Elsewhere the topic of Robert Graves's
The White Goddess recently came up, in connection with the traditional envisioning of "the Muse" as a female supernatural entity. So I thought I'd start a thread in case people would like to further discuss the idea here--either Graves's take on it, or the concept of a Muse in general.
Gotta say, I didn't much care for Graves's thesis.
The book was recommended to me by a feminist friend who loved it. She had been raised, as I had, in a rigidly patriarchal and often downright misogynistic and homophobic religion. So I understand her unhappiness in a culture and community that perennially casts everything feminine or effeminate as fallen, evil, and weak both physically and morally...or (as in the case of the Virgin Mary) as simply lesser and second-class in relation to Wonderful, Holy Maleness. Note that the Virgin Mary is honored as the ONE exception to the female sinfulness represented by Eve; furthermore, her devotees are strictly cautioned that she may be
honored but never, never, NEVER actually
worshipped, because worship is reserved for the Holy Trinity, generally depicted as male, male, male. Femaleness is constantly depicted as inferior and secondary to maleness, from the creation of Eve to the Wedding of the Lamb in the book of Revelations (in which Christ is the bridegroom and the Church his once-sinful but now redeemed and properly subservient bride).
Christianity was vigorous about stamping out goddess-worship wherever it encountered it in medieval Europe, and it remains hypervigilant about goddess-worship sneaking back into society via the Marian cult. As Graves himself points out in his book.
Anyway, my friend loved Graves's re-affirmation of the divine feminine. The idea that successful poets have always devoted themselves to Her service in the form of a feminine Muse was a refreshingly validating concept, from my friend's perspective.
I took a completely opposite view. I thought Graves was just being a stereotypically self-justifying womanizer. And, as sexists so often are, homophobic to boot.
According to Graves, only heterosexual men can be great poets, because only they can have a "fruitful" erotic love relationship with the feminine ideal. He says that that's why Socrates and Plato were so negative about poetry--they felt no sexual attraction to a female Muse, and instead preferred "the god" (i.e., the rational, logical Apollo). Graves believes that male homosexuality is fundamentally incompatible with poets' need to properly appreciate the female Muse, as he does himself.
And women poets--why, why, why must you persist in wanting to write? You're no good at it, because it goes against your nature! Why can't you be content to be inhabited by the holy Muse, which is a tremendous honor unavailable to men? Graves reluctantly concedes that lesbians might have a shot at producing an occasional poem that's not doggerel (and even then it's not a "fruitful" relationship with the Muse, as his own male-female relationship is), but the rest of us chicks are hopeless as poets, because true poets must have an erotic relationship with the female Muse.
In other words, because male heterosexuality and spirituality and creativity are inextricably linked for Graves himself, he assumes that his own experience is the One True Way to Be a Poet; therefore, the entire universe must conform to his own worldview.
But I really lose patience when Graves says that the poet's unwavering faithfulness to the goddess requires him to not get too attached to the mortals in which she temporarily resides. That's right, poets are to worship the immortal Muse by recognizing her divine presence in the young, beautiful body of a mortal woman...making sweet love to her for a period of time...and then spotting when the goddess no longer resides in that particular mortal, but has moved on to inhabit the body of another beautiful young woman. If you don't move on when the goddess does, you are no longer worshipping Her--you have shackled yourself to a mere mortal, and are no longer worthy of receiving divine poetic inspiration.
Bottom line--to be a really great poet, you've gotta love 'em and leave 'em, and not be overly concerned about the trail of broken hearts and lives in your wake. What does it matter if a series of once-young, once-naïve women are now struggling to keep food on the table while they raise your bastards alone in a hostile society...so long as you got a smattering of really good love poems out of each of them? That's what counts.
Sorry, but I'm inclined to empathize with the young women who got used and discarded by both the poet and the goddess (who looks more and more like merely a personification of the poet's own wandering eye, and his unchanging sexual appetite for young, firm bodies, in spite of the fact that bodies change with time, pregnancy, etc.).
Claiming that the poet is not to blame for his cruelty, because ultimately it is the cruelty of someone else (the goddess)...and further claiming that
his secular unfaithfulness is actually religious faithfulness...is the most outrageous, self-serving bullshit I've ever heard in my life.
So no, I'm not too enthused about Graves's thesis. Seems awfully misogynistic and homophobic from where I'm standing.