Lynn Smythe
The White Goddess
November 28th 2007 00:22
Robert Grave's Book The White Goddess
The White Goddess
The White Goddess is a book-length essay based upon the nature of poetic myth written by Graves. First published in 1948, and revised, amended and enlarged in 1966, it represents an approach to the study of mythology from a decidedly creative yet idiosyncratic perspective. It proposes the existence of a European deity, the "White Goddess of Birth, Love and Death," inspired and represented by the phases of the moon, and who, Graves argues, lies behind the faces of the diverse goddesses of various European mythologies.
Graves argues that "true" or "pure" poetry is inextricably linked with the ancient cult-ritual of his proposed White Goddess and of her son. His conclusions come from his own conjectures about how early religions developed, as there is no historical evidence that the "White Goddess" as he describes her ever figured in any actual belief system. However given that the worship of the Goddess, as defined by Graves, took place in pre-literate and pre-historical times the lack of such evidence is not in itself evidence of lack.
Poetry and Myth
Graves described The White Goddess as "a historical grammar of the language of poetic myth." The book draws from the mythology and poetry of Wales and Ireland especially, as well as that of most of Western Europe and the ancient Middle East. Relying on arguments from etymology and the use of forensic techniques to uncover what he calls 'iconotropic' redaction of original myths, Graves argues not only for the worship of a single goddess under many names, but also that the names of the Ogham letters in the alphabet used in parts of Gaelic Ireland and Britain contained a calendar that contained the key to an ancient liturgy involving the human sacrifice of a sacred king; and, further, that these letter names concealed lines of Ancient Greek hexameter describing the goddess. In response to critics, Graves has accused literary scholars of being psychologically incapable of interpreting myth or too concerned with maintaining their perquisites to go against the majority view.
Graves's The White Goddess deals with goddess worship as the prototypical religion, analyzing it largely from literary evidence, in myth and poetry.
Graves admitted he was not a medieval historian, but a poet, and thus based his work on the premise that the "language of poetic myth anciently current in the Mediterranean and Northern Europe was a magical language bound up with popular religious ceremonies in honor of the Moon-goddess, or Muse, some of them dating from the Old Stone Age, and that this remains the language of true poetry..."
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