The White Goddess

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Tosh - Rated
This book contains a lot of ancient Celtic poems. That's it's good side. Unfortunately it also contains a lot of theorising by Robert Graves, who sees himself as Odin, intuiting the letters of a Celtic alphabet based on trees. Instead of scholarship, archaeology or logic, Graves relies on poetic inspiration. He just "knows". The White Goddess was very popular in the 70s among people who were also into Tolkein and spoon-bending. The world was going through a recession and we had to make our own entertainment.

The White Goddess, and Graves' equally made-up take on Greek mythology, appealed then (and probably still do) to people who'd never come across European mythology in other, more reputable, sources. The Da Vinci Code of its day.

Indispensable - Rated
"The White Goddess" is an essential textbook and source of inspiration for any serious writer in the English language. It is not a book one can borrow and read through; it is a book one needs at one's side for constant reference. It is quite hard to get in an affordable edition; moreover, the above edition is a very good and authoritative one. Buy a copy while you can; tomorrow will be too late.

Interesting, yet very personal! - Rated
It is a fascinating book for all who are interested in poetry and celtic heritage. Yet it seems a very personal book by Graves. Read like that, it is contains some interesting information on various subjects. There are also some long boring passages about tribes moving here and there etc.

Myths, poetic power, a store of ancient verse - Rated
The White Goddess by Robert Graves A new edition edited by Grevel Lindop

Three 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.

Very well researched and opens the door to many other myster - Rated
draws heavily on ancient welsh and irish muse and poetry, graves explains the meaning behind the words and presents proof that the western alphabet was developed in britain in conjunction with the early greeks.