Anyone else read The White Goddess? How well founded are Graves's arguments? I'm not a big history buff, and only about half way through the book. I'm finding it fascinating, but a lot of what he says seems to be fairly tenuous connections between different myths. In one sections he is trying to decipher a riddle that he imagines to be in a poem by Gwion/Taliesin and makes some pretty wild leaps it seems to me. Is Graves generally respected or is he kind of an eccentric?
Nobody takes him seriously, and that’s in a field that already tolerates more out there takes than usual like Girard or Durkheim. His historical claims have been completely trashed by archeologists and linguists and he’s essentially just schizoposting to transpose his own myth onto history.
>>25334250Anon told me many years ago that if I read this wiccan feminists will try to cut off my penis.So couldn't possibly risk it.
when i was looking for poetry craft books i found this book, but it was just him talking about how women are superior or some shit. i feel like if graves where alive in modern times he would def be a trannyalso it was all made up
>>25334448>schizopostingThis exact idea passed through my mind while reading it lol
>>25334448>His historical claims have been completely trashed by archeologists and linguists and he’s essentially just schizoposting to transpose his own myth onto history.Sounds a lot like Nietzsche.
>>25334250
>>25334448>completely trashed by archeologists and linguistsAs a poet he took guesses and believed like any religious person would. What book(s) make these corrections (trash)? In contrast we have people like Graham Hancock and no matter how much his ideas are proving to be true, there are establishment people who continue to make him out to be a kook.
>>25335157bullseye
>>25335183>As long as I don't violate facts, I can make up a ton of shit in the empty spaces between themkek, well it is fun, I'll give him that, but pretenses at being a "truth" sayer are hilarious.
>>25335545That’s not quite what the passage says. He’s drawing a distinction between fact and truth. Facts alone don’t constitute truth. Necessary but not sufficient. And RG wasn’t under any illusions, he knew he was only speaking to certain people.
>>25334250He’s too stupid to notice his love for the queen is bred into him, but he’s just smart enough to try and “unpack” it like everyone else can’t see what’s going on
>>25334250The White Goddess, along with The Golden Bough, are not literally true but it they are symbolically and spiritually true
>>25335560To be fair to Graves, he does begin the book by saying something like "skeptics need not read on", but if you have to preempt your critics, aren't you kind of giving the game away from the start?
>>25335633>The White Goddess, along with The Golden Bough, are not literally true but it they are symbolically and spiritually true>>25335560>He’s drawing a distinction between fact and truth. Facts alone don’t constitute truth.so hes like they tranny version of evola?
>>25335970He’s not writing a conventional scholarly argument. If it doesn’t resonate, no amount of argument will make it resonate; and if it does, the argument is almost secondary.
>>25334499>>25334499>>25334499You're mainly right, he definitely views woman as divine and man as fractured/incomplete. There is more of the author's psychology here than valid commentary on anthropological myth. I would post a page from the book to support this but I guess I can start threads with an image but I can't post replies with an image. Genius.
>>25335995True, it's entirely a vibe post of a book. Resonate or not, he's just throwing stuff at the wall to see if you'll eat it.
>>25336012‘Since I am neither scientist nor philosopher, I should not venture to call any scientific or philosophical treatise obscure.'
>>25334250>How well founded are Graves's arguments?Not very. The book is one conjecture build on top of another, forming a precarious Jenga-stack of a thesis.That's not to say the book isn't interesting or entertaining, as you noted yourself. It's worth reading as a piece of speculation.
>>25334448>His historical claims have been completely trashed by archeologists and linguistsHe isn't writing historically, though. You've already missed what he's doing with White Goddess.It's like a mythic prose-poem taking a historical essay as its face.
>>25334448True, but it could be soft social engineering to push mother earth and feminist alligned history to the zeitgeist, a lot like Bacofen's work and Feminist centered occultism that the Theosophists were pushing at the time. Modern Wicca and Pop New Age occultistsm seemingly blends in well with Robert Graves and other Anglo occultists.
>>25336138don't want to be that guy but i wouldn't necessarily call Graves's or the first generation of wiccan movements necessarily feminist.yes, it's woman centering, but it still enshrines a woman's role as a sexual object, a homemaker and mother, and later a custodian of tradition and defines a man's role as an almost oedipal struggle to win her affections.It's no surprise that the original wiccan groups were among rightist circles (Gardner was an ardent tory) who saw themselves as a revival of the original European religion. It's been awhile since I looked into him, but Graves had some interesting ideas along those lines as well irrc.It wasn't until the 60s-80s that wicca and neopaganism got redefined by second wave feminist and ecological undercurrents into what we think of it today, with writers like zsuzsanna budapest and starhawk.
>>25336153Good point. Its a lot like the Victorian age liberal impulse amongst the upper classes eventually turning into mass democratic liberalism you see now, a far cry from the original impulse.
>>25334477now I need to read it so wiccan feminists turn me into a tranny
>>25336114He does say that he is bound by fact in his mission to reveal the truth. That he should have reverence for historical and archeological facts, which means that future facts that have been uncovered which may throw doubt on his conclusions is already admitted by him to be a valid refutation of his thesis. Again, as others have said, it's fascinating and a bit of fun, but his conclusions are too tenuous to take seriously.
>>25336572it's a gloss so that you take it seriously, that's at least how I read it.William Blake felt bound by his bardic mission to tell the truth, the spiritual truth, even if it was in his poetry and he wasn't literally writing about the historic milton.
>>25334250Combining robert graves with nietzcsche summons strong anthropological poetic reading to apollonian and dionysian poetic anthropology especially combined to anthropological psychedelic and combine that with the visionary blake huxley psychedelic reading and if those readings are combined with cyber psychedelic feminist donna haraway theories and something like the doors to perceptions become cleansed and become the seals to perception or something like that
>>25339450Graves made a point about Hercules-Dionysus being mortal and the death and resurrection of him converting him into Hercules-Apollo the immortal. I honestly couldn't make much sense of that, do you have any insight?
>>25339450>or something like that
