Monday, 31 December 2007

Grobert Raves

I was bedridden over the festive period, thanks to an injury I picked up in the opening of a new Primark last September, and I elected to soothe my fevered brow at least partially with Robert Graves' endearingly insane non-essay The White Goddess. Apparently Graves had read The Golden Bough, he just managed to miss the point. I think an illustrated edition of this work is long overdue. Just think what a talented woodcutter or engraver to do with these sample excerpts -
"Since there were always twelve stones in the gilgal, or stone circle, used for sacrificial purposes, the next jaunt is to chase the white roebuck speculatively round the twelve houses of the Zodiac."
"Her nests, when one comes across them in dreams, lodged in rock-clefts or the branches of enormous hollow yews, are built of carefully chosen twigs, lined with horsehair and the plumage of prophetic birds, and littered with the jaw bones and entrails of poets."
"An English or American woman in a nervous breakdown of sexual origin will often instinctively reproduce in faithful and disgusting detail much of the ancient Dionysiac ritual. I have witnessed it myself in helpless terror."

1 comment:

Dogtooth said...

I've just finished Murphy. At one point near the beginning of the novel, one of the sub-plotters has the imaginative scope to curse not only the day he was born, but also the day he was conceived. Just for good measure, presumably.