#Robert Graves

[madnessofmen]

me and the mutuals

[lokavisi]

Not to mention that the Triple Goddess "archetype" reinforces gender roles/stereotypes and sometimes bioessentialism when placed in the "right" hands.

[vintagehomecollection]

Architect Robert Graves juxtaposes straight and curved geometric forms in unexpected ways in a townhouse library.

Inside Today’s Home, 1986

[thepettymachine]

Agnes has learned she is expecting a baby boy again

[alovelywaytospendanevening]

Sassoon and Graves in 1920.

When Robert Graves walked into C Company mess on 28 November 1915 on some errand, he noticed an unexpected book on the table. It was a copy of Post Liminium, a collection of essays by the late nineteenth-century poet Lionel Johnson. The army was not noted for its Lionel Johnson readers; a 'military text-book or a rubbish novel' were more the order of the day. Graves took a discreet look at the name on the flyleaf. A glance round the mess was enough to indicate 'Siegfried Sassoon': the tall, lanky, shy subaltern. Graves, also tall but anything but shy, quickly struck up a conversation. Both being off duty, the two were soon walking into Béthune for cream buns, busy talking poetry. Sassoon and Graves had a good deal in common. Both were conventionally unconventional public school products, trying to turn themselves into competent army officers and into the kind of poets Eddie Marsh would publish in his Georgian Poetry anthologies. Both, anxious about being insufficiently manly, had cultivated a tougher, sportier side: Sassoon through fox-hunting and cricket; Graves through boxing — he had been the school middleweight champion. Both were lonely and in love (Sassoon with David 'Tommy' Thomas, Graves with George 'Peter' Johnstone). Both were almost certainly still virgins. The friendship necessarily developed in fits and starts, and owed some of its intensity to that. Long conversations, the uninterrupted exchange of poems and confessions, were a rare luxury. Graves gave Marsh a humorous but probably not very misleading account of their difficulty 'in talking about poetry and that sort of thing': 'If I go into his mess and he wants to show me some set of verses, he says: "Afternoon Graves, have a drink… by the way, I want you to see my latest recipe for rum punch."' He also made it pretty clear to Marsh that it was not just poetry they had to be careful about discussing openly: 'I don't know what the CO would say if he heard us discussing the sort of things we do… His saying is that "there should be only one subject for conversation among subalterns off parade." I leave you to guess it.' There was obviously a secret thrill in these surreptitious exchanges, a sense that Graves and Sassoon were like two naughty schoolboys, hoodwinking their peers and those in authority.

— Harry Ricketts, Strange Meetings: The Poets of the Great War (2010)

[jurakan]

I’ll take a fun fact, and in return give you a Happy Friday!

I found this out because I recently read The Fellowship about the Inklings, and so! Today You Learned which famous actress Tolkien met by accident one time.

Tolkien recounts this in Letter 267, in reference to how he knows that not a lot of people really know who he is. He was at a lecture by Robert Graves (yes, that Robert Graves; he had this to say about him: "A remarkable creature, entertaining, likeable, odd, bonnet full of wild bees, half-German, half-Irish, very tall, must have looked like Siegfried/Sigurd in his youth, but an Ass."). After the lecture--which Tolkien said was horrible--he was introduced to a young woman (Graves assumed they'd recognize each other) who he found easy to talk to, and they apparently got along quite well. Partway through this conversation, Graves was very amused and said, "It is obvious neither of you has ever heard of the other before," and made formal introductions.

Tolkien, of course, you know. The woman here was Ava Gardner. Y'know, the famous actress.

[From the Turner Classic Movies website.]

Tolkien, for the record, still had to be told she was a famous movie star, as apparently he still didn't recognize the name.

J.R.R. Tolkien met movie star Ava Gardner, at a lecture by Robert Graves, and apparently they got along pretty well, even if they didn't know who the other was.

I just thought that was wild.

[ashintheairlikesnow]

I got a new Dead Gay Poets With Complicated Feelings About Nationalism book! As far as I can tell this book was written explicitly for my specific special interest and I am just emotionally rolling around on the floor right now like a happy dog in the backyard

[thequietabsolute]

Robert Graves, She Tells Her Love While Half Alseep

[majestativa]

Medusa loved to feel the serpents which served for hair curled close to her neck and dangling down her back, but with their heads raised to form an impressive bang over her forehead.

— Lucan, The Medusa Reader, transl by Robert Graves, (2013)

[derangedrhythms]

Some say that Darkness was first, and from Darkness sprang Chaos.

Robert Graves, from ‘The Greek Myths: The Complete and Definitive Edition’

[davidhudson]

Robert Graves, July 24, 1895 – December 7, 1985.

[glowing-starlight]

Tiberius and Vipsania Scene for Anonymous

[traegorn]

So the whole maiden mother crone thing is genderessentialist bullshit. I know. But where did that idea even come from?

I mean, it doesn't have to be gender essentialist bullshit, it depends on how its applied... it just happens to be very popular with gender essentialists.

As for the origins -- there are a bunch of different "triple goddesses" in different mythologies -- a few who fall into the maiden/mother/crone pattern, but many who don't. The idea is largely believed to have begin with this woman Jane Ellen Harrison, who kind of "flattened" a lot of goddesses into this archetype. She bought into a lot of the same ideas that Margaret Murray would make popular.

The person who's largely responsible for spreading the Triple Goddess bullshit though is this guy Robert Graves, with his book The White Goddess. Graves is the loudest voice, and his work has been largely discredited -- but if I was going to blame one person for it becoming popular... it's his ass.

[shakespearenews]

Smith went on to appear at the National opposite her future first husband, Robert Stephens, father to her two actor sons, Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens, in an acclaimed and unconventional 1967 Franco Zefferelli production of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, with a script updated by the poet and author Robert Graves.

The Observer was delighted: “Not for years has the human substance of Shakespeare been [reflected] like this.” The public agreed. After a month in repertory, the production was reportedly still selling out right back to the standing room behind the stalls.

[thepettymachine]

Agnes & Robert

it was time for their couple portraits since they're adults now.

[alovelywaytospendanevening]

British gay/bi male writers and their social circles

As a great admirer of gay literature, the social circles of gay and bisexual male writers is something that piques my interest. Due to the dangerousness of the matter in the past and also because it revolves around a relatively small niche, it seems that there was high level familiarity between these figures. The United Kingdom, a country whose literary input has abundant homoerotic tones, is a very adequate setting to analyze such a configuration.

I've been building a graph on this subject for some time, and now it seems mature enough for me to post it. It's a diagram based on friendship connections — deep or superficial —, although romantic and family-related connections are also included. Just a mutual recognition of existence isn't enough to justify a connection (otherwise most of them would be linked to Wilde!), and rivalries were not considered too. All the writers included were born during the Victorian and Edwardian eras (1837-1910), where this interconnectivity seemed particularly strong.

This is just an early version, as I imagine there is still a considerable amount of information that I missed. Therefore, I'm very open to suggestions and comments on it!

(Three Irishmen were also included in the diagram: Stoker, Wilde and Reid)