Robert Graves: Life on the Edge

Robert Graves was astonishingly prolific and worked in many genres, so much so that for a while I thought there must be several writers by that name. He wrote lyric poetry, scholarly studies of mythology, drama, criticism, and journalism, he translated from Latin, and is probably best known for his potboilers "I, Claudius" and "Claudius the God," works that he considered purely commercial and took little interest in. And, as Miranda Seymour makes clear, he was as odd a duck as ever walked. His life was defined by the women to whom he devoted himself. "Abased himself" would perhaps be the better term. The first and most influential was the American Laura Riding, a second-rate poet who fancied herself some sort of prophetess who would save the world from war and turned Graves into her adoring puppy. Later in life Graves devoted himself to a series of young women, each of whom he claimed embodied "the goddess" in whose service he thought he dwelled. Seymour (a novelist herself) writes beautifully, and with the cooperation of key members of the Graves family she has produced what will surely be the definitive biography of Graves for years to come. She brings to life his almost effortless genius but never stoops to hero worship--she is unstinting in her examination of his faults. Here we see every aspect of Graves: his brilliance, his foolishness, his free spirit, his sexual repression, his generosity, his egocentricity. It is a portrait as fully round as one could possibly want.