Re: OT: White Goddess

--- Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...> wrote:
> Alas, practically all his
> linguistic 'evidence' is pretty
> worthless;
   Let me explain again that his works aren't valuable
because of fact in the traditional sense of the word.
They are poetic and mythic. Yes, most of his
linguistic connections have no bearing whatsoever on
reality as we know it, but the connections he finds
and the end results of his "fiction" do - they're
valuable in the same sense that folk etymologies are.
They're not valid linguistic connections either, in
any academic ( i.e. scholarly, factual, concrete)
sense of the word, but they are valuable as poetic
understandings of the world around us. Graves'
brilliance is not in the details of his connections
(details such as these are rarely important in myth),
but in the connections themselves and the ideas they
inform.
   Raven didn't really get burned, Icarus didn't
really wear wings fashioned from wax, Bre'r Rabbit
didn't really get stuck in Tar Baby. These are
fictions - myths. Graves' arguments need to be
understood in the same sense - ignore the factual
errors (and there are a lot) but look at the
connections and the understandings these lead to.
   A perfect example, to me, is his dependence on the
idea of an ancient triple-goddess (Maiden, Mother, and
Crone) which is really a very recent development
(1920's, but I forget the woman who started the idea.
Gage, maybe?). We know that the triple-goddess idea is
NOT ancient, but the ideas that this concept envelops
are valuable, and mythic. And the idea offers a new
way to understand how the idea applies to life, how it
informs life.

> i.e. a mishmash of fact, fiction & imagination - not
> what I understand by
> either "fact" or "truth".
   Think of truth and fact like circles and squares -
a square is a circle, with sufficient numbers of sides
(or however that saying goes - I know I got it wrong).
Graves' ideas aren't a mishmash - if they were, there
wouldn't be any reason for the continued importance
his works have played. It wouldn't get anywhere. There
is a pattern to his thoughts - and they can only be
understood by thinking of his works as a new
mythology. Once you can do that, divorcing his words
from anything you accept as true, there is an
underlying "truth" expressed. I know this - I've been
as cynical and confused as others have expressed, but
worked through it. A different way of reading him is
required.

> Oh yes?  Many do not subscribe to that thesis,
> either.  I was brought up on
> the classics and have a fair knowledge of the
> mythologies of Greece and
> Rome, at least - and I haven't noticed many of
> Graves' idiosyncratic ideas
> actually holding up.
   I didn't say his ideas held up in a _Greek_ or
_Celtic_  mythic sense. I only said "mythic" which
does not refer to any other mythic cycle. It is it's
own myth, and the connections to other myths are only
tools for elaborating its own mythic structures. It
has nothing to do with Greek myths in the same way it
has nothing to with actual history or true linguistic
principles. It is it's own mythology, and the ideas of
that mythology, applied outside of Greek or Celtic
myth, DO hold up. They do serve a purpose, and they do
elaborate on issues of religion and life.
   The problem with academia and scholarly attitudes
is that there is, generally, only a certain way of
looking at his work. People try to compare the work to
history, or to the myths it draws on to explain its
mystery, or to linguistic flaws, and then assume that
the entire work is flawed. It's not - it's just hidden
ebhind those flaws, which were manipulated just as a
poet picks words, or an artist applies colors, to
create an understanding of a mystery, something that
is inherently ineffable.

> to a vivid imagination (or "analeptic thought" as
> Graves calls it).
   Yet that same analeptic thought / vivid imagination
is praised in art, or in other myths. The connections
to all the facts of the world have to be ignored, to
some degree, in order to understand just what he's
getting at.

  Let me say it one more time:  It is it's OWN MYTH,
unrelated to any of those sources he used in
fashioning it.

> Alas, one doesn't have to be in academia to notice
> some of the more glaring
> inconsistencies and, indeed, downright errors.
   Academia is, in my mind, more than schools and
lecture series. It is a mindset, a way of reading
things. And as strange as it sounds, I'm just as
critical of the work as you are, because I can think
academically as well. It took me some time to find a
deifferent reading of it, and one that I could live
with. A lot of that owes to my husband making me read
it until I understood what it was he saw in it (I used
to be the one pointing out errors and big gaping
holes). He didn't guide me, or tell me what it was,
but let me find my own understanding of it.

> As Lars Henrik Mathiesen, so rightly IMHO, wrote:
> .....
> >Graves should always be read as historical fiction.
> Suggestive
> >fiction, sometimes, but his are not scholarly
> works.
   In a strict sense, or even the sense of
scholarly/academic I explained above, absolutely. I
agree. But as a work of religious inspiration (like
the Bible or the Quran or the Upanishads or the Avesta
or the Sutras or...), it _IS_ scholarly.
   Of course, being pagan certainly helps in
understanding it. Doesn't guarantee an understanding,
but does help.

  Aidan, defending a work that gets a lot of flak for
being misunderstood (and even Graves' misunderstood
it, I think).




__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail.
http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/

Replies