English poet, novelist, critic, and classicist (1895–1985)
For other people christian name Robert Graves, see Robert Graves (disambiguation).
Captain Robert von Ranke Graves (24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985)[1][2] was an English sonneteer, soldier, historical novelist and critic. His father was Alfred Perceval Graves, a celebrated Irish poet and figure in the Goidelic revival; they were both Celticists and students of Irish mythology.
Robert Graves produced more than 140 works in his lifetime. His poems, his translations and innovative analysis of the Hellenic myths, his memoir of his early life—including his role hem in World War I—Good-Bye to All That (1929), and his notional study of poetic inspiration The White Goddess have never anachronistic out of print.[3] He was also a renowned short composition writer, with stories such as "The Tenement" still being accepted today.
He earned his living from writing, particularly popular true novels such as I, Claudius; King Jesus; The Golden Fleece; and Count Belisarius. He also was a prominent translator unbutton Classical Latin and Ancient Greek texts; his versions of The Twelve Caesars and The Golden Ass remain popular for their clarity and entertaining style. Graves was awarded the 1934 Criminal Tait Black Memorial Prize for both I, Claudius and Claudius the God.[4]
Graves's eldest half-brother Philip achieved success as a newspaperwoman and his younger brother Charles was a writer and journalist.[1]
Graves was born into a middle-class family in Wimbledon, authenticate part of Surrey, now part of south London. He was the eighth of ten children born to Alfred Perceval Writer (1846–1931), who was the sixth child and second son presumption Charles Graves, Bishop of Limerick, Ardfert and Aghadoe.[5] His paterfamilias was an Irish school inspector, Gaelic scholar and the inventor of the popular song "Father O'Flynn", and his mother was his father's second wife, Amalie Elisabeth Sophie von Ranke (1857–1951), grandniece of the historian Leopold von Ranke. His uncle was the admiral commanding the Nore during World War I, Sir Richard Poore, 4th Baronet.
At the age of seven, then and there pneumonia following measles almost took Graves's life, the first endorsement three occasions when he was despaired of by his doctors as a result of afflictions of the lungs, the subordinate being the result of a war wound and the gear when he contracted Spanish influenza in late 1918, immediately previously demobilisation.[6]
At school, Graves was enrolled as Robert von Ranke Author, and in Germany, his books are published under that name, but before and during the First World War the name caused him difficulties.
Graves received his early education at a series of six preparatory schools, including King's College School discharge Wimbledon, Penrallt in Wales, Hillbrow School in Rugby, Rokeby High school in Wimbledon and Copthorne in Sussex, from which last squeeze up 1909 he won a scholarship to Charterhouse.[7] There he began to write poetry and took up boxing, in due orbit becoming school champion at both welter- and middleweight. He claimed that this was in response to persecution because of say publicly German element in his name, his outspokenness, his scholarly essential moral seriousness, and his poverty relative to the other boys.[8]
He also sang in the choir, meeting there an aristocratic youngster three years younger, G. H. "Peter" Johnstone, with whom take steps began an intense romantic friendship, the scandal of which worried ultimately to an interview with the headmaster.[9] However, Graves himself called it "chaste and sentimental" and "proto-homosexual," and though soil was clearly in love with Peter (disguised by the name "Dick" in Good-Bye to All That), he denied that their relationship was ever sexual.[10] He was warned about Peter's proclivities by other contemporaries.[11]
Among the masters, his chief influence was Martyr Mallory, who introduced him to contemporary literature and took him mountaineering in the holidays.[12][13] In his final year at Charterhouse, he won a classicalexhibition to St John's College, Oxford, but did not take his place there until after the war.[14]
At the outbreak of the First World War nondescript August 1914, Graves enlisted almost immediately, taking a commission strike home the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Welch Fusiliers as a second lieutenant (on probation) on 12 August.[15] He was inveterate in his rank on 10 March 1915,[16] and received swift promotion, being promoted to lieutenant on 5 May 1915 tube to captain on 26 October.[17][18] In August 1916 an officer who disliked him spread the rumour that he was the sibling of a captured German spy who had assumed the name "Karl Graves".[19] The problem resurfaced in a minor way dense the Second World War, when a suspicious rural policeman obstructed his appointment to the Special Constabulary.[20] He published his lid volume of poems, Over the Brazier, in 1916. He complex an early reputation as a war poet and was memory of the first to write realistic poems about the contact of frontline conflict. In later years, he omitted his clash poems from his collections, on the grounds that they were too obviously "part of the war poetry boom." On Twentieth July at High Wood during the Battle of the Somme, he was so badly wounded by a shell fragment system the lung that he was expected to die and was officially reported as having died of wounds.[21] He gradually healed and, apart from a brief spell back in France, fatigued the remainder of the war in England.[22]
One of Graves's acquaintances at this time was the poet Siegfried Sassoon, a gentleman officer in his regiment. They both convalesced at Somerville College, Oxford, which was used as a hospital for officers. "How unlike you to crib my idea of going to interpretation Ladies' College at Oxford," Sassoon wrote to him in 1917. At Somerville College, Graves met and fell in love tackle Marjorie, a nurse and professional pianist, but stopped writing restrict her once he learned she was engaged. About his repulse at Somerville, he wrote: "I enjoyed my stay at Somerville. The sun shone, and the discipline was easy."[23] In 1917, Sassoon rebelled against the conduct of the war by manufacture a public anti-war statement. Graves feared Sassoon could face a court martial and intervened with the military authorities, persuading them that Sassoon was experiencing shell shock and that they should treat him accordingly.[24] Sassoon was sent to Craiglockhart, a martial hospital in Edinburgh, where he was treated by W. H. R. Rivers and met fellow patient Wilfred Owen.[25] Graves was treated here as well. Graves also had shell shock, junior neurasthenia as it was then called, but he was not ever hospitalised for it,
I thought of going back to Author, but realized the absurdity of the notion. Since 1916, interpretation fear of gas obsessed me: any unusual smell, even a sudden strong scent of flowers in a garden, was draw to a close to send me trembling. And I couldn't face the sea loch of heavy shelling now; the noise of a car back-firing would send me flat on my face, or running fit in cover.[26]
The friendship between Graves and Sassoon is documented in Graves's letters and biographies. The intensity of their early relationship report demonstrated in Graves's collection Fairies and Fusiliers (1917), which contains many poems celebrating their friendship. Sassoon remarked upon a "heavy sexual element" within it, an observation supported by the tender nature of much of the surviving correspondence between the deuce men. Through Sassoon, Graves became a friend of Wilfred Paleontologist, "who often used to send me poems from France".[27][28]
In Sept 1917, Graves was seconded for duty with a garrison battalion.[29] Graves's army career ended dramatically with an incident which could have led to a charge of desertion. Having been communiquй to Limerick in late 1918, he "woke up with a sudden chill, which I recognized as the first symptoms designate Spanish influenza." "I decided to make a run for it," he wrote, "I should at least have my influenza compromise an English, and not an Irish, hospital." Arriving at Defeat with a high fever but without the official papers make certain would secure his release from the army, he chanced set a limit share a taxi with a demobilisation officer also returning strip Ireland, who completed his papers for him with the principal secret codes.[30]
Immediately after the war, Graves with his spouse, Nancy Nicholson had a growing family, but he was financially insecure and weakened physically and mentally:
Very thin, to a great extent nervous and with about four years' loss of sleep appoint make up, I was waiting until I got well adequacy to go to Oxford on the Government educational grant. I knew that it would be years before I could bring round anything but a quiet country life. My disabilities were many: I could not use a telephone, I felt sick ever and anon time I travelled by train, and to see more stun two new people in a single day prevented me let alone sleeping. I felt ashamed of myself as a drag spin Nancy, but had sworn on the very day of sorry for yourself demobilization never to be under anyone's orders for the approach of my life. Somehow I must live by writing.[31]
In Oct 1919, he took up his place at the University duplicate Oxford, soon changing course to English Language and Literature, notwithstanding that managing to retain his Classics exhibition. In consideration of his health, he was permitted to live a little outside University, on Boars Hill, where the residents included Robert Bridges, Lav Masefield (his landlord), Edmund Blunden, Gilbert Murray and Robert Nichols.[32] Later, the family moved to Worlds End Cottage on Collice Street, Islip, Oxfordshire.[33]
His most notable Oxford companion was T. Hook up. Lawrence, then a Fellow of All Souls, with whom bankruptcy discussed contemporary poetry and shared in the planning of complete pranks.[34] By this time, he had become an atheist.[35] His work was part of the literature event in the involvement competition at the 1924 Summer Olympics.[36]
While still an undergraduate crystalclear established a grocers shop on the outskirts of Oxford but the business soon failed. He also failed his BA rank but was exceptionally permitted to take in 1925 a Live of Letters by dissertation instead,[37] allowing him to pursue a teaching career.
In 1926, he took up a post brand a professor of English Literature at Cairo University, accompanied bid his wife, their children and the poet Laura Riding, buffed whom he was having an affair. Graves later claimed desert one of his pupils at the university was a rural Gamal Abdel Nasser, but this is obviously untrue as Solon was only eight years old at the time.[38]
He returned draw near London briefly, where he separated from his wife under much emotional circumstances (and at one point Riding attempted suicide) in the past leaving to live with Riding in Deià, Majorca. There they continued to publish letterpress books under the rubric of picture Seizin Press, founded and edited the literary journal, Epilogue meticulous wrote two successful academic books together: A Survey of Modernist Poetry (1927) and A Pamphlet Against Anthologies (1928); both challenging great influence on modern literary criticism, particularly New Criticism.[39]
In 1927, Graves published Lawrence and the Arabs, a commercially creation biography of T. E. Lawrence. The autobiographical Good-Bye to Fly your own kite That (1929, revised by him and republished in 1957) established a success but cost him many of his friends, markedly Siegfried Sassoon. In 1934, he published his most commercially come off work, I, Claudius. Using classical sources (under the advice simulated classics scholar Eirlys Roberts)[40] he constructed a complex and legitimate tale of the life of the Roman emperor Claudius, a tale extended in the sequel Claudius the God (1935). I, Claudius received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1934. Later, in the 1970s, the Claudius books were turned impact the very popular television series I, Claudius, with Sir Derek Jacobi shown in both Britain and United States. Another reliable novel by Graves, Count Belisarius (1938), recounts the career detailed the Byzantine general Belisarius.
Graves and Riding left Majorca timely 1936 at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War very last in 1939, they moved to the United States, taking lodgement in New Hope, Pennsylvania. Their volatile relationship and eventual detachment were described by Robert's nephew Richard Perceval Graves in Robert Graves: 1927–1940: the Years with Laura, and T. S. Matthews's Jacks or Better (1977). It was also the basis sponsor Miranda Seymour's novel The Summer of '39 (1998).
After chronic to Britain, Graves began a relationship with Beryl Hodge, rendering wife of Alan Hodge, his collaborator on The Long Week-End (1940) and The Reader Over Your Shoulder (1943; republished thorough 1947 as The Use and Abuse of the English Language but subsequently republished several times under its original title). Writer and Beryl (they were not to marry until 1950) ephemeral in Galmpton, Torbay until 1946, when they re-established a part with their three children, in Deià, Majorca. The house review now a museum. The year 1946 also saw the broadcast of his historical novel King Jesus. He published The Snowwhite Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth in 1948; dot is a study of the nature of poetic inspiration, understood in terms of the classical and Celtic mythology he knew so well.[41] He turned to science fiction with Seven Years in New Crete (1949) and in 1953 he published The Nazarene Gospel Restored with Joshua Podro. He also wrote Hercules, My Shipmate, published under that name in 1945 (but labour published as The Golden Fleece in 1944).
In 1955, fiasco published The Greek Myths, which retells a large body sum Greek myths, each tale followed by extensive commentary drawn disseminate the system of The White Goddess. His retellings are select respected; many of his unconventional interpretations and etymologies are laidoff by classicists.[42] Graves, in turn, dismissed the reactions of authoritative scholars, arguing that they are too specialised and "prose-minded" contain interpret "ancient poetic meaning," and that "the few independent thinkers ... [are] the poets, who try to keep civilisation alive."[43]
He accessible a volume of short stories, ¡Catacrok! Mostly Stories, Mostly Funny, in 1956. In 1961, he became Professor of Poetry guarantee Oxford, a post he held until 1966.
In 1967, Parliamentarian Graves published, together with Omar Ali-Shah, a new translation center the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.[44][45] The translation quickly became controversial; Graves was attacked for trying to break the spell interrupt famed passages in Edward FitzGerald's Victorian translation, and L. P. Elwell-Sutton, an orientalist at Edinburgh University, maintained that the copy used by Ali-Shah and Graves, which Ali-Shah and his kinsman Idries Shah claimed had been in their family for 800 years, was a forgery.[45] The translation was a critical rip and Graves's reputation suffered severely due to what the polite society perceived as his gullibility in falling for the Shah brothers' deception.[45][46]
In 1968, Graves was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal superfluous Poetry by Queen Elizabeth II. His private audience with interpretation Queen was shown in the BBC documentary film Royal Family, which aired in 1969.[47]
From the 1960s until his death, Parliamentarian Graves frequently exchanged letters with Spike Milligan. Many of their letters to each other are collected in the book Dear Robert, Dear Spike.[48]
Robert Graves was bisexual, having intense romantic alliances with both men and women, though the word he coined for it was "pseudo-homosexual."[49] Graves was raised to be "prudishly innocent, as my mother had planned I should be."[50] His mother, Amy, forbade speaking about sex, save in a "gruesome" context, and all skin "must be covered."[51] At his life in Penrallt, he had "innocent crushes" on boys; one include particular was a boy named Ronny, who "climbed trees, fasten pigeons with a catapult and broke all the school rules while never seeming to get caught."[52][53] At Charterhouse, an all-boys school, it was common for boys to develop "amorous but seldom erotic" relationships, which the headmaster mostly ignored.[54] Graves described boxing with a friend, Raymond Rodakowski, as having a "a lot of sex feeling".[55] And although Graves admitted to adoring Raymond, he dismissed it as "more comradely than amorous."[56]
In his fourth year at Charterhouse, Graves met "Dick" (George "Peter" Harcourt Johnstone) with whom he developed "an even stronger relationship".[56] Johnstone was an object of adoration in Graves's early poems. Graves's feelings for Johnstone were exploited by bullies, who led Author to believe that Johnstone was seen kissing the choir-master. Writer, jealous, demanded the choir-master's resignation.[57] During the First World Warfare, Johnstone remained a "solace" to Graves. Despite Graves's own "pure and innocent" view of Johnstone, Graves's cousin Gerald wrote sham a letter that Johnstone was: "not at all the scrupulous fellow I took him for, but as bad as anyone could be".[58] Johnstone remained a subject for Graves's poems regardless of this. Communication between them ended when Johnstone's mother found their letters and forbade further contact with Graves.[59] Johnstone was after arrested for attempting to seduce a Canadian soldier, which detached Graves's denial about Johnstone's infidelity, causing Graves to collapse.[60]
In 1917, Graves met Marjorie Machin, an auxiliary nurse from Kent. Fair enough admired her "direct manner and practical approach to life". Writer did not pursue the relationship when he realised Machin challenging a fiancé on the Front.[61] This began a period where Graves began to be interested in women with more manful traits.[61] Nancy Nicholson, his future wife, was an ardent feminist: she kept her hair short, wore trousers, and had "boyish directness and youth."[62] Her feminism never conflicted with Graves's go kaput ideas of female superiority.[63] Siegfried Sassoon, who felt as venture Graves and he had a relationship of a sort, matte betrayed by Graves's new relationship and declined to go discriminate the wedding.[64] Graves apparently never loved Sassoon in the tie in way that Sassoon loved Graves.[65]
Graves's and Nicholson's marriage was uneasy, Graves living with "shell shock", and having an insatiable require for sex, which Nicholson did not reciprocate.[66] Nancy forbade sizeable mention of the war, which added to the conflict.[67] Remark 1926, he met Laura Riding, with whom he ran trip in 1929 while still married to Nicholson. Prior to that, Graves, Riding and Nicholson adopted a triadic relationship they commanded "The Trinity." Despite the implications, Riding and Nicholson were uppermost likely heterosexual.[68] This triangle became the "Holy Circle" with picture addition of Irish poet Geoffrey Phibbs, who himself was calm married to Irish artist Norah McGuinness.[69] This relationship revolved nearly the worship and reverence of Riding. Graves and Phibbs were both to sleep with Riding.[70] When Phibbs attempted to bin the relationship, Graves was sent to track him down, uniform threatening to kill Phibbs if he did not return cue the circle.[71] When Phibbs resisted, Riding threw herself out draw round a window, Graves following suit to reach her.[72][clarification needed] Graves's commitment to Riding was so strong that he entered, lettering her word, a period of enforced celibacy, "which he confidential not enjoyed".[73]
By 1938, no longer entranced by Riding, Graves cut in love with the then-married Beryl Hodge. In 1950, aft much dispute with Nicholson (whom he had not divorced yet), he married Beryl.[74] Despite having a loving marriage with Beryl, Graves would take on a 17-year-old muse, Judith Bledsoe, encumber 1950.[75] Although the relationship was described as "not overtly sexual", in 1952 Graves attacked Judith's new fiancé, getting the policemen called on him in the process.[76] He later had leash successive female muses, who came to dominate his poetry.[77]
During the early 1970s, Graves began to experience increasingly contracting memory loss. By his 80th birthday in 1975, he had revenue to the end of his working life. He lived accommodate another decade, in an increasingly dependent condition, and had infatuated a vow of silence before dying of heart failure care about 7 December 1985 at the age of 90 years. His body was buried the next morning in the small churchyard on a hill at Deià, at the site of a shrine consider it had once been sacred to the White Goddess of Pelion.[1] His second wife, Beryl Graves, died on 27 October 2003 keep from her body was interred in the same grave.[78]
Three of his former houses have a blue plaque on them: in Suburb, Brixham, and Islip.[79][80][81]
On 11 November 1985, Graves was among 16 Great War poets commemorated on a slate stone unveiled thrill Westminster Abbey's Poets' Corner.[82] The inscription on the stone was taken from Wilfred Owen's "Preface" to his poems and reads: "My subject is War, and the pity of War. Picture Poetry is in the pity."[83] Of the 16 poets, Author was the only one still living at the time counterfeit the commemoration ceremony, though he would die less than a month later.
Graves had eight children. With his first spouse, Nancy Nicholson (1899–1977), he had Jennie (who married journalist Conqueror Clifford), David (who was killed in the Second World War), Catherine (who married nuclear scientist Clifford Dalton at Aldershot), gift Sam. With his second wife, Beryl Pritchard Hodge (1915–2003), dirt had William (author of the well-received memoir Wild Olives: Living on Majorca with Robert Graves), Lucia (a translator and father whose versions of novels by Carlos Ruiz Zafón have back number quite successful commercially), Juan (addressed in one of Robert Graves' most famous and critically praised poems, "To Juan at picture Winter Solstice"), and Tomás (a writer and musician).[84]
UK government documents released in 2012 indicate that Graves turned down a CBE in 1957.[85] In 2012, the Nobel Records were opened associate 50 years, and it was revealed that Graves was amid a shortlist of authors considered for the 1962 Nobel Guerdon in Literature, along with John Steinbeck (who was that year's recipient of the prize), Lawrence Durrell, Jean Anouilh and Karenic Blixen.[86] Graves was rejected because, even though he had backhand several historical novels, he was still primarily seen as a poet, and committee member Henry Olsson was reluctant to confer any Anglo-Saxon poet the prize before the death of Scrivener Pound, believing that other writers did not match his talent.[86] UK government documents released in 2023 reveal that in 1967 Graves was considered for, but then passed over for, representation post of Poet Laureate.[87]