Robert Graves and the White Goddess: 1940-1985 (Vol 3) (Paperback)

~ (Author) "Great Bardfield, in the heart of the Essex countryside, during the early hours of a February morning in 1940..." (more)
Key Phrases: Robert Graves, White Goddess, New York (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

If this long, concluding volume to Richard Perceval Graves' three-volume biography of the poet, novelist, and mythologist Robert Graves lacks the savor and drama of the second volume, it is only because the relatively sedate life of an aged, lionized poet can be relatively tame reading. Robert Graves, the author's uncle, had by the beginning of World War II, at age 45, settled into life with Beryl Hodge, his second wife. After the war, they took up residence in Majorca, where he was visited by an unending succession of disciples and young women whom Graves adopted as lovers and muses. It was on Majorca that Graves produced The White Goddess, his reworking of Celtic and pre-Greek mythology, surely one of the strangest Great Books ever written, and it is the tale of the poet's growing obsession with the triple-moon goddess, dubbed Cerridwen, that takes up much of this book. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

"I am a poet not a dirty old man," Robert Graves insisted in his 70s, but his pen seemed then to be driven by a thwarted passion for the exploitative or adoring young women in the village on Majorca where he spent much of his last 40 years. An apostle of the female principle that he celebrated in his White Goddess (1948), he seemed to owe his devotion to an authentic bitch-goddess. The tyrannical American poet Laura Riding enslaved him sexually and emotionally in the 1920s and 1930s, wrecking his first marriage. (She was the focus of the second of the three volumes of his nephew's biography, which with this book is now complete in 1385 pages of gossipy chronicle.) With a second wife and new family to support, Graves wrote potboilers for money and masochistic love poetry to imaginary, compliantly loyal and bullyingly disloyal "muses." More a log than a life, this biography is Graves's fever chart both as suffering acolyte and as senior poet of his generation. A literary rebel under Riding, after her he settled into ironic historical fiction as well as classical criticism and translation, while keeping a separate emotional compartment for the erotic torments his verse required. At 80, with 10 more years of life to come, he lapsed into senile silence?an awkward matter for his biographer. At some point the reader may be too word-weary to care about the errors carried over in this British import, errors in everything from the names of American universities to ordinary geography. Photos.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 618 pages
• Publisher: Phoenix House (February 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0753801167
• ISBN-13: 978-0753801161
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,053,810 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars fascinating look into the creative life, June 12, 2001

By	P. Cornelius "pcornelius" (Mountain View, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Robert Graves and the White Goddess 1940-85 (Paperback)

The third book on the life of poet and novelist Robert Graves is the story of his achievement of great public success, and then what? So many poets have achieved greatness only to spend the rest of their lives in a hapless chase to regain it. Graves' unique pursuit of his path should be a salutory example to all that it need not be so. Along the way we also find out about his new muses and other new relationships both with his growing family as well as with the world. Particularly interesting are his lectures and synopses of his remarks on other poets including Lawrence, Hopkins, Yeats, Pound, Eliot, Auden, Thomas and Byron, most of whom earned his displeasure to a greater or lesser degree. There are also amusing vignettes such as Graves' introducing J.R.R. Tolkien to Ava Gardner when neither one had ever heard of the other. Although Graves' last decade is almost too sad and his pursuit of younger women sometimes a bit pathetic, overall it is always a moving, intriguing and enjoyable story. The second volume of this work does not seem to be on Amazon, which I find a horrible omission.