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Fond Memories of Robert Graves
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10505 |
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THE ARTS
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2 / 1986 |
2,173 Words |
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Christopher V. Davies
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" 'What is the use or function of poetry nowadays?' is a question not the less poignant for being asked 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 of 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 warning, turned the house upside down by capricious experiments in philosophy, science and industry, and brought ruin on himself and his family."
--Robert Graves, from The White Goddess
With the passing of Robert Graves on December 7, 1985, at the ripe age of ninety, the English-speaking world lost one of the greatest poetic voices of the twentieth century. To the general public, Robert Graves's best known work was the I Claudius, and Claudius the God saga, which the (London) Times Literary Supplement described as "the only successful historical novel of the century." His early autobiography, Goodbye to All That, led John Wain to comment in the (London) Observer: "From the moment of its first appearance [it was] an established classic."
In his excellent study, The Poetry of Robert Graves, Professor Michael Kirkham acknowledges in the Introduction that Graves is "surely the best contemporary writer in English of a lucid, plain but well-bred prose." But the most valuable contribution of this flamboyant personality, "arguably our most distinguished man of letters" as Anthony Powell, also a distinguished man of letters, described him, was in and through his poetry and writings about poetry.
Martin Seymour-Smith, in his biography, Robert Graves--His Life and Work, comments, "Only by 1960, when he had reached the age of sixty-five, was Graves' reputation as a poet of genius secure. He had to wait a long time to be recognized as the foremost English-language love poet of this century--and probably the two preceding ones, too." On the dust jacket there is reference to Graves' "isolation, both geographical and personal, from the mainstream of literature in this century."
In 1929, Graves used the proceeds of Goodbye to All That to build a house on the Spanish island of Mallorca, where he was to live for the rest of his life except for a lengthy interregnum caused by the Spanish Civil War and World War II. But this "geographical isolation" is significant only in so far as it stems from his "personal isolation." The reasons for this are paradoxically central to understanding why he is more profoundly relevant to our times than many more fashionable and accepted, possibly "socially aware," writers.
Graves reveals his poetic character in his seminal prose work The White Goddess, which he subtitled: "A historical grammar of poetic myth." He himself admits it is "a very difficult book, as well as a very queer one." But since its first publication in 1984, it has had an increasingly important influence, albeit often subliminal, that extends far beyond literary circles.
Born in 1895, Graves joined the army at the outbreak of World War I only months after
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