Gumtree, minor correction, Amicah is the one who first brought up Homer's Daughter not me.
Frybabe and Amicah Sorry I got my wires crossed - it's sometimes hard to keep everything straight especially when pressed for time. Any excuse
Whilst on the subject of Robert Graves I should attempt to answer the question
Ginny posed:
Gum what does Martin Seymour-Smith's biography say about Graves? I've always been somewhat suspect of Graves, what did he conclude?
I should say I was never totally convinced by Graves either but am more inclined toward him now than I have ever been. The more I read Graves the better I appreciate him - which is not to say I read him every day
It's ten years or more since I read the biography so for what my memory is worth.....
Firstly, Seymour-Smith was a life long friend of Graves so one wonders whether he was truly objective OR alternatively by knowing his subject so well he was able to cut through the facade. He did hold back on some issues in the first edition but the 1995 edition (the one I read) was fully revised and extended to include matters he previously left unsaid. What they were I'll never know as I've no intention of reading the original 1982 edition but I believe chiefly it was to do with Graves' womanising -he had to have his Muse. S-S goes into those aspects quite thoroughly.
Seymour-Smith praises Graves' knowledge and facility for writing but is at pains to make the point that his own wife, who was an Oxford classicist, worked with Graves daily as his assistant whilst he was writing
The Greek Myths - which he wrote for Penguin as part of their push to popularise the classics - Janet Seymour-Smith was appalled at the lack of scholarship and in part was responsible for correcting Graves' work - the inference being that Mrs S-S's contribution was vital in establishing some degree of accuracy -
So he really is suspect - on the other hand S-S praises Graves so far as the content of
The White Goddess is concerned which Graves described a 'a historical grammar of poetic myth' - this is what S-S says about it (in part)
"
The White Goddess ...is the product of a highly sophisticated, independent and uncompromising mind... The answer to the question as to whether Graves believed its thesis in a literal sense is that
The White Goddess is a gigantic metaphor - although it is at the same time an idiosyncratic 'key' to, not all, but some, mythologies. It is, as well, the lively and stimulating expression of an outstanding and unusual temperament, a temperament which loathes and distrusts machinery, which hates the developments of technology, and which needs to live as near as possible to nature, in accord with the season.
..."
Graves wrote "The study of mythology...is based squarely on tree-lore and the seasonal observation of life in the fields"
I think Graves' long term reputation will rest on his poetry. He was one of the WWI War Poets along with Brooke, Sassoon, Owen et al. He was writing lyrical poetry at a time when it was way out of 'fashion' and he stuck to his guns continuing to write his brand of poetry until the end.
The White Goddess is something of a testament of a practising poet.
Which brings us right back to our reading of Odyssey and the part that myths and 'tree lore' -the seasons and their fruitfulness - nature itself - have to play in our story and in the affairs of men - and Gods! And as we noted recently
Odyssey and
Iliad are the earliest sources we have in regard to the Greek myths - myths which are rooted in nature.
