Robert Graves
, 1895 - 1985
Robert Graves (b. Wimbledon, London) was a British poet, novelist, mythographer and translator best known for his hugely influential works of classical reception The Greek Myths (1955) and I, Claudius (1934). He is one of the circle of British poets known for his World War I poetry. Graves had a tumultuous and often scandalous personal life. His work is as controversial as it is influential.
Graves was the son of Alfred Perceval Graves, a Gaelic scholar and poet, and Amalie von Ranke Graves, a relative of the German historian Leopold von Ranke. He was one of ten children, and described later how he was raised by his mother to be sexually prudish. He won a St. John's Scholarship to study at the University of Oxford, but left in 1914 to fight in World War I as a junior officer, publishing his first poetry book Over the Brazier in 1916. In 1929, he published his autobiography of World War I, Good-bye to All That. In the same year, he left his wife Nancy and four children for Laura Riding, an American poet, with whom he lived in Majorca.
Riding was influential on Graves' work, and in his writing Graves built up the idea of the Muse-like female "White Goddess" who inspired poets. He published a book devoted to the theme in 1948, The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth. He also wrote the classical reception novels I, Claudius (1934), Claudius the God (1934), Count Belisarius (1938), and The Golden Fleece (1944). After his breakup with Riding, he had multiple other relationships, including a marriage to Beryl Hodge.
Graves' classical work has been hugely influential, with his mythography books often cited as a source explicitly in later mythographical writings, and many of his alterations to myth appearing as fact in the myth-related writings of others. However, Graves' mythical writings were informed by highly controversial ideas. Graves believed in Analeptic Thought, the idea forgotten events can be recovered through intuition, and he advocated for Greek myth holding truths about an earlier matriarchal society that worshipped a great goddess, later displaced by patriarchal invaders.
Graves was a good friend and regular correspondent of younger-generation war poet Spike Milligan. During World War I, he was friends with Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, but he fell out with Sassoon over the publication of Graves' World War I autobiography. Graves appears to have been bisexual, and at different points in his life pursued forms of non-monogamy and polyamory. Many of his romantic relationships were highly erratic and destructive, with Graves even threatening violence against men involved in them. He also seems to have suffered with poor mental health after fighting in World War I.
Sources:
Poetry Foundation Bio (accessed: June 11, 2021).
Britannica Bio (accessed: June 11, 2021).
Wikipedia (accessed: June 11, 2021).
Bio prepared by Robin Diver, University of Birmingham, RSD253@student.bham.ac.uk.
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