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The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth

Robert Graves

4.03 · Rating details · 3,124 ratings · 179 reviews

The White Goddess is perhaps the finest of Robert Graves's works on the psychological and mythological sources of poetry. In this tapestry of poetic and religious scholarship, Graves explores the stories behind the earliest of European deitiesâ€”the White Goddess of Birth, Love, and Deathâ€”who was worshipped under countless titles. He also uncovers the obscure and mysteri

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Paperback, Amended, Enlarged, 512 pages

Published January 1st 1966 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (first published 1948)

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· 3,124 ratings · 179 reviews

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Feb 14, 2008 Rodney rated it it was amazing

Shelves: poetry

O.K., so Graves was dead wrong about the Celts. Still, the "White Goddess" thesis--that patriarchal invaders suppressed the mother-goddess religions of the Aegean and Ancient Near East, traces of which managed to survive in Europe, especially in the minstrel lore of Ireland and Wales--is thanks to Graves now part and parcel of the modern. The real fun of the book isn't so much in its truth as the getting there: a waterslide ride of educated guessing, crossword logic, and speculative buccaneering ...more

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Apr 07, 2008 Old-Barbarossa rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Rambling nonsense when he steps beyond what he knows.
Most of his ideas on the "tree alphabet" are his own and sourceless. Unfortunately a lot of the celtic magic industry owes too much to this as a gospel of sorts. Better and more scholarly book are out there if you can be bothered looking. But they are without the glamour of Graves which I suppose is part of the attraction to the sidhe huggers.

Edit:

This is a dreadful book...yet I’ve read it twice, the 1st time in the early ‘80s and again in ’13 ...more

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Jul 23, 2010 David rated it it was amazing

All right, let me honest and start by saying this was totally my favorite book in the entire universe when I was, like, 11. Hands down. It gave me my first sense of what scholarship might be - if it were actually fun.

Now I did end up becoming a professional scholar, and one who probably does have too much fun for his own good, so perhaps a word here is in order.

Those people who say the book provides zero evidence for its points - all I can say is, "yeah, that's right. It's kind of a joke. Or... All right, let me honest and start by saying this was totally my favorite book in the entire universe when I was, like, 11. Hands down. It gave me my first sense of what scholarship might be - if it were actually fun.

Now I did end up becoming a professional scholar, and one who probably does have too much fun for his own good, so perhaps a word here is in order.

Those people who say the book provides zero evidence for its points - all I can say is, "yeah, that's right. It's kind of a joke. Or... well, Graves does insist that poetic truth is not a totally different truth, not to be judged by prose criteria of truth, but that it should always be at least true on the prose level and also something more (that something more being magical, profound, etc etc). But the question is always: is that very assertion part of the joke as well. Because what is magic? It's something that's both true, and a fraud, a trick, but it's true because you can carry it off. And what makes Graves so much fun is that he can always carry it off. When he says that he's solved some ancient mystery - why are fish used as a symbol for Christ - by time-traveling in a poetic trance and overhearing a conversation between two Roman literari c100 AD, he's obviously not asking to be judged by normal scholarly standards. He's having fun, and saying, "well, tell me it _isn't_ true!"

What I love about Graves is that he writes about religious devotion, of utter subordination to a terrifying entrancing but ultimately destructive goddess-muse, in such a way as to imply absolute subordination, but in fact, turns it into a license to do absolutely anything he pleases. His biographers always seem to miss this, presenting him as a sort of pathetic wimp in the sway of all these headstrong domineering women. In fact, you read books like this, or even more perhaps his essays on poetry, and you meet someone utterly different: someone who is having more fun than any professional scholar would ever be allowed to, sounding off on any topic in a way that's simultaneously outrageous, ground-breaking, profound, world-shattering, and probably, on some level, also, ridiculously untrue. What's the real game and what's his aim in playing it? That's half the fun. You can never be completely sure. But like any great theorist (and to be honest, I sometimes think Deleuze and Derrida, etc, are really doing exactly the same thing) the point is not to spend the rest of our lives deciding whether we adore him like a god or revile him, but to take it as a demonstration that it's possible to have just as much fun ourselves. That's what I did, without ever realizing that's what I was doing. And in retrospect, I'm not sure my career was better for it, but my writing was, and probably, arguably, the world is - if only slightly.

...more

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Sep 10, 2008 Josh rated it really liked it

Graves's phrase for what he does is "poetic scholarship," and I'm tempted to be generous and believe that what he means here really is thought that is associative and fleet, as opposed to simply lazy. The scholarship borders on parody: Graves's assertions are made on what is essentially zero evidence. But he follows his hind without faltering once, and by the time 500 pages is up, you do feel a sort of Palace of Wisdom effect has been achieved.

Where does that leave us? For me, reading this book ...more

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Oct 12, 2007 Erik rated it really liked it

I would call this Joe Campell's Power of Myth for grownups. I've been thinking about this book recently, but I have to admit I never got more than halfway with it. Nobody else I know has either, but what I did take from it was worth the struggle. Hopelessly inadequate summary: Graves belives that literature and poetry are magic, real magic. These arts objectively conjure effects the same way a ritual is supposed to work, to make a deity present in the mundane world through a charm, a rhythm, eve ...more

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Jul 15, 2011 Titus L rated it it was amazing

Whilst some have disputed Graves historical inaccuracies, im not reading this for its historical account, but rather for its mytho-poetical inventiveness and inspiration, of which I would say that it delivers handsomely.

The attempt to reconcile the Ancient Hebrew, Greek and Celtic civilizations with an Aegean/Tuath De Danaan Diaspora is fascinating and demands that the reader have a fairly wide background in cultural and mythological studies.

Speculating on the Cad Goddeu, The Battle of the Tree Whilst some have disputed Graves historical inaccuracies, im not reading this for its historical account, but rather for its mytho-poetical inventiveness and inspiration, of which I would say that it delivers handsomely.

The attempt to reconcile the Ancient Hebrew, Greek and Celtic civilizations with an Aegean/Tuath De Danaan Diaspora is fascinating and demands that the reader have a fairly wide background in cultural and mythological studies.

Speculating on the Cad Goddeu, The Battle of the Trees, a medieval Welsh poem from the Book of Taliesin, that the trees that fought in the battle in which each tree had a meaning and significance of its own. Graves argues that the original poet had concealed Druidic secrets about an older matriarchal Celtic religion for fear of censure from Christian authorities and that the 'battle' was probably not physical but rather a struggle of wits and scholarship. They did this he claims by employing the secret sign language called Ogham, in this case the Tree Ogham in which each tree holds a representative symbol, sound, meaning, set of mythologies and etc..
The particular poem and its meanings is he claims further concealed by the device of being 'pied' or mixed up with a further four poems, only those in the know would be able to correctly untangle and decipher their original order.

However and due to the excessive overloading of references and origins, at times it seems that Graves has almost become one of his ancient Cambrian Awenyddion' the magical minstrel poets who disguised their wisdom under the pretence of being possessed by spirits, as they did not deliver the answer to what is required in any connected manner..."but the person who skillfully observes them will find after many preambles...and incoherent though ornamented speeches, the desired explanation conveyed in some turn of word"
He could not have described his own method more perfectly, persist and you will find his meanings become clearer.

Nevertheless, despite the erratic, over-rich and often obscure prose, his reconciliation of the Tree Ogham Alphabet with the calender of the Year, the stations of both sun and moon, is an inspiring and potentially convincing demonstration of how the ancient mythographers (may have)created meaning and managed the seasonal and social rituals of their times.
Reaching further, his exposition and extrapolation of Biblical and earlier mythologies and their themes is remarkable.

I value and recommend this work to any more serious and patient reader (who is preferably well read, mytho-historically)for its hidden gems, its tremendous scope and its imaginative-inspirational qualities.

Bright Blessings By Stone and Star,
Celestial Elf ~ ...more

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Jun 17, 2007 Jessica added it

Recommends it for: souls stuck in purgatory.

this is a massive endeavor and will take an eternity to read. while i love cross-referencing the divine feminine through the mystical traditions, i can only take this book in small doses. imagine the densest, darkest fudge. this is not for the faint of heart, but a great resource. i don't want to have to give it back to ira unread, so wish me luck!

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Feb 25, 2008 Ange rated it liked it

It's almost impossible to read the Plath study without this book; apparently, it was a huge influence on Plath while she was at Cambridge (in the flat where she died, there was a poster of the White Goddess tacked to the pantry door). The book is more interesting for the mythological and folkloric tidbits than the unifying thesis, at this point.

I think the mythological connections are sound, but I have some trouble believing that each and every "true poet" since the advent of Christianity has b ...more

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Jul 24, 2008 Terence rated it liked it

Recommends it for: Poets, feminists, Greens, socialists & other anti-capitalists

Shelves: mythologies, religion-general, poetry

I first read The White Goddess during a road trip with my ex at the turn of the century. I can remember several days when we were staying at a bed-and-breakfast in pre-Katrina New Orleans. It was neither overly warm nor overly humid, and my erstwhile spouse was recovering from serving as a mosquito smorgasbord, so I had some down time to sit out on the patio and read. I have to say that the first time through this book left me confused and lost; the second time through I’m on firmer ground in un ...more

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Oct 15, 2011 Michael rated it really liked it

If you drew a Venn diagram of unreadable books and unputdownable books, this would be in the small area of intersection. It reads like the death-evacuation of a brilliant and eccentric mind.

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Oct 16, 2014 Czarny Pies rated it did not like it

Recommends it for: People who believe in UFOs

Recommended to Czarny by: ET and Mork from Ork

Shelves: mythology, criticism

Faute de pouvoir donner cinq etrons, je luie donne une etoile.

The White Goddess is a book that belongs on the same shelf as the Erich von Daniken's Chariots of the Gods or Thor Heyerdahl's Voyage of the Kontiki. It simply does not deserve to be read.

Robert Graves was acknowledged in this lifetime to have been one the greatest Latin scholars of his generation. His brilliant translations (e.g. The Golden Ass) and wonderful historical novesl (e.g. I Claudius) did a great service to the reading publ ...more

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Sep 17, 2007 Chris rated it liked it · review of another edition

A controversial classic and certainly not for all tastes. Graves' erudition in ancient literature and mythopoetics is well known (e.g. his classic reference works on Greek mythology) but his thesis in this book has been contested in many quarters (and proved incorrect in some anthropological aspects) and struck me as largely speculative, although I really can't make a judgment since I'm not well read in this area. I can say that reading this book did spur me to read up on Irish and Welsh myth. I ...more

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Aug 06, 2007 Michael rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: Oh, so THAT'S what was up Frodo's butt

I got kicked in the face by this book. For real, it walked up to me, said "i will kick you in the face." I ignored it's warning, and woke up 2 months later with a shattered jaw and lots and lots of information about poetry and bards. Wonderful read if you've ever had a sneaking suspicion all of your favorite "myths" had a certain aura to them.

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Jan 27, 2008 Charles rated it it was amazing

This book is absolutely fascinating and an all-time favorite of mine. It ties together ancient history, poetry and myth, drawing from traditions around the world.

What this book isn't: traditional history or scholarship. As wikipedia puts it, "Graves openly considered poetic inspiration, or "Analepsis" as he termed it, a valid historical methodology." It is easy to see why New Age, Wikka and other modern syncretic traditions have seized on this book as a touchstone.

On the other hand, I think thi ...more

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Jun 22, 2013 Leo rated it it was ok

Illogical, unscientific, ahistorical, and weirdly entertaining.

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Feb 01, 2008 Nikki rated it it was ok

I find this book particularly overrated. It is used as a basis to establish a geneaology for modern paganism. However, it is one supposition based upon another. Very faulty logic.

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Apr 24, 2011 E Hamilton rated it it was amazing

I reread this book perhaps every other year. Every year, being more widely read, I find more facts that are now outdated. But every year, the ideas, themes and conclusions I feel to be more true.

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Sep 21, 2010 H added it

Shelves: theory-criticism

Astonishing. By Graves' claim, the measure of a poet is by his accuracy/faithfulness in depicting the (actual) White Goddess, thus proving the truth and source of his mystical inspiration. All the Welsh stuff goes far above my head but he cites some instances from pre-modern English poetry (pp. 426-36):
- Shakespeare's Venus & Adonis, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and more seriously in the Tempest
- Donne's "A Fever"
- Keats' "Belle Dame Sans Merci"
- Nimory (enchantress of Merlin) in Malory's Mort Astonishing. By Graves' claim, the measure of a poet is by his accuracy/faithfulness in depicting the (actual) White Goddess, thus proving the truth and source of his mystical inspiration. All the Welsh stuff goes far above my head but he cites some instances from pre-modern English poetry (pp. 426-36):
- Shakespeare's Venus & Adonis, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and more seriously in the Tempest
- Donne's "A Fever"
- Keats' "Belle Dame Sans Merci"
- Nimory (enchantress of Merlin) in Malory's Morte D'Arthur IV, i
- Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner" (the woman dancing with death)

" 'What is the use or function of poetry nowadays?' is a question not the less poignant for being defiantly asked by so many stupid people or apologetically answered by so many silly people. The function of poetry is religious invocation of the Muse; its use is the experience of mixed exaltation and horror that her presence excites. But 'nowadays'? Function and use remain the same; only the application has changed. This was once a warning to man that he must keep in harmony with the family o living creatures among which he was born, by obedience to the wishes of the lady of the house; it is now a reminder that he has disregarded the meaning, turned the house upside down by capricious experiments in philosophy, science and industry, and brought ruin upon himself and his family. 'Nowadays' is a civilization in which the prime emblems of poetry are dishonoured." (14)

"Mount Helicon was not the earliest seat of the Muse Goddesses, as their title 'The Pierians' shows; the word Muse is now generally derived from the root mont, meaning a mountain. Their worship had been brought there in the Heroic Age during a migration of the Boeotian people from Mount Pieria in Northern Thessaly. But to make the transplanted Muses feel at home on Helicon, and so to preserve the old magic, the Boeotians named the geographical features of the mountain--the springs, the peaks and grottoes--after the corresponding features of Pieria. The Muses were at this time three in number, an indivisible Trinity, as the mediaeval Catholics recognized when they built the church of their own Holy Trinity on the site of the deserted shrine of the Heliconian Muses. The appropriate names of the three Persons were Meditation, Memory, and Song." (385-6) ...more

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Sep 02, 2010 Welwyn Wilton Katz rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: history, essays, myths-sagas-legends, comparative-mythology

This is a great book. Graves is best known for his novels I Claudius or his poetry (which was his favorite form of writing), but this work about the grammar and connectedness of myth is a scholarly epic, profoundly interesting and peppered with references to support his "alphabet of the trees" and their use as at least an Iron Age "code" which Druids and perhaps others used to teach and remember their oral knowledge from generation to generation. There has been debate regarding the accuracy of G ...more

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Dec 08, 2012 Jason Hare rated it it was amazing

Graves' essay on the downfall of a matriarchal, goddess worship, societal structure in stone age Europe is the premise of this book long essay. Several themes in this book have been written about by anthropologists and other writers before and since Graves but The White Goddess is certainly the best known.

Graves own words:

"language of poetic myth anciently current in the Mediterranean and Northern Europe was a magical language bound up with popular religious ceremonies in honor of the Moon-godde ...more

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Nov 19, 2018 Judyta Szaciłło rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: in-my-library, humanities-social-sciences, poetry

At the long last, after many years of occasional remindings that I should read this book, I sort of did - skipping through a lot as I'm not good at digesting nonsense. Sweet nonsense it is, but still... Do not get confused by the title's claim. The book has very little to do with historical research in the modern sense. It is rather a continuation of the noble tradition of the medieval biblical exegesis as well as Jewish Kabbalah. It's interesting and amusing to observe that ancient methodology ...more

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May 11, 2009 Beverly rated it really liked it

Francesca Lia Block made me read this. I have no idea if this man is insane or not but I was young enough when I read it that it blew my mind anyway.

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Aug 25, 2009 Larry Chaves rated it it was amazing

This is a difficult read so if you're not a lover of mythology, it's not for you. However, if you want to take the next leap Graves is the man you're looking for. Brilliant!

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Apr 26, 2019 Daryl rated it really liked it

Shelves: nonfiction

Sometimes it's hard to tell erudition from bullshit, and at times, The White Goddess seems to me to sort of walk that line. Certainly it is packed full of erudition about ancient history, religions, languages, trees, and customs/rituals, but the breezy way in which Graves strings these things together sometimes seems suspect. It's not so different from what I've read of Frazer's The Golden Bough (whom Graves cites here and there, at times with the modest assertion that old Frazer in his giant wo Sometimes it's hard to tell erudition from bullshit, and at times, The White Goddess seems to me to sort of walk that line. Certainly it is packed full of erudition about ancient history, religions, languages, trees, and customs/rituals, but the breezy way in which Graves strings these things together sometimes seems suspect. It's not so different from what I've read of Frazer's The Golden Bough (whom Graves cites here and there, at times with the modest assertion that old Frazer in his giant work simply hadn't carried things forward to their obvious conclusions), so perhaps there is tradition or prior art for this sort of work.

The book reads at times like the explication of a mythic conspiracy theory -- I can almost see Graves with scrolls and bits of papyrus pinned to his wall with lengths of yarn strung from piece to piece to demonstrate the thousands of connections he makes across myths and histories and languages. Often enough, it felt as if he had an idea in mind and that he interpreted his inputs (or often lack of inputs) to accord with his idea. At times it also reads like the ramblings of an old grandpa who starts in one place and then meanders sort of aimlessly before pausing to ask "now where was I?" and moving on to the next topic.

It is a pretty readable -- that's not to say an easy -- book in spite of its meandering. I'll confess that I didn't delve deep into the logic by which he made various numerological connections to build several variants of ancient alphabets based on tree taxonomy and linked to bardic cyphers and finger languages. I read the words and understood the general idea and trusted that I could come back to it later if ever I decided he was taking me for a ride and I wanted to try to verify for myself. Nor did I carefully cross-reference the thousands of name and story variants he breezily tossed out as if they're common knowledge (they were a veritable alphabet soup to me). Again, I trusted that he was an ok source and otherwise contented myself to be a willing victim to his knavery. I'll further confess that I skimmed some of the particularly name-heavy sections. These shortcuts are what made it readable and helped make the book a pleasure rather than a labor for me.

It's rare for a book to send my mind in so many directions with such enthusiasm. I've walked away from The White Goddess wanting to read The Mabinogion, learn more about Welsh and Irish history, research augury, and maybe get off my ass and learn Latin so that I can read the likes of Catullus in the original. I mean, I won't do most of these things, but a book that's sufficiently stimulating that it makes me want to is one that really struck a chord for me. ...more

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Nov 12, 2018 Taylor Boone rated it it was amazing

It's the unofficial Golden Bough sequel the world was clamoring for!

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May 13, 2010 Clay Kallam rated it really liked it

Shelves: philosophy

This book was a revelation to me when I first read it, sometime back in the '70s -- but I wanted to try it again to see if I was merely hung over from the '60s, or there was something deeper going on.

After re-reading it, I have to say it is a powerful work, though it was made more powerful then by the fact that it preceded the mythological studies of Joseph Campbell, and thus had the advantage of the shock of the new.

"The White Goddess" is, however, several books in one, and isn't exactly an eas This book was a revelation to me when I first read it, sometime back in the '70s -- but I wanted to try it again to see if I was merely hung over from the '60s, or there was something deeper going on.

After re-reading it, I have to say it is a powerful work, though it was made more powerful then by the fact that it preceded the mythological studies of Joseph Campbell, and thus had the advantage of the shock of the new.

"The White Goddess" is, however, several books in one, and isn't exactly an easy read. There are fascinating segments, for Graves is a gifted writer, a talented researcher and a challenging thinker, but there are also digressions that go nowhere, and inclusions that seem present only because the information was at hand, rather than furthering one of the several themes of the book.

Speaking of those themes, "The White Goddess" is about the great goddess and her various incarnations, and is one of the earliest assaults on patriarchy and the assumption that male sky gods are all that really matters. Graves, a serious poet, relates to the goddess primarily as a muse, but in the book, he discusses her in all her aspects.

He also links various appearances of the goddess in different cultural traditions, presaging Campbell, and makes it clear that the aspects of the goddess are common to us all. At the same time, he examines the myth of the Year King (the template for many of the narratives about Jesus) and the Sun God, and again, connects the various legends through their common manifestations of differently named gods.

It was also interesting to me how much crosscultural intellectual pollination was going on in the prehistoric world, and though Graves often takes leaps that staid professionals would never dare, even when he's clearly stretching, he is still generally interesting.

There are also many chapters devoted to the alphabet, and its relation to the calendar (and vice versa), and though the connection to his main theme is sometimes tenuous, this too has its charms. It gives us a window into what the great minds of the distant past -- those minds that would be our elite thinkers today -- did with their brainpower. (People 20,000 years ago did not know as much as we do now, but that doesn't mean they were any less intelligent.)

In the end, Graves' attack on the unspoken assumptions of mid-century Western culture actually is easier to digest now than it was in 1946, when he wrote the book (he brought it up to date in 1960). We are much more open to the strengths and wisdom of the female half of humanity today, and we are more prepared to acknowledge the common ground of beliefs that underly almost all our societies.

Nonetheless, "The White Goddess" takes some energy to finish, and is at times a pretty heavy meal. Its finishing chapter on the role of the muse, and her relation to the artist, is a fine conclusion, but unfortunately not to the book that precedes it. Still, there is much revealed here, and patient readers will be rewarded for their efforts by, at the least, seeing connections that were not visible before.

...more

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Jan 21, 2013 Jon Corelis rated it it was amazing

Shelves: five-star-poetry-books

"A prodigious, monstrous, stupefying, indescribable book ..."

***** A Five Star Poetry Book: Recommended for All Readers

[Note: this book exists in numerous editions; this review is based on The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth, Amended and Enlarged Edition (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1966 and later), which is the edition I'd recommend to interested readers.]

This is a popular, influential, and controversial book. Let's put things in perspective by quoting the first and best revi "A prodigious, monstrous, stupefying, indescribable book ..."

***** A Five Star Poetry Book: Recommended for All Readers

[Note: this book exists in numerous editions; this review is based on The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth, Amended and Enlarged Edition (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1966 and later), which is the edition I'd recommend to interested readers.]

This is a popular, influential, and controversial book. Let's put things in perspective by quoting the first and best review of it, the statement by T. S. Eliot, who was responsible for its publication, that this is a 'prodigious, monstrous, stupefying, indescribable book.' Eliot was not, to say the least, given to exaggeration, so his opinion is all the more suggestive that there must be something special here.

A second data point: this book is just what it says it is: 'A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth.' It may be the only one ever written. But be that as it may, criticisms of the book's scholarship are quite beside the point, because it isn't and doesn't claim to be a work of scholarship. It's a work of visionary poetic intuition which uses Celtic mythology as a paradigm to explore the roots of poetic inspiration. To criticize its scholarship is like criticizing the Old Testament for employing invalid anthropological methods.

Admittedly, the book is not easy reading, and much of it may never be clear to many readers. Graves himself warns that 'this remains a very difficult book, as well as a very queer one, to be avoided by anyone with a distracted, tired, or rigidly scientific mind.' But he goes on to give a useful reference point to which his whole complex, and often convoluted, argument ultimately remains related: that 'the language of poetic myth anciently current in the Mediterranean and Northern Europe was a magical language bound up with popular religious ceremonies in honour of the Mood-goddess, or Muse, and that this remains the language of true poetry.' The argument for, or one might better call it the exploration of, this thesis takes the reader on something of a wild ride. But however much or little one is convinced of the thesis, there is barely a paragraph of it which is not intensely interesting and intensely suggestive, leading one to new insights of one's own in considering poetry, mythology, and religion.

This is not, perhaps, a book everyone will want to sit down and read straight through; many people may benefit more from keeping it around to dip into every once in a while, thinking about the paragraphs which seem most intriguing and saving the obscure or less convincing seeming ones for later. (I myself have done both: I had to buy a new copy after the old one I bought years ago started falling apart.)

Hence the five stars, meaning that this is a must have book for anyone interested in Robert Graves, poetry, mythology, Celtic culture, or religion. I don't think even those who aren't convinced by it could say it is ever a dull read. ...more

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Jan 13, 2018 Martin rated it it was ok · review of another edition

What absolute twaddle.

Sure, I went to this book with the intention of reading it as quickly as possible so I could shit-can the thing in context—but boy oh boy is this daft. Graves was an unorthodox scholar to such a frustrating degree that one should hardly call him a scholar. The man's historical novels and prose translations are fine reads (even if the premiss of 'Homer's Daughter' is dafter than beastiality), but his treatment of myth is the work of a nutter par excellence, with a gleeful d What absolute twaddle.

Sure, I went to this book with the intention of reading it as quickly as possible so I could shit-can the thing in context—but boy oh boy is this daft. Graves was an unorthodox scholar to such a frustrating degree that one should hardly call him a scholar. The man's historical novels and prose translations are fine reads (even if the premiss of 'Homer's Daughter' is dafter than beastiality), but his treatment of myth is the work of a nutter par excellence, with a gleeful disregard for fact. And that's fun, to a degree: one loves the thought of a matriarchal moon goddess. But Graves's uncanny ability to see 71 instances (in 170 Greek myths) of a lost white goddess (cf. 'The Greek Myths') is the work of a charlatan. Even worse, his pernicious twaddle is winning, self-replicating like swine flu for those who delight in seeing moon goddesses—abolished by the intrusive Achaean patriarchal myths and Apollonian falsehoods of Dorian ne'er-do-wellers...and whatever— where there is only blank papyrus. Graves is influenced by scholar Johann Jakob Bachofen, who put forth four phases of cultural evolution, whereby matriarchal societies are slowly replaced with patriarchal ones. Bachofen’s work influenced not only Graves, but also the scholars whom Graves used as sources for 'The Greek Myths'.

The result is bedlam. His work was influential on second-wave feminism, providing an unfortunate excuse for scholarly scorn, as horn-rimmed sexists could laughably cut out citations in Heide Göttner-Abendroth's 'scholarly' book, 'The Goddess and Her Heroes', leaving a moth-eaten brocade where there was once validity. And god save us from Jennifer Woolger and Dr Roger Woolger, whose 'scientific' psychology book, 'The Goddess Within' (don't bother skimming it—I'll never get that life back), shores up its bogus belief in a matriarchal Crete society by throwing Graves's name into footnotes so repeatedly that the authors bring to mind images of the Salt Bae meme. But it gets worse: Wiccans and New Age charlatans worldwide have found their Bible in Graves, because he wears the tweeds of academia and writes excellent prose. But oh, oh, what to do with the drivel in this paperback. Even Heaney and Hughes were duped into the SHAMANIC POWERS of the Celtic poet and his moon goddess after reading Graves. The man was in dementia's throes, perhaps.

The book is fun as a pseudo-science of myth, supposing that 'true myths' can be uncovered by applying the techniques of 19th-century philologists and German linguists; but don't let yourself get carried away with the Gravesy-train. If he truly believed in what he was doing, then he was off it. But I suspect that somewhere in his heart of hearts—maybe to win the favour of Laura Ridinghim—Graves knew he was being deceptive. 'The White Goddess' (like 'The Greek Myths') will be, for many, their entrée (perhaps even single foray) into ancient myth. And if that's the case, it's all sixes and sevens. ...more

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Dec 09, 2013 Eric Sipple added it

I'm not sure how to rate a book like this. On its own it is, as a friend said, historical/mythological fanfiction. The shoddy anthropology, etymology and linguistic study Graves marches out in support of the book's thesis - that All True Poetry praises The White Goddess and everything else, like things that aren't Scottish, are crap - is kind of awe inspiring. By the middle of the book, I couldn't take a damn thing he was saying seriously.

And yet, because I was reading it for research, and resea ...more

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Mar 28, 2019 Kevin rated it it was ok · review of another edition

I'm typically a fan of Graves, unpopular as he's become today, but this work was almost unreadable. His The Greek Myths has a lot of fantastical editorializing, but for the most part, is relegated to commentaries at the end of his more or less faithful (and good!) retellings of the myths. This work, however, pushes the fantastical to 11, and I didn't find myself sympathising with the authors' arguments at all. Whatever the truth of his White Goddess might have been, she didn't get a very good ch ...more

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About Robert Graves

Robert Graves

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Robert von Ranke Graves, born in Wimbledon, received his early education at King's College School and Copthorne Prep School, Wimbledon & Charterhouse School and won a scholarship to St John's College, Oxford. While at Charterhouse in 1912, he fell in love with G. H. Johnstone, a boy of fourteen ("Dick" in Goodbye to All That) When challenged by the headmaster he defended himself by citing Plat Robert von Ranke Graves, born in Wimbledon, received his early education at King's College School and Copthorne Prep School, Wimbledon & Charterhouse School and won a scholarship to St John's College, Oxford. While at Charterhouse in 1912, he fell in love with G. H. Johnstone, a boy of fourteen ("Dick" in Goodbye to All That) When challenged by the headmaster he defended himself by citing Plato, Greek poets, Michelangelo & Shakespeare, "who had felt as I did".
At the outbreak of WWI, Graves enlisted almost immediately, taking a commission in the Royal Welch Fusiliers. He published his first volume of poems, Over the Brazier, in 1916. He developed an early reputation as a war poet and was one of the first to write realistic poems about his experience of front line conflict. In later years he omitted war poems from his collections, on the grounds that they were too obviously "part of the war poetry boom". At the Battle of the Somme he was so badly wounded by a shell-fragment through the lung that he was expected to die, and indeed was officially reported as 'died of wounds'. He gradually recovered. Apart from a brief spell back in France, he spent the rest of the war in England.
One of Graves's closest friends at this time was the poet Siegfried Sassoon, who was also an officer in the RWF. In 1917 Sassoon tried to rebel against the war by making a public anti-war statement. Graves, who feared Sassoon could face a court martial, intervened with the military authorities and persuaded them that he was suffering from shell shock, and to treat him accordingly. Graves also suffered from shell shock, or neurasthenia as it is sometimes called, although he was never hospitalised for it.
Biographers document the story well. It is fictionalised in Pat Barker's novel Regeneration. The intensity of their early relationship is nowhere demonstrated more clearly than in Graves's collection Fairies & Fusiliers (1917), which contains a plethora of poems celebrating their friendship. Through Sassoon, he also became friends with Wilfred Owen, whose talent he recognised. Owen attended Graves's wedding to Nancy Nicholson in 1918, presenting him with, as Graves recalled, "a set of 12 Apostle spoons".
Following his marriage and the end of the war, Graves belatedly took up his place at St John's College, Oxford. He later attempted to make a living by running a small shop, but the business failed. In 1926 he took up a post at Cairo University, accompanied by his wife, their children and the poet Laura Riding. He returned to London briefly, where he split with his wife under highly emotional circumstances before leaving to live with Riding in Deià, Majorca. There they continued to publish letterpress books under the rubric of the Seizin Press, founded and edited the literary journal Epilogue, and wrote two successful academic books together: A Survey of Modernist Poetry (1927) and A Pamphlet Against Anthologies (1928).
In 1927, he published Lawrence and the Arabs, a commercially successful biography of T.E. Lawrence. Good-bye to All That (1929, revised and republished in 1957) proved a success but cost him many of his friends, notably Sassoon. In 1934 he published his most commercially successful work, I, Claudius. Using classical sources he constructed a complexly compelling tale of the life of the Roman emperor Claudius, a tale extended in Claudius the God (1935). Another historical novel by Graves, Count Belisarius (1938), recounts the career of the Byzantine general Belisarius.
During the early 1970s Graves began to suffer from increasingly severe memory loss, and by his eightieth birthday in 1975 he had come to the end of his working life. By 1975 he had published more than 140 works. He survived for ten more years in an increasingly dependent condition until he died from heart failure. ...more

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Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina (Claudius, #2)

I, Claudius/Claudius the God (Claudius #1-2)

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“Poetry began in the matriarchal age, and derives its magic from the moon, not from the sun. 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!” — 22 likes

“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,
Careless of where the next bright bolt may fall.” — 13 likes

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