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67 of 73 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Myths, poetic power, a store of ancient verse,
By A Customer
This review is from: The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth (Paperback)
The White Goddess by Robert Graves A new edition edited by Grevel LindopThree things that enrich the poet: Myths, poetic power, a store of ancient verse. Graves first published "The White Goddess" in 1948, and he published revised and expanded editions in 1952 (1958 USA) and 1961. Now a fourth edition has been published by Carcanet in England as part of the Robert Graves Programme, and Faber and Faber has published a paperback edition. So far this edition is not published in the USA. The editor Grevel Lindop has written a good introduction to the book. He calls the book "a historical grammar of poetic myth" (Graves's subtitle), "an adventure in historical detective work, a headlong quest through the forests of half the world's mythologies, a poet's introduction to poetry, a critique of western civilisation, a polemic about the relationship between man and woman, and a disguised autobiography." (Page vii.) What he does not call the book is a miscellany of poems by Graves and others. That's too bad, because what is permanently valuable about the book is not Graves's theories, but rather the poems that are included. Graves included about 15 of his own poems in the book, and they are some of his best. Most of Grave's poems that were included here were first published in his Collected Poems 1914-1947. Here we get not only the poems but the explanations of them. It is as if Graves is his own scholaist. An example of this is found in Chapter XX "A Conversation at Paphos--43 AD" where Graves writes the first three lines of the poem "Nuns and Fish," and then 14 pages later he gives the final two lines. That's not to say that I am entirely happy with Lindop's editing. One of Graves's annoying habits was that he did not always indentifying his quotations. If you are not familar with his poetry then you will have no way of identifying "On Portents" as the poem Graves quotes on page 334. On the next page Graves misdates and misquotes his poem "The Fallen Tower of Siloam." Lindop gives the date of the poem in the introduction (p. xxii) but does not give the line as it appears in Graves' Collect Poems. By the way the line runs "Should the building totter, run [not spring'] for an archway!" On page 435 Graves quotes a poem by Laura Riding but does not name it. Only those familar with Riding's poetry know that he is quoting stanza 17 of her poem "Echoes." Another deficency is the lack of a bibliography of the books Graves referenced. Also the index leaves much to be desired. Shakespeare and Lewis Carrol are mentioned but other poets, Keats, Shelly, etc., are not to be found. These annoyences could have easily been remedied with aggressive editing.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Hard to extract the good from the bad research,also very confusing,
By Anglo_Pyramidologist (England) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth (Paperback)
This is not an easy work to read and will take some time to fully understand. There is an underlying theme of 'The White Goddess', which is directly linked to the Great Goddess hypothesis popularised by the archaeologist Marija Gimbutas. This hypothesis asserts that in Europe (and parts of the middle-east) during the Palaeolithic and Neolithic periods of prehistory, there was a prevalant venerated monotheistic deity - a mother goddess of fertility and the earth. Scholars today are split on this hypothesis. Most interestingly the renowned archaeologist Arthur Evans converted to the Great Goddess hypothesis after he discovered all the female Minoan fresco's and figurines at Knossos. Robert Grave's however was never an archaeologist, but he specialised in mythology. Several chapters in 'The White Goddess' are therefore adequately dedicated to tracing the 'Great Goddess' (named the 'White Goddess') through various mythologies, especially British, but also Greek. Sadly however Grave's underlying theme is completely buried by a lot of ideosyncratic poetic (and myth) identifications, many which are poorly justified. Furthermore there are numerous chapters which have absolutely nothing to do with the White Goddess theme, and i found them incredibly hard to understand. The work is certianly not coherent and i'm surprised no previous reviewer has noted of this. I only bought this since i am familiar with the literature of Marija Gimbutas and i found several of the chapters on the Great Goddess hypothesis useful.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
An insight into inspiration,
By
This review is from: The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth (Paperback)
Robert Graves comes to his subject as a poet first and foremost; he seeks the wellspring of poetic inspiration from which poetry originated, and links it to the forces which move poets today (ie in the mid 20th century).At the root of his tale is the Triple Goddess, maiden, mother and crone, whose worship he sees as the earliest religion of our ancestors and the pre-runner of all later pantheistic and patriarchal religions. But he constructs a whole paraphernalia on top of this, involving druidism, Ogham writing and a "tree alphabet" used for divination. This he ties into, and uses to explain, passages in Irish, Welsh, Norse, Middle Eastern and Greek mythology, as well as certain elements of early Jewish beliefs. He uses the work of earlier researchers who he cites extensively; a great part of his source material comes from the late 19th and early 20th century academic world of Celtic studies. His tale is rich and complex; the work throughout of a poet, not an anthropologist or archaeologist. The unfortunate side-effect of this is that one is never quite sure where he is genuinely passing on scholarship, and when he is speaking with the voice of the muse. One cannot use this book (as some have tried) as a text to explain prehistory. However, there is much here which genuinely informs our understanding of the world of our ancestors. If your interest is anthropological, you'll need to read it in conjunction with some other key texts and keep a weather eye open for Graves getting carried away. If you are interested in the same thing as Graves - inspoiration, the power of myth to move us and its continuing usefulness in creative writing, you can absorb its power without worrying so much about accuracy. In its day this was an immensely influential work; it enjoyed a revival in the 1970s and is probably due for another. The world of New Age "Goddess Studies", initially kick-started by Graves but since become lost and enfeebled down many fruitless byways, has a lot to learn from this powerful treatment of the subject.
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