount Pelion, and by the removal of my mare-headed image. I am the Triple Mother of Life, the mistress of all the Elements, the original Being, the Sovereign of Light and Darkness, the Queen of the Dead, to whom no God is not subject. I rule the starry skies, the boisterous green seas, the many-coloured earth with all its peoples, the dark subterrene caves. I have names innumerable. In Phrygia I am Cybele; in Phoenicia, Ashtaroth; in Egypt, Isis; in Cyprus, the Cyprian Queen; in Sicily, Proserpina; in Crete, Rhea; in Athens, Pallas and Athena; among the Hyperboreans, Samothea; Anu among their dusky serfs. Others name me Diana, Agdistis, Marianae, Dindymena, Hera, Juno, Musa, Hecate. And, in the Stables of the Sun in Colchis, under the shadow of the towering Caucasus, where I propose to send you, I am named 'The Bird-headed Mother' of 'Brimo,' or 'The Ineffable'. 15

The majestic wording of the early part of the speech reminds one of the visitation to Apolieus in The Golden A ss. The Goddess is divine, powerful, and ubiquitous - her matriarchs reflect some of this. In the Prologue of Hercules, My Shipmate, Graves offers us a vivid picture of a matriarchal priestess who disputes with an ex-Argonaut, Little Ancaeus, over the proper relations of man and woman. In the dispute, or confrontation, Little Ancaeus represents the Achaean or patriarchal point of view, while the Orange Priestess represents the matriarchal point of view. The cultural changes that have taken place in Greece have not yet 15 Robert Graves, Hercules, My Shipmate (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1945), pp. 26-27. In England, the title is The Golden Fleece.

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appeared on Mallorca, where the scene is set; and Little Ancaeus, in the context of the discussion, has just related to the priestess that in Greece men are supplanting the women as rulers and are passing the name down the male line rather than passing it down the female line - as is yet done in the Priestess's Mallorca: The Nymph cried: "No, no, that is manifestly absurd. Though it is plain and indisputable, for example, that little Kore is my daughter, forasmuch as the midwife drew her out of my body, how can it be known certainly who was her father? For the impregnation does not necessarily come from the first man whom I enjoy at our sacred orgies. It may come from the first or it may come from the ninth." "That uncertainty the Greeks attempt to dispel," said Ancaeus, "by each man choosing what he calls a wife — a woman who is forbidden to company with any man but himself. Then, if she conceives, his own paternity is not to be disputed." The Nymph looked earnestly into Ancaeus's face and said: "You have an answer for everything. But do you expect me to believe that women can be so ruled and watched and guarded as to be prevented from enjoying any man whom she pleases? Suppose that a young woman became wife to an old, ugly, or blemished man like yourself? How could she ever consent to company with him?" Ancaeus, meeting her gaze, answered: "The Greeks profess that they can so control their wives. But, I grant you, it often happens that they cannot, and that a woman secretly mates with a man to whom she is not a wife. Then her husband is jealous and tries to kill both the wife and her lover, and if both the men are kings, their peoples are drawn into wars and great bloodshed ensues."16 The discussion, or debate, between Little Ancaeus and the Priestess, reveals the contrast between Pelasgian and Achaean. The last part of this quotation seems to glance at the Trojan War and the differences between Menalaus, Helen, and Paris. Such differences, it would seem, could not occur in Mallorca and matriarchal culture because no woman and no man were bound by any other agreement other than consent. It seems plain that Graves is championing the matriarchal over the patriarchal arrangement. Why should he do so? Because, perhaps, he feels that women, as with Livia and Theodora, make the better rulers; and 16

Op. cit., pp. 11-12.

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because, as is implicit in the quotation, the patriarchal form of monogamy seems a restive one, fraught with potential violence, and essentially opposed to much that is human nature. Ultimately, it might be, in Graves's view, the patriarchal form of family that leads to much of the world's violence, trouble, and aggravation. At any rate, Graves seems to suggest that the "innocence and calm" of Mallorca derives from a more 'natural' relation between sexes. His portrait of the priestess as a representative of the primitive woman who felt superior to man, who connected sexual to religious ceremony without shame, and who thought of patriarchal marriage as shameful is central to both Graves's prose and poetry. 3.

THE WHITE GODDESS

If The Greek Myths shows an orderly and methodical approach to its subject, that is because by 1955, the date of its publication, Graves had his myth and method well in hand. The White Goddess, published in 1948, is marked by signs of high excitement and discovery and is less well organized, although this does not mean there is no organization present. My thesis is that the language of poetic myth anciently current in the Mediterranean and Northern Europe was a magical language bound up with the popular religious ceremonies in honour of the Moongoddess, or Muse, some of them dating f r o m the Old Stone Age, and that this remains the language of true poetry - 'true' in the nostalgic modern sense of 'the unimprovable original, not a synthetic substitute'. The language was tampered with in late Minoan times when invaders f r o m central Asia began to substitute patrilinear for matrilinear institutions and remodel or falsify the myths to justify social changes. Then came the early Greek philosophers who were strongly opposed to magical poetry as threatening their new religion of logic, and under their influence a rational poetic language (now called the Classical) was elaborated in honour of their patron Apollo and imposed upon the world as the last word in spiritual illumination: a view that has prevailed practically ever since in European schools and universities, where myths are now studied, only as quaint relics of the nursery age of mankind. 1 7 17

The White Goddess, p. vi. of the Foreword.

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Taking the poem Cad Goddeau to be the record of the defeat of one religious dispensation by another and working more as an anthropologist than as an Irish or Welsh scholar, Graves carefully lists the various cultural stages known to the archaeology of British pre-history and puts his finger on the Belgic Iron Age conquest of Britain in 400 B. C. Prior to this date, Bronze Age Britain had survived uninterruptedly since 1500 B. C.; and the event, described in the poem as a confrontation of two religious tree-alphabets within each of which the sacred name of a deity was concealed, spelled the overthrow of a goddess-worshipping Bronze Age Britain with its center at Avebury by an Odin-worshipping, Iron Age tribe of Belgic Celts - the Druids of Gaul described in Claudius the God. Graves's thought takes the following steps: 1) the Cad Coddeau records a religious revolution; 2) the victors are devotees of the ash-god Odin who now replaced the Alder-go Bran; 3) Fearn, alder, is replaced by Nion, ash, in the key spring position on the calendar sequence; 4) hence, the BLFS7V is Odin's alphabet, and the BLNFS is the earlier alphabet imported from Mycenean Greece; 5) the consonants spell out a prayer to the universal goddess; the vowels spell out her name. On pages 260-261 of The White Goddess Graves offers his own conclusion that the BLNFS originated in Pelasgia or in Minoan Greece; in The Greek Myths he briefly restates his work with the BLNFS and the BLFSN alphabets s u c c i n c t l y . « His reasoning runs as follows: the overthrow by the Belgic Celts of the British Danaana in 400 B.C., an event recorded in the Cad Goddeau, represented a religious revolution in which Odin and Belinus conquered goddess-worship and Bran (equated with Osiris). Graves's method is to read the Cad Goddeau, or "The Battle of the Trees", as a mythic record of that event, much as he read the marriage of Zeus and Hera as the mythic account of Achaean triumph over Minoan Pelasgia, and of God over Goddess. Or, as the couplet in his Forward puts it:

18

The Greek Myths,

I, pp. 182-84.

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Conquering gods their titles take From the foes they captive make. Researchers in anthropology and comparative religion take this couplet's concept literally. Modern parallels are seen in nations re-writing history after their victory. The Belgic Celts didn't rewrite history, but they did, according to Graves, revise the alphabet and the calendar and the religion - or the myth, as non-subscribers might put it. The expression of contempt by the Celts for Bran is recorded in the alphabet beginning BLFSN. The " F " is Irish fearn, or 'alder', and the alder is Bran's sacred tree of resurrection related to the sacred season of spring. The " N " is Irish for nion, or 'ash', and the ash is sacred to Odin. Thus, the BLATFS is revised to BLFSN in order to promote Odin to a month consonant with spring and out of winter, which Bran returns to in this revision; merely allow each letter to be a twenty-eight-day month with "B" at mid-winter and with " N " in April to make sense of this change. By this reasoning Graves arrives at the conclusion that the Odin-worshipping Celts defeated and absorbed the Danaan's culture, which had been matriarchal, or matrilineal perhaps, and goddess-worshipping as had been its Pelasgian descendants. Just as the Pelasgians belonged to a Minoan civilization which related each twenty-eight-day month of the calendar to a tree (whose name was a letter) and to a zodiac sign (which related to the seasonal Pelasgian Creation Myth), so poems of Irish and Welsh provenience contain some of these same discoverable relations in them. The conclusion Graves reaches is that the British Danaans taught the Myth to their Belgic conquerors of 400 B.C. and the Irish Ollaves and the Welsh Minstrels brought in into modern times in myth and legend and riddle. So much, then, for the theory of The White Goddess. Whether or not it is valid history or pre-history may be disputed by those with sufficient learning to do so; my purpose is to put Graves's use of symbol and mythic structure into the reader's hands so that the mature poetry and prose may be more easily interpreted. To this end, a poem named "The Song of Amergin" or "Amergin's C h a r m " may now be examined. But first, a few words on relations between "Song" and

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Graves's sense of the contemporary world. The final pages of Graves's The White Goddess are a tract for the times. He does not expect modern civilization, with its industrial and urban characteristics, to be sympathetic with his myth for . . . the Mother-and-Son myth is so closely linked with the natural year and its cycle of ever-recurring observed events in the animal and vegetable queendoms that it makes little emotional appeal to the confirmed townsman, w h o is informed of the passage of seasons only by the fluctuation of his gas and electricity bills or by the weight of his underclothes. 19

Nor does a saturnine Graves expect any miraculous cures for the world's problems. Things will get worse before they get better, and only by a return to something akin to Pelasgia or pre-Achaean Argos in Arcadia will humanity once again understand itself and its relation to nature. Scientific technology has intellectually attempted to rise above and control nature in Apollionian and male pride, but human nature remains to be satisfied, to be explained, to be helped. The increasing specialization of functions demanded by technological advances in all fields increasingly refuses an overview to any one man: work areas overlap; communication is baffled; ends cannot be clearly determined; civilization moves out of control. Graves turns upon intellectualism as to an arid desert, and upon specialists as off-balance camels: "To know only one thing well", writes Graves acidly, "is to have a barbaric mind: civilization implies the graceful relation of all varieties of experience to a central humane system of thought".20 Lacking a "central humane system of thought", civilization will go on the rocks, Graves thinks, and perhaps only afterward gain back its lost health and perspective: No: there seems n o escape from our present difficulties until the industrial system breaks down for some reason or other, as it nearly did in Europe during the Second World War, and nature reasserts herself with grass and trees among the ruins. 21 19 20 81

The White Goddess, p. 535. Op. cit., p. 237. Op. cit., p. 546.

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Here Graves glances at nuclear war and total destruction; he has never really left his old theme of hatred for the horror, the nightmare, the inhumanity of war behind. He has searched for a "humane system" of thought, his myth; and "Amergin's Charm" is its skeleton. The following is reproduced from page 218 of The White Goddess and is known as the "Song of Amergin" or "Amergin's Charm".

Dec. 24 - Jan. 20

Β

Jan. 21 - Feb. 17

L

Feb. 18 - M a r . 17

Ν

Mar. 18 - A p r . 14

F

Apr. 15 - M a y 12

S

May 13 - June 9

H

June 10 - July 7

D

July 8 - Aug. 4

Τ

Aug. 5 - Sept. 1

C

Sept. 2 -• Sept. 29 Sept. 30 - Oct. 27 Oct. 28 --Nov. 24

M G NG

Nov. 25 - Dec. 22 Dec. 23

R

God speaks and says: I am a stag of seven tines, or an ox of seven flights, I am a wide flood on a plain, I am a wind on the deep waters, I am a shining tear of the sun, I am a hawk on a cliff, I am fair among flowers, I am a god who sets the head afire with smoke I am a battle-waging spear, I am a salmon in the pool, I am a hill of poetry, I am a ruthless boar, I am a threatening noise of the sea, I am a wave of the sea Who but I knows the secrets of the unhewn dolmen?

Birch

Beth

Rowan

Luis

Ash

Nion

Alder

Fearn

Willow

Saile

Hawthorn Uath Oak

Duir

Holly

Tinne

Hazel

Coll

Vine Ivy Reed

Muin Gort Ngetal

Elder Ruis (an intercalated day of new year)

Moving across the columns from left to right there are columns for month dates, alphabet letters, lines of verse, names of trees,

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and the Irish tree-names which are also the names of the letters in the spoken alphabet. I mentioned above that these are all related, and here they are put in their correct correspondence to one another. It is to arrive at this alphabetical ordering that Graves struggles so energetically in The White Goddess, for here in the Irish Beth-Luis-Nion alphabet is recorded the story of the Spirit of the Year, of Dionysus, or Celestial Hercules, from longago Pelasgian Greece. Thy mythic story of the Spirit of the Year is, in its turn, said to be the prime myth of European civilization and to lie beneath the Greek Myths and drama, Christianity, the Norse myths, the Hebrew Tor ah, and the Arthurian legends. Most of the lines of "Song of Amergin" are directly related to "observed events in the animal and vegetable queendoms" or to seasonal cycles. The first line and its "stag of seven tines", for example, refers to the seven months of the first half of the year (counting letters it is seven; counting months, six and one-half). The first half of the year is symbolized by Celestial Hercules or Osiris or Dionysus in the Myth; he is the hopeful spirit of life, just as the first half of the year is one of growth and escape from winter. It is with Dionysus or Osiris that the poet identifies himself. The dying year, after the mid-summer date of June 23, belongs to Set (the African Sirroco wind which brings drought and a rise in the crime rate). The oak month is the point at which the year changes and at which, originally, the Celestial Hercules figure submitted himself to be sacrificed on an oak tree, while oak timbers burned and their smoke incited the dancers to a frenzy so that their heads were "set afire". This was the month of midsummer holiday and celebration as well, and it is akin to an Irish wake. The Celestial Hercules figure has escaped to the Happy Isles, and for him all celebrate by feasting and by love-making. Hence the month before is a chaste month of preparation, and a month of flowers. The last month is a death month; and being the thirteenth month, the last month of the year, was considered unlucky - as the number thirteen still is by many. The "wave of the sea" is the winter storm and the image also evokes the feared phenomenon modern geologists call a "shock wave" which sweeps all before it with irresistible power - an image of death. The first

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six months are fruitful months, and their imagery in the lines of verse indicate this; the last six months are months of barrenness for the most part, and their imagery shows this as well. Of the first six months, the first has been mentioned as the "stag of seven tines", or as the buoyant new Spirit with all before him. The next month, that of the Rowan tree, is the flood month of countries of mild winter. The Ash month is one in which the winds dry the fields and ready them for planting. The alder month is one of regeneration in which growth begins and in which children gotten of the mid-summer holiday are born - hence "tear of the sun". The Willow month is the month in which the "hawk" or royal gif fon-vulture, the spirit of the year come of age, exults. In the middle of the month falls May day, a time of love revelry; and it is the willow branches which are woven into cradles. The Hawthorn month is a month of preparation sexual abstinence, and the Month in which the Romans and Greeks cleaned the temples in preparation for mid-summer. The first half of the year is ending and the month is not a month of "beginnings" or lucky in this sense. It corresponds in this way to the thirteenth month before new-year. The month of the oak, the tree of endurance, stands opposite to the winter solstice in the wheel of the year. The year has waxed, and after June 23, it wanes. The imagery wanes with the year in the lines of verse. The Holly month is the "spear month" because the spirit of the waning year spears the spirit of the waxing year, and this mythically explains the "death" of the sun's power. In the sacrifices of the mid-summer ritual, holly stakes were used to kill the victim; the Irish letter for Tinne was shaped like a spear. Significantly, the Holly puts out fresh leaves in the winter months, while most trees lose or arrest the growth of their foliage, and thus the Holly is an adequate symbol for the spirit of the second half of the year. The sacrifice in mid-summer is not to be thought the death of the Spirit of the waxing year, but merely the weakening of its powers. Henceforth Osiris is searched for by his "tanist" or double, the twin to Osiris who is Set of the Waning Year. The month of Hazel foreshadows the end for the weakening Osiris who must be as wary as a "salmon in a pool" to avoid death; the

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nut of the Hazel, a symbol of concentrated wisdom, is dropped into his pool to sustain him by the goddess. Harvest and increase is the Vine month, whose summer fruit distilled into wine is the wisdom of poetry's truth at the half-way house between midsummer love and mid-winter death. The "hill" of poetry and the "cliff" on which the hawk sits in the poem can be understood by adding the dolmen structure to the tree-alphabet in its calendar sequence of months. See page 270 in The White Goddess.

z/s

Summer H D

F

Lion

Ν

Β u 1 1

L

0

U

New Year

C/Q S e r Ρ e η t

Eagle

Β A

Τ

E

M G NG R I

In the dolmen figure above, the Vine month at the top of its column does seem to sit on a "hill", and the summer months ending in Coll (Hazel) of wisdom rest upon the fall column rooted in Ruis (Elder) of death. Similarly, the Saille (Willow) months does seem to perch on a ledge like a "hawk on a cliff". The two added letters of "Z" and " Q " seem to have been added to the original thirteen consonants at a later period and doubled for the fifth and ninth months along with "S" and "C". As Graves sees fit to add these in, with an appropriate line apiece, with the original thirteen lines into his published poem "Amergin's Charm", they are given here and in their assigned positions. The symbolic end of the mythic figure of the Waxing Year is at the fall season, which is the hunting season, when the Spirit of the Waning Year, disguised as a Boar, perhaps, kills the Dionysius-Osiris-Hercules hero - as Apollo in that disguise killed Adonis. It was in this season, too, that Orpheus was torn to pieces by the Bassarid priestesses. And now the wind rises and whistles

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through the reeds with a "threatening noise of the sea" - the sound of doom and of the closing year. Hence the wild winds that boom the waves along the cliffs and run among the reeds belong to the month of Ngetal, or Reed. The unlucky thirteenth month of "R" or Ruis (Yew) is death. The final line: "Who but I knows the secret of the unhewn dolmen", refers to the intercalated New Year day of December 23. On this day the Child Horus is born - the resurrected Osiris and the process begins anew. Life will ascend up the left column of spring, across the lintel of summer, and down the right column of fall into the New Year day. It is a symbolic and mythic journey out of the earth and back to the earth again in which all nature participates and which all nature acknowledges. The goddess of the Earth supports the structure and the process as the ultimate Mother of all life. She is the center of the mythic structure as the spirit that quickens and withers life in her different aspects of the seasons; she is new moon (maiden), full moon (woman), and old moon (crone), or spring, summer, and fall. Her three respective colors are white, red, and blue. She is Graves's Triple Goddess. The burial shaft grave at New Grange is narrow and low so that entrance must be made on hands and knees, and the figure is of a womb. The dolmen, too, is like a womb at its center, so that the "secret" of the unhewn dolmen is that of life itself. The names on the inside of the dolmen figure - Bull, Lion, Serpent, and Eagle - are those used on page 270 of The White Goddess and are zodiac constellations of seasonal significance. Briefly, the bull-calf is the spirit of spring, birth, fertility, and health; the lion is the spirit of summer, consummation, virility, and vigor; the Serpent or Boar is the spirit of fall, death, impotence, and disease. Any attempt to align the zodiac with the treecalendar, however, is one fraught with difficulty. To begin with, the zodiac is ancient when history begins. Because of the phenomenon known as the precession of the equinoxes, furthermore, the signs have changed houses since their early invention when, according to Graves, the Virgin held at mid-summer. 22 22

Op. cit., pp. 420-22. Owing to the phenomenon known as the precession of the equinoxes, the sun rises in an earlier zodiac sign every 2000 years;

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The seasonal significance for any zodiac sign is confused further by the fact that contributing cultures had not the same seasons or interpretations of the zodiac signs. Graves himself has a way of adding to the difficulty by sometimes offering a calendar based upon the current zodiac and by sometimes reverting to one quite ancient. In general, the Bull-Lion-Serpent sequence is used, but it will be noticed in the mythic prose that different configurations occur in which the Lion is Anger, the Goat is Lust, and the Serpent is Fear. Though the lion changes place, it seems to be a normal calendar sequence of spring (rise to powers) that is used. As the explanation for this usage would take a great deal more space than it would seem to warrant, this brief explanation of the zodiac complexity will have to suffice. Hopefully, my usage will be clear enough to answer the reader's questions, but Graves does not feel the casual reader is worth stopping for and can be purposely difficult when he chooses to be so. His zodiac arrangement is a case in point. But it is certain that Graves wants to use the zodiac in the way the Pelasgians did: Bull at spring; Lion or Virgin at summer; Serpent at fall; and Waterman-Eagle at midwinter. This arrangement places the Twins across from the Archer, the Crab of chastity across from the Goat of Lust, the orgiastic Virgin across from the sexless Fish, and the budding Ram across from the Scales weighing out the summer's wisdom, as well as the life of the Bull. Place Birch and Yew at the winter solstice and divide the other trees around the zodiac circle evenly with Oak for the Lion. The consonants Beth and Ruis are the New Year vowels because they are birch of inception and Yew of death. This is similar to the way the vowels line up with the calendar. The vowels, however, do not represent months of the year, but seasons, or stations of the year and are related to New Year day and the pendant to "Amergin's Charm".

hence, the zodiac Virgin, once intended to hold at mid-summer, now appears in the fall. In the turned-back version, the old relations are restored.

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Dec.

24

A

I am the womb: of every holt

Mar. June Sept. Dec.

25 24 26 22

0 U E I

I am the blaze: on every hill I a m the queen: of every h i v e

I am the shield: of every head I am the grave: of every hope

Silver fir Furze Heather Poplar Yew

Ailm Onn Ura Eadho Iadho

New Year day joins the death vowel "I" and the birth vowel "A" just as "Β" and " R " were joined. The other vowels are, of course, representative of spring, summer, and fall. The vowel "O" is the spring equinox of the Bull when the furze is burned upon the hills to make way for new growth. The new growth of furze will have yellow flowers typifying the new young sun to whom shepherds dedicated their holiday. With regard to the life cycle, as opposed to seasonal cycle, it is the holiday spirit which leads to lovemaking and initiation. The new "U" vowel belongs to mid-summer and the house of the Lion, for heather yields both honey and stinging bees. The queen-bee goddess sacrificed her lover-drone at this time, first having sated him with honey. But for the rest it is the time of love and consummation of love; the psychological sting is in the knowledge that love must end. For the season, however, the goddess is erotic and the lion roars. The "nymph" goddess becomes an old crone in autumn of the "E" vowel; she is both a huntress of malicious spite and a nurse. As a nurse the crone is the "shield", but the term "shield" also implies battle and despair of old age. As the warriors made shields of poplar wood, the tree is appropriate for this season, but only metaphorically. In terms of the cycle of life, this is the time of repose and rest. In the last vowel "I" of death, it can be seen how the New Year must be shared the vowel of birth, or "A". This is the hope of resurrection implicit in the birth of the new hopeful Spirit of the Year at New Year day. 23 Thus, the new has 23

Op. cit., Chapter Sixteen. The 'queen' and the mid-summer zodiac of the Virgin are aspects of the Goddess whose name is concealed in the vowels sacred to N e w Year Day, or IEUOA. Graves derives Jehovah from this name taken 'captive' by the Hebrews. But, if I gather correctly that the New Year vowels are read from right to left, the original name expels a breath when pronounced as if begetting the North wind, Ophion,

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become old and must again make way for the new. It is the basis for the spiral image, says Graves, on so many Mycenaean graves, including the one at New Grange. The spiral represents the infinite repetition of season spiraling out and returning from whence they began, and the ever-repeated renewal of life gives the spiral the meaning of immortality. The spiral is also at the heart of the single poetic Theme of Mother and Son myth: The Theme, briefly, is the antique story, which falls into thirteen chapters and an epilogue, of the birth, life, death and resurrection of the God of the Waxing Year; the central chapters concern the God's losing battle with the God of the Waning Year for love of the capricious and all-powerful Three-fold Goddess, their Mother, Bride, and layer-out. The poet identifies with the God of the Waxing Year and his Muse with the Goddess; the rival is his bloodbrother, his other self, his weird.24

with whom Eurynome begot all things in the Creation Myth. The North wind is the fertilizing wind, seemingly, since the sun never occupies the sky in that quarter - making it the moon's exclusive sky. Hence N e w Year Day is a day of the rebirth in the name which evokes the first creation of wind and breath. 24 Op. cit., p. 11.

IV T H E MYTHIC PROSE

It is, it seems to me, to the Autobiography and mythic works such as The Golden Ass, King Jesus, and The Anger of Achilles that one must turn for positive value in Graves's tremendous labors, rather than to the negativistic tract for the times at the close of The White Goddess (although it is not my intention to disregard the tract), because the mythic works are literature with a deep concern for human and spiritual values. In all of Graves's prolific writing, it is difficult to discover how his Myth or Theme relates to specifically human values. He seems to take these for granted. In his tract he ranges with brilliant power over the religious issues which have splintered the West, now in confrontation with a Communist East. Only a consideration of spiritual strength, Graves feels, can save the West from its grim difficulties within and without. Yet a real return to religion might mean religious civil war. In the meantime, Pluto (God of Wealth), Apollo (God of Science), and Mercury (God of Thieves) 1 rule the West in an unholy triumvirate. But for all this analysis of modern difficulty in the West, the ethical, moral, or human values ostensibly present in the Myth which he offers to assuage those difficulties do not make themselves readily apparent in the tract. For all the steady intelligence of his perceptions and the bold overview presented, it is yet to the mythic prose one must turn if he wishes to find the texture of value and feeling which makes the Myth worth writing 1 The White Goddess, p. 523. Mercury is a Thief, it would seem, because he, as Satan the Cosmocrator, steals men away from God in Commandments discussed as the first eight. In the context of Graves's Myth, Mercury must be a Set or Apollo.

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about. No work of Graves could be more to the point, in this regard, than his translation of Apuleius's The Golden Ass, which relates to the Autobiography in a fundamental way. In the Autobiography, Graves's short poem to Nancy and Jenny had ended this way: Some speak of Alexander, And some of Hercules, But where are there any like Nancy and Jenny, Where are there any like these?2

The heroes of war, or the champions of male strength and power, were opposed to family and the hearth. In the first volume of The Greek Myths Graves comments on the primitive matriarch: She took lovers, but for pleasure, not to provide her children with a father. Men feared, adored, and obeyed the matriarch; the hearth which she tended in a cave or hut being their earliest social centre, and motherhood their prime mystery. Thus the first victim of a Greek sacrifice was always offered to Hestia of the Hearth.3

In the description of the Goddess Hestia given in the first volume, it is significant that of all the Olympians Hestia alone has the glory of being the divinity who ". . . never takes part in wars or disputes".4 Both Athena and Hestia oppose wanton destruction and violence; the opposition of Nancy and Jenny to Alexander and Hercules in the Autobiography seems to be repeated in The Greek Myths by Hestia and Ares. This same kind of opposition is present in The Golden Ass, but the texture of the opposition is placed in the mythic pattern and deeply enriched by it. The Goddess Isis's relation to Set, whose symbol is an Ass, makes the opposition of female gentleness to male destractiveness apparent. For in the Osiris-Isis-Set mythic triad, Osiris as waxing year is the representative of health, fertility, and gentleness, while Set as the waning year represents destruction, lust, and cruelty. The 2

See my Chapter II, p. 33 for discussion of this verse and the long shadow it seems to cast on Graves's work. 3 Graves, The Greek Myths, I, p. 11. 4 Op. cit., p. 74.

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Onager, the ancient wild, untameable, destructive Ass of the desert, gave its ears of royalty to the Egyptian scepter presumably because it was equated with the Waning Spirit of the Year,5 or that part of the year when the Sirocco blew up dark dust clouds from the African desert which stopped growth, dried the land, and spurred the crime rate. Set, as a source of destruction, equals Alexander, Ares, or the view of Achilles given in The Anger of Achilles. Thus, in The Golden Ass, Lucius Apuleius is allegorically transformed into an Ass for his vain, ruinous behavior; he is transformed back to a man (i.e., a human being) only after he repents with all his heart.

1.

T H E G O L D E N ASS

The structure of The Golden Ass, then, is that of the Myth; only now the seasonal implications of the Myth are made to correspond to the spiritual growth, decline, and rebirth of spiritual powers. Lucius Apuleius, a historical personage whose "spiritual autobiography" the book is, possesses the knowledge to write a work with such precise symbolism because he was a poet, historian, and priest of Isis.6 These roles are the ones which Graves seems to aspire to as the proponent of Bardism, and his translation of an ornate Latin style into a staid English prose is out of respect to an author for whom he has fellow feelings - and because the Goddess's clear description by Apuleius at the climax of the tale deserves a sober treatment. She is Nature, Love, and Truth; her compassion for Apuleius is saving grace and restored humanity. Apuleius is restored to humanity from the condition of an Ass, however, only because of his sincere rejection of the values which in the Myth the figure of Set symbolizes - lust, cruelty, and destruction. The young Lucius at the opening of the book does not 5

Robert Graves tr., The Golden Ass of Apuleius, by Lucius Apuleius (New York: Pocket Library, 1954), p. xii. Cited hereafter as The Golden Ass. β Op. cit., p. xix.

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reject those values, rather he confirms them in his character: he is base and lusty (his affair with the slave girl Fotis); he is cruel (he loves Fotis only to learn Pamphile's magic, treats his kind host Milo as an old bore, and drunkenly stabs goatskins misconceived to be robbers); he is destructive (his abortive attempt to become an eagle through magic converts him into an Ass and brings down violence and robbery upon his host Milo). His folly is made into a public spectacle at the Festival of Laughter, during which a mock trial is held for Apuleius's murder of the goatskins; his drunken memories convert the experience into an imaginative defense of honor and property, until the "corpses" are revealed. Apuleius has made an ass of himself indeed; his attempt by magic to become an eagle (the mythic symbol of resurrection and nobility) symbolically and appropriately misfires as he becomes an Ass - a debased human being and an ignorant one. His spiritual climb back up to humanity is a long one full of beatings, suffering, and bestiality by which he learns to appreciate the position of the helpless in the hands of the base. His vision of the Goddess who restores him to humanity signifies once again his desire for an ennobled humanity devoid of the base, the animal, the ignorant, and the cruel. The story Apuleius tells derives from experience and avoids philosophy or theory, and its force comes through by way of a solid framework interset with ribald tale, farcical anecdote, moral tale, and legend. The book has that rare Chaucerian quality of being entertaining while being ever on the probe for what is most base and most fine in human nature. The brief account given here must fall far short of the book's due reward and keep to the mythic outlines to avoid floundering. Let us note, then, that Apuleius as an Ass defies the bandits, or the Lion of Anger, for the sake of Charité the Virgin in a baffled attempt to help her escape.7 The tale of Tlepolemus and Charité which follows the escape is the story of the myth again; Thrasyllus murders Tlepolemus in a boar hunt so that he may have Charité, who, upon discovering the act, kills Thrasyllus. It is the story of Set's murder of Osiris and of Isis's revenge upon 7

Op. cit., pp. 133 ff.

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Set whereupon Horus is born. Too, the picture of the "virgin riding in triumph on an ass" 8 is the triumph of love over lust and gentleness over cruelty. The tale of the baker's wife's deceit with a miller, Apuleius's part in bringing the deceit to light, and the tragedy which follows indicates Apuleius's rejection of the Goat of Lechery. 9 The aftermath is that the miller hangs himself. In the story of the councillor, his wife, and two sons, the Serpent of Fear is defeated. Apuleius, still an Ass, does not act a part in this tale other than to relate it. T h e councillor's wife takes an incestuous desire for her stepson, poisons him for not reciprocating her desire, and blames the second son for the murder with the aid of a lying slave. A court convenes on the case and hastily credits the slaves's crucial testimony until an old and respected doctor defies the stirred emotions of the court in order to review evidence and eventually obtain the son's acquittal. The story inculcates the love of truth in the name of which fear is faced. In the form of an Ass, Apuleius defeats the Lion, the Goat, and the Serpent (Zodiac equivalents of spring, summer, and fall) and returns to the rose season at which he began his transformation. The roses, sacred to the goddess, which were denied him throughout his year as an Ass and which have the power to give him human shape once more, are promised him by the goddess herself in a vision. His transformation back to human shape takes place on New Y e a r Day, the day that the new Spirit of the Year Horus is born, and it means spiritual regeneration for Apuleius despite all the evil and bad luck he has brought down upon himself and his masters in the symbolic form of the Ass of lust, cruelty and destruction. T h e three central chapters of the book, which deal with the tale of "Cupid and Psyche", tell a similar tale. Psyche moves through innocence, to lust, to despair, and back to favor as a goddess-wife to the god Cupid. The story of Psyche runs parallel to the story of Charité, and the gentle narrative of "Cupid and Psyche" contrasts starkly with the real world of the brutalized and 8 9

Op. cit., p. 145. Op cit., p. 193.

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faithless bandits. The old lady who tells the story of Psyche in the bandit's cave hangs herself in seeming recognition of the contrast between lambent tale and odious reality. As an Ass, Apuleius belongs to that base world; however, he escapes it by following the directions of the goddess, who appears to him after he escapes the embarrassment of publicly doing a shameful act with a condemned woman and offers the goddess a prayer. It is possible that Graves used the goddess's speech to Apuleius as a model for the one quoted above in which the goddess speaks to the children of Athamas in Hercules, My Shipmate·, they are similar.10 The instructions Apuleius receives for New Year day are as follows: Tomorrow my priests offer me the first-fruits of the new sailing season by dedicating a ship to me; for at this season the storms of winter lose their force, the leaping waves subside and the sea becomes navigable once more. You must wait for this sacred ceremony, with a mind that is neither anxious for the future nor clouded with profane thoughts; and I shall order the High Priests to carry the garland of roses in my procession, tied to the rattle which he carries in his right hand. Do not hesitate, push the crowd aside, join the procession with confidence in my grace. Then come close up to the High Priest as if you wished to kiss hand, gently pluck the roses with your mouth and you will immediately slough off the hide of what has always been for me the most hateful beast in the universe.11 Apuleius as Set the Ass becomes Apuleius as Horus, who, having died a spiritual death, is once more reborn as the New Year child of new innocence and love. Apuleius had once been Osiris beloved of the goddess; the book shows him as Set whom the goddess despises and as Horus beloved anew. He is the goddess's "son and lover", for in the spiritual sense she has given him birth and love together.

10

Op. cit., pp. 237-40. Cf. pp. 27-28 in Hercules My Shipmate for the use Graves makes of Apuleius's work. 11 Ibid., p. 239. With reference to the sea so copious in the quotation, it is interesting that 'Pelasgians' is an Achaean name for the mixed population of semi-matriarchal, Bronze Age peoples found on the mainland and islands, and means 'Seafarers' according to Graves The White Goddess, p. 51.

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2.

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K I N G JESUS

Graves considers Apuleius's style in The Golden Ass to be genuinely "archaid" - which means mythically accurate in the sense of myth as "ritual mime". In King Jesus, a reconstruction of the life of Christ, Graves models Christ into a Sacred King who is born on New Year, betrothed to Queen Mary of Michal in whose right he is royal, ritually maimed so that his right heel resembles the hock of a "bull calf", and sacrificed as King of the Jews. In short, Christ is made to conform with the characteristics of a sacrificed Celestial Hercules, Osiris, or Dionysus in a dramatization, or mime, of the mythic pattern. A preview of The Hebrew Myths occurs in chapter nineteen; Jesus and Mary the Hairdresser dispute over a set of tablets on which icons are displayed, Jesus interpreting these as a scholar of the Torah and Mary as a priestess of the Goddess. 12 The tablets tell the story of the Spirit of the Year. The career of Graves's Christ keeps as close to this story as possible. Although Graves wishes to be true to history and uses one or another source for all he says, his process of interpretation might be analogous to a Shakespearean scholar committed to forcing everything in the tragedies and comedies into the pattern Tillyard sets forth in Elizabethan World Picture. The resulting interpretation may have great merit and insight, but the equation of Shakespeare with the World Picture and of Christ with the Myth is, after all, an assumption. What King Jesus offers is a mythic portrait of a Sacred King, a human portrait of a loyal follower of the wise and benevolent teacher Hillel, and a heroic portrait of a man of destiny who felt the Kingdom of God to be imminent with himself as its prophet. Graves writes thus: 12

Robert Graves, King Jesus ( N e w York: Creative Age Press, Inc., 1946), pp. 249-59. The Greek traveler of this section compares customs and cultures like a modern anthropologist as Claudius did in I, Claudius with the Druids and Germanic tribes, the Vestal Virgins, and the Greek Pallas Athena. If he is attempting to popularize his thesis through such means, he has misjudged the gap between himself and his audience, to whom much that he says must seem infinitely remote.

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As a sacred King, the last legitimate ruler of an immensely ancient dynasty, his avowed intention was to fulfill all the ancient prophecies that concerned himself and bring the history of his House to a real and unexceptionable conclusion. He intended by an immense exercise of power and a perfect trust in God the Father to annul the boastful tradition of royal pomp - dependent upon armies, battles, taxes, mercantile adventures, marriages with foreign princesses, Court luxuries and popular oppression - which Solomon had initiated at Jerusalem; and at the same time to break the lamentable cycle of birth, procreation, death and rebirth in which both he and subjects had been involved since Adam's day. Merely to resign his claim to temporal power was not enough. His resolute hope was to defeat Death itself by enduring with his people the so-called Pangs of the Messiah, the cataclysmic events which were the expected prelude to the coming of the Kingdom of God; and his justification of this hope was the prophecy in the twenty-fifth chapter of Isaiah: "He shall destroy Death for ever." In the Kingdom, which would be miraculously fertile and perfectly pacific, all Israelites would be subjects who acknowledged him in his threefold capacity as king, prophet, and healer, and under his benignant rule would live wholly free from error, want, sickness or fear of death for no less than a thousand years.13 As a sacred King and a historical figure, the Gravesian Christ seeks the millenium of health, fertility, and prosperity for his people in a "pre-ordained mythical pattern": 13 Op. cit., p. 284. A description of the perfectly pacific and fertile "kingdom" follows directly. As King, prophet, and healer who had remained untainted by the World, the Flesh, and the Devil (or the False Creation unworthy of meditation), Jesus would first endure the Pangs of the Messiah and then lead his followers into a thousand years of perpetual peace without the threat of war, want, or fear. When the millenium did not occur, disappointment was followed by philosophic adjustment to the religious problem thus posed: Jesus was made the Second person of the Trinity and Mary as the immaculate receptacle of the Life and Brightness of God was made the Third. Her mother, St. Ann, must then have immaculately conceived Mary - "Here", writes Graves, "was a fine breeding ground for all sorts of heresy", The White Goddess, p. 525. A popular reassertion of the Theme, Graves writes, would place the Virgin in the center between Jesus and Satan as Waxing and Waning Suns. Graves's Jesus wished to defeat the Female Moon and death; his remaining remote from the false and vain Material Creation in perfect purity was the Way. In Graves's life, confirmation was a disappointment (the Holy Ghost as dove failed to appear), atheist Raymond outwitted him on trinity doctrine (Autobiography, p. 47), and Goliath won wars.

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To be laid at birth in a manger-basket, to be crowned king, to suffer voluntarily on a cross, to conquer death, to become immortal: such was the destiny of this last and noblest scion of the most venerable royal line in the world.14

There is no evidence of a lack of respect for the figure of Christ in King Jesus. The sacred King who wished to annul the "boastful tradition of royal pomp - dependent upon armies, battles, taxes, mercantile adventures . . ." etc., in order to lead his people to the Kingdom of God in which all is "miraculously fertile and perfectly pacific" cannot but have reverence from Graves. The point at which Graves's Christ becomes most inimical to his author's conceptions seems apparent in the above quotation where Christ is made to wish the abrogation of "birth, procreation, death and rebirth". The cycle of birth and rebirth is the heart of the Myth, and it is Christ's mission to destroy Death by omitting completely all carnal and sexual indulgence and thus destroy all dependence upon women in favor of an entire dependence upon God the Father. Quoting Clement of Alexandria, Graves frequently repeats Christ's mission thus: "I have come to destroy the works of the Female".15 It is this conception of Christ and of Jewish theology which causes Graves to characterize Christ's mission as one sharing in a Jewish "obsession with celestial patriarchy". One of Graves's prime objectives in the writing of King Jesus, therefore, is to absorb the life story of Christ back into his mythic pattern which acknowledges a Creatrix and the superiority of Female over Male. Thus the Gravesian Christ survives the experience on the cross (a subject which Graves takes up at length in The Nazarene Gospel Restored with his co-author Joshua Podro),16 speaks to his apostles a final time, and feeling his mission was premature and his sacrifice for naught, disappears with 14

Op. cit., p. 14. Op. cit., p. 2. This view Graves gets from Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, iii. For those who can not get this edition, Clement is discussing The Gospel according to the Egyptians. 16 (New York: Doubleday Bros., Inc., 1954). See p. 795 for summary of findings. 15

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the three Marys - Mary his bride, Mary his Mother, and Mary Magdalene (the Hairdresser) - who compose a familiar triad symbolic of the Triple Goddess. Christ is subsumed by the Myth as the last and most illustrious of the sacred Kings. Graves's Jesus in Rome deals with the possibility that Christ may have journeyed to the decadent capital described in 1, Claudius. In general, Graves's approach to his life of Christ is the same as his method in other researches; assuming the archetypal pattern of the Pelasgian Creation Myth to underlie Greek and Hebrew religious traditions, he compares variation of custom and belief as in the chapter "The Terebinth Fair" and relates Hebrew custom to Greek, Canaan, Aegean, Roman, and Egyptian custom. Graves feels that the Hebrew texts have been edited and tampered with to such a degree as to make them unreliable guides to prehistorical events. Still, by comparison of Hebrew myths with the popular myths of Canaan, and of Jewish history with the history of neighbouring nations, a general working knowledge can be won of the ancient events and legal traditions most relevant to the secret story of Jesus, which is all that need concern us here.17 Following this procedure, Graves ranges widely through King Jesus in his most eclectic and erudite manner, sometimes taking us to Rome to overhear Athenodorus lecture Livia (the "real" ruler of Rome) and Augustus on the relation of Hebraic traditions as diverse as circumcision, pork taboo, and child sacrifice (p. 135), and sometimes taking us for jaunts into the possibility of matriarchy in Hebrew history (with parallels offered in the histories of Rome, Egypt, Greece, and Crete [p. 56]). There is also the ring of The White Goddess in Graves's description of an early Jerusalem of pre-exilic times that worshipped Anatha, the Moon-goddess (pp. 119-120), of Good King Josiah's cutting of the sacred groves (pp. 184-195), and of Herod's attempt to restore the old religion of Set to Israel (pp. 121-125). The Essenes are said to have worshipped Moses as a sun-god Dionysus (pp. 208209); under their tutelage Christ is led to interpret the vision of 17

Graves, King Jesus, p. 13.

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Ezekiel by means of zodiac and calendar imagery of lion, goat, bull, serpent, and eagle.18 Christ's fast on Mount Horeb recalls The Golden Ass in one quite distinct use of calendar symbolism by which Apuleius regained the favor of Isis. Christ fasts in a circle drawn in the sand and divided into quarters. In succession Christ faces the Lion of Anger in the east quarter, the Goat of Lust in the southern quarter, the Serpent of Fear in the western quarter - which together form a Chimaera with lion's head, goat's body, and serpent's tail. The only beast Christ fails to conquer is the white bull of winter which resides in his own quarter. The bull represents the cycle of New Year, death and rebirth, which the Gravesian Christ wishes to destroy in order to lead in the Kingdom of God. Graves's use of symbolism, in which Christ is the bull-calf, indicates that the cycle is never ending and ever moving from bull to bull-calf. Christ's rejection of Anger, Lust, and Fear, however, resembles the similar rejection of these by Apuleius, and the implication is the same for both: they become masters of the prime symbols of evil, of the corruptive powers within themselves, and even of time. For the lion is the waxing sun; the goat is the summer sun; and the serpent is the waning sun.19 Thus, in defying the calendar beasts, both Apuleius and Christ may control the Chimaera and the tendency toward base or destructive behavior. Apuleius becomes a priest; Christ, as Graves has him, attempts to realize the deutero-Zechariah prophecy, which will require a word of explanation. Graves understands Christ as a man who never willingly broke the Law of God as interpreted by Hillel. Yet many of Christ's last acts seem impious according to that Law. Graves's solution is that Christ was attempting in his last days to act out the sins of his nation and allow himself to be sacrificed for his acts as a scapegoat, and by this means awaken his people to their dangerous state of depravity. It is Judas, according to Graves's notion, who first understands the meaning of Christ's seemingly altered 18

Op. cit., pp. 210-236. The boibel-loth alphabet reappears in Essene lore. 19 Op. cit., pp. 232-233.

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attitude, and in Judas's musing words Graves's interpretation becomes clear. The scene is the last supper at which Christ commands his disciples to eat the bread and wine as though they were his body and blood. This act, for intelligent and informed Jews, was an idolotrous imitation of rites performed in the Mysteries of Eleusis and related cults. Then it dawns on Judas that Christ is acting out the roles of the Worthless Shepherd and the False Prophet: All that had puzzled and grieved him was now explained at last; the revelry that Jesus had led in the clubhouse; his cursing of the figtree; his forcible purging of the Temple; his refusal to acknowledge the authority of Jehovah; his abandonment of a sincere message announcing the imminent Kingdom of God in favour of a false message announcing a revival of the blood-thirsty Davidic monarchy; and now this idolotrous eucharist! Clearly, he had resolved upon self-destruction, upon becoming the scape-goat that should bear away the sins of the whole people. He had combined in himself Zechariah's prophecy of the shepherd and Isaiah's prophecy of the Suffering Servant — the Marred Man, the Man of Sorrows, who would go to his death as a willing sacrifice and be numbered among the sinners.20

Graves's portrait of Christ, then, is one which rationalizes away miracles, presents Christ as a man of his own times and traditions, subsumes him into his mythic pattern as a heroic individual who was consciously willing to sacrifice himself for the good of the people he loved, and affords him good birth,21 education, and character by which to command the respect of his people. Christ is anti-war, devout, heroically self-controlled, and desirous of a 20

Op. cit., pp. 366-367. Op. cit., see "Historical Commentary" at the close of the work in which Jesus is hypothesized to be Herod's grandson by Antipater, whose execution forced Mary into the aged Joseph's protection. Again, for those who do not have a copy of the book, page two has a copy of Graves's sources the first of which reads as follows: ". . . Commentators refer to Jeshu-ha-Notzri [i.e., Jesus] by mention of the wicked kingdom of Edom, since that was his nation . . . H e was hanged on a Passover Eve . . . H e was near to the Kingdom [i.e., in order of succession]", from Lexicon Talmudicum, sub "Abarnabel". A second quotation reads in part: "They say that his mother descended from princes and rulers, but consorted with carpenters", from Talmud Babli Sanhédrin, 106b, 43a, 51a. 21

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community "miraculously fertile and perfectly pacific". That Graves has mingled myth with the life of Christ is a considerable help toward understanding what the moral issues are which the Myth embodies. In The Anger of Achilles?2 Graves's translation of the Iliad, the theme of anti-war, so prevalent in Graves's work after the Autobiography, returns with a vengeance to the foreground of attention.

3.

T H E A N G E R OF

ACHILLES

Graves's inveterate hatred for war had, indeed, never left the stage of social and historical forces upon which he focuses his gaze. The social web of interacting religious, military, commercial, and political forces which condoned war took his full condemnation in Goodbye to All That. His move to Mallorca must be considered as a figure and real withdrawal from England. The researches Graves conducted from Mallorca found figures such as Claudius and Belisarius at odds with the policies and traditions of Rome and Byzantium with regard to the best Pagan and best Christian traditions which those two figures represent for Graves. Excursions into the English Civil War as covered in Wife to Mr. Milton (1944) and into the American Revolutionary War of the Sergeant Lamb novels (1940) discover business speculation, fanatic church involvement, political intrigue, and an ignorant but patriotic soldiery. He found, present and past, the face of Mars to have its sardonic smile. He then moved into pre-history, at a loss, evidently, for help in written history, but it should be noted that Graves's adopted goddess in the aspect of Nature despises war as infertile destructiveness, in the aspect of Truth hates war as deceit, and in the aspect of Love abhors war as lust, cruelty, and hatred. Apuleius was made to reject Lust, Anger, and Fear symbolic of Set; Christ is a sacred King who commends the blood-thirsty Davidic monarchy only as the Worthless Shepherd and False Prophet who wishes to act out the very sins for 22

Robert Graves, tr., The Anger of Achilles ( N e w York: and Co., Inc., 1959). All pages cited in text refer to this text.

Doubleday

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which as a scapegoat he will be crucified. All of this anti-war concern seems to me to be a direct continuation of the concern shown in the Autobiography. But in his translation of the Iliad (The Anger of Achilles), Graves conceives of his subject not only as an opportune one by which he might vent his long-standing hatred for organized war upon Agamemnon, Nestor, and Achilles but as a subject crucial to his historical thesis as well. Troy was related to Crete and Mycenaean Greece by cultural ties of goddess-worship. In Agamemnon, Nestor, and Achilles are to be found the Iron-age Achaeans and Dorians who destroyed Cnossus on Crete, Troy, and Mycennae. Thus, for Graves, Hector is an Osiris defeated by Set-Achilles; the mythic implications are epochal as well as cultural and individual. In a footnote to "The Wrath of Achilles" or the section by that title found in The Greek Myths, Graves puts his historical attitude and literary view-point (which are the same) clearly: Homer faithfully describes the lives of his new overlords who have usurped ancient religious titles by marrying tribal heiresses and, though calling them god-like, wise, and noble, holds them in deep disgust. They live by the sword, disdaining love, friendship, faith, or the arts of peace. They care so little for the divine names by which they swear that he dares jest in their presence about the greedy, sly, quarrelsome, lecherous, cowardly Olympians who have turned the world upsidedown.23

The Olympians, who are mere projections of Dorian and Archaean society, are "greedy, sly, quarrelsome, lecherous, cowardly" in character and in act. These characteristics attributed to the Achaeans and to the later Dorians are mythically associated with Set - the cruel, lusty, destructive Spirit of the Waning Year. Of the Achaeans in Graves's interpretation of the Iliad, these Set-like qualities are most associated with Achilles, as the title might suggest. Of all the Achaean chieftains, the most boastful, malicious, self-centered, and vainglorious is Achilles himself. Thus, Achilles's triumph over Hector of Troy is mythically analogous to Set's murder of Osiris. For Troy is characterized by those same qual23

Graves, The Greek Myths,

II, p. 312n.

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ities which the Achaeans are made to despise: love, friendship, faith, the arts of peace. It is these qualities which Osiris represents as the Spirit of the Waxing Year and the champion of fertility, increase, health, and gentleness. Of all the Trojans, Hector is the most just and the most gentle. With all of this historical and mythical association of values in mind we might go to the short lyric which captures the ebbing death of Hector at Achilles's hands: Darkly, darkly falls the night. One fair star is burning bright: Hesperus his name, and he Rivals all the stars that be.

The Evening star is the symbol of immortality - the first star to appear after the sun sets in the west - and mythically is sacred to Aphrodite, or Venus, for whose love the Sun-king dies. Thus, Hector, meeting a death at the peak of life, is a sun-king sacrificed to the goddess, who "darkly, darkly" presides over him as the crone of fate but who also receives him, as the name Hesperus hints, in the Isles of Hesperides, the Happy Isles in the far western sea. Graves uses the precise "grammar of poetic myth" in this short poem, which is reminiscent of Blake's "Tyger, tyger burning bright / In the forests of the night". Both poems have an immediate power to seize interest through the imagery and rhythms alone; but of this and other verses by Graves, attention to the mythic details of language will repay the reader with an enriched appreciation. The translation itself is a prose-verse one,24 and in the pruned24

See pp. 32-35 of the "Introduction" in which he discusses the problems of a prose-verse translation. Scholars of Homer differ on the dating of the epic, but it is interesting to note that Nilsson finds the various elements mixed so far as date is concerned. Some he thinks return to Mycenaean Greece, and some he regards as of truly ancient vintage. See The Mycenaean Origin of Greek Mythology, pp. 24 ff. Though specific myths are not dated, the myth of Heracles is of Mycenaean origin - which is late Minoan. If Graves is right, it is of early Minoan vintage. Thus, the lyric of Hesperus, a Celestial Hercules figure, might be one of the very ancient elements of the epic. Graves's lyric rendering of it allows its rhythmic and figurative language to evoke feeling across four or five thousand years or more. This kind of thing alone makes the translation valuable to those who find Greek hexameters an odd meter in English.

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down prose sentence Graves is able to achieve, more than would be possible in the original hexameter lines with their redundant epithets, a nuance in meaning and an edge in the satire which together make the reading fresh and alive. The attitude in the satire, however, is peculiarly Gravesian, and overtones of the autobiography seem to be heard at points such as the fiasco which follows Agamemnon's speech of Book Two. The siege, having lasted for nearly a decade, has made the men weary of war. Agamemnon decides to test the spirit of the troops by giving a defeatist speech and offering to return home to Greece. The men are supposed to follow the lead of coached members of the council and shout for renewed efforts to defeat the Trojans. Instead of the envisioned spirited attack on Troy, which Agamemnon hopes will follow his speech, the men make a dash for the beached boats, begin knocking out the props and launching the ships - their scampering feet raise a tall column of dust. It is a fiasco! The men have spirit indeed, but it has long since wandered home. Only by the quick thinking of Odysseus is complete disaster for the expedition averted. Graves gives the humor and irony of the situation full play, for after the men have been calmed down Nestor makes a speech in which Agamemnon is likened to a shepherd who will guide the men through the hazards of battle. He concludes his speech coldly ". . . but anyone who feels an irresistible desire for home, can try launching his ship and be the first to die" (Book II, p. 63). Agamemnon and Nestor are made the butts of some truly delicious satire in Book Ten in which Agamemnon, unable to sleep, awakens Nestor only to hint that an attack may be underway "for all we know". Much is made of the hint as Nestor awakens hero after hero, and a grand council meets in the dead of night to avert the threat. Thus the Greek leaders are pressed relentlessly throughout the translation and at every opportunity satirized. Whether of mortals such as Nestor - who, having led arrow-pierced Machaon out of battle to the rear, props up his feet, pours himself Pramnian wine while Machaon bleeds, and says: "Once the battle is joined, who finds any opportunity to relax" - or gods such as Zeus - who, having just threatened

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errant gods and goddesses with "egregrious punishment" for disregarding his will, is led by his all-powerful nose to do the will of a suppliant and caressing Athene - Graves's satire devastates male pretensions and incompetence. Only the domestic scenes in Troy are allowed to escape the caustic treatment accorded the Greeks. According to Graves's thesis, it was such as these Greeks who "turned the world upside-down" by replacing Demeter, the goddess of fertility, with Zeus, the god of power who ruled with a thunder-bolt. The fall of Troy was an important chapter in the extinction of Mycenaean culture; the ideal civilization fell, and Graves mourns the event in prose and poetry. Trojan defeat meant sunset for civilization and a long night "without a moon". Such is the way Graves's phrasing runs in "Lament for Pasiphae", dedicated to the fall of Cnossus and Cretan, or Minoan, civilization. If all that has been said thus far were to be summarized, such a summing up would read as follows: 1) Criticism on Graves has dismissed his historic thesis and adopted the Laura Riding explanation for his Goddess; 2) origins for the Goddess can be discovered in Graves's war experience and a clump of associations which find beauty in death and horror; 3) a view of Graves's researches as fundamentally sound allows his "discovery" of a Bronze Age religion and Goddess to be seen as both the source of his oft-remarked recovery of powers and the basis for his historical and cultural critique; 4) central to this critique is Graves's pointed attack on "philosophic religion" and "logical" systems of belief which have led to doctrine-juggling, speculation, scepticism, cynicism, and division in religions and therefore culture - all related to the Iron Age overthrow of the Minoan civilization; 5) Graves's Myth is offered as a restorative to faith, being non-institutional, unabstract, concretely seasonal, and purely mystical or mythical. It centers upon moral conduct and spiritual wholeness rather than dogma and dualism - the chief areas of breakdown in Graves's war-time disillusion with religion. The duality in Graves has been noted from the first as has been his animosity toward "talkers and theory". It is the most paradoxical

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aspect of the study of Graves that he theorizes and speculates away all theory and speculation, that he thinks away religious philosophic thought, and that he doubts so deeply and profoundly in order to defend faith - by which he ultimately means love of truth before self-interest, love of honor before self-interest, and love of earth and humanity before self-interest. One is reminded so much of the Courtly Love poetry, the Chartres Cathedral Natura thinkers of the eleventh and twelfth century, of Michaelangelo - and all those who reach from the past to the present with an affirmation of the human spirit and a determination not to be buried under the worst of that spirit. For Graves, war represents the worst kind of human demoralization because what is best in man is most despiritualized - a quality of experience caught in Ronald Searle's illustration of Achilles on page 289 of The Anger of Achilles in which the vainglorious and brightly armored Achilles, black of eye and spear upraised says: "Forward noble Greeks."

ν T H E M Y T H AND T H E POETRY

One fundamental difference between Graves and his critics has been, from the beginning (particularly noticeable in such poems as "Two Fusiliers"), aggravated by a misunderstanding over what the war meant - the "Beauty in Death" idea was too intimately associated with the "mess of things unclean" in "The Dead Boche" to be dissociated in Graves's mind or related adequately in the minds of his critics. The horror Graves blamed upon governments, upon patriarchs, and ultimately upon the Dorian archetype whose descendants invented philosophic religion that supplanted the Myth; the selfless courage and the "Beauty in Death" he related to Osiris of the Myth and to a theory of reincarnation which may, in the last analysis, be the source of Graves's deepest sense of content, not with things as they are but with the renewed sense of fitness and ultimate justice in things his eyes saw. This new vision of things begins about 1938: Stirring myself from long hibernation I knew myself once more a poet Guarded by the timeless principalities Against the worm of death, this hillside haunting; And presently dared open both my eyes. ("Mid-Winter Waking" . . . p. 163)i

All the evidence in support of Graves's theories may convince one of the reality of the Bronze Age religion and even of its continuity into the present through vestiges of ritual folk-way, but the critic has been unprepared to fully accept the ancient religion as 1 Robert Graves, Collected Poems (1966). Page references in text refer to this edition unless otherwise cited.

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Graves's belief-system (excluding, of course, human sacrifice in a literal sense but retaining its spiritual implications). Y e t Graves only makes complete sense as a hierophantic poet-priest, a latterday priest of Isis, or an Ollave who has nothing but contempt for the Court minstrels of past and present. Tracing the Myth from Minoan times to Ireland and Avebury to the Courtly love lyrics and ballads and on into its diminishing remains of the present, Graves (somewhat legalistically) gave his Myth the justification of right by precedence and reemphasis to England as a Mother country; it also gave him an emotional leverage and a poetic sense of tradition by blood and birthright - all of which put a positive face upon his hitherto negative stance. Further, it justified his sense of the war and his sense of society as Laura Riding and Nancy had, each in their way, influenced him to see it, brought to a successful culmination all his studies of psychology with Rivers, comparative religion and myth in Frazer, anthropology in Harrison, Classics, languages, archaeology, and magic. Finally, in accepting the theory of reincarnation, Graves found a way to make peace with the ghost-ridden, memory-haunted past. The Goddess, as Apuleius said in his prayer, had the power of warding off nightmare and ghosts. The modern sceptic with his entrenched disillusion must scoff at Graves (who does not scruple to scoff back), but to see Graves through the eyes of a total sceptic is to risk not seeing him at all - because he is a believer. A belief, nothing less, can account for his new serenity, his content, his rebirth of well-being, and the poetry which from 1938 on begins to bubble out of the new, clean spring of his soul. His second marriage accounts for his new happiness, but the Myth accounts for a sense of his acceptance and a sense of profound resolution both for the past and the future. The old bitterness is given perspective, and the new happiness is allowed release. All the new lyrics will express a concern with how to accept and suffer through the gifts of love and life, how to endure the alternate gift of rebuff of love and Fate, how to live - these concerns lead to the heart of the new poetry and to a Goddess of Love and Fate. With this vision before him, one which does not deny the evil or tragedy of life nor exclude love and promise, Graves "opens [his] eyes

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upon a world which had given him great pain in new hope". The primitive and magical sophistication of the Myth allows Graves every means to articulate his opposition to the technological, urban, despiritualized world beyond Mallorca. Graves's Myth is dedicated to the life of the spirit, to magic, and the outside world is alien to this spirit. He had said "Goodbye" in 1929, but now he wished to offer his Myth to that alien world. "Language of the Seasons" expresses the awkwardness he feels in his situation over the incommunicable "gulf" between himself and the world not now of "horror", but rather of tenderness and loving care (p. 162): Living among orchards, we are ruled By the four seasons necessarily: This from unseasonable frosts we learn Or from usurping suns and haggerd flowers Legitimist our disapproval Weather we knew, not seasons, in the city Where seasonless, orange and orchid shone, Knew it by heavy overcoat or light, Framed love in later terminologies Then here, where we report how weight of snow, Or weight of fruit, tears branches from the tree. Graves writes this in 1939, on the eve of war, to a world that is urban, industrial, and organized for violence. He recognized now as then how awkward his seasonal Myth must appear to urbanités. Millions of persons are accustomed to seeing oranges and orchids the year round, seem nearly unaware of seasons, and are attuned only to psychological terminologies in which love is ultimately "sex". Men do their work without affection for their job and have little feeling or sympathy for "nature". The orchardist's affection for his land and trees is unfamiliar to the "office worker". The farmer's recognition of birth pain in the "weight of fruit" that tears branches from the tree or death in the "weight of snow" is missed by the office worker, who might more easily grasp the notion of a statistic or a deductible item. The terms by which ordinary feeling and common affection might be communicated to the city person are increasingly few and far between. While a seasonal myth seems hopeless in a world growing more and more urban, Graves is more and more convinced of its importance; for

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a seasonless city existence that no longer frames its life and love in seasonal terms is unnatural, emotionally bankrupted by synthetic terminologies, and unregenerate. From this time forward, Graves excoriates all abstract speculation as sterile and alien in his satires while in his lyrics he increasingly emphasizes the seasonal phases of the year symbolic of the key moments of life, so that spiritual and natural cycles imply one another: birth (winter), initiation (spring), consummation or marriage (summer), repose (fall), and death (winter). Graves carries a seasonal kind of distinction into the divisions of his poetry; for if the waxing buoyant spirit of the year, Osiris, is the obvious mythic figure with which to identify when writing love lyrics, the mythic Set is the figure with which the satirist identifies in his intention to maliciously destroy. With regard to subject matter, the lyrics deal always with love theme and Myth; the satires attack all that is alien to it. Thus the two work in a coordinated manner to affirm and protect the Myth. Let us turn to the satire first and watch Graves attempt to destroy several forms of "mental bondage" before turning to the lyrics and its "green world". Graves's own definition of satire tends to remind us of Frye's terminology: "The purpose of Satire," Graves writes, "is to destroy whatever is over-blown, faded, and dull, and to clear the way for a new sowing."2

1.

T H E SATIRES

At the close of The White Goddess appear two satires which offer critics difficulty. These are called "The Destroyer" and the "Return of the Goddess". The first is given a brief introduction 2

Graves, The White Goddess, p. 499. The sense of "new sowing" - the satires destroying old and lyrics seeding new attitudes - implies personal and social concerns growing out of the Myth's spiritual implications. Hoffman's view that the alert reader may find the Myth unnecessary and Kirkham's view that the Myth recedes into the background for a majority of the poems (p. 224) emphasizes individual poems and readings. My own presentation attempts to emphasize connections and relations with the Myth and within the poetry as an inseparable whole.

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by Graves himself as he closes his "tract for the times". 3 Graves's search for a myth, the nature of it, and its subsequent influence upon his view of pre-history, history, and the present may now be illustrated by examination of a passage and a poem: we are to read a satire " . . . on the memory of the man who first titled European civilization off balance, by enthroning the restless arbitrary male will under the name of Zeus and dethroning the female sense of orderliness, Themis. T h e Greeks knew him as Pterseus the Destroyer, the gorgon-slaying warrior-prince from Asia, remote ancestor of the destroyers Alexander, Pompey, and Napoleon." 4 " T h e Destroyer" begins: Swordsman of the narrow lips, Narrow hips and murderous mind Fenced with chariots and ships, By your joculators hailed The mailed wonder of mankind Far to westward you have sailed. Graves's central obsessions all come into focus here. T h e "gorgon-slaying" Pterseus, representative of those Dorians who supplanted the prophylactic-mask-wearing matriarchs and their Myth with "cowardly Olympians" and the "religion of logic", is related to a trio of conquerors, each of whom is more recent than the last. Nor can we escape noting how the introductory words interpret this as a conflict between the "arbitrary male will" and the "female sense of orderliness". T h e restrained fury of "mailed w o n d e r " and " b y your joculators hailed" conveys Graves's attitude toward those who "first tipped European civilization off b a l a n c e " and toward those who succeeded Pterseus into modern times. With this before us, the second stanza m a y be read as a continuation of harsh irony with mythic implication: You it was dared seize the throne Of a blown and amorous prince Destined to the Moon alone, A lame, golden-heeled decoy, Joy of hens that gape and wince Inarticulately coy. 3 4

Op. cit., pp. 512 ff. Op. cit., p. 540.

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Addressing Pterseus, Graves contrasts the symbol of Dorian strength with that of Pelasgian strength - the Sacred King. That the "mailed wonder" has "dared seize the throne" from a loveconsort, " . . . a blown and amorous prince/Destined to the Moon alone", juxtaposes two contrasting forms of courage: beside the egoistic vainglory of Pterseus, "fenced about with chariots and ships", is set the commitment of the prince to be a voluntary fertility sacrifice. Further, the prince is a "lame, golden-heeled decoy", a Sacred King unaccustomed to force or the arts of war. The lines "joy of hens that gape and wince / Inarticulately coy" conjures up a vision of the cock-partridge, sacred because amorous and fertile, dancing to a ring of hens in courtship — at which time he is blind to attack.5 From this imagery, it seems clear that Pterseus is Set; and the principle, Osiris. History, Myth, and attitude combine here as they do in the prose. Linking the infertility of the fields to the dead fires of hearth and home, the third stanza adds invective to irony: You who, capped with lunar gold Like an old and savage dunce, Let the central hearth go cold, Grinned and left us here your sword Warden of sick fields that once Sprouted of their own accord. The phrase "capped with lunar gold" implies that Pterseus has perverted his proper role of Sun King and protector of the fields into that of scourge to the land; he not only fails to promote fertility, but brings about devastation and barrenness. Pterseus has "grinned" and left his sword as "warden of sick fields", all of which implies a new sense of values, a new dispensation, a disregard of the values attached to the Sacred King. Thus, the "central hearth" is allowed to wink out. The image of Pterseus as an iron-sinewed, boyish-minded "protector" is one which we find in Graves's novels, although the adjective "boyish-minded" may not apply in every instance. It is the image of Achilles certainly. It is also the image of a patriarchal world for Graves, and 5

Graves, The Greek Myths, I, p. 115 and p. 157 n. See also The Goddess, pp. 326, 393, 540 and 355-60.

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he thrusts hard at that image in his satire. Pterseus is a "savage dunce" who in his careless ignorance leaves a wake of misery, barrenness, and destruction. The final stanza is apocalyptic: Gusts of laughter the Moon stir That her Bassarids now bed With the unnoble usurer, While the ignorant pale priest Rides the beast with a man's head To her long-omitted feast. The term "Bassarids" recalls the Bacchanal revels in honor of atumnal Dionysius and the violence of ecstasy in its most extreme sense of "maddened"; the modern contrast of Bassarids bedding with the "unnoble usurer" stirs sardonic laughter in the Goddess whose compliant love for Set is temporary - till mid-winter. Dionysian impulses are quiescent, but the priest "rides" to the "feast" though he is "ignorant" he does so. That he is "pale", perhaps, implies asceticism. The sense of the poem is one of false quiet and coming doom for the priest and the usurer upon the Bassarid's and Centaur's rediscovery of each other and spiritual ecstasy. However, disastrous implications seem contained in the foreboding amount of unawareness in the scene: the other-worldly priest is ignorant of urban-industrial man who in turn is ignorant of the animal in himself and in Nature upon which he depends ecologically for life. In the natural world "unawareness" means death. But such unawareness stirs laughter, as the "long omitted feast" looms ahead. Just such a catastrophe is envisioned in "Return of the Goddess", the direness of the moment dependent upon how " . . . exhausted by man's irreligious improvidence the natural resources of the soil and the sea" have become.6 Under your Milky Way And slow revolving Bear Frogs from the alder thicket pray In terror of the judgment day, Loud with repentance there. •

Graves, The White Goddess,

p. 540.

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The astral detail implies a relentless turning of the wheel of time to the catastrophe of collapse. The citizen-frogs pray from the alder thicket - the tree of spring and therefore of regeneration and resurrection. It is the tree planted on the sepulchral islands of the sacrificed, and long ignored, fertility gods such as Osiris, Dionysus, or Celestial-Hercules. The defeat of the spirit of Osiris by the spirit of Pterseus has left the state of affairs of the world in capricious hands. The log they crowned as king Grew sodden, lurched and sank, Dark waters bubble from the spring, An owl flats by on silent wing, They invoke you from each bank.

The images convey the ominous imminence of disaster. The "log", symbolic of the state of affairs under the patriarchs such as Pterseus and his successors, sinks under its own weight. Graves here seems to refer to his novels of Rome and Byzantium. The "dark waters" bubbling suggests contamination at the source, and the owls, a sacred bird of Athens and wisdom, hoot softly as though invoking an end to a sorry state of things. The final stanza suggests the end, the final collapse: At dawn you shall appear, A gaunt, red-wattled crane, She whom they know too well for fear, Lunging your beak down like a spear To fetch them home again.

The end comes in the form of a crane - mythically related to the invention of letters, the cessation of war, and justice7 - which now comes as an embassy from an angry Earth Goddess to enact her judgment upon the repentant frogs with a lunging beak: "To fetch them home again." This is the same crane which Claudius used to such good purpose in his war with Caractacus. The soldiers who had guilty consciences took flight. In this poem, it is the 7

Op. cit., pp. 248-50. In my discussion of "Instructions to the Orphic Adept", near the close of this chapter, some views on the relation of the theory of reincarnation to Graves's poetic rebirth and to his war experience are forwarded.

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frogs who pray repentantly with guilty consciences, but too late. Both "The Destroyer" and "Return of the Goddess" are mythic, and they deal with themes which directly or indirectly take their meaning from Graves's historical thesis and mythic figures. The Set-like grinning of Pterseus as he leaves his sword carries with it the implication of something untrustworthy in the male "arbitrary will". It seems to be, in fact, the male joy in violence which Graves most distrusts. Surely Graves's war experience, so vividly captured in the Autobiography, is at the root of this feeling which he expresses time and again in his novels and poetry. The poem "Recalling War" offers a clear example of this feeling of joy-in-destructiveness, which in the Myth is a characteristic of Set and which in this poem connects with Graves's personal war experience. Of this experience, Graves writes with profound feeling and with a total commitment to that "vow" spoken in the name of war-survivors. War was "No more discord of flags / But an infection of the common sky . . ." though it were "airiest May". There was a "use again for God" to assuage those "wounds beyond all surgeoning". War was the "foundering of sublimities, / Extinction of each happy art and faith", for in the name of "logic" or of "love" it meant the "duty to run mad". The poem concludes (pp. 130-131): 8 And we recall the merry ways of guns Nibbling the walls of factory and church Like a child, piecrust; felling groves of trees Like a child, dandelions with a switch. Machine-guns rattle toy-like from a hill, D o w n in a row the tin-soldiers fall: A sight to be recalled in elder days When learnedly the future we devote To yet more boastful visions of despair.

It is interesting in the light of this poem to compare our view of primitive Pelasgia with Graves's view of the modern world. The ritual sacrifice of a sun-god had had a purpose: the refructification of the fields and the land - but the "merry ways of 8

Robert Graves, Collected Poems (New York: Doubleday and Co., Inc., 1961). This poem was deleted in the 1966 collection.

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guns"? Critics have called the primitive world too bloody to be poetic; but was that world any bloodier than ours? In simple truth, it seems far less so. The twenty thousand casualties which Graves's regiment alone suffered, not to mention the total death count of World War One and World War Two, would have lasted the bloody Pelasgians for two thousand years easily. If blood is the criterion, we, not they, are the barbarians. Graves, however, focuses upon the meaning of sacrifice and how the "ritual" is performed. The Sacred-King was honored, and he was killed with merciful dispatch by dignitaries, who saw the ceremony as a necessary one to the welfare of the community; for, if it were not done, starvation and death would surely follow. In contrast to this, the child-like destructiveness implicit in the imagery of the poem's closing lines caricatures modern war and the male joy-indestructiveness. Factory, church, groves - nothing is sacred to war. The early images of the poem, which are those of mature and adult reflection on the mental horror of the ordeal, yield to the mindless child-like images at the close; the effect is one through which peers the authentic face of nightmare. Nightmare is one of the goddess's faces when nature turns to chaos. In the poem, "Hag-Ridden", the speaker awakes from a nightmare (p. 270): I awoke in profuse sweat, arms aching, Knees bruised and soles cut to the raw Preserved no memory of that night But whipcracks and my own voice screaming. Through what wild, flintly wastes of fury Hag of the Mill Did you ride your madman?

The Hag is the goddess Fate whose Zodiac-Mill circles the North Star as did the "slow revolving Bear" in "Return of the Goddess". In life, as in the dream, she is the face of horror. It is the aspect of the goddess emphasized by the Vintage Book cover of staring eyes and skeletal teeth and by the critics' view of a bloody goddess; it is a side of the goddess encouraged by Graves as well, for Fate has brought him his share of nightmare as well as sound dreams. As the consort of Set, the goddess is nightmare; as the

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consort of Osiris, she is the beauteous Isis described by Apuleius. As ambivalent Fate, the goddess first did all but kill and drive Graves mad; then on Mallorca she turned her other side to him and smiled; or so mythically we may describe the war years and divorce followed by the serene beauty, success, and fame which Graves found on his island retreat. Underlying much of the "love" poetry is this ambiguity of love between man and woman, on the one hand, and between man and a goddess of Love, Nature, and Fate on the other. Thus, in the lyrics, the pain and joy of love between men and women is a basic metaphor by which the vagaries of life and fate are caught with telling force and infinite variety by the poet Graves. The taste, restraint, and passion in this poetry is that of a man who has faced the nature of things and learned to endure the perplexity, inconstancy and shock of living and loving for the sake of its gifts. That life and love have gifts to be treasured is the point of view earned by Graves only after the early nihilistic doubts of "The Castle" (in which life is made to be a castle of nightmare with no exit), and a realization reached only "Through Nightmare". The mature satire, however, indicates by its subject matter that though Graves found an 'exit' from the castle he still Uves within the dark presence of its walls and shadows. The satire probes at the shadows in a way to express the nature of their darkness. "The Cuirassiers of the Frontier", which relates to Count Belisarius, finds the guards of the perimeter of the empire to be its only strength, for within the "rind" the "tree" is dead and corrupt. Thus, militarism is a result of corruption and a virtue only in that it lives by a code of loyalty and courage. From this set of virtues, however, comes a love of battle, violence, and pride of arms which learns to despise the gentle arts of peace. One hears the Sergeant on the training field of the Autobiography, shouting "Bite him, I say! Stick your teeth in him and worry him! Eat his heart out!" 0 to the new recruits. Graves was glad, he says, to leave the training fields for the trenches; he makes it clear that killing men being asked to think of it as grand for the spirit are 9

Graves, Goodbye,

p. 237.

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distinct matters which it is nightmarish to confuse. The "logic" of war may justify the matter; the spirit recoils. It is in such a recoiled posture that Graves's spirit lashes out to attack "logic" at its source, the Dorians, to relate the warrior spirit with a "religion of logic", and to assume the continued alliance of war and logic in future destroyers. Perhaps the supreme feat of logic and science has already joined with the supreme weapon of ultimate violence in the nuclear bomb. In Graves's thesis, this conjunction of science and war takes its distant roots in the Dorian Pterseus, the proto-type patriarch of European affairs, whose coming "turned the world upside-down" by supplanting a moon-goddess of Fate and Love with a Thunder-god of Logic. The modern counterpart of Zeus is an Apollo-Science wielding the H-Bomb. Graves's essential point seems to be that logic leads to science and to legalism; legalism leads to loop-hole hunting and faithlessness, with war as the end to which all tends. One final example of Graves's war satire may illustrate the power of love to maintain, as opposed to the power of war to disintegrate, the spirit of trust or faith through a contrast of the respective "Spoils" (p. 232): When all is over and you march for home, The spoils of war are easily disposed of: Standards, weapons of combat, helmets, drums May decorate a staircase or a study, While lesser gleanings of the battlefield Coins, watches, wedding-rings, gold teeth and such Are sold anonymously for cash. The spoils of love present a different case, When all is over and you march for home: That lock of hair, those letters and the portrait May not be publicly displayed; nor sold; Nor burned; nor returned (the heart being obstinate) Yet never dare entrust them to a safe For fear they burn a hole through two-foot steel.

The souvenirs or spoils honorable conflict with changes to dishonorable watches, wedding-rings,

of the first stanza connote at first the armed opponents, but this connotation pilfering of the dead. The line "Coins, gold teeth and such" is one which, in

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Pope's manner, juxtaposes unequal times, here of progressively dense emotional weighting, and thereby implies a chaotic sense of values or a faithlessness. Stealing cash or watches is criminal, but the theft of the wedding rings and gold teeth implies depravity; the final, off-hand "and such" adds the tone of "businessas-usual" to the implication of depravity and recalls the phrase "infection of the common sky". Contrasted to this implication of chaos in war spoils is the implication of the "holiness of the heart's affections" and the sacredness of the spoils of love. The spoils of love are such that they have no other purpose but to be what they are; nothing can replace or alter them in value, nor will the obstinate heart return them. The final line implies that the strength of love is greater than the strength of even such material as steel. Taken literally, the last line fails; but taken as a statement of passion it succeeds and indicates the momentary triumph of spirit over matter, love over war, order over chaos. In this poem, therefore, the Muse has won. In another satire, "Apollo of the Physiologists", she seems to lose. This is one of Graves's wittiest and most devastating satires. In it he tilts at science and scores solid hits, particularly by use of rhyme and ironic situation within which the diction plays havoc. No other satire, though some are more rancorous, so well illustrates Graves's dispute with the scientific attitude. It goes thus (p. 187): Despite this learned cult's official And seemingly sincere denial That they either reject or postulate God, or God's scientific surrogate, Prints of a deity occur passim Throughout their extant literature. They make him A dumb, dead-pan Apollo with a profile Drawn in Victorian-Hellenistic style The pallid, bald, partitioned head suggesting Wholly abstract cerebral functioning; Or nude and at full length, this deity Displays digestive, venous, respiratory And nervous systems painted in bold colour On his immaculate exterior. Sometimes, in verso, a bald, naked Muse,

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His consort, flaunts her arteries and sinews, While, upside-down, crouched in her chaste abdomen, Adored by men and wondered at by woman, Hangs a Victorian-Hellenistic foetus Fruit of her academic god's afflatus. Choosing the familiar chart of human anatomy, Graves uses it to objectify his attitude toward science, which represents its "deity" as the sum of its parts. Though scientists deny that they deal in religious terms, they yet cultivate a hieratic status and call nonscientists "laymen". Finding in them a new "clergy", Graves sees the chart as a projection of the scientific attitude; the projection is a quasi-religious statement of a patron-god, Apollo, dedicated to "Wholly abstract, cerebral functioning". It is lifeless deity: Apollo is "dumb" and "dead-pan"; his aspirations are housed in a "pallid, bald, partitioned head"; what is sacred to him is clearly painted on his "immaculate exterior" in "bold colour" - his various systems. The "Victorian-Hellenistic "style" reminds us of Graves's thesis in The White Goddess: the Hellenic destruction of the Goddess Myth first with the sword and next with philosophy and logic. As it was under Victoria that Christian faith received its most telling blow at the hands of speculative science, the logic of the compound epithet Victorian-Hellenistic seems to be based upon the parallel rise of the Apollonian spirit, in both of which instances, ancient and modern, the consequences were to be sophistry, skepticism, and even cynicism. More specifically, however, the poem explores the incapacity of the Apollonian reason to understand the Dionysian world of impulse, passion, and love. The chart is factual, detached in its examination of the human form, objective in its findings, and blatantly prideful in its knowledge. But this Apollo, with his "pallid, bald, partitioned head", and this Muse, who "flaunts her arteries and sinews" at her consort, make a truly depressing pair of lovers. If love becomes "fact", a man's lover, his Muse, inevitably bears in her womb a "Victorian-Hellenistic foetus - / Fruit of her academic god's afflatus". The word "fruit" ironically recalls the orchard where "weight of fruit, tears branches from the tree"; and this line from "Language of the Seasons" implies process, pain, loss, and all the

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fundamental emotions associated with birth and death and love. The term "afflatus" mocks with closing emphasis the cerebral inspiration of science, satirizes its pretensions, as it approaches the subject of human love, and reveals its limitations. The rhymes carry this satirical intent to a sharp focus as "Muse" incongruously chimes with "sinews" and "respiratory' with "deity". The Muse, for Graves, is love and fate and truth as expressed by way of the language of the seasons, not by way of bones and systems. The ennobling potential of love, much at the heart of Graves's Myth, stands buried beneath fact in the charts so dear to scientists. In this satire, Graves seems to be clearing the way for his own expression of love in the lyrics. In "The Eugenist" and "Gulls and Men", Graves continues to satirize scientific attitudes as fatally factual and naively logical, and we may consider that he is thus exorcising them from his green-world community of attitudes, just as he exorcised the martial spirit with its child-like destructiveness in the war satires. The martial figure of Pterseus in "The Destroyer" was mythically a Set figure; in the Apollo of "Apollo of the Physiologists" we find another Set figure. But this should not surprise us as we have seen war and logic related in the Dorians of Graves's historical thesis. We have also seen war and logic related to the patriarchal spirit of egoism and coercion in the prose of Graves. Let us turn directly to this aspect of the satire, then, in which the male temperament is satirized. One of the first of the satires to address itself directly to the subject of the male temperament occurs in Poems: 1939-1945 and is called "Frightened Man". The poem "Frightened Man" (p. 160) is not so much a direct satire as a satire by implication, for in it men are made to be observers and dependents of the inscrutable and superior power of women: We were not ever of their feline race, Never had hidden claws to sharp as theirs In any half-remembered incarnation; Have only the least knowledge of their minds Through a grace on their part in thinking aloud;

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We recall that in The Anger of Achilles the many-thundered Zeus is so much putty in the hands of a suppliant Athena. The close of the poem may remind us of Claudius's visit to Livia in I, Claudius, at which time Claudius saw a new Livia of bottomless determination: The worst is when they hide from us and change To something altogether other: We meet them at the door, as who returns After a one-hour seeming century To a house not his own.

Graves obliquely thrusts at the male ego by inverting customary relations of dominance and dependence. A somewhat similar inversion occurs in "Theseus and Ariadne", but in this poem, based upon the classical allusion of Theseus's abandonment of Ariadne, the satire aims at undercutting the male sense of vanity in sexual prowess and adventure. Theseus dreams of an Ariadne yet waiting and yearning for him: "He sighs: 'Deep sunk in my erroneous past / She haunts the ruins and ravaged lawns.' " The inversion, which is a strategy of contrast, occurs in the second stanza. Theseus is deceiving himself, for Ariadne is quite content, And with a surer foot she goes than when Dread of his hate was thunder in the air Of him, now all is done, she never dreams But calls a living blessing down upon What he supposes rubble and rank grass; Playing the queen to nobler company.

The dreaming is all one-sided, and the effect of the poem is to be discovered in a doubly deceived Theseus. He is deceived that Ariadne mourns him as a lost lover, and he is further deceived in his own dreams which, while seeming to be a patronizing sorrow for an abandoned love, linger on disconcertingly and hauntingly. A longer and more complicated poem is "Dialogue on the Head-Land" (p. 223). Written in the form of dialogue for "She" and "He", the poem alternates between her and his words and searches the hearts of each. She wishes he might never fall "out

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of love", and he responds that he never will "whatever happens". As he repeats the phrase "Whatever happens", it slowly appears that he expects to "fall out of love" and that his exaggerated vows "to be true" are the window dressing of a vanished affection. At the close the imagined worst has already happened, and the vows close in upon the two: He: Skies have already fallen, seas are slime, Watersnakes poke and peer six-headedly She: And I lie snugly in the Devil's arms. He: I said: 'Whatever happens.' Are you crying? She: You'll not forget me - ever, ever, ever? At the level of naturalistic dialogue, the poem reveals two lovers deceiving one another and themselves as well; at the mythic level, the symbols of the seas turning to "slime", the six-headed "watersnake" poking and peering, and the girl's lying snug in the arms of the "Devil", seem to indicate that "she" is the goddess who has exchanged Osiris for Set (the Devil) and the waxing months for the waning months (the zodiac Snake with six heads stands for the six waning months) and a fertile sea for a dying one (slime). If this reading is a valid one, a subtle satire is going on in the poem. Somewhat like Theseus who dreams he was the forsaker, " h e " in this poem, while ready to be the forsaker, is himself abandoned. Unlike Troilus (as Chaucer has him), "he" is neither constant nor ennobled. Self deception, perhaps, precludes it. There is nothing particularly subtle in Graves's treatment of maledom in "The Blue-Fly" (p. 229): The Female is portrayed as a luscious cling peach which the blue-fly ravishes as he hums, " Ό my love, my fair one!' / As in the Canticles." The irony of the spectacle is etched finely as the male blue-fly is described with a malicious care for detail: Magnified one thousand times, the insect Looks farcically human; laugh if you will! Bald head, stage-fairy wings, blear eyes, A caved-in chest, hairy black mandibles, Long spindly thighs.

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But if the fly has ruined the very perfection of nature's fruit, it would be foolish to "swat that blue-fly for being a blue-fly, / For debauch of a peach". Nor will more use of a "microscope" help explain the debauch; the implications are more overwhelming than can be explained by scientific "data". The satire closes provocatively: Nature, doubtless, has some compelling cause To glut the carriers of her epidemics Nor did the peach complain.

The love in the Canticles and the five-day "glut" of lust are in sharp contrast, while the fly and the human male are compared as "carriers of her epidemics". Nature stands behind the whole comical scene with some "compelling cause". As in "Beauty in Trouble", the "beauty", here a "peach", is content. The microscope penetrates through the song of love to the grotesque bluefly and the orgiastic lust (man as angel and man as devil) - but the peach is undividedly one. The poem seems to illustrate man's own view of himself, caught as he is in the dilemma of philosophical dualism, which is the epidemic of either/or morality and body vs. soul religion. Perhaps the hypocrisy will be understood if made extreme enough by a "glut" - or can one side of a man see his other side? In "Slice of Wedding Cake", Graves's hostility grows into straight-forward invective. If there is any doubt legitimately left that Graves does seriously remain feminist, "Slice of Wedding Cake" (p. 243) should end it. The poem indicates that Graves is a misanthropist, but only of the men of "mankind". The poem reads as follows: Why have such scores of lovely, gifted girls Married impossible men? Simple self-sacrifice may be ruled out, And missionary endeavor, nine times out of ten. Repeat 'impossible': not merely rustic, Foul-tempered or depraved (Dramatic foils chosen to show the world How well women behave, and always have behaved).

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Impossible men: idle, illiterate, Self-pitying, dirty, sly For whose appearance 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 man? Do I? It might be so. In the stanza, beginning "Impossible men . . .", one seems to hear the voice of Nancy and Laura, or is it only Father Graves considering one of his daughter's husbands? The title of the poem suggests marriage, and Graves's view of patriarchal marriage is clear. The poem takes the occasion to berate men with an angry, malicious eye for failings (with the observation about City Parks oddly irrelevant and yet telling - is it that men can afford to be so ill behaved precisely because they are male?). The first three stanzas repeat the word "impossible". Then why do women marry them? Two nasty reasons appear: in a patriarchal arrangement it is for women to marry or try for independence in a man's world; under any arrangement whatsoever, the inferiority of men pense of man"? Perhaps so. All men are not Sets predominantly; cannot be escaped. Does Graves "overvalue woman / At the exsome are Osirisis. In this context, perhaps the groom should be allowed at least the reservation of judgment. But Osiris was not logical and coercive as are men in a patriarchal society, nor was he sly or self-pitying - like our "leaders" in the City parks. But the abstraction "men" is unwieldly; and by attacking "men" in pseudo-logical terms, Graves hoists them on their own rhetorical petard. It is, after all, the rhetoric of logic and reason Graves most despises. Notably, in the mythic lyrics and love lyrics, the vow is the chief element to undergo examination in order that any taint of rhetoric might be caught and exorcised. But such care occurs only in the lyrical "green world"; as for this brazen one, rhetoric is not far to seek. Satire, once again, destroys whatever is "dull, faded, and overblown" so that the lyrics might effect a "new sowing".

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A final group of satires may indicate that Graves distrusts logic and science at root because of their false claims and because they tend to become rhetoric and deceit. In their view of science, Swift and Graves seem to have much in common. The satire "Dream of a Climber" (p. 225) strives to puncture the bubble of pretense blown up by science and news media. The detached speculations of the "climber" are a "ladder" which reaches from "earth to Heaven". Yet the character of such speculation is not meditation "from the secret, stony pillow" but technical: "(World patents pending; tested in the shops.)" The climber's "nosing of pure brass", his "perfect phallo-spiritual tilt", and his "fuzzy puff or cloud on top - / Excellent lure for angels and archangels!" suggests both a pride which amounts to hybris and the apocalyptic vision of "Return of the Goddess". The satire concludes thus: Come, climber, with your scientific hat And beady gambler's eye, ascend! He pauses, poses for his camera man: 'Well Known Climber About to Ascend.' But in the published print, we may be sure, He will appear, not on the lowest rung. But nearly out of view, almost in the cloud, Leaning aside for an angel to pass, His muscular broad hands a-glint in the sun, And crampons on his feet. The "cameraman" and the caption suggest the news story which will be rhetoric amplify the climber's achievements. The line in which the climber leans aside "for an angel to pass" underscores the satirical thrust of the verse; for in juxtaposing the material and spiritual worlds, a deep cleavage is discovered between the knowledge of things and the knowledge of self: the bold climber who desires knowledge above all things is deceived in himself at the outset, and the rhetoric of news media bids fair to compound his ignorance. The wit is sardonic, and the tone is lightly veiled anger. In a more whimsical mood, Graves combines humor with satire to ridicule an old enemy: the news communique. The

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vagaries of the military mind, nationalism, history, and the official news coverage of events are all implicit in "The Persian Version" (p. 185): Truth-loving Persians do not dwell upon The trivial skirmish fought near Marathon. As for the Greek theatrical tradition Which represents that summer's expedition Not as a mere reconnaissance in force By three brigades of foot and one of horse (Their left flank covered by some obsolete Light craft detached from the main Persian fleet) But as a grandiose, ill-starred attempt To conquer Greece - they treat it with contempt; And only incidentally refute Major Greek claims, by stressing what repute The Persian monarch and the Persian nation Won by this salutary demonstration: Despite a strong defence and adverse weather All arms combined magnificently together.

The phrasing, and the terms, are modern enough. The satire seems interested in demonstrating how logic may be twisted in the interests of rhetoric and how dangerous is the assumption that man is logical. We are half led to wonder if the Greeks had their own interpretation of the event wholly correct. It is one of Graves's happiest satires, although the wryness of the parody upon communiques and nationalistic history gives the humor a keen edge. The easy access of rhetoric to logic is cleverly developed; the rhythmic and triumphant conclusion in which rhetoric completely defeats logic is both witty and trenchant in its insight. The rhetoric of morality is as corrupt as that of scientific progress, military history, or nationalism. On the turn of a word, the naughty state of nakedness may become acceptable nudity. "The Naked and the Nude" (p. 240) uses the differing connotations of the two words to present a contrast between a shameful "morality" and an unshameful "immorality". The contrast distinguishes those who wish to seem to love morality from those who, in fact, love it enough to risk seeming immoral. Though lexicographers say the two words ought to mean the same, "the

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naked and the nude / . . . stands as wide apart / As love from lies, or truth from art." The poem begins with two important distinctions; 1) lies and rhetoric are opposed to love, 2) and the rhetoric of art is opposed to truth. The poem goes on to point out how "Lovers without reproach will gaze / On bodies naked and ablaze" and how the truth of their love leaves them innocent. On the other hand, The nude are bold, the nude are sly To hold each treasonable eye, While draping by a showman's trick Their dishabille in rhetoric, They grin a mock-religious grin Of scorn at those of naked skin. The naked, therefore, who compete Against the nude may know defeat; Yet when they both together tread The briary pastures of the dead By Gorgons with long whips pursued, How naked go the sometime nude!

The term "naked" as it is here finally to be understood means honest truth and innocent love devoid of false sophistication; the term "nude" means sophistication, rhetoric, and the "showman's trick". The first is love; the second is lust. As the final lines indicate, honesty may lose to rhetoric and regain its true position only in the quality of death. Deceptiveness of rhetoric is closely related to the Gravesian emphasis upon the Dionysian and rejection of the Apollonian. The poem "Forbidden Words" indicates the path that Graves took out of an Apollonian world, a path he is still following (p. 242): There are some words carry a curse with them: Smooth-trodden, abstract, slippery vocables. They beckon like a path of stepping stones; But lift them up and watch what writhes or scurries! Concepts bared from the close language of love Darling, you use no single word of the list, Unless ironically in truth's defence To volley it back against the abstractionist.

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Which is among your several holds on my heart; For you are no uninstructed child of Nature, But passed in schools and attained the laurel wreath: Only to trample it on Apollo's floor. The term "nude" might serve to illustrate a "forbidden word". It holds that in it which detests, like the stepping stone, bold examination; it is the acceptable rhetoric for nakedness as when a painter paints a "nude"; it is a term to be barred from the language of love because of its suggestion of shame where none is. The lover, addressed as "darling", is said to ironically hurl such words back at the "abstractionist" in mock modesty. The road out of the Apollonian world, then, is through sophistication and back to simplicity. The lover is no "uninstructed child of Nature"; she has attained the laurel wreath - "Only to trample it on Apollo's floor". But this may be only one view of the matter. In "The Portrait" a quite different view of "innocence" is presented (p. 218): She speaks always in her own voice Even to strangers; but those other women Exercise their borrowed, or false, voices Even on sons and daughters. She can walk invisibly at noon Along the high road; but those other women Gleam phosphorescent - broad hips and gross fingers Down every lampless alley. She is wild and innocent, pledged to love Through all disaster; but those other women Decry her for a witch or a common drab And glare back when she greets them. Here is her portrait, gazing sidelong at me, The hair in disarray, the young eyes pleading: 'And you love? As unlike those other men As I those other women?' The portrait of wild innocence, of natural unselfconsciousness, of non-rhetorical love in this poem is not qualitatively different from the "achieved" innocence of the former portrait. Both have a similar complaint against an immoral morality of dishabille and

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artfulness so accepted by the "other women". Essentially, then, all that Graves defends heartily is love "felt", and all that he excoriates most vehemently is the scientific, speculative, or safely rhetorical view of love. Graves is unwilling to accept the Apollonian reasons for love. His goddess contends for the total love of man. This love is both physical and spiritual, like Courtly Love, and it ennobles the possessor similarly. In "Cry Faugh!" Graves reviews opposing attitudes summarily and dispatches them. A kind of drama unfolds in which Graves identifies several forms of mental bondage and excludes them from his "green world" society (p. 221): Caria and Philistia considered Only pre-marital adventures wise; The bourgeois French contrariwise. Socrates and Plato burked the issue (Namely how man-and-woman love should be) With homosexual ideology. Apocalyptic Israelites, fortelling The imminent End, called for a chaste Sodality: all dead below the waist.

A vow of love is passionate, binding, and ennobling for Graves. Mere philandering, platonic love, or monkish asceticism do not fully satisfy the spirit of love. A woman for Graves is not a kind of toy; she is not a syllogism; she cannot be done without. Woman is the center of his vision - whether she is the Earth Goddess, or a mortal person. His own detachment in stating opposing views of love is a mimicry of their speculative devotion. In the fourth stanza he finds a "nymphological disquiet" in them. The fifth stanza calmly states the desire of science to "eliminate the sexual problem". In the sixth stanza repressed emotions overflow: Cry faugh! on science, ethics, metaphysics, On antonyms sacred and profaneCome walk with me, love, in a golden rain Past toppling colonnades of glory, The moon alive on each uptilted face: Proud remnants of a visionary race.

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And it seems as though Graves, having exorcised several forms of "mental bondage" now moves into his "green world" under a moon, amidst golden rain, ready for a "new sowing".

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The "green world" of Robert Graves is a world of seasons, which may be expressed by an exact "poetic grammar". The chief stations of life - birth, initiation, marriage or consummation, repose, and death - relate to the seasons, beginning and ending with winter, just as in the pendant of "Amergin's Charm". The pendant reads as follows: I am the womb of every holt I am the blaze on every hill I am the queen of every hive I am the shield of every head I am the tomb of every hope In this world, as implied by the repetition of I in the pendant, the goddess Nature is the cynosure of all attention. She is the Mother of the Seasons, Goddess of the Wild Things, and her emblems are the moon, the sun, the wind and stars, the trees and flowers. She is the enemy of false manners and sophistication, false morality, false rhetoric and specious reasoning, and tyrannical logic. She is the image of the never-ceasing flow of nature, the promise of both life and death, joy and anguish. She is Fate and her sway is absolute and unalterable. One accepts her ambivalent nature as a matter of course and loves her for the good of experience and for all that is glorious in life. In brief, such is the nature of the goddess that stands at the center of the Myth and commands the love of a poet who was once nearly physically dead and once nearly spiritually emasculated. Graves felt war to be unnatural and immoral, and the subject never long leaves his mind as he looks for clues of an ancient myth; if the roots of war run deeply into our past, then to change men's thinking on war may ultimately mean to change men's thinking on much else as well. The matriarchal, primitive, Dionysian characters of the Myth

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indicate just how much Graves feels is wrong with Western culture. He would take the leadership away from Mars and Mercury and Apollo and give it to Demeter, a goddess of fertility and fructifying love. As the focus in the "green world" is upon the goddess, let us recall Graves's "The White Goddess" to begin with (p. 199): AH saints revile her, and all sober men Ruled by the God Apollo's golden mean In scorn of which we sailed to find her In distant regions likeliest to hold her Whom we desired above all things to know, Sister of the mirage and echo. It was a virtue not to stay, To go our headstrong and heroic way Seeking her out at the volcano's head, Among pack ice, or where the track had faded Beyond the cavern of the seven-sleepers: Whose broad high brow was white as any leper's, Whose eyes were blue, with rowan-berry lips, With hair curled honey-coloured to white hips. Green sap of Spring in the young wood a-stir Will celebrate the Mountain Mother, And every song-bird shout awhile for her; But we are gifted, even in November Rawest of seasons, with so huge a sense Of her nakedly worn magnificence We forget cruelty and past betrayal, Heedless of where the next bright bolt may fall.

The poem is written in couplets, often made inconspicuous by repeat and near rhymes, and in three stanzas which honor the triple-goddess: the virgin Echo, whose story Apuleius retold, appears in the first stanza; a full description of the nubile and erotic goddess of summer appears in the middle stanza: the crone of autumn is implied in the final stanza. The personal note of autobiography dominates the poem. Graves's disaffection and rebellion from Christianity and Pollonian authority is found in his Autobiography; he left for Mallorca because it was "a virtue not to stay". The details of the second stanza evoke the search and the research Graves carried out while writing his historical novels;

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the poem itself appears on a dedication page at the front of The White Goddess. The final stanza is full of the spirit of the poetry and prose after the amazing Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth. The "cruelty and the past betrayal" are behind - the nightmare, the nihilism, the trench warfare, and the neurasthenia - and a view of life in "nakedly worn magnificence" fills him with awe and a sense of requited love which makes him "Heedless of where the next bright bolt may fall". The poem is a prayer of thanksgiving and a eulogy to that Mythic symbol of the origins and continuing vitality of love and life: the goddess of Nature. As queen of the hive, her hair is honey-coloured; her lips are the color of the berries on her spring tree of regeneration, the Mountain Ash; her brow is broad and leper-white, like the moon. The "green sap" of spring trees and the birds, representative of all the vegetable and animal world, celebrate her with the poet Graves and for the same cause - for that moment of infinite spring vitality, for the abundant earth, for the sense of miracle. The poetry after 1939 is one permeated with a constant sense of miracle, of discovery, and of new vision. One is prompted to think that Robert Graves, like Apuleius, had a mystic experience which had profound influence upon him; one recalls Proserpine in "Escape", the woman of "The Visitation", and "The Door". At any rate, the lyrics included in Poems: 1939-1945 and those to come afterward express a seasonal myth with life experience keyed to one of the seasons, spring-initiation, or with all four seasons employed to express total experience. Life is reduced to its most fundamental aspects and may be seen as a whole, each part insinuating all other parts and refusing fragmentation; it is a mythic vision in which joys and terrors interpenetrate each other with meaning and in which the sensuous rhythms themselves become the meaning. Let us, then, look at a few of the lyrics which variously express the seasonal year. The line in the pendant to "Amergin's Charm" which stands for birth reads "I am the womb of every holt"; the winter tree of inception related to the birth vowel, Ailm, is the Silver Fir. In the poem "To Lucia at Birth" the setting is wintry in the sense that the mythic Set connotes (p. 169):

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Though the moon beaming matronly and bland Greets you, among the crowd of the new-born, With 'Welcome to the world' yet understand That still her pale, lascivious unicorn And bloody lion are loose on either hand: With din of bones and tantarara of horn Their fanciful cortege parades the land Pest on the high road, wild-fire in the corn. Outrageous company to be born into, Lunatics of a royal age long dead. Then reckon time by what you are or do, Not by the epochs of war they spread. Hark how they roar; but never turn your head, Nothing will change them, let them not change you. Set's "bloody lion" of wrath and the "lascivious unicorn", the same zodiac symbols of Anger and Lust which Apuleius and Jesus faced, roam the winter landscape in the spirit of Pterseus of "The Destroyer" - "Pest on the high road, wild-fire in the corn." The "outrageous company" seems to be a contemporary one, for it is the descendant company of a "royal age long dead". Graves's historical thesis is operating and underpins the final word of advice to Lucia: "Nothing will change them, let them not change you." The implication is that Lucia - whose name is based upon the Latine Luce - is a moon-child of love and light who will find the wintry violence into which she is born repugnant and ugly; she is asked not to change her gentleness for its violence. Thus, Graves typically opposes a patriarchal world of warriors with a female symbol of gentleness and love. All his feminism, all his anti-war feeling, and all his passionate love and hate are discovered in this poem in those precise ways which we have come to expect. It is a poem in which Robert Graves's bottomless pessimism confronts his fondest hopes. In one sense, it is a poem imbedded in the experience of all humanity. Too, one can recall from the Autobiography how Graves wrote a poem to Nancy and Jenny while the walls reverberated to the martial strains of "The British Grenadiers". That earlier poem is in the vein of nursery rhyme, as Cohen points out, while this poem is one of rich mythic implication and personal feeling. Perhaps the chief difference between

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the poems is, artistic considerations aside, a more profound recognition in the later poem of the human lot, a recognition of the high importance of, and great difficulties to be faced by, any honest code of human decency and personal integrity. Lucia is asked by the speaker in the poem to preserve her sense of values, and the weight of difficulty implicit in the simple request must be felt by way of the wintry details of the scene into which she is being born: it is an "outrageous company" full of "lunatics" who may not be satisfied with simple decency or appreciative of it. Lucia is born to trouble, but not necessarily to madness. In fact, the poem looks forward to a spring of love, to initiation, and to fulfillment in marriage. "Under the Olives" might well be Lucia's initiation into love; it is a spring poem: "I am the blaze on every hill". This is the time of year when the young waxing sun is drying the winter floods and readying the fields for planting. The Olive tree is associated with the festivals of May 10 and the experience of first love. Graves shows his ability to get power into the first Une and to match brevity with poignance (p. 259): We never would have loved had love not struck Swifter than reason, and despite reason: Under the olives, our hands interlocked, We both fell silent: Each listened for the other's answering Sigh of unreasonableness Innocent, gentle, bold, enduring, proud.

The first line flows to "reason" as the fifth line flows to "unreasonableness"; these oversway the hesitant intermediate and final rhythms. The free and independent personalities of two young people, innocent and proud, are caught up unaware in the persuasive and purposive rhythms of procreative nature. A moment of universal experience unfolds itself which looks back to puberty and forward to maturity, and in the sharp swoop of the transition there is petulant bewilderment. It is all "despite reason", yet it is a reality of human experience - the kind of reality which 10

Graves, The White Goddess, p. 491.

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is so conspicuously absent from the chart of "Apollo of the Physiologists". If the lovers of "under the Olives" might be imagined to have married and consummated their love, although love is not a matter of mere legality to Graves, they would enter the phase of "Amergin's Charm" denoted cryptically by the words "I am queen of every hive". As bees both bring honey and sting, the lovers envision the sweetness of their love enduring the final pain of mortality - as do the lovers of "Counting the Beats". As the lovers lie in one another's arms, each heart beat seems to take them nearer to the moment of final parting, hardly to be conceived, and the poem's rhythm is appropriately pulsing, meditative and slow. The lovers face death, which their love seems to deny, with a metaphysical question (p. 209): Where shall we be (She whispers) where shall we be, When death strikes home, O where shall we be Who were you and I? Not there but here, (He whispers) only here, As we are, now and here, Always you and I. The moment is to be suspended and immortalized, the wheel of time to be stopped, through an act of memory of "now and here". The solution of the chief Orphic mystery concerning the problem of "escape from the Wheel", Graves explains, is "not to forget".11 This solution is made the matter of "Instructions to the Orphic Adept", and it colors Graves's view of love. A forgotten vow is loss of life, a kind of sacrilege. In a different but related context, Graves's surviving his comrades-in-arms anguished him, and he has never quite forgiven himself. "The Survivor" is a study of unrelieved anguish, for the speaker must be loyal to others with yet new vows of love. That the war foisted this impossible condition upon Graves is just one more reason for his hatred of it. Pain is soothed but not resolved in "Counting the Beats", for it 11

Op. cit., pp. 140-41.

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seems to wear the solution "not to forget" and dominate the final stanza: Counting the beats, Counting the slow heart beats, The bleeding to death of time in slow heart beats, Wakeful they lie.

The mythic vision of Graves is not without pain, but it is pain in the natural order of things, to be faced with the heart as well as the head. The seasonal cycle which brings in the spring and summer brings autumn and winter too. It is no secret and can be faced with dignity. Autumn, of course, is the time when the cronegoddess is "the shield of every head", and in "She Tells Her Love While Half Asleep" the bloody-minded Muse is a gentle nurse (p. 171): She tells her love while half asleep, In the dark hours, With half-words whispered low: As Earth stirs in her winter sleep And puts out grass and flowers Despite the snow, Despite the falling snow.

Few poems might better illustrate Graves's ability to merge the world of human feeling with the world of mythic feeling. As the seasonal pattern of the Myth implies, the protean nature of the goddess reflects the rhythms of life as life felt, rather than life thought about; and here the rhythms inform us of the meaning, or, literally, transmit the meaning. The phrase "In the dark hours" refuses to take regular meter, the whole pulse of rhythm, as of meaning, resting gently and definitely on "dark". This pulse of rhythm transmits itself to the last two lines (which might easily be read regularly) so that "-spite" alone becomes stressed. And this is a soothing rhythm used with those who are ill and possibly past hope. Further, the rhythms of the second and final lines seem to fuse together the logical distinction that exists between "She" and "Earth" even though the "as" prohibits the fusion. That is, the emotional content of the rhythm defies the logic of the syntax so that the world of human feeling merges into the

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world of mythic feeling through a kind of poetic alchemy. For death, the pendant to "Amergin's Charm" pronounces these words: "I am the tomb of every hope". Graves's reactions to death vary with his moods. The poem "Lovers in Winter" shows a courageous attitude (p. 164): The posture of the tree Shows the prevailing wind; And ours, long misery When you are long unkind. But forward, look, we lean Not backward as in d o u b t And still with branches green Ride our ill weather out. But death can be the hasty error of "The Suicide in the Copse" or the straightforward fear of "The Twin of Sleep" which makes its point with telling effect in the final stanza (p. 305): I do not like Death's greedy looks: Give me this twin instead Sleep never auctions off my books, My boots, my shirt, my bed. Again, the poem "Apple Island" finds the speaker holding his own against fear as he feels he may find a happy immortality on the orchard island of Hesperides or Avalon. The poem runs thus (p. 262): Though cruel seas like mountains fill the bay Wrecking the quayside huts, Salting our vineyards with tall showers of spray; And though the moon shines dangerously clear, Fixed in another cycle Than the sun's progress round the felloe'd year; And though I may not hope to dwell apart With you on Apple Island Unless my breast be docile to the dart Why should I fear your element, the sea, Or the full moon, your mirror, Or the halved apple from your holy tree?

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The speaker seems to address the goddess. The time, judging from the "cruel seas" which destroy human habitation and spray the vineyards with salt, is the thirteenth month when the seas boom along the coast and among the reeds - the dead month. If the sun is at its nadir in its course around the "felloe'd year", the moon, "fixed in another cycle, is yet powerful and shines "dangerously clear" as the crone of death over all nature. Yet the speaker feels he may yet reach Apple Island for having had a breast "docile to the dart", or a heart open to the lunar shafts of love. Why, then, the speaker questions, should he fear her symbols of sea, moon, or apple? The seas symbolize the element of life; the moon symbolizes its phases as in a mirror; the apple symbolizes immortal life: For if an apple is halved cross wise each half shows a five-pointed star in the centre, emblem of immortality, which represents the Goddess in her five stations from birth to death and back to birth again. It also represents the planet V e n u s - V e n u s to whom the apple was sacred - adored as Hesper the evening star on one half the apple, and as Lucifer Son of the Morning on the other. 12

Thus, the poem operates within the precise "grammar of poetic myth" which is a language of the seasons; the winter of death implies a rebirth in the child Horus, the resurrected Osiris or Dionysus. There is, also, a strong hint of a personal kind of immortality, just as winter yields to spring, for those, such as the speaker in "Apple Island", who have a docile heart. Out of this hope, the speaker faces death with trust and equanimity. Many of Graves's poems follow the points of the star to be found in the halved apple: birth, initiation, consummation or marriage, repose, and death. Sometimes, as in "The Door", a lyric expresses the entire sequence of the wax and wane of life under the auspices of a goddess Nature (p. 166): When she came suddenly in It seemed the door could never close again, Nor even did she close it - she, she The room lay open to a visiting sea Which no door could restrain, «

Op. cit., p. 277.

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Yet when at last she smiled, tilting her head, To take her leave of me, Where she had smiled, instead There was a dark door closing endlessly, The waves receded. Two balanced stanzas and all in one breath, the poem sweeps in full circle around the points of the star in the halved apple. Each stanza holds word and phrase against the other. The door which "could never close again" is soon "closing endlessly"; and the classic restraint in the soft exaltation of " - she, she - " is balanced in delicate tension and with precision against the muted terror of "instead". The word door, Celtic duir or oak, seasonally ties in with mid-summer in the tree-alphabet; the sea, as the flood of life, rises in spring to summer fullness and recedes in the autumn to winter low, the time of storm waves. Like Aphrodite on the sea shell, the goddess washes in with the flood, and then returns; with her returns life, accorded to man by Nature, and its vision of beauty. In this poem, as elsewhere in his prose and numberless articles, Graves finds in a female goddess the only apt description of that full vision of the endless variety and beauty of the earth and its terrors. In "The Door" the joy of life and the fear of death seem to reconcile themselves in a serene vision of a lovely goddess whose only fault is her withdrawal. Yet this goddess, described only as smiling or "tilting her head", seems mortal and warm to us somehow. Goddess and mortal seem merged, and this merging leads me to restate and re-emphasize an earlier suggestion for the reading of the poetry. My suggestion, in brief, is that Graves's love poetry is involved inextricably with his Mythic goddess. The addressed lover of a poem often seems to be ambivalently a mortal woman and again a goddess of Nature, Fate, and Life. It is not merely that several of Graves's poems are addressed specifically to goddesses, such as "Rhea" or "To Myrto of Myrtles", but that in such poems as ."She Tells Her Love While Half Asleep" or "The Door" he merges what is mortal and what is myth. What does such a suggestion mean for the reading of the poetry? It might well mean that half of the power in the love poetry is lost upon a reader who

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misses the ambiguity involved in verses which imply that learning to love a woman is the same experience as learning to love fate. The primitive woman of free and independent spirit, such as the Orange Priestess in Hercules, My Shipmate, is the woman, the earthly Muse, to and of whom Graves writes his poetry. In short, it is the matriarchal spirit of womankind, who once imitated the Creation Myth of the Pelasgians, raised queendoms, and held men subservient in an ordered world, that Graves evokes. He does not wish a resumption of human sacrifice, if any doubt remains on this point in the mind of the reader; he is, however, deeply distrustful of the male temperament and would like women and the world to be free of the whims of men. In the above reading of the prose it was my intention to establish Graves's views on man's inferiority to woman; this same view recurs in the satiric verse. It seems altogether reasonable to suppose that the same author would not change, in order to write poetry, those views he held to write prose. Thus, the person addressed in the love poetry, when this can be ascertained or supposed to be a woman, is that primitive and free woman who loves when she will. She is, then, the image of fate, and in "Turn of the Moon" this relation between woman and fate becomes clear. They are both the "inconstant moon" (p. 271): Never forget who brings the rain In swarthy goatskin bags from a far sea: It is the Moon as she turns, repairing Damages of long drought and sunstroke. Never count upon the rain, never foretell it, For no power can bring rain Except the Moon as she turns; and who can rule her? She is prone to delay the necessary floods, Lest such a gift might become obligation, A month, or two, or three; then suddenly Not relenting but by way of whim Will perhaps conjure from the cloudless west A single drop to surprise with hope Each haggard, upturned face. Were the Moon a Sun, we would count upon her To bring rain seasonably as she turned;

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THE MYTH AND THE POETRY Yet no one thinks to thank the regular Sun For shining fierce in summer, mild in winter Why should she so drudge? But if one night she brings us, as she turns, Soft, steady, even, copious rain That harms no leaf nor flower, but gently falls Hour after hour, sinking to the taproots, And the sodden earth exhales at dawn A long sigh scented with pure gratitude, Such rain - the first rain of our lives, it seems, Neither foretold, cajoled, nor counted on Is woman giving as she loves.

The Moon, the symbol of the goddess Nature and Fate and Love, controls the rain, the winds, and the fertility of the earth in an inconstant, though not malicious, manner. One can not "foretell" or "count upon" the rain, so that when it does fall it is a free gift that goes to the "taproots". The Sun, who is constant, cannot surprise us as can the Moon. Regardless of the Moon's many fluctuations, the Sun stays true to its course. Here, then, is the relation between man and woman: man is a constant Sun who serves an inconstant Moon-woman. He cannot "foretell" or "count upon" her love and receives it with "pure gratitude". The Moon, goddess of Fate, bestows her blessings or her curses, her rain or drought, upon earth just as woman loves man; the rain "Is woman giving as she loves", and man's "sodden" earth exhales with a long scented sigh at dawn like some troubadour composing an aubade after the cruel, aloof lady has taken pity upon him. In the love poetry of Robert Graves, then, as in Courtly love poetry, the man is steadfast and loyal to a lady of caprice. Allow the mortal woman to become a goddess of Nature and Fate, and it will follow that loving a capricious woman is, in a way, like loving a capricious fate through every 'turn of the moon'. Nor is the similarity between the primitive and capricious woman that Graves admires and the aloof, capricious woman of Courtly Love one of mere change. In The White Goddess,13 Graves insists that many of the Crusaders were seduced from orthodoxy 13

Op. cit., pp. 439-40.

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by certain heretical Christian cults existing under the protection of the Moslems in the Holy Land. These cults, which had earlier been worshippers of the Virgin as an Earth Goddess, were found by the Crusaders worshipping the Virgin Mary. King Richard Lion-Heart was one who belonged to the Marian cult, and his "lyre-plucking, red-stockinged troubadors" composed French songs which found their way into early English poetry under "anon". As the worship of Mary exalted the female status, the effect upon society was to exalt the status of women in general, to the welfare of all: The most memorable result of the Crusades was to introduce into Western Europe an idea of romantic love which, expressed in the terms of the ancient Welsh minstrel tales, eventually transformed the loutish robber barons and their sluttish wives to a polished society of courtly lords and ladies. From the castle and court good manners and courtesy spread to the country folk; and this explains 'Merry England' as the country most engrossed in Mary-worship. 14

In this way, Graves draws a line of continuity between his work in pre-historical myth and his interests in a contemporary world. The Hellenes had barbarized a civilized Minoan culture, reduced women to slaves, and put logic in the place of love; the result was that the male temperament became hardened and crafty. The introduction into feudal Europe of Mary-worship, on the other hand, exalted women and the gentleness of women; the result was the spread of "good manners and courtesy" through the court to the folk. Thus, the Myth, the style of the poetry, and the purpose of the poetry come into focus. The Myth is, for Graves, the firm ground upon which European culture rests; the style of Courtly Love poetry as it implies man's relations to woman accurately reflects the Osirian love of Isis; the purpose is to help spread those attitudes which might bring good manners and courtesy into greater fashion - and to help avoid war in the future. The love of a woman teaches us to be gentle of heart and more docile in the hands of fate. Behind the beloved woman stands the goddess of nature, now the Mid-summer goddess of love, now »

Ibid.

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the hag of nightmare, now the image of tortured fate. In "Fragment" a lovely lady "expands" to the goddess of Nature (p. 261): Are you shaken, are you stirred By a whisper of love? Spell-bound to a word Does Time cease to move, Till her calm grey eye Expands to a sky And the clouds of her hair Like storms go by? And in "Two Children" it seems that woman is loved as a nature goddess, an evanescent Flora (p. 335): You were as venturesome as I was shy: Eager and inquisitive your eye. You set a nap on the plum, a haze on the rose, And shooting stars across the wintry sky Flashed by in volleys for me when you chose. None spoke with you, I alone worshipped you, Child of the wave, child of the morning dew, And in my dreams went chasing here and there A fugitive beacon-your moon-yellow hair. Is it the goddess who "set a nap on the plum", or is it a mortal woman who inspires the emotional reaction to this sensuous appreciation of nature? It seems to be both. In "The Visitation" the goddess of Mid-summer, the miraculous experience of love, is caught in another sensuous lyric (p. 260): Drowsing in my chair of disbelief I watch the door as it slowly opens A trick of the night wind? Your slender body seems a shaft of moonlight Against the door as it gently closes. Do you cast no shadow? Your whisper is too soft for credence, Your tread like blossom drifting from a bough, Your touch even softer.

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You wear that sorrowful and tender mask Which on high mountain tops in heather-flow Entrances lonely shepherds; And though a single word scatters all doubts, I quake for wonder at your choice of me: Why, why and why? The poem blends matters of mortal and mythic significance. It is, of course, a love lyric. From a state of "disbelief" the speaker is led through a vital experience which "scatters all doubts" and leaves him humble and awed at his miraculous good fortune that love should have visited him. He is awakened, profoundly affected, and amazed into a reflection on the nature of things. The woman's beauty and gentleness are suggested by similes of moonlight, orchard blossom, and mountain heather, and by one interpretation the poem might be considered a love lyric which uses somewhat trite imagery in the pastoral vein. But the woman owns a "sorrowful and tender mask", a phrase which Graves uses in connection with his goddess, and the similes are all part of the tree calendar. The moonlight is the emblem of the goddess to whom the calendar is dedicated. The blossom, here described as "drifting from a bough", implies the springtime season, the apple of wisdom, and immortality. The heather is that symbol of honey and bees, love and death, and the bittersweet experience of existence. Hence, Graves's usage of the formal term mask conveys the sense of a symbolic fatefulness which is both sorrowful and tender, bitter and sweet. If this interpretation seems acceptable, the love lyric expands into a mythic eulogy on the goddess of love. It has the feel and the quality of Botticelli's "Primavera". 15 That is, the poem is not only a love lyric, but also a lyric dedicated to the forces and the impulses of love, the fertile earth, and the beauty of nature. The goddess is a Flora in Botticelli, and the lushness and the fragile beauty of the blooms and ferns suggest the transience of the perfect moment envisioned as the virgin is led forward between a sober matron Venus and an excited nymph.

15

Op. cit., p. 154. See comment on Birth of Venus.

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Flora's face is neither joyous nor sad, but full of a conscious dignity and simplicity which seems well expressed by the phrase "sorrowful and tender mask". Love lyric and mythic lyric mingle inextricably. The concrete experience of human love is contained within mythic terms which imply universal experience. The door, opening upon the speaker, seems, as it did in "The Door", to imply the moment of mid-summer fruition of all things; unlike the earlier poem, however, the door closes in the visitor, and the moment is to continue in force to the close of the poem. Specific calendar imagery allows us to place the poem and the experience within its context of the seasons, which never cease flowing and which never cease repeating themselves. And is not this Graves's single poetic theme: "the life, death, and resurrection of the Spirit of the Year, the goddess's son and lover"? The Myth serves to focus attention upon what is most natural and most human, most personal and most universal, in experience: birth, initiation, marriage, repose, and death. "The Visitation" describes the coming of love and the power it has to move us from "disbelief" to questioning wonder. In the love poetry which deals with the theme of the vow or oath, the speaker often addresses an ambivalent loved one or listener who may be the mortal lover or the veiled goddess of Fate. Some of the most exquisite lyrics in the Collected Poems attest to the passion and restraint with which Graves approaches love and life in his maturity. They evidence a taste and refinement of spirit which comes only to the intelligent and sensitive who suffer the profound depths of horror, chaos, and deception and who survive into a simplicity of spirit. Out of all the fury of purpose which drove Graves to Mallorca and away from his homeland, out of the complex research and theories of pre-history accompanied by the technical readings of icons and myths, and, finally, out of the bulk of writings and translations has emerged a fine literary sensitivity. Both the serene sense of simplicity and the literary sensitivity have entered fully into the writing of his poetry since 1939, and in none of that poetic production do his abilities and capacities show themselves in a better light than in the love poetry dealing with the theme of the oath or vow. One

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poem, "Despite and Still", shows both the simplicity and sensitivity of which the mature Graves is master (p. 158): Have you not read The words in my head, And I made part Of your own heart? We have been such as draw The losing straw You of your gentleness, I of my rashness, Both of despair Yet still might share This happy will: To love despite and still. Never let us deny The thing's necessity, But, O, refuse To choose Where chance may seem to give Loves in alternative. The speaker in this exquisite lyric addresses his lover directly, the "necessity" of the speaker's love is at once earnest, an effect conveyed to us by the dimeter and trimeter lines, and formal, an effect conveyed by the vocative O and the couplet rhyme scheme. The final effect is one of passionate restraint, as though the speaker were demonstrating, even in the verse, that his love was teaching him to discipline his rashness, to earn a gentle regard, and to master despair. In the knowledge of their necessary love, they must love "despite and still", not attempt to deny a passionate attraction which brings with it, to "such as draw / The losing straw", grief and trouble, nor attempt to escape from the problem by taking "Loves in alternative". They must endure through all the mental confusion and bafflement and realize their heart's desire. The poem is Dionysian, rather than Apollonian, because it places feeling above reason, internal truth above external truth, desire above speculation, and love above everything. If the speaker's lover does not admire his rashness, he will put it aside and be more submissive to her gentle will; thus to love is to educate one's innermost feelings rather than the mind's percep-

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tions of the external universe. The first kind of education leads to civilization; the second leads to technocracy. Graves seems, in his poem, to be lettering the " y o u " be the goddess as well as the lover; in his sense, Graves, or the speaker of the poem, is assuring the goddess of his devotion and strengthening himself against the strokes of fate ahead. But the conditions of love, like the conditions of life, are difficult and not infrequently exasperating even for the best and most patient. The speaker of the poem "Patience" gives vent to the feelings of exasperation and the moment of despair, but does so in beautifully controlled dimeter triplets, each third line in pentameter, so that the final effect is one of disciplined anguish (p. 286): Almost I could prefer A flare of anger To your dumb signal of displeasure. Must it be my task To assume the mask Of not desiring what I may not ask? On a wide bed, Both arms outspread, I watch the spites do battle in my head. Yet know this sickness For stubborn weakness Unconsonant with your tenderness. O, to be patient As you would have me patient; Patient for a thousand nights, patient! Whether the first two lines are to be read dimeter or trimeter is a question of interpretation: is the poem meditative in tone or is it more of an outburst? Taking the first line to be a dimeter means reading it with all syllables unstressed save the last syllables of almost and prefer; this reading seems to be supported by the obvious dimeter construction of the second line. If so, the rhythm established is conversational in the sense of pulses

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overriding syllable count - a typical management of metrics in Graves's poetry - and the final effect is one of outburst. Thus, the language strives against its bonds just as the speaker struggles with his emotions to keep them within bounds. The break with trimeter to a more impulsive dimeter rhythm implies the threat of emotional disorder and rebellion, as does the resentment directed at the awkward situation in the second stanza and the hammering repetitions of "patience" in the last stanza. Still, the dimeter rhythm does set a limit to the sense of threatening disorder, and patience is evoked to restrain the very emotions which rankle within its limits of order. Whether it is the speaker's lover or his Fate which offers him the "dumb signal of displeasure", whether he is learning patience with his love or with his life, the speaker discovers his own "weakness" and "sickness" to be "unconsonant" with known and desired "tenderness". Because that tenderness is so desirable and because his own rashness may be the cause of the "signal of displeasure", the speaker is learning patience and submissiveness before a gentle affection not to be commanded, nor threatened, nor coerced. It is the 'taming of the shrew' in reverse — woman taming and civilizing man - or, at least, softening his rugged edges and bad manners. Both the prose writing and the satirical verse have prepared us for this attitude in Graves according to which the female is the superior. Part of the female superiority lies, supposedly, in an ability to choose well between conflicting decrees from the head and the heart. Both Livia and Theodora are presented to us as unillusioned persons, we recall. But it is in the figure of Antonina that we see a woman who loves her personal freedom as much as her husband, Belisarius, and who so strongly resents being taken for granted as though a piece of property that the affair with Theodosius grows far out of proportion to her real love for him, but perversely in proportion to Belisarius's galling confidence in her. For the woman, Antonina, it is a matter of the heart; for the man, Belisarius, it is a simple matter of ethics and trust. In the lyric "The Falcon Woman", Antonina and Belisarius inevitably come to mind (p. 263):

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THE MYTH AND THE POETRY It is hard to be a man Whose word is his bond In love with such a woman, When he builds on a promise She lightly let fall In carelessness of spirit. The more sternly he asks her To stand by that promise The faster she flies. But is it less hard To be born such a woman With wings like a falcon And in carelessness of spirit To love such a man?

Here, as in "Dialogue on the Headland", the "promise" implies a sense of mistrust and doubt which offends and then repels. Such promises and vows are to be kept, not spoken or bandied about, if they are to avoid becoming a mere rhetoric of love. In love, it is the thing, not the words, which is desired; either the thing is present, or it is not. Verbal promises always seem to imply the mental process, the legal contract, the Apollonian for Graves; and his celebrations of love are never free of the fear of vows, oaths, and promises. In this context it is interesting to recall Nancy's wish to be, not separated, but dismarried so that nothing legal held her to Robert Graves; Nancy's desire to be guided by love, rather than law, seems to have impressed itself upon Graves. In the lyric "Seldom, Yet Now" Nancy's objection to contractual love seems to find expression (p. 275): Seldom yet now: the quality Of the fierce love between us Seldom the encounter, The presence always, Free of oath or promise. And if we were not so, But birds of similar plumage caged In the peace of everyday, Could we still conjure wildfire up From the common earth, as now?

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Much as Nancy would have desired, the concept of love in this lyric is fierce, without duty or obligation, and continued out of desire alone. The oath or promise would only cage the lovers in a stagnant "peace of everyday", would replace passionate desire with legalistic restraint, and would reduce the "wildfire" to smothered coals. The woman and the man must be free to part or remain together if the giving of love is to have meaning. It is this freedom in matters of the heart that Graves finds to be absent in the patriarchal marriage, as we recall, and his anthropological investigation of matriarchal marriage seems to have at base a concern for man's relations with women as these relations tend to free the "quality" of love celebrated in "Seldom, Yet Now". The essential thought seems contained in the dispute between Little Ancaeus and the Orange Priestess. Little Ancaeus indicates that the Dorian Greeks invented marriage vows in order that men might not be embarrassed by their wives' giving birth to other men's sons or daughters. The sense of women as property to be watched and guarded seems madness to the Orange Priestess, who feels the problem to be better solved by allowing the mother to own the children as well as the property to rear them. No vows are necessary in the matriarchal world of Mallorca in which the Priestess lives and rules. It is a world in which the Priestess, as a woman, reflects the power of the Goddess of Love, whose symbol is the moon which controls the rains and winds and fertility of the earth and under whose full-faced light lovers make their beds to insure inception. Under the stars at Mid-summer, the lovers of "The Starred Coverlet" meet, and reassured by divine protection and approval of the moon and stars (make their presence be their sign and token of love in a luxury of worldlessness (p. 267)): A difficult achievement for true lovers Is to lie mute, without embrace or kiss, Without a rustle or a smothered sigh, Basking in each other's glory. Let us not undervalue lips or arms As reassurances of constancy, Or speech as necessary communication When troubled hearts go groping through the dusk;

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Yet lovers who have learned this last refinement To lie apart, yet sleep and dream together Motionless under their starred coverlet Crown love with wreaths of myrtle. Whether the lovers are to be placed in Pelasgia, or whether they are universal, the lyric is a paean to perfect trust and love in which no vow intrudes to imply distrust. It is to the "achievement" of such a love that the myrtle is awarded: for the glory of love. The love lyrics, then, compose themselves into a "green world" from which the attitudes attacked in the satires have been exorcised. Those attitudes always involve logical, philosophical, scientific, legalistic, and generally "intellectual" forms of "mental bondage". The mind operates to assure, protect, safeguard emotional security by law, morality, and rule of order. Yet love, friendship, happiness, and honor elude such protective measures because they are not "things" but "essences", are not owned but earned, and are not subject to laws of matter but only to the laws of the spirit - to an emotional dynamic which the calendar-story both states and represents. The laws of the spirit are of paradoxical nature: to get you must give; to freely give you must be free to withhold; to withhold is to be inconstant; to be inconstant is to seem unloving. Thus to love is to be "fickle" like the moon and the Goddess. Marie of Champagne's adulterous rule that "married love is bound love" meant that love's gift-like essence cannot be bound and retain its true "essential" nature. The Goddess is therefore the "perceptual other woman" whose gift of love is a sign of her freedom just as "her service is perfect freedom".

3.

THE MYTHIC LYRICS

The lyrics most heavily invested with Mythic content, or Mythic lyrics, recapitulate either implicitly or explicitly all that has been said. The calendar-story of Osiris's battle with Set is a story of all human and animal and vegetable life in its wax-and-wane aspect it ripes and ripes and it rots and rots. The mere fact that human,

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animal, and vegetable can be equally involved in this wax-andwane aspect makes clear the "natural" or the bio-zoo-botanical relationships among things living. Apollo may study these fruitfully with his logic and science. Graves has exorcised Apollo from his "green world" (in a reversal of Plato) not because logic or science are unuseful, but because these have wrongly extended themselves into the spiritual realm of Dionysius, celebrated in the lyrics as love, freely given, and untied to obligation or rule or law. The highest form of love is self-sacrifice when "ripeness is all" at mid-summer. This feat of pure selflessness, done in the name of love, raises man out of such "natural" relationships as dominate the calendar into a wholly different spiritual relationship with the Goddess to become her lover. In the act of volunteering one's life for the good of others, man becomes ennobled and exemplifies humanity at its best - thus Graves's view of Minoan civilization and its heroes relates to his view of Christ and to his own war experience. Suffering is balanced with a vision of love and promise; the love is earned by the suffering which is to be remembered with honor. Those who have never suffered for love have nothing to remember, of course. Thus Memory becomes a significant factor in the determination of spiritual achievement. Heroes aside, the love lyrics develop the idiom of vows and suffering (usually through patience) by which men raise themselves into the spiritual level and learn to trust without recourse to coercion. That Graves brings a good deal of psychological complexity smacking of experience to his love lyrics need not convince us that he has only a personal involvement in mind. The beloved expands to become something as big as life and experience, so that the act of loving becomes associated with the act of living - the whole of life is involved with vows, suffering and patience, and coercion or trust. In the Mythic lyrics, these matters reach a quintessence of expression befitting their subject which is the height of spiritual achievement. Notably, the welling up out of the unconscious-self of Dionysiac courage and heroism is idealized in Graves's heroes: in selflessness they find self-hood. Thus "Beauty in Death" remains essential to Graves's vision. In these poems, however, unlike " T h e Dead F o x Hunter", the sense of loss is fully balanced

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by a sense of gain which the Myth fully articulates. First, then, let us look at "To Juan at the Winter Solstice" (p. 175) which organizes all the calendar themes of the Single Theme. In the first of the poem's seven stanzas, the single, poetic theme is announced: There is one story and one story only That will prove worth your telling, Whether as 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.

Graves's long search for his Myth through epic poems and nursery rhymes, myth and legend, yielded his "Grammar of Poetic Myth", which is taken up in the second stanza: 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?

Here are the calendar trees, the zodiac beasts, the triple will (moon's three phases of new, full, old), and the Boreal Crown (the north star, motionless as death, to which all "true kings" are translated after death). As the Spirit of the Waning Year passes to the Boreal Crown in the form of a rising eagle and the Spirit of the Waxing Year begins the New Year, the third stanza may appropriately move to Spring (p. 175): Water to water, ark 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.

ark/ cradle, winnow

peers/ zodiac signs

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THE MYTH AND THE POETRY Summer or is it of the Virgin's silver beauty, All fish below the thighs? She in her left h a n d bears a leafy quince; W h e n , with her right she crooks a finger smiling, H o w m a y the King hold back? Royally then he barters life f o r love. Autumn O r of the undying snake f r o m chaos hatched, Whose coils contain the ocean Into whose chops with naked sword he springs, T h e n in black water, tangled by reeds, Battles three days and nights, T o be spewed u p beside h e r scalloped shore? Winter M u c h snow is falling, winds roar hollowly, T h e owl hoots f r o m the elder, F e a r in y o u r heart cries to the loving-cup: Sorrow to sorrow as the sparks fly upward. T h e log groans and confesses T h e r e is one story and one story only.

Virgin/

zodiac, love goddess

left/ death quince/ immortality

snake/

north wind. Set

coils/

storm wind

three/

triple will

scalloped/

elder/

log/

old m o o n

death tree

the e l d e r "

" Connections between this log and that in "Return of the Goddess" are of decay and corruption (the subject of many of the satires such as "Currasiers of the Frontier" in which "frontier" is an imaged "rind" of soldiery whose courage and honor are yet alive). Fraser noted the connection between this satire and Count Belisarius: "Does Mr. Graves feel about the British Empire, or about Western Civilization generally, more or less what he feels about Byzantium?" (Vision and Rhetoric, p. 146). Fraser further comments that Graves first saw just the horror of war and only later saw the honor and nobility of a soldier's life. But if my understanding is correct, Graves saw the honor and horror in a close relation-

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The Waxing Spirit of the Year, Osiris, moves through each season, waxing with the sun to the zenith of summer solstice when he barters love for life, and waning as his opponent Set takes his place in the goddess's favor. The Myth accounts for the turning of the year from new to old identifying life with the change of season. The goddess, Nature, is favorable and unfavorable to the Spirit of the Year as the season turns from the warm and beckoning waters of summer to the stormy seas of late fall. Zodiac imagery merges with water imagery in the zodiac-mermaid Virgin,17 and water imagery merges with seasonal imagery of seastorm and snow. Thus, the mythic Virgin, ever renewed, moves from the spring rains to the summer sea of life through the storms of fall seas to the snows of death - to spring again. Similarly, man begins life in the womb, in a bag of waters, and moves to the sea of death; he passes his life to his sons, who are born in a bag of waters. Hence, "Water to water, ark to ark". The femaleness of all nature lies at the heart of the poem. The complex imagery enfolds and reflects man's life as an integral, but subordinate, element in a larger design which holds within it all life and all things. Within this vast design, man is a small matter. The seasonal pattern reaches a climax in winter, at which point Graves insists upon the vita brevis theme in order to gain a startling contrast of all the water imagery with the spark of human life. He strikes the theme by using Job's lament and by alluding to the famous lines: "But man is born to trouble, as the sparks fly upward." The Graves who wrote his despair into "The Castle" might

ship which society, the decayed log, could not see. That society could not see the honor - the "beauty in Death" - was a form of proof to Graves that "decay" had indeed set in. That the "decay" of the log in the Mythic lyric associates with "rind" in the satire which, in turn, associates with the views of Belisarius indicates the high degree of inter-relatedness that exists in Graves's work and why one may well be forced to consider his thesis and his Myth as relevant to a contemporary world; the satires imply our world is a spiritually blind one, and the lyrics present the vision. 17 Again, the precession of the equinoxes accounts for the dislocation of the Virgin from the mid-summer position and her mythically appropriate place, according to Graves.

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have ended at the sixth stanza in the winter snow's triumph over vitality. But the Mother and Son Myth implies that the Son barters "love for life" and keeps his vow with steadfast love, not with a qualified "whatever happens" as in "Dialogue on the Headland". For even though death is imminent, yet life has been received and held. There is no need to be thankless. In the final stanza of the poem Graves evidences that affirmation of life, and its mythic symbol of the Goddess of Love, to which he struggled and won through despite the horror of war, neurosis, and nightmare: 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. The seasonal pattern tells us what is promised and what is performed by the goddess: birth, initiation, consummation, repose, and death. The goddess is at the center of this vision of Robert Graves; though her autumn boar will trample the summer flowers, one is not to forget her smiling or her gracious seasons. Thus, the goddess of Fate is loved despite her blows as the capricious courtly lady is loved despite her cold, aloof manner. The Gravesian Myth inspires love to endure, trust, and hold fast, and women to be Muses to men. In such a vision, the heart rules the head, and Dionysus, Apollo. The theme of self-destruction and willing self-sacrifice appears in "Darien" and involves and organizes nearly every major theme in the poetry. The structure of the poem is mythic in Graves's definition of myth as ritual mime: "Darien" reenacts the sacred king's ritual sacrifice at mid summer in true primitive terms. The sacred king, A Dionysius-Celestial Hercules-Osiris figure, addresses the Goddess Io of Danaan Argos, perhaps, and their son-to-be Darien, who is a Horus figure. The poem deals with a central moment in the "single poetic theme: the life, death, and resurrection of the Spirit of the Year: the Goddess's Son and Lover". All of Graves's interest in his Myth reveals itself in this

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mythic poem, and yet the poet dominates the anthropologist as the lyricism of the treatment pervades throughout (p. 216): It is a poet's privilege and fate To fall enamoured of the one Muse Who variously haunts this island earth. She was your mother, Darien, And presaged by the darting halcyon bird Would run green-sleeved along her ridges, Treading the asphodels and heather-trees With white feet bare. Often at moonrise I had watched her go And a cold shudder shook me To see the curved blaze of her Cretan axe. Averted to set face, her business Not yet with me, long-striding She would ascend the peak and pass from sight. But once at full moon, by the sea's verge, I came upon her without warning. Unrayed she stood, with long hair streaming, A cockle-shell cupped in her warm hands, Her axe propped idly on a stone. No awe possessed me, only a great grief; Wanly she smiled, but would not lift her eyes (As a young girl will greet the stranger). I stood upright, a head taller than she, 'See who has come', said I. She answered: 'If I lift my eyes to yours And our eyes marry, man, what then? Will they engender my son Darien? Swifter than wind, with straight and nut-brown hair, Tall, slender-shanked, grey-eyed, untameable; Never was born, nor ever will be born A child equal my son Darien, Guardian of the hid treasures of your world.' I knew then by the trembling of her hands For whom that flawless blade would sweep: My own oracular head, swung by its hair. 'Mistress', I cried, 'the times are evil And you have charged me with their remedy. O, where my head is now, let nothing be

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But a clay counterfeit with nacre blink: Only look up, so Darien may be born! 'He is the northern star, the spell of knowledge, Pride of all hunters and fisherman, Your deathless fawn, an eaglet of your eyrie, The topmost branch of your unfellable tree, A tear streaking the summer night, The new green of my hope.' Lifting her eyes, She held mine for a lost eternity. 'Sweetheart', said I, 'strike now, for Darien's sake!' At the center of this poem, as the Myth, stands the goddess of love and fate. As Graves identifies with Osiris and the sacred king to write his lyrics, so in this poem the poet is identified with the sacred-king speaker and is "enamoured" with his vision of the Muse "Who variously haunts this island earth". As a goddess of the seasons, the Muse's winter solstice is "presaged by the halcyon bird; 18 as goddess of the Wild Things she runs "green-sleeved along her ridges" among flowers sacred to her; 19 as the Moon Goddess she strides across the skies with an emblem, the Cretan axe, whose double blades curve like the new moon and old moon - hence the "cold shudder"; as the goddess of the sea and midsummer love she appears under the full moon at seaside with her hair streaming down, a cockle shell in her hand, and the axe put idly by. As love goddess, she is the Muse, that wild, innocent girl of "The Portrait" and of the love lyrics in which she comes unexpectedly as in "The Visitation" or remains away as in "Patience". In "Darien" the speaker comes upon her "without warning", and their love is the perfect vowless, wordless marriage of eyes. Thus the themes of wordless love in "The Starred Coverlet" and the not-to-be-foretold event of love in "Turn of the Moon" appear to give the flat, mythic pattern the depth of human feeling. Too, the ennoblement of the lover in the Courtly Love theme of 18

Graves, The White Goddess, p. 193. " Graves, The Greek Myths, I, p. 288. The "asphodel" here intended is the narcissus, not the daffodil, or the three-petalled, blue fleur-de-lys, or iris. In Minoan times, this lily plant was sacred to, and the royal emblem of, Cnossian Kings of Crete.

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the lyrics implies self-sacrifice and self-control, and in "Darien" it is the supreme sacrifice and supreme nobility required of the lover: he offers his life that the fields might be refructified with his blood (on the primitive level), that Darien and new hope might be born to a dank, frozen earth (on the mythic level), and that his love might be found unswerving (on the personal level). There is no compromise. Apuleius's hatred of the bandits and his personal sacrifice to aid Virginia, Jesus's sacrifice of the appearance of dignity that he might take upon himself the sins of his people as a scapegoat and exorcise them from Israel, and Hector's defense of his home and family against Achilles's vainglory these are concrete materials by which to illustrate the refusal of compromise with truth as Graves has offered them in his prose. In the poetry, the desire of Graves to exorcise attitudes in the satires so that a lyric "green world" might be glimpsed seems relevant to "Darien" as well. For the poet identifies, says Graves, with Osiris in his sacrificial role in order that Darien might be born; for the love of the Goddess of Wisdom the poet actively wishes to oppose "whatever is overblown, faded, and dull and to clear the way for a new sowing". Thus, the speaker says in the last few lines of the poem that Darien is "The new green of my hope". On these words, the goddess raises her eyes to the speaker "for a lost eternity" of worldless love at the edge of death. For the sacred-king, an oracular head would be formed after death through which the priestesses would prophesy; it would be a "clay counterfeit with nacre blink". For the poet, on the other hand, the "nacre blink" might well mean the still, slow gaze of poetic immortality through mother-of-pearl eyes. The chief theme of the poem, however, remains that of conscious self-sacrifice conceived as the highest possible expression of human love; for with Wilfred Owen, Graves feels, perhaps from the trench-warfare days, that there is no "Greater Love" than that of dying for others. Darien is the hope born of love and sacrifice. The figure which appears in "To Juan at Winter Solstice" is the same figure which, in "Darien", appears at winter solstice and demonstrates the ennobling quality of love by giving his life for Darien - who is the New Year Child, Horus, a resurrected

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Osiris. The great interest of "Darien" rests in its clear view of the goddess and in her relations with her lover. The Osiris figure stakes all for love and with the hope that Darien will be bom. "To Juan at Winter Solstice" organizes the calendar themes. The mythic poem "Instructions to the Orphic Adept" (pp. 20103) is a fascinating poem involving a theory of reincarnation which is implicit in the spiral of the seasons (the spiral at the entrance to Mycenaean tombs, the bean plant, and the ivy all symbolize this notion of deaths and rebirths). The theory may be familiar to students of Bhuddism or, perhaps, of Plato who discusses this concept in Phaedo. In brief, our present life determines our next life in an ethical context of reward and punishment: tyrants are reborn hawks or wolves, sensualists become asses, fair and civic-minded men are reborn bees, ants, or good men. Only perfect souls escape out of the "wheel" or "spiral" of reincarnations. This theory may be helpful in explaining the symbolism of Apuleius's story and of such poems as "Lyceia" - in which Lyceia taunts the wolves who are learning only "envy and hope". It may also explain Graves himself, his highly moralistic position, and his fascination with the theme of the after-life portrayed in "Instructions". For the Adept is a volunteer sacrifice who, having died, awakens in the nether-world. The poem itself is, in part, a translation from the Timpone Grande and Campagne Orphic tablets. It begins thus: So soon as ever your mazed spirit descends From daylight into darkness, Man, remember What you have suffered here in Samothrace, What you have suffered. After your passage through Hell's seven floods, Whose fumes of sulphur will have parched your throat, The halls of Judgment loom before you, A miracle of jasper and of onyx. To the left hand there bubbles a black spring Overshadowed with a great white cypress. Avoid this spring, which is Forgetfulness; Though all the common rout rush down to drink, Avoid this spring.

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To the right hand there lies a secret pool Alive with speckled trout and fish of gold; A hazel overshadows it. Ophion, Primaeval serpent straggling in the branches, Darts out his tongue. This holy pool is fed By dripping water; guardians stand before it. Run to this pool, the pool of Memory, Run to this pool! Then will the guardians scrutinize you, saying: 'Who are you, who? What have you to remember? Do you not fear Ophion's flickering tongue? Go rather to the spring beneath the cypress, Flee from this pool!' Then you shall answer: Ί am parched with thirst. Give me to drink. I am a child of Earth, But of Sky also, come from Samothrace. Witness the glint of amber on my brow. Out of the Pure I come, as you may see. I also am of your thrice-blessed kin, Child of the three-fold Queen of Samothrace; Have made full quittance for my deeds of blood, Have been by her invested in sea-purple, And like a kid have fallen into milk. Give me to drink, now I am parched with thirst, Give me to drink. But they will ask you yet: 'What of your feet?' You shall reply: 'My feet have borne me here Out of the weary wheel, the circling years. To that still, spokeless wheel - Persephone. Give me to drink!' Then they will welcome you with fruit and flowers, And lead you toward the ancient dripping hazel, Crying: 'Brother of our immortal blood, Drink and remember glorious Samothrace!' Then you shall drink. You shall drink deep of that refreshing draught, To become lords of the uninitiated Twittering ghosts, Hell's countless populaceTo become heroes, knights upon swift horses,

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Pronouncing cracles from tall white tombs By the nymphs tended. They with honey water Shall pour libations to your serpent shapes, That you may drink Unlike "To Juan at Winter Solstice", which suggests the misery of the human lot and the Set figure who as scape-goat carries off the sins of a people in a rite of purgation (Graves's Christ and Frazer's sense of the Pope of Bhudda as good shepherds who lay down their lives for their sheep), "Darien" and "Instructions to the Orphic Adept" belong together as mid-summer poems of Osiris's volunteer sacrifice, just before and just after death occurs from a double-axe. The Set figure's death is sad, and as death approaches he is enjoined, as is Juan, to "dwell on her smiling" to compensate for the pain and the suffering to come; the human lot in general is sad, and compensation is to come through memory of better days. But in "Darien" the moment of the sacrifice is one of ecstatic spiritual love (human love at its fullest) caught by the sharp spoken rhythms and the exchange of eyes held for an "eternity" - and, next, a "mazed spirit" descends into darkness to "that still, spokeless wheel Persephone". There is to be no return and no "Escape" (in the war poem, please recall, it was "Dear Lady Proserpina" who sent Graves back up to life) for the Adept whom the Orphic tablets instruct with regard to behavior in the nether-world. Surely, Graves did not invent the Timpone Grande or Compagno tablets, and his own war-time death-poem must have struck him as curiously parallel to the sense of those tablets - the Pagan nether-world, the "mazed" descent, and the Goddess — for Proserpina and Persephone are names for the White Goddess (particularly, according to Frazer the latter name Persephone which doubles for Demeter). Graves had passed Cerberus with its three heads - lion, lynx, and sow - and given it morphia to sneak out (shades of Odysseus and Charterhouse School), but the Adept goes on to find choice necessary between the spring of Forgetfulness and the Pool of Memory. The spring of Forgetfulness is on the left (the weak side related to the waning sun), is overshadowed by a "great white cypress" (a prime resurrective tree perhaps ironically placed), and is

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flocked to by the "common rout" who prefer the "black" waters of oblivion to the water of life in the Pool of Memory. On the right, the hazel overshadows the "secret pool", drops its nuts of wisdom to the "speckled trout and fish of gold" below, and holds in its branches the serpent Ophion of the Creation Myth. The fish of gold, the amber on the Adept's brow, and his being of the Sky and from the Pure - all these relate to the sun and to gold just as Osiris is the waxing sun and spirit-of-the-year. And what has he to remember? He will remember the "eternity" of eyes and ecstatic love and the death - that Darien might be bom or that there might be hope in the world. He "belongs" to the three-fold Queen of Samothrace and repeats the ritual phrase of his sacrifice used in Eleusinian rites: "like a kid I have fallen in milk". This phrase seems to mean that a lamb of innocence has died untainted with evil in the purity of maternal milk - thus a sense of beauty and honor is seen in the death of volunteer sacrifice. Such purity will allow the Adept to escape the need of any further reincarnation or rebirths - for his life has been perfect. His feet, thus, have brought him to the that "still, spokeless wheel - Persephone". No more spokes, because no more months. Thus he is not afraid of Ophion's "flickering tongue" since he is immortal and is welcomed as such to become a lord of the "uninitiated / Twittering ghosts . . . .". He has become a hero on earth, at whose tomb the nymphs will pour libations and through whose mask the priestesses will pronounce oracles. The Adept will dwell in the land of orchards known as Elysium where the sun always shines and flowers always bloom and every kind of fruit is always in season. His powers of prophesy depend upon his memory, and his memory is good since he has nothing he wishes to forget. Similarly, Graves's memory is sharp, and his experiences with war have remained with him through the novels and researches in a continuous search for the meaning of death and sacrifice. In The White Goddess (pp. 140 ff.) Graves discusses this problem of the Orphic solution to the problem of flux or Rheo, "I flow away". It has been discussed by Kirkham in his discussion of "Instructions". The solution is "not to forget". Considering this solution with regard to Graves's war experiences is fruitful. For

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even if Graves had wanted to forget the war, his nightmares and ghosts and neurasthenia would not let him. His guilt would not let him. Yet his discovery of his Goddess vanquished nightmare and ghost together and seemingly whatever guilt he may have felt from the war. Had his theory been a hoax, this would not have happened (the poetry tells us it did, in fact, occur). How is this explained? One can only speculate and offer guesses. My best guess is that Graves is a devotee of the Goddess and a theory of reincarnation according to which his old comrades-in-arms, like the Adept, have escaped the Wheel acquitted of their "deeds of blood" by their selfless acts of courage and are in Elysium. Graves, having "died", may be classed with them were it not for his later culpable acts implicit in But It Still Goes On - which his steady life thereafter may have up for. His poems to the Black Goddess would suggest something like this. But the escape from ghosts and nightmares, which Apuleius in his prayer to the Goddess mentions, can be accounted for by the scheme of justice inherent in the ethical scheme of reincarnations. For it no longer was necessary for Graves to feel responsible for the problem of justice which he had, Hamlet-like, taken upon himself: he neither had to admonish corrupt authorities nor attack them to bring things right. They would receive their due and more in reincarnations. His quarrel was ended in a revelation of divine justice which his war experience and his scholarship supported. Again, note that his poem "Instructions" is in part a translation from Orphic tablets which Graves as a Muse poet devoted to truth-telling does not scruple to reproduce into poetry. Kirkham says that Graves nowhere mentions anything about immortality of the soul; however, it might be said that he mentions little else since the rebirth pattern of the calendar is the seasonal one upon which immortality as a doctrine is based - the spiral on the entrance to the Mycenaean tombs. Perhaps it does seem odd of Graves to adopt an ancient religion (yet one still current in the aspect of reincarnation), but once having accepted the concept for Graves, at least, the discovery of the Goddess can be seen to be a resolution to his past and his future in one clear sense: the old rankle over injustice both social and divine was assuaged. It opened the way

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for a new sowing for Graves amply evidenced in the new spirit of his poetry, in the happy second marriage, and in a resolution to the problem of flux and to Alun Lewis's question of " . . . what remains of the beloved". The Goddess, symbolized as a crane in "Return of the Goddess", is related to "the invention of letters, the cessation of war, and justice".20 The poem closed thus: Sufficiunt Tecum, Caryatis,

Domnia Quina. As has been mentioned, Graves offers his Myth as a solution to the West's difficulties within and without by way of which religion could be reasserted without civil war. Though one is obliged to regard this as optimistic, he may yet regard it as seriously intended on the part of Graves; for it would, if accomplished, tip the scales back the way they were before the Dorians and Pterseus "tipped civilization off balance" - which Graves memorializes in "Lament for Pasiphae". The three mythic poems - "To Juan at Winter Solstice", "Darien" and "Instruction to the Orphic Adept" - represent a climax in Graves's poetry. In them Graves attempts to summarize his many themes, arrive at a quintessential crystallization of his Myth, and present his passionate vision of a Muse whose beauty and wisdom could give rise to man's most generous and noble impulses - even self-sacrifice to the general good. Such was the interpretation made of Jesus in King Jesus; the antithesis of Jesus would be Achilles of The Anger of Achilles. In the satiric verse "The Destroyer" presents Pterseus as the prose presents Achilles; the sacrificial figures of "Darien" and "To Juan at Winter Solstice" body forth a poetic view of the Sacred Kings of whom 20

Graves, The White Goddess, pp. 248-50. One is led, by the theory of reincarnation, to reconsider the use of animals in Graves's work as owing ethical as well as symbolic possibilities for comment. Would Apuleius, unrepentant, have been reborn an ass? Are the wolves of "Lyceia" one-time tyrants or vicious men? Are the frogs of "Return of the Goddess" similarly undergoing punishment for a pompous and dull life? And is the crane of the same poem the Furies?

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Jesus, for Graves, represents the last of a "long and illustrious line". That illustrious line of Sacred Kings presumably began declining when Troy and Cnossus and Mycenaean Greece fell. As the fall of Cnossus represents a crucial historical moment for Graves, the moment when civilization fell before barbarism, this discussion of the mythic poetry might aptly close upon a poem dedicated to that moment in time. "Lament for Pasiphae" is in one sense an occasional poem, but in another sense it is an elegy: an elegy composed upon the occasion of the death of the Cretan Blodeuwedd, or Pasiphae (p. 204): Dying sun, shine warm a little longer! My eye, dazzled with tears, shall dazzle yours, Conjuring you to shine and not to move. You, sun, and I all afternoon have laboured Beneath a dewless and oppressive cloud A fleece now gilded with our common grief That this must be a night without a moon, Dying sun, shine warm a little longer! Faithless she was not: she was very woman, Smiling with dire impartiality, Sovereign, with heart unmatched, adored of men, Until Spring's cuckoo with debraggled plumes Tempted her pity and her truth betrayed. Then she who shone for all resigned her being, And this must be a night without a moon. Dying sun, shine warm a little longer! This poem has only one difficulty or barrier to a satisfying interpretation, and that is how to explain "Spring's cuckoo with bedraggled plumes". A note in The Greek Myths may clarify:21 Hera's forced marriage to Zeus commemorates conquests of Crete and Mycenaean - that is to say Cretanized - Greece, and the overthrow of her supremacy in both countries. He probably came to her disguised as a bedraggled cuckoo, in the sense that certain Helenes who came to Crete as Fugitives accepted employment in the royal guard, made a palace conspiracy and seized the kingdom. Cnossus was twice sacked, apparently by Hellenes: about 1700 B.C., and 21

Graves, The Greek Myths,

I, p. 51 n. 1.

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about 1400 B.C., and Mycenae fell to the Achaeans a century later. Zeus could be caricatured as a cuckoo because he threw all the other deities out of the nest, and because he borrowed Hera's sceptre, which was surmounted with the cuckoo. In moving from prose passages crackling with dates and events to the poetry itself, we must expect to leave behind a razor-sharp intellect capable of cutting through the curtain of myth and legend at the back of the stage of European culture and expect to encounter a mentality deeply moved and impressed at the kind of view afforded by the slit in the curtain. Rather than the brick wall of barbarism and a narrow space filled with dusty, unused and unusable props of antiquity, Graves discovered, in his own view, a superior stage for human drama with props and scenery such as men have only dimly remembered and badly copied. One such prop was recently recovered from the sea off the coast of Sicily: a scale in bronze with a goddess upright holding a beam surmounted on the ends with a bull and a boar. The crescent horns and tusks represented the power of life and death which lay in the hands of the goddess, who tipped the scales this way and that. The artifact may be merely decorated scales, or it may be what anthropologists call an icon or image of religious conviction suggested by the scales to some artisan. However the case may be, it is an image of the Gravesian goddess standing between Osiris and Set, Dionysus and Apollo, the Twins of the Zodiac, who never end their dispute over an ambivalent and serene goddess, Natura. The see-saw of life and death, the glory and the horror, the fixed image of change, the necessity of things good and evil, the serene and sorrowful mask of the goddess, the memory of love given and received - these are the properties of Graves's Myth and his own mature view of the nature of things. Death is natural if frightening, in this view, but war is both frightening and unnatural - for it takes men off before their time according to nature. From the autobiography, Graves's neurosis grew and nourished hatred for the great wrong of war until his Myth gave him back his health in a vision which accorded to his dead classmates a lost dignity and gave to him a release from their ghostly memory. Were they not like the sacrifices of old and

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would they not find peace for their courage? On the other hand, was not war an affront to reason and spirit too? The goddess seemed to smile in assent, and Graves bowed to the moon. Does Graves really believe in his laboriously reconstructed vision? Perhaps he does, just as each of us believes his own kind of 'vision' of how things 'are'. The literature a man produces is not, of course, judged upon its Tightness or wrongness or upon its author's intensity of belief, but ultimately it is judged to be 'good' if it is unforgettable to enough readers. When an author engages us, heart and soul, even once, he is important; when he engages us often and profoundly so that he agitates and provokes all our mental and emotional faculties into harmonious relations with one another, he becomes a force of some incalculable kind. Does Graves engage us often and profoundly? Let me conclude with some personal responses. Κ Graves fails to convince us that final solutions will be reached by way of goddess-worship, he gives us insight into a profoundly religious experience. If his arguments for matriarchy tend to ignore those of human fallibility, he makes a good case against the assumption of male superiority. If Graves has been arrogant at times, he is of the genus irritabile as a poet, nor does he live among saints. Throughout his literary performance Graves earns a deep respect for the rare integrity of his character, the courageous independence and originality of his mind, the provocative analysis of issues pertinent to an embattled world, and for his dedicated and life-long discipleship to the art of poetry, to which he has added a distinguished voice.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

I.

COMPLETE BIBLIOGRAPHY 1916-1965

Higginson, Fred H., A Bibliography of the Works of Robert Graves (London: Nicholas Vane, 1966; Hamden, Ct.: The Shoe String Press, 1966).

II.

POETIC WORKS OF ROBERT GRAVES

Over the Brazier (London: The Poetry Bookshop, 1916). Goliath and David (London: The Chiswick Press, 1916). Fairies and Fusiliers (London: Heinemann, 1917). Treasure Box (London: The Chiswick Press, 1919). Country Sentiment (London: Seeker, 1920). The Pier-Glass (London: Seeker, 1921). Whipperginny (London: Heinemann, 1923). The Feather Bed (Richmond: The Hogarth Press, 1923). Mock Begger Hall (London: The Hogarth Press, 1924). Welchman's Hose (London: The Fleuron, 1925). The Marmosite's Miscellany (London: The Hogarth Press, 1925). Poems: 1914-1926 (London: Heinemann, 1927; Doubleday, 1929). Poems: 1926-1930 (London: Heinemann, 1931). Poems: 1930-1933 (London: Barker, 1933). Collected Poems (London: Cassell, 1938). Poems: 1938-1945 (London: Cassell, 1946). Poems and Satires 1951 (London: Cassell, 1951). Collected Poems 1955 (New York: Doubleday, 1955). The Poems of Robert Graves: Chosen by Himself (New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1958). Collected Poems (New York: Doubleday, 1961). Man Does, Woman Is (New York: Doubleday, 1964). Love Respelt (London: Cassell, 1965). Collected Poems 1966 (New York: Doubleday, 1966). Poems 1965-1968 (London: Cassell, 1968).

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SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

III.

PROSE WORKS OF ROBERT GRAVES

On English Poetry: Being an Irregular Approach to the Psychology of :his Art, from Evidence Mainly Subjective (London: Heinemann, 1922). The Meaning of Dreams (London: Cecil Palmer, 1924). The Poetic Unreason and Other Studies (London: Cecil Palmer, 1925). A Survey of Modernist Poetry, with Laura Riding (London: Heinemann, 1928). But It Still Goes On: An Accumulation (London: Cape, 1930). I, Claudius (New York, Vintage Books, n.d.), reprint from the Smith and Haas edition of 1935. Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina (New York: Smith and Haas, 1935). Count Belisarius (New York: Random House, 1938). King Jesus (New York: Creative Age Press, Inc., 1946). Hercules, My Shipmate (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1945). The White Goddess (New York: Vintage Books, 1948). The Common Asphodel: Collected Essays on Poetry 1922-1949 (London: Hamilton, 1949). Occupation: Writer (London: Cassell, 1951). The Nazarene Gospel Restored, with Joshua Podro (London: Cassell, 1953). The Golden Ass of Apuleius, by Lucius Apuleius, translation (New York: Pocket Library, 1954). "These Be Thy Gods, O Israel", New Republic CXXXIV (Feb. 27 and Mar. 5, 1956). The Crowning Privilege. The Clark Lectures 1954-1955 (New York: Doubleday, 1956). Goodbye To All That: An Autobiography, 2nd ed. (New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1957). The Greek Myths, revised edition, 2 vols. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1957). Jesus in Rome: A Historical Conjecture, with Joshua Podro (London, Cassell, 1957). English and Scottish Ballads (London: Heinemann, 1957). Steps: Stories, Talks, Essays, Poems, Studies in History (London: Cassel], 1958). 5 Pens in Hand (New York: Doubleday, 1958). The Anger of Achilles, translation (New York: Doubleday and Co. Inc., 1959). Food For Centaurs (New York: Doubleday, 1960). Oxford Addresses on Poetry (New York: Doubleday, 1962). The Hebrew Myths: The Book of Genesis, with Ralph Patai (New York: Doubleday, 1964). Mammon and the Black Goddess (New York: Doubleday, 1965). Poetic Craft and Principle (London: Cassell, 1967).

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165

IV. BOOKS A N D PAMPHLETS IN CRITICISM ON GRAVES A N D SPECIAL R E F E R E N C E S Bergonzi, Bernard, "Poets II: Graves, Blunden, Read, and Others", Heroes' Twilight: A Study of the Literature of the Great War (New York: Howard-McCann, 1966), pp. 60-91. Also "Retrospect I, Autobiography", pp. 146-90. Bogan, Louise, "Satire and Sentimentality", Selected Criticism (New York: Noonday Press, 1955), pp. 316-18. Bullough, Geoffrey, "The Georgian Tradition", The Trend of Modern Poetry (London: Oliver and Boyd, 1959), pp. 46-77. Cohen, J. M., Robert Graves (New York: Grove Press, 1961). Day, Douglas, Swifter Than Reason (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1963). Enright, D. J., "Robert Graves and the Decline of Modernism", Conspirators and Poets (Chester Springs, Penn.: Dufour, 1966), pp. 48-67. Fairchild, Hoxie Neale, "Georgians", Religious Trends in English Poetry, Vol. V: 1880-1920 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962), pp. 347-391. Fraser, G. S., "The Poetry of Robert Graves", Vision and Rhetoric: Studies in Modern Poetry (London: Faber and Faber, 1959), pp. 13548. Frazer, Sir James, The Golden Bough (New York: Macmillan, 1927). Goodall, George and R. F. Traherne eds., Muir's Atlas of Ancient and Classical History, 2nd ed. (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1961). Hoffman, Daniel, Barbarous Knowledge (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967). Johnston. John H., Chapter III in English Poetry of the First World War (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1964), pp. 71-112. Jung, Carl and C. Kerenyi, Essays in a Science of Mythology in the Collected Works, 19 vols., 2nd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969). Kirkham, Michael, The Poetry of Robert Graves (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969). Mehoke, James, "The Purpose of Myth in the Work of Robert Graves". An unpublished University of Washington dissertation, 1964. Muir, Edwin, "Robert Graves", Transition: Essays on Contemporary Literature (New York: Folcroft, 1926). Nemerov, Howard, "The Poetry of Robert Graves", Poetry and Fiction Essays (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1963), pp. 112-17. Neumann, Erich, The Great Mother, translated by Ralph Manheim (New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1955). Nilsson, Martin P., The Mycenaean Origin of Greek Mythology (New York: Norton, 1932). Parise, Anthony, "The Private Myth of Robert Graves". An unpublished University of Wisconsin doctoral dissertation, 1963. Riding, Laura, Anarchism is Not Enough (New York: Doubleday, 1928). Seymour-Smith, Martin, Robert Graves (New York: Longmans, Green

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SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

and Co., 1956). (=No. 78 of the series Writers and Their Works, Bonamy Dobree, ed.) Stade, George, Robert Graves (=No. 25 of the series Columbia Essays on Modem Writers) (New York Columbia University Press, 1967). Thwaite, Anthony, Chapter Ten in Contemporary English Poetry, 2nd ed. (London: Heinemann, 1961, pp. 125-39). Vaughn, Agnes, The House of the Double Axe (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1960). Weisinger, Herbert, "A very curious and painstaking person: Robert Graves as Mythographer", The Agony and the Triumph (E. Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1955), pp. 146-58. Williams, Charles, "Robert Graves", Poetry at Present (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930), pp. 194-206.

V. ARTICLES IN CRITICISM ON ROBERT GRAVES Algren, Nelson, "Sentiment and Terror", Poetry, LV (1939), pp. 157-59. Anon., "A Personal Mythology", Times [London] Literary Supplement (lune 5, 1959), p. 336. Adams, Hazard, "Criticism: Whence and Whither?" The American Scholar, XXVIII (Spring, 1959), 226-38. Auden, W. H., "A Poet of Honor", The Mid-Century, No. 28 (July, 1961), pp. 3-9. Reprinted in Shenandoah, XIII, No. 2 (Winter, 1962), pp. 5-12. Creely, Robert, "Her Service is Perfect Freedom", Poetry, XCHI (May, 1959), pp. 395-98. Dahlberg, Edward and Herbert Read, "Robert Graves and T. S. Eliot", Twentieth Century, CLXVI (1959), pp. 54-62. Davie, Donald, "The Toneless Voice of Robert Graves", The Listener (July 2, 1959), pp. 11-13. — , "Impersonal and Emblematic", Listen, III (Spring, 1960). Reprinted in Shenandoah, XIII, No. 2 (Winter, 1962), pp. 38-44. Dudek, Louis, "The Case of Robert Graves", Canadian Forum, XL (Dec., 1960), pp. 199-201. Enright, D. J., "The Example of Robert Graves", Shenandoah, XIII, No.2 (Winter, 1962), pp. 13-15. , "Robert Graves and the Decline of Modernism", Essays in Criticism, XI (April, 1961), pp. 319-37. Reprinted in Conspirators and Poets, pp. 48-67. Fraser, G. S., "The Reputation of Robert Graves", Shenandoah, XIII, No. 2 (Winter, 1962), pp. 19-32. Fuller, Roy, "Some Vintages of Graves", The London Magazine, V, No. 2 (Feb., 1958), pp. 56-59. Gaskell, Ronald, "The Poetry of Robert Graves", The Critical Quarterly, III (Autumn, 1961), pp. 213-22. Gregory, Horace, "Robert Graves: A Parable for Writers", Partisan Review, XX (Jan.-Feb., 1953), pp. 44-54.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Gunn, Thorn., "In Nobody's Pantheon", Shenandoah, XIII, No. 2 (Winter, 1962), pp. 34-35. Hayman, Richard, "Robert Graves", Essays in Criticism, V (Ian., 1955), pp. 32-35. Hoffman, Daniel, "The Unquiet Graves", Sewanee Review, LXVII (1959), pp. 305-16. Reprinted in Barbarous Knowledge, pp. 129-44. Jarrell, Randall, "Graves and the White Goddess", Yale Review, VL (1955, 1956), Pts. I, pp. 302-14, and II, pp. 467-80. Jennings, E., "Robert Graves", Speculum, CCXIII (July 3, 1964), p. 17. Kirkham, Michael, "Incertitude and the White Goddess", Essays in Criticism, XVI (Jan., 1966), pp. 57-72. Peschmann, H., "Salute to Robert Graves", English, XIV (Spring, 1962), pp. 2-8. Schwartz, Delmore, "Graves on the Dock: the Case for Modern Poetry", The New Republic, CXXXIV (March 19, 1956), pp. 20-21. Spender, Stephen, "Poetry for Poetry's Sake and Beyond Poetry", Horizon, LXXVI (April, 1946), pp. 221-38. Steiner, George, "The Genius of Robert Graves", The Kenyon Review, XXII (Summer, 1960), pp. 340-65. Swanson, Roy, "Graves's 'Hercules at Nemea' ", The Explicator, XV, No. 9 (June, 1957), p. 56. Ussher, Arland, "Robert Graves: The Philoctetes of Majorca", Dublin Magazine, XXXII (1957), pp. 18-21. Vickery, John B., "Three Modes and a Myth", Western Humanities Review, XII (1958), pp. 371-78. Wilson, Colin, "Some Notes on Graves's Prose", Shenandoah, XIII (Winter, 1962), pp. 55-62.