Robert Graves

[catalog]

I've been thinking he should have his own thread for a while, cos of all the things he was mixed up in:

• He's another one of those who creates or births the 60s, in terms of his "conversion" via magic mushrooms. And the link with Robert Gordon Wasson. A bit like, say, Alduos Huxley, in that sense.
• But he's also, again like Huxley I suppose, firmly got one foot in the pre-60s with all his work on myths and the classics
• His connection with the soft machine and Robert wyatt
• His complicated love life
• Lived abroad in the sun, like idlerich and shakahislip.

So he's sort of the end of something, and the beginning of something, through sex and drugs.

He is a bit fusty but a bit freewheeling, conservative and liberal, liminal etc etc

But the main thing that made me start the thread is that I went to one of those Viktor Wynd lectures a few months ago now, by a guy called Andy Letcher, and he was talking about the cultural history of magic mushrooms and said Graves sort of "broke" them. And he had this image of him which i thought was very haunting

This is not quite the same lecture, but it's basically the same



Might be of interest to some.

And the main essay by Graves, about mushrooms, that he references are:

https://cyberdisciple.files.wordpress.com/2021/01/graves-poets-paradise-1961.pdf

I DNF the white goddess and have not read this essay, but I'm enjoying 'I Claudius' a lot so will put a few bits in here about it from now on, and everyone else can add some brilliance.

 

[Murphy]

No idea about the mushroom links, personal bridgeheads are The White Goddess, I Claudius and bits on Greek myths

The White Goddess has an inaccurate, outdated chronology but its main thrust is still convincing - language as occulted symbolism representing the Anglo-Saxon invasion’s magical front, the British seeking to enchant and encode their aims and methods against an invading enemy rapidly gaining territory

It builds on your tree shagger thread too due to the nature of tree symbolism - Cad Goddeu or The Battle of the Trees

Cad Goddeu

"Cad Goddeu" published on by null.

www.oxfordreference.com

Is a deeper, more occulted agency at work representing the White Goddess of fertility, as Graves claims? That’s a reach but the rest is still startling. The Art of Memory by F Yates is worth reading prior to dipping into TWG first as it delves tangentially into bardic memory schemes. A foundational intro but the field of archaeo-linguistics, carbon dating and language studies in general have evolved considerably since

 

[catalog]

i did read the first 50 or so pages of TWG but then my mate who lent it me wanted it back.

The things that i remember from it are the long intro/foreword where he is banging on about the poet's duty and marking it out as a vocation.

And yes, as you say re treeshagging, the bits where he's on about all the different tree conferences and how they all mean different stuff.

 

[Murphy]

It’s a code which still hasn’t been exactly cracked, so to see someone with a fair degree of hubris go at it with such gusto, I mean he has to caveat it as a quest. Noble, highest set of intentions etc

Try The Art of Memory. It avoids the less ivory towered faff of Graves, so if you subsequently return to TWG certain mnemonic significances will resonate with more attuned detail

 

[Murphy]

WWI veteran, look at the Nash brothers or AOS, they were all fractured minds underneath it all

 

[catalog]

well that's the thing with him that's intriguing isn't it, he was Oxford Professor of Poetry but he's on the shrooms.

And apparently was a family friend of the guy from soft Machine and had Robert Wyatt round his place in Majorca

Robert Wyatt - The Wire

Ahead of his appearance at our Off The Page literary festival for sound and music in Bristol on 26 September, read an extract from Marcus O'Dair's biography, tracing Wyatt's teenage years through to the birth of his first son

www.thewire.co.uk

 

[forclosure]

@catalog William Blake to me is the real root of where all those guys like Huxley and Graves stem from

 

[catalog]

I sort of know what you mean, but they are actually pretty different people and I think graves criticised blake a bit. What I mean is that graves is very well to do, classically educated, and that shines through. Whereas blake is such a one off, doing his own thing.

Bbut maybe if you explain a bit more?

I read the poets paradise essay i linked to above over the weekend and it's very interesting.

His description of being on mushrooms is good, he closed his eyes a lot, which is not something I would typically do.

There's also quite a bit of discussion as to thd meaning and origin of "paradise" which is a nice sync with what woops was saying in spendys thread.

In ancient times, "Paradise" was strictly reserved for an illuminated aristocracy, until the Church at last threw open the gates to all converts, however brutish or feeble minded, who would accept baptism

I didn't think it at the time I read it, but as I copy this out now, it makes me think that our correlate for Church now could be conceivably "Tech" and baptism is a coding boot camp.

St John's Apocalyptic Paradise is borrowed from chapters of the pre-Christian Book of Enoch, which are themselves based on the "Eden" chapters of Ezekiel and Genesis; and these, again, on the Babylonian Paradise described in the Gilgamesh Epic and elsewhere. The Persians knew a similar Paradise; and their name for it; paradaeza, yields the Syrian-Greek word paradeisos and the Hebrew pardess. Those middle-Eastern Paradises, so far back as the Sumerian, are reported as being delightful mountain-top gardens watered by a four-headed crystal river, their fruit trees laden with flashing jewels

 

[woops]

I sort of know what you mean, but they are actually pretty different people and I think graves criticised blake a bit. What I mean is that graves is very well to do, classically educated, and that shines through. Whereas blake is such a one off, doing his own thing.

Bbut maybe if you explain a bit more?

I read the poets paradise essay i linked to above over the weekend and it's very interesting.

His description of being on mushrooms is good, he closed his eyes a lot, which is not something I would typically do.

There's also quite a bit of discussion as to thd meaning and origin of "paradise" which is a nice sync with what woops was saying in spendys thread.



I didn't think it at the time I read it, but as I copy this out now, it makes me think that our correlate for Church now could be conceivably "Tech" and baptism is a coding boot camp.

What say you @padraig (u.s.) do you feel yourself being inducted into a patrician secret society?

 

[catalog]

Didnt you read Graves' bio recently woops? Why don't you tell us something about him?

 

[woops]

He was ruined by the war

He formed a cult-like ménage à quatre also involving the interesting-sounding poet Laura Riding which culminated in multiple suicide attempts

He later married Beryl and went on to betray her for an increasingly inappropriate string of "muses"

The mushroom stuff was only lightly discussed

The biographer probably found it embarrassing and obviously preferred his own personal recollections of Graves and how much Graves liked him. There must be a better bio

 

[catalog]

From this morning's reading of 'I Claudius'

"Do you believe that the souls of criminals are eternally tormented?"
"I have always been taught to believe that they are."
"But the Imoortal Gods are free from any fear of punishment, however many crimes they commit?"
"Well, Jove deposed his father and killed one of his grandsons and incestuously married his sister and... yes, I agree..."

Step change from the Roman religions and I suppose something like Hinduism to the Semitic religions where you have an infallible God.

 

[Murphy]

plus the rise of imperial cults (Augustus/Octavius) as republic morphed towards empire

you could view Livia’s actions as seeming to justify (to her) some form of higher moral ground where she becomes a goddess, hence the ruthlessness of Caligula tormenting her as she lies aged with failing health

 

[catalog]

the other bit i folded over this morning was about Livia's views on the republic and all her endless murdering being basically cos she didn't want a republic

You refuse to see that one can no more reintroduce republican government at this stage than one can reimpose primitive feelings of chastity on modern wives and husbands. It's like trying to turn the shadow back on the sundial: it can't be done.

i mean, trump and bozza, what are they if not decadent emperors?

 

[Murphy]

I can’t recall the source, maybe Miranda Green, that women from elite families yielded more power and influence under imperial dynasties than republican equivalents

If Livia intuited or saw that coming, her nature would do the necessary rest

 

[catalog]

didn't bozza's wife ultimately throw the axe on cummings' neck?

 

[Murphy]

bros before ho’s?

 

[catalog]

just finished claudius the god this morning, have really enjoyed the pair of novels.

some bits i copied out

Regarding treeshagging:

The party had come to the stage that parties reach when the first excitement of drink has worn off and everyone begins to feel a little tired and at a loss. Interest now centred on Vettius Valens: he was hugging a fine evergreen oak-tree which grew outside the house, and talking to an imaginary Dryad inside it. The Dryad had apparently fallen in love with him and was inviting him in a whisper, audible only to himself, to a rendezvous at the top of the tree. He finally consented to join her there and made his friends form a human pyramid to enable him to climb up to the first big bough. The pyramid collapsed twice amid shrieks of laughter, but Vettius persevered and at the third try got astride of the bough.

Roads are better than pyramids:

"I am pointing at the Appian Way,' I replied solemnly. 'It was begun in the Censorship of my great ancestor, Appius Claudius the Blind. The Roman Road is the greatest monument ever raised to human liberty by a noble and generous people. It runs across mountain, marsh, and river. It is built broad, straight, and firm. It joins city with city and nation with nation. It is tens of thousands of miles long, and always thronged with grateful travellers. And while the Great Pyramid, a few hundred feet high and wide, awes sightseers to silence - though it is only the rifled tomb of an ignoble corpse and a monument of oppression and misery, so that no doubt in viewing it you may still seem to hear the crack of the taskmaster's whip and the squeals and groans of the poor workmen struggling to set a huge block of stone into position

On Druidry:

It would be as well to give here in brief an account of the main features of Druidism, a religion which seems to be a fusion of Celtic and aboriginal beliefs. I cannot guarantee that the details are true, for reports are conflicting. No Druidical lore is allowed to be consigned to writing and a terrible fate is threatened to those who reveal even the less important mysteries. My account is based on the statements of prominent apostates from the religion, but these include no Druidical priests. No consecrated Druid has ever been persuaded to reveal the inner mysteries even under torture. The word 'Druid' means 'Oak-man', because that is their sacred
tree. Their sacred year begins with the budding of the oak and ends with the falling of its leaves. There is a god called Tanarus whose symbol is the oak. It is he who with a flash of lightning generates the mistletoe on the oak-tree branch, which is the sovereign remedy against witchcraft and all diseases. There is also a sun-god called Mabon whose symbol is a white bull. And then there is Lug, a god of medicine, poetry, and the arts, whose symbol is the snake. These are all, however, the same person, a God of Life-in-Death, worshipped in different aspects, like Osiris in Egypt. As Osiris is yearly drowned by a god of waste waters, so this triple deity is yearly killed by the God of Darkness and Water, his uncle Nodons, and restored to life by the power of his sister Sulis, the Goddess of Healing who corresponds to Isis. Nodons manifests himself by a monstrous wave of water, twelve feet high, that at regular intervals comes running up the mouth of the Severn, chief of the western rivers, causing great destruction to crops and huts as far as thirty miles inland. The Druidical religion is not practised by the tribes as such, for they are fighting units commanded by kings and noblemen, but by thirteen secret societies, named after various sacred animals, the members of any one of which belong to a variety of tribes; because it is the month in which one is born - they have a thirteen-month year - which decides the society to which one is to belong. There are the Beavers, and the Mice, and the Wolves, and the Rabbits, and the Wild Cats, and the Owls, and so on, and each society has a particular lore of its own and is presided over by a Druid.

On the origins of the Roman alphabet:

The Latin alphabet was borrowed from the Dorian Greeks in the time of the learned King Evander, and the Greeks had originally had it from Cadmus who brought it with him when he arrived with the Phoenician fleet, and the Phoenicians had it from the Egyptians. It was the same alphabet, but only in name. The fact was that
Egyptian writing began in the form of pictures of animals and other natural objects, and that these gradually became formalized into hieroglyphic letters, and that the Phoenicians borrowed and altered them, and that the Greeks borrowed and altered these alterations, and finally the Latins borrowed and altered these alterations of alterations.

Donkey-Cock:

I enjoyed perfect health throughout the following year, and nobody tried to assassinate me, and the one revolution that was attempted ended in a most ignominious way for its prime mover. This was Asinius Gallus, grandson of Asinius Pollio and son of Tiberius's first wife, Vipsania, by Gallus whom she afterwards
married and whom Tiberius hated so and finally killed by slow starvation. It is curious how appropriate some people's names are. Gallus means cock, and Asinus means donkey, and Asinius Gallus was the most utter little donkey-cock for his boastfulness and stupidity that one could find in a month's tour of Italy. Imagine,
he had not got any troops ready or collected any funds for his revolution, but believed that the strength of his personality supported by the nobility of his birth would win him immediate adherents!

 

[Murphy]

Been going through TWG unable to sleep so got up and read overnight, you forget how bonkers its scope is

Firstly, dating and chronology are poorly understood by Graves. He had no c14 dating, hence you could bin large tracts. The ogham stone language section is irrelevant. The Baltic influences are irrelevant. If you want to see sky worship morph over various millennia welcome to European prehistory but push further past the Bronze Age, back to the Neolithic if you want thoroughness. Plenty of Neolithic monuments have moon cycles built in to their calendars. Newgrange is loaded with triple (triskelion) spiral motifs, nearly 2800 yeas before The Matres (who I met in a dream once)

Solar cults are Bronze Age. The rupture point probably came through disease in a Neolithic farming population, I dunno take your pick from anthrax to pox to crop and livestock decimation. The 80% replacement comes from a people in a region we now associate with Ukraine (western steppe herders). This is the likely entry point of a new variation of indo-euro myths. The sun born across the sky in a great chariot is witnessed In countless archaeological contexts from this cultural horizon. Different rites too. It’s not a rupture point between late Bronze and Iron Ages although an environmental event is calculated for 1200-1100BC (Bronze Age collapse)

The Cad Goddeu by Taliesin is an archaeological site in itself. It borrows or steals from much older mythological frameworks than its christian context. Taliesin was a poet for wealthy patrons. He declares in other works visiting coined up rulers simply because he had heard (of) them. All of the evidence suggests a post-Roman prolapse, with the British being attacked from multiple directions - Irish forces conquer west and north Wales but are driven out by the warlord Cunneda/Cunedag from what we now call Clackmannanshire. Within decades the British faced new (and now all too familiar) foes, the Anglo Saxons, but Vortigern catches most flack from employing Hengist and Horsa as mercenaries over an unpaid debt (welching) by a rival, a pejorative term that has been constantly exploited since. It goes full circle even today - the Scots become too tight to lend money and the Welsh renege on debts - what untrustworthy people!

The spells of psychopathic Gwydion, much to @craner ’s possible amusement, are the last vestiges of a mixed pagan/Christian Brythonic population doing everything it can to save, sanctify and weaponise language as a means of survival. Suppression nearly always breeds revivalism. The years between 410-650AD are as bloody an era as the Roman conquest period itself, although the process is slower and far more attritional. If you hold this stencil up against the ‘grab some of this borrow/steal a bit of that’ approach taken by Graves, far more clicks into place

Overall, Graves was close - The Battle of the Trees is a battle of language but from a much later period still steeped in pre-christian/pre-Roman myth, moon motifs and magic

 

[Murphy]

Also, what’s up with his complete omission of Yeats