Daniel Chaikin’s Reviews > The White Goddess > Status Update

Thinking about abandoning this one. I don't mind reading it, but I'm not getting much out of it. Just an incoherent blitz of facts (and iffy reasonings) that aren't coalescing into anything for me... Will sleep on it.

Progress of a sort

Hmm

I'm failing to make the leap if faith required to buy in. But I'm still reading it.

Whoa. Convoluted in all it's majestic meaning (or maybe just bs?)

Noting I might want to look up The Golden Ass by Apuleius - a Roman novel.

The birch, though very noble,
Armed himself but late:
A sign not of cowardice
But of high estate.

- the battle of the trees...

The reason why the hairs stand on end, the eyes water, the throat is cypress constricted, the skin crawls and a shiver runs down the spine when one writes or reads a true poem is that a true poem is necessarily an invocation of the White Goddess, or Muse, the Mother of All Living, the ancient power of fright and lust — the female spider or the queen-bee whose embrace is death.

P. 20

The function of poetry is religious invocation of the Muse (page 10)

Where the scientist must choose the most economical interpretation, Graves chooses the interpretation richest in meaning

Introduction, page XIV