Reading list.

The Robert Graves biography was strangely unsatisfying and I am trying to decide just why that was. Richard Graves covered all the ground, having such a huge body of information, diaries, letters and accounts by others to collate that it was a gargantuan task. Hard to see the wood for the trees. He obviously did well, yet for me it lacked something, maybe insight. It isn't the right of the biographer to have opinions, yet so many do have at least a point from which they view their subject. I think perhaps Richard G tried to see all points of view. He must have been influenced by the surviving figures in Roberts' life, one of whom was Beryl his second wife who had loyally supported him and stood by whilst he went off with his 'Muses.' He begins the book with a quote from Robert who purportedly said that he disliked 'muck raking' but if it was to happen then at least the full story should be know with all the facts. Starting with his Uncles' expressed wish for the whole truth then, Richard has done well. As the reader I feel I am watching the passion from a great distance and that isn't enough.

I remember that it was in Graves' Greek Mythology that I read the words (given to Chronos I think, must check) that man was not meant to be monogamous. At the time I took it that he meant literally 'men' and not humankind and it seems I was right. Robert himself is unable to accept the lovers of his muses with as much equanimity as Beryl, in the main, accepted the muses. Neither did they accept each other so readily! Cindy disliked being supplanted by Juli. She was by far the most disruptive. The only (?) muse whose relationship with the great man became fully sexual, she very nearly caused the breakdown of his marriage and household. I did raise a cheer when I heard that his daughter Jennie (by Nancy) took Cindy for a walk along a cliff path and at a precipitous point threatened to throw Cindy over unless she agreed to leave Robert alone. Furthermore that if she agreed now and reneged later on the agreement Jennie would find her and kill her later!

It was impossible for me when looking at a phoograph of Robert as a young man, not to see his rather full and fleshy mouth as that of a self-indulgent person. I have judged mouths like that, fairly or unfairly, in the past although reason says that it is a physical trait and not one he could have much control over. There is the evidence that he was a disciplined and hard-working man who pulled his weight domestically, but he does seem to have been able to set aside the feelings of others in order to meet his own needs. Which leads me to the thought: do we forgive great men foibles we would find unacceptable in a lesser man? Is the ill they may have caused others somehow counterweighted by their achievements? It seems that for me the answer is 'yes.' And maybe for Glenda too as I see from her comment that she considers I Claudius to have enriched her life.

Now I have started 'A History of God' by Karen Armstrong, which promises to be more stimulating.