A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z
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Life and Works: Robert Graves, poet, novelist, biographer, mythographer, classical scholar and translator was born in 1895 in Wimbledon, a well-to-do suburb of London into a middle-class family, and died in 1985 in Deya, the Majorcan village he had made his home (with the exception of the Spanish civil war and the Second World War) since 1929. The period immediately following Robert Graves' birth is described in an amusing an impressionistic manner in the opening pages of his autobiography. The juxtaposed images of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee procession, that he witnessed at the age of two or three, and then that of the terror of his encounter with his father's Shakespeare folios say much: his family was patriotic, upper middle class, well-educated and strict. His childhood seems unremarkable and his struggles through adolescence at the British public school, Charterhouse, seem rather de rigeur: he disliked and was disliked by most of his peers and was afraid of the majority of his masters. Toward those whose company he did seek, he developed rather innocent though clearly earnest homosexual feelings. Here he started to write poetry and published his first volume of poems, Over The Brazier in 1916. He was expected to go up to Oxford where he had already secured a classical scholarship at St. John's. Like most adolescents, Graves viewed has father as an oppressive patriarch and, with the convenient outbreak of the Great War, thought he had an opportunity to escape childhood and oppression for manhood and glory. Graves did not graduate from Oxford University but joined in 1914 the British Army. Graves' own poetry and prose is the best source for a description of his war experiences. It suffices to say that Graves found neither manhood nor glory but terror and madness in the war. He was wounded, left for dead and pronounced dead by his surgeon in the field and his commanding officer in a telegram to his parents but subsequently recovered to read the report of his own demise in The Times. Amazingly, given the extent and the nature of his wounds, Graves made a full recovery and was assured of home-service for the duration of the war. However, like many of his fellow invalided combatants, though home in the most 'honourable' circumstances possible, Graves could not overcome the feeling of guilt that he had left his soldiers in peril while he himself was safe. He managed to have himself posted back to the front. Before seeing action again though, he was met by his company surgeon who threatened him with court-martial if he did not immediately remove himself from the front. Graves married twice. His first marriage to Nancy Nicholson, the daughter of the painter William Nicholson, produced four children: Jenny, David, Catherine and Sam. His second marriage to Beryl Pritchard produced a further four children: William, Lucia, Juan and Tomas. Graves married the painter and feminist Nancy Nicholson in 1918, and took his B.Litt in 1926. Nancy was a 'modern woman' who refused to take on Graves' names and preferred wearing trousers to dresses. Though their relationship was initially happy and productive (Nancy and Robert worked on a children's book together), the stress of family life, little money and Robert's persistent shell-shocked condition caused them troubles. In the same years Graves moved to Egypt to work as a professor at the University of Cairo. He was accompanied with his wife, children and the poet Laura Riding, with whom he established the Seizin Press and published the journal Epilogue (1925-38). In 1929 Graves moved with Riding to Deya, in Mallorca, where he lived the most of his life. The outbreak of Spanish Civil war forced them leave the island, and after brief periods in Lugano, Brittany and London, they sailed for America in 1939. The controversial autobiography Good-Bye To All That (1929), a chronicle of the disillusioned postwar generation, became a huge bestseller but alienated several of Graves's friends, notably Sassoon and Edmund Blunden. The book described the author's unhappy time at school, the horrors of war and the end of his first marriage. Another commercially successful book was Lawrence And The Arabs (1927). Later Graves told that Goodbye to All That "paid my debts and enabled me to set up on Majorca as a writer". With Riding Graves collaborated on a number of literary projects, but their personal relationship was undermined by infidelities. A Survey Of Modernist Poetry (1927), published by Seizin Press, contained close analysis by Riding which influenced the New Criticism. By the end of the 1930s their paths separated. Riding married in 1941 Schuyler B. Jackson (d. 1968). Graves fell in love with Beryl Hodge, the wife of his friend, with whom he returned to Mallorca in 1946 and married her in 1950. Graves considered himself primarily a poet, but he could not live by poetry and was best known for his unorthodox novels of Roman history, I, Claudius (1934) and Claudius the God (1934), as well as fictionalized reappraisals of history and legend such as King Jesus (1946) and Homer’s Daughter (1955). His early lyrics were written in gloomy, late-Romantic style. His later works dealt mainly with love and marriage, birth and death, often set within a mythological framework. Classical literature and mythology became Graves a constant source of inspiration. His views on intuition and poetry Graves summarized in his essay The Case for Xanthippe (1960). According to Graves, women and poets are natural allies. Abstract reasoning is a predominantly male field of thought, and rational schooling discourages intuitive thought. If the Claudius books are well known because of their world-wide television, an almost equal audience has been introduced to Graves through his autobiography, Goodbye to All That (first published in 1929 and then substantially revised for a new edition in 1957). Graves, however would most like to have been best remembered as a poet and, indeed, for a time received numerous accolades that suggested that that might be the case. While his reputation as a novelist is modest, it is relatively constant. Several of his works including the Claudius books and Wife to Mr Milton have been in print ever since they were first published. In the 1940s Graves became interested in myths and history. Studies of goddess lore led him also reinterpret the genealogy of Jesus, and rewrite the Gospels. In the historical novel King Jesus (1946) he presented Jesus as a sage and poet, and rejected the mystical Virgin Birth doctrine. King Jesus sold-out their initial war-time print run of 12,000 in their first week and continue to be reprinted by various presses on both sides of the Atlantic from time to time. Graves' career spanned the majority of this century. He was a youthful witness to the evolution of this century's self-conscious notion of its own modernity. He nearly died fighting for a belief in nation and England at a time when modern ideals were displacing the notion of 'for king and country' with sometimes contradictory socio-political ideals. He witnessed the same upheavals and suffered many of the same trials of his avant-garde contemporaries (such as Breton, Soupault and Apollinaire in France and T.E. Hulme, David Jones and Wyndham Lewis in Britain) in the First World War yet, along with other poets like Edward Thomas, Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, wrote about them very differently. He saw things going wrong again and decided then to say Goodbye to All That and try out life on his own terms. Graves was influenced by a number of the 19th-and early 20th-century scholars, such as James Frazier, J.J. Bachofen, Jane Harrison, and Margaret Murray. In the 1950s he published two volumes of The Greek Myths (1955) and The Nazarene Gospel Restored (1953, with Joshua Podro). Graves was the author of numerous other works, of which the most popular were:
Graves was the author or the editor of over 140 books or collections of essays or poetry. From 1961 to 1966 Graves was Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford - he was 66 when he delivered his first lecture in this office. Graves wrote several autobiographical works, essays, and carried out Greek and Latin translations. Graves's later works often challenged academic and popular conventions, emphasizing the value of mythology and poetry over science and technology. Robert Graves passed away on December 7, 1985 after a long and slow mental and physical disintegration. He is buried in Deya. His marker is a simple concrete slate with the inscription: "Robert Graves, Poeta, 1895-1985". |
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Selected works of Robert Graves:
Bibliography about Graves:
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